Father would not permit me to leave the house for a full year. While Id’s power could have allowed it, Eth forbade any of us from disobeying our parents. Instead, I waited for father’s anger and concern to cool. While biding my time, I received a visitor.

Id saw Father speaking with a man we could tell was a foreigner. His toga was stripped with yellow and trimmed with burgundy, characteristic of the more central cities to east of Sofia. To know what was being discussed, I moved to entrance of the house and hid out of sight behind a corner to listen.

“I pray you, Aristocles,” the visitor said, “allow me audience with the miraculous Philena the wise.”

“I cannot grant you this,” I heard Father telling him. “Philena mustn’t be bothered with such a matter.”

“I understand that such comparatively small matters are beneath her,” the visitor pleaded, “but no doctor has been able to alleviate my wife’s sickness. If there is but a chance for her to show this petty kindness, I beseech Philena to hear my plea.”

“I doubt Philena would be of any help to you, Darius.” Father said firmly.

“How can you say that?” Darius asked, aghast.

“Because even the perfect mind cannot obtain knowledge from nothing,” Father pointed out, “and you have neglected to bring your wife with you.” Curious as to what father meant by that I peeked around the corner.

“Why would I have needed to bring…” then Darius trailed off as he noticed me. “Oh, hello little one. Do you know where Philena is?”

“I am Philena,” I answered.

“I apologize. I am looking for the Philena who dispelled the Sahalian invasion of this city five years ago,” Darius clarified.

“I am her,” I assured him.

Darius took a step back and looked to our father, who nodded. “She is whom you seek,” he said reluctantly.

“But she is too young,” protested Darius. “Was she even alive during the attack?”

“She was a month old when she foretold it,” answered Father.

Darius looked back to me in excitement. “Incredible! Surely you can help me,” he told me. “My wife is gravely sick, and no one in Megara can cure her.”

“Can you help,” I asked Id.

“I could look into the branching futures where she is given different treatments,” Id considered. “However, all the other cities are too far away for me to see. She will need to be brought here.”

“She will need to be brought here for me to see her futures,” I explained aloud.

“I will send word to bring her here,” Darius said excitedly.

“Will you now?” inquired father, his arms crossed.

“Advocate for Darius,” requested Eth. “He needs our help.”

“Will it be so inconvenient?” I asked father. “We have many guest rooms.”

“I do not wish to make a habit of helping all of humanity going through a crisis, or Sofia would run out of guest rooms,” father justified, then sighed. “Very well, you may stay with us,” he told the visitor.

“I am forever in your debt,” said Darius relived. He left to send for his wife.

Father ordered me, “Go play with your sister, Philena.”

When we left the room, Id said, “Father is whispering to Darius in a very stern way… and I can hear them.”

“What did he say?” I asked, curious.

Id listened again, then told me, “He said, ‘Whatever you have heard of Philena, you will not share with her. Whatever rumor or speculation you have heard, or had, you do not let past your lips while you are here in Sofia. Otherwise, I will call the guards and have you expelled from the city as a trespasser.’”

“What could people in other cities be saying about us?” wondered Eth.

It was two weeks before Darius’s wife, Eleanor, was brought to our house. When she arrived one afternoon, Darius received her with great impatience and reprimanded the servant for taking so long. They insisted that a slower pace was made out of concern for Eleanor’s health.

Once they finished their argument, Darius presented Eleanor to me. Id spent a few minutes searching Eleanor’s future, concluding that it was too open to make any solid prediction.

To solve this dilemma, I requested medicines and treatments be presented to us in order to narrow the futures. When Id searched this time, there much more concrete results.

However, despite searching for the whole day, not a single remedy would better Elenor’s health. The next day I suggested that Id should search the combination of cures, which, quite predictably, took longer. The whole day was spent searching and nothing was found, while Eth spurred us on and Darius grew anxious.

The obvious next step would be to search mixtures of three, but the third day bore no fruit. Finally, on the fourth day, Id found a blend of tonics which would restore Eleanor to full health.

The medicine was to be made and taken each day. When she showed significant signs of improvement by the second day of treatment, Darius’s joy was unable to be contained. After a week they made their journey home.

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“Philena, we will begin exploring and training your foresight,” said father a few days after Darius had left. “Tell me what seeing into the future is like.”

Id explained to me, “It’s like looking at a map, but the closer you look the more roads and paths appear on it.”

I relayed this to father. “Interesting,” he said. “Is it any different when you look to a future that’s in a different place?”

Id expounded, “It’s like reading a map that isn’t right in front of you. The farther away it is, the less detail can be made out.”

I told this to father as well.

“How far can you see?” he asked.

“From right here I can see four months ahead. From right now I can see perhaps thirty miles away” Id provided, which I passed on.

He nodded thoughtfully. “When trying to cure Eleanor, what was your methodology in reading the map of time?” father asked.

“Ego can I just have control for this?” Id requested. “I don’t want to play this game of messenger.”

“No,” I denied firmly. “Allowing either of you to have control would be a disaster.”

“Then could you allow me to physically speak?” Id bargained.

This I allowed. Id answered Father’s question, “I followed each treatment’s path through time until I found one that worked.”

“Wouldn’t it have been more efficient to look for the future where she recovers, then work back to the present?” Father suggested.

“Yes, it would have,” Id admitted after a pause. “I hadn’t thought to do that.”

Father brought forward a water clock. “In the courtyard a servant has been instructed to flip a coin ten times. I want you to dictate instructions to me which will result in all flips having the same result. Do this before the water has run out of this clock, in fifteen minutes. Begin.”

