"D'you think meditating will help, Cerberus?"

"...Do you mind if I give you a nickname, Cerberus doesn't seem quite right." Since he's not a giant scary three-headed dog and all.

"Meditation always helps in understanding what your cards mean," he agrees. "And this isn't my true form," he says, guessing what Terry's on about.

He looks toward the setting sun. It's getting chilly. "Windy, please return. I'll try to figure you out later, promise. Cerberus, I'm gonna go home. You want to come with or find someplace for yourself out here? If you come with me you'll have to try and hide from my family. They'd probably think you were some kind of animatronics I made as a prank."

"I can be very quiet," he says, and becomes as still as a plush toy.

...a floating plush toy.

"And not obviously magic. Would you mind riding in my backpack?" He asks, while packing the Clow Book and his notebook and pencils into same.

He promptly scrambles into it.

And Terry bikes home. How do you even meditate?

Eh, he'll look it up on the family computer. If he can kick his goody-two-shoes going-to-be-a-fancy-lawyer brother off it for two minutes.

Cerberus is very quiet and well-behaved in Terry's backpack.

When he gets home he has a short conversation about the imminent family dinner and where were you honestly, then rushes up to his room and lets Cerberus out.

"I'm going to research how to meditate real quick. I can probably get out of the family dinner by saying I have lots of homework. Do you want me to bring you something?"

"Oooh there's food? What's there to eat?"

"Today? Chicken and pasta and bread and really fancy sauce my mom likes to buy. Chocolate chip cookies as dessert."

"Coooookies!"

"I'll bring you a cookie or two, then. Don't think I can sneak off with the whole plate."

And he heads downstairs.

He gets access to the family computer for ten minutes by claiming it needs an update. He's the one who set it up and keeps fixing it, after all, so nobody questions it.

And he's back up about twenty minutes later with a plate of chicken and pasta in fancy sauce, and four cookies. "Two for me, two for you."

"Yaaaaay!" he says, floating over to a cookie and grabbing it to eat.

It's warm, and contains an above-average amount of chocolate.

Terry chows down on the unimportant not-cookie food, eats one cookie, puts the other one on his desk, says, "Please don't eat that, I want it later." And starts meditating.

Relaxed sitting pose. Deep breaths. Clear thoughts. It's difficult to have clear thoughts after a day as... Interesting, as this. He doesn't seem to be getting anywhere.

"It helps if you put your cards around you and your staff on your lap," Cerberus adds.

So he does that. Staff exits backpack. Windy goes directly in front of him, with Float off to the left slightly.

And this time he tries to focus on the staff, and magic that he damn well knows is in him.

Well, for as long as he damn well knows things, he won't really get anywhere, even with the subconsciously soothing influence of the staff.

He tries that for a while, but eventually... Far be it for Terry to stick to something that is obviously not working. The traditional meditation exercise of trying to think about nothing, taking deep, ryhtmic breaths, takes place.

That starts getting him somewhere. It's much easier than he'd expected, too, and he soons falls into a pattern, and starts seeing things behind his closed eyelids...

He doesn't stop the deep breaths. He sort of... Double-thinks, or tries to, deliberately not interpreting the mysterious images on a conscious level. Experience it now. Think about it later.

Then he will successfully continue meditating!

The mysterious images start being much less mysterious: a little ball of sunlight, bright as can be, incredibly and terrifyingly powerful, about the same place he'd expect Cerberus to be; the two cards, floating to either side of him, slowly gaining form in their avatars.

The ball of sunlight (too bright) knocks him out of meditation when he realizes it's in the same place as Cerberus.

"Eesh, that will take some getting used to. You're much shinier while I'm meditating, Cerberus." He checks the time.

He's only been out for like twenty minutes.

"See, I told you this wasn't my true form."

Twenty minutes is longer than it felt like.

He sets an alarm for 9:30. "Gonna try again."