There is a long tradition in literature and mythology of the "blind seer" -- the person who can see the future but at the cost of the ability to see the present. The irony was not lost on me, but I did spend the first fifteen years of my life totally blind without any compensating abilities, so the irony got old rather quickly.

My parents died in a fire when I was twelve years old. Somehow I managed to escape that fate. I suspect a partial activation of my power but I have never been certain, and it is not a night I care to recall.

My parents had been wealthy enough, and society was still regulated enough, that I was able to live more or less by myself. My parents' lawyer had been a family friend for years, and "Uncle" Samuel was appointed as my guardian. He arranged for a housekeeper and companion who helped me look after the house and garden. My life was still quite isolated, restricted to the world I felt safe in: my home, a few local shops and parks, and little else. When I turned fifteen I couldn't understand what was happening to me when "things" started appearing in my head.

I know now it was my mutant power awakening, but it was most disconcerting to be aware of a perception that seemed like it might be what everyone else described as sight, though of course I had no relevant grounds for comparison. I knew for sure that my eyes were not involved as, technically speaking, I don't have eyes -- the optic nerve never developed properly.

They say that you can never explain sight properly to a blind person and it's true: there are too many aspects of it that can't be translated into any other context and analogies can only go so far. I found it a lot easier to imagine that I was dealing with a totally new sense, which just happened to have a visual component. I still find it difficult to describe what I am seeing in purely visual terms.

The "vision" inside my head always seemed blurred at first, and whilst it took me a long while to understand the concept of sight-based depth perception, it actually took me a lot less time to realise that I could not only sense depth and distance, but time as well.

As an analogy, try to image describing a rainbow without being able to use the names of any colours or even wavelengths of light. It would be possible, but would seem woefully inadequate to most people. I'm afraid until the English language manages to create a four-dimensional tense structure it will remain that way.

I had never had many friends, partly through my parents' protectiveness, partly through a natural reticence, so it was difficult for me to make some of these adjustments. Mercifully I did have one friend who was always there for me. His name was David Michaels and he was, literally, the boy-next-door. We had been friends for years and told each other everything. I believe I was the only person he ever trusted enough to reveal his homosexuality to. Times were different then -- well, maybe not so different -- and such a thing could be the ruin of a man if it were ever revealed. He was so scared, and I think -- I hope -- I helped him through his fear.

With a relationship based on that much trust I knew I could tell him about my strange abilities, and I thank God that I did. He was the one who provided me with a frame of reference about what sight was, that allowed me to decipher the images in my head. His patience was limitless, we'd sit and look out the window for hours, with me trying to describe all the futures that I saw and him supplying me with a more normal visual description for comparison.

Thanks to him, words like "colour" had true meaning for me. I hear his voice whenever I watch a sunrise, or the leaves in autumn, describing the tones and visual textures to me. In return I tried to convey the delicate strangeness of clouds when seen in four dimensions: each timeline's sky is always subtly different from all the others, thanks to the vagaries of unpredictable weather patterns.

The changes that resulted from my appreciation of my gift were profound. Always a little hesitant moving around before, as all but a few blind people are no matter how calm their facade, I now strode through the world with confidence, knowing exactly where to put my feet so that I would never stumble. That simple fact alone gave me more confidence than you can probably imagine. I developed the grace and poise of a dancer, and I did dance, on my own terms, for the first time.

I never needed to study Braille again, the sheer "certainty" of the written word allowed me to see books quite easily, and there were vastly more books in normal print than translated into Braille -- having someone read to you is pleasant, but nothing compares to reading what you want, when you want, just because you want to. Actually, the concept that a mere variation of black and white tones might convey words, ideas and meaning took more getting used to. At least with Braille there was a tangible element (I still thought mainly in tactile terms back then), but the written word had no depth, nothing you could touch.

Handwriting was strangest of all to get used to. Print was regular and predictable whereas handwriting was not. Sometimes I would ask David to write something for me, and I would become absorbed in seeing all the different letters that might flow out of his pen as he made up his mind about what to write. It was a unique form of performance art that only I could see.

