"Huh. Yeah, that makes sense."

"In terms of predicting problems in advance - I think this was studied once, but it was by a Mindhealer who had...questionable ethics...and went around looking at everyone's mind at the academy where he worked, and then kept personal records on his predictions of who would have troubles later. And I have only heard of this secondhand, anyway, his work was never published in a treatise." He frowns, rubs his chin. "The risk for some problems does seem to run in families? Becoming addicted to drugs and sudden madness later in life, in particular, are more likely if someone's parent or sibling suffered the same problem." 

"Doesn't being addicted to drugs only happen if you actually take any ever?"

"I mean, yes, but if you include alcohol, most people will have some at least once in their lives, though of course most never become addicted. ...Also there is likely a factor that children with parents who drink or take drugs will likely have those drugs around in their homes. I am not sure if it has been well-studied whether children by blood, but raised elsewhere, still have the higher risk." 

"That would be interesting..." She writes it down. "If I have money later is it okay to pay people to let me look or to answer my questions - like if they don't mind it, and it would just be annoying to sit there waiting for me to see whatever I was looking for, I mean -"

"Oh. Hmm. I am not sure that is something where Mindhealers have a settled answer. Healers might, there are more of them and they sometimes want to study healthy patients for comparison and will pay them to sit still all afternoon for it. Many people feel more private about their thoughts than about their bodies, but Mindhealing Sight per se does not actually look at thoughts. I think it would be all right, but you would want to explain and get their opinion before telling them how much money, and be cautious of the fact that very poor people might think it worthwhile to make themselves very uncomfortable for twenty coppers." 

She thinks about that for a moment, then nods.

"I continue to be very pleased with how carefully you think about this. Ah, and your last question was about defence. There is something that a Mindhealer can do called a set-command; it involves imposing a certain intent on a patient, usually expressed as an imperative word or phrase in Mindspeech, and pushing it into place with your Gift. You could, for example, force someone to 'stop moving', and they would stop attacking you. The single positive quality of set-commands is that they are fast, a second or two to place. They are very sloppy, will not wear off, and take much greater skill and time to undo afterward, which is why I do not recommend this unless you are in critical danger." 

Nod nod. "Does it have to be something simple like that - or something negative like that -"

"It does generally have to be simple, because of the lack of finesse. I believe positive set-commands are possible, for example ordering someone to run away." 

Nod nod.

He sits back. "Have you been practicing your Sight? Anything in particular you have noticed?" 

"I think the gears don't actually go through each other, they just go in directions that don't exist."

"Fascinating! It is definitely remarked by many Mindhealers that our Sight can contain physically impossible things, and that this is useful for conveying the full detail of the mind." 

"I'm not sure yet how many directions that don't exist there are.'

"I suspect your mind is still trying to absorb all of the information involved, and find ways of working with it. I - admit that your concept of more than one imaginary direction makes my head spin a little, but that may work fine for you. For myself, I found as a teenager that I could imagine the water of rivers and lakes as coloured, and this gave my metaphor a way of conveying more. The metaphor seems to respond to visualizations in this way." 

"That's smart! I'm not sure it will work for me because of how gears have to touch other gears to work though."

"Hmm. I think that it is not uncommon for Empaths to sense emotion as a colour, or smell, or equivalent to another sense, and emotional valence - or simpler valences - is a quality that can be attached to a gear or a cluster of gears but is not necessarily about the way they touch... I am not sure. This is something that is worth extensive consideration on your own, I think." His lips curve into a smile. "Which I am certain you will do. You are every teacher's ideal student." 

"Thank you!"

He pats her shoulder. "Anyway. More questions, or are you ready to move on to the exercises I had prepared for today?" 

"I'm ready, what are they?"

"So, one of the most common actual uses of our Gift that we will be called on to do with patients, is when they are troubled by an association - emotional or otherwise - with a particular situation, and - at least in the short run - would find it easier to go on with their lives if they did not have this. So I am going to give you a situation that I associate with strong emotions, and I want you to try to do a detour or fence around this. - I will of course put it back afterward. However, do you have any questions, first, about this practice in general?" 

"How come the detour or fence won't make it so you can't think about it to fix?"

"I suppose if you did a fence thoroughly enough it would make it trickier, but I have quite a lot of practice with this, and it is almost impossible to make a fence thorough enough that no angles are approachable, especially if one has Mindhealing-Sight." 

"Okay... how do I actually do it?"