“Ok start with finding where they are all the same side.” I commanded.

“Right.” Id said.

As Id searched the landscape of time, she would mutter about how something wouldn't work, or the servant wouldn’t do as instructed, or that it would interfere with another flip. Once the clock ran dry, Id wasn’t satisfied with her instruction, but gave them none the less. Which father recorded on his wax tablet and delivered to the servant. I stayed behind to not complicate things. When the servant was finished, eight out of the ten flips landed with the owl side up.

The rest of the day and the following week, father trained Id relentlessly in her foresight, demanding continually faster predictions from events increasingly farther away that were growing in complexity until finally mother interceded on my behalf.

“Dearest, I believe you should reconsider your plans for Philena,” Mother broached.

Curious, father questioned, “In what way?”

“You should not be putting such a burden on her this early,” Mother explained. “Yes, she is capable of incredible things. However, she is still only five years old.”

Father folded his arms. “Well, beloved, how long should I delay Humanity’s victory?” he asked crossly. “How many lives lost so that Philena may have time to play?”

“What good would victory be, if it means sacrificing your own daughter?” Mother pleaded.

Father’s eyebrows furrowed. “Philena is not a normal girl,” he told her sternly. “She can manage this, and she will manage war.”

“You forget your duty as her father,” Mom accused him.

“And you forget your place as my wife!” Father raised his hand to strike her, but brought it down to his side.

Shaken, mother replied, “As you say. Might you at least delay her martial life until womanhood?” she requested. “You cannot have designed to have Philena spill enemy blood before she has had her own.”

“I didn’t divine such an event from the stars, Calista,” Father told her. “Philena will be making plans and giving orders when I have deduced her to be ready. In this matter, it would be better for that to be sooner rather than later.” He put a calming hand on her shoulder. “Patience is a virtue, but so is decisiveness.”

“Still, if victory is assured either way, then you must consider the peace which will follow,” Mom said. “What sort of future will there be if Philena has only ever known the screams of her enemies and never the quiet of her loved ones?”

Father’s eyes unfocused as he scratched his beard. Then he gave a solemn nod. “Despite being motivated by emotion, that is a valid concern,” he admitted. “Very well, I will let off some pressure, but she will not have a typical girlhood.”

“Of course, I could not ask otherwise,” conceded mother.

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The day after mother intervened, Father allowed me to play with the children of the other Patrons. The girls were squatting in a circle where they bounced a ball and picked up several small white things only to drop them as they tried to catch the ball.

As I approached them, Eth said, “Wait, maybe we shouldn’t interrupt them. It would be rude.”

“We don’t know them,” agreed Id.

“And we won’t become acquainted with anyone with that mindset,” I countered. Aloud, I said, “Um, hi.”

The taller of the four girls replied, “Hello. Whose daughter are you?” She looked us over, her face unreadable.

“That’s a little rude, Ophelia,” said a shorter girl with wavy chestnut hair.

“Aristocles is my father,” I answered, pointing to my house.

This satisfied the one called Ophelia, who nodded in approval and motioned for me to join the game. As I crouched among them, the girl with chestnut hair gave introductions. “I’m Ella,” she said. “You already know Ophelia. Please forgive her artlessness – her father is Atticus.” Pointing to the others in turn, she added, “That’s Thalia and that’s Iris. What’s your name?”

“Philena,” I told them.

“Oh.” While it was Thalia who spoke, the other girls also seemed surprised. “My father told me you were special,” Thalia said.

This piqued my curiosity. “What did he say?” I asked.

“To not seek you out,” answered Thalia, “but also not to shun you, either.”

“Did he say why?” I asked, confused.

“No,” said Thalia, shrugging her shoulders.

I looked around at the others, who all shook their heads. As I sighed in disappointment at the lack of answers, Iris interrupted the silence. “Have you played ball and bones before?” she asked me.

“No,” I answered, turning my attention to the white things on the ground between us.

“It’s simple,” she said. “You just pick up as many knuckle bones – they’re from a goat – before the ball bounces twice.” Iris then demonstrated; she held up the ball then let go and lunged for a bone. She picked one up and caught the ball.

Iris then put the bone down and played again; this time she got two. She caught more each turn, working her way up to four before she failed on the fifth.

Iris then handed me the ball. One bone was easy, two was harder, and I failed on the third.

“That was a good first try,” she assured me.

I was handing the ball to Ophelia when Id said, “There is a boy in a bush behind us who is going to throw a pebble at Ella.”

I looked to Ella. “You should duck,” I warned her.

She cocked her head at me. “Why?” The word was barely out of her mouth when the small rock hit her in the forehead. “Ow!”

Thalia looked at me with wide eyes. “How did you know that was going to happen?” she asked.

“He’s going to hit here in the back of the head next,” said Id, who then shared her vision with the rest of us.

I waited until he began his throw, then put an open hand to the back of my head and caught the stone. I then stood and turned to throw it back. Seeing through Id’s vision that I would miss to the right, I adjusted my aim to the left and threw.

The boy yelled in surprised pain. I turned to Thalia and shrugged. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” I told her.

A look of anger came over Ophelia. “Luke is that you?” she demanded, shouting at the bush where the boy was hiding.

“No,” came the boy’s timid voice.

Ophelia rose and ran to her house, yelling back, “I’m telling Father!”

Luke jumped out of his hiding spot and ran after his sister.