Though I had always admired art in the forms of music and sculpture, now I came to appreciate painting with a positive vengeance. I had always had a penchant for tales of medieval times -- the chivalry, the sheer legendary quality of it all. I had always loved the story of Arthur and Guinevere, Merlin and Morgan, Cair Paravel and Fair Avalon, and now I could see it represented in life.

It must have seemed strange to many to see a woman so obviously blind (the scar tissue around my eyes made concealment almost impossible, even behind the largest pair of dark glasses) wandering through art galleries looking at the pictures. David often accompanied me on such trips, as a "cover."

My parents had left me well provided for, though I was greatly helped by the fact that I did not need nursing care or readers. I might have drifted through life quite contentedly, had I not met Raven. I had been visiting Paris when I first saw her. I was in the Musee Picasso, trying to come to terms with the concept of surrealism -- in my innocence I could see no real reason for picturing the world any way other than it was, surely it was beautiful enough?

My unaccompanied presence drew the usual murmurs and whispers, but few had the courage to say anything, and those who did I saw coming towards me well ahead of time, and was able to avoid.

It was just then that I "saw" a woman whose features seemed blurred and uncertain depending on which future I looked at. My curiosity piqued, I simply had to find out more about her... or him, it was hard to say at that point.

The woman must have noticed me watching her. If she found that strange in a blind woman, she didn't show it. She tried to slip away in a variety of guises, but I could still see her. She was always the blurred face in a range of crystal-clear images. Thus, before we had ever exchanged a word, we had both realised that the other was also "gifted." The word "mutant" was new to me as a term for what I was, and besides "gifted" has always seemed so much more positive. I may be a mutant, but I possess a gift.

I caught up with her in a side street some distance away, and I have always suspected that she might have been prepared to harm me if she thought I was going to reveal her secret. Luckily I was able to find the right words to take her more or less completely off guard: "If you're going to turn into the dark-haired man in the suit, go for charcoal grey, but if you're going to be that blonde woman, try a floral print dress, not the stripes. It'll be far more flattering for her." I paused to let the words sink home before continuing. "I'm a little different too, you see."

And so Irene Adler met Raven Darkholme. Not exactly a nexus point in terms of global causality, but at least a major personal juncture for me.

In Raven I found a focus for my life and my vision. I could never work out who was the older of us. I was not particularly young, but some things she said suggested she was older than I could possibly understand. That could have been a result of her life, however -- which, from the little I learned about it, had been a lot harder than mine. When I saw what her true appearance looked like, I understood why she was bitter. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to grow up with blue skin and yellow eyes.

Raven was wild and daring, in ways I couldn't imagine. She had come to the museum to see some of the paintings that Picasso had done of her; his surrealism and his references to his "Blue period" were more literal than most people imagine. Her life invigorated mine, and I hope I was something of a moderating influence on her as well, for even then she was prone to self-destructive urges. In me I like to think she found the ultimate example of someone to whom outward appearances truly meant nothing. In time we found love with each other. Having spoken to David so often about such things, I found nothing strange or wrong with our relationship -- we loved one another, what more did we need? She gave me my "other" name, and I gave her hers. On one occasion she told me that I was her destiny, and it sort of became a running joke. Another time, I told her that I liked her unpredictability: that it added to her mystique. It was not a word she'd heard before, and she liked the sound of it. Again, not perhaps earth-shattering as naming ceremonies go, but it had importance for us.

I was always sad that David and Raven never liked each other, though each tolerated the other in my presence. Just barely, though, and it's very lucky I was able to defuse many an argument with a little foresight. He thought she was thoroughly dangerous, especially to me, and she thought he was a boring stick-in-the-mud, though her exact phrase was a little more "earthy" than that.

I have to admit that David was right about some things though: there were secrets in Raven's life that I never learned about, although I had my suspicions. I learned not to probe certain subjects too closely, nor ask questions when she would disappear for days at a time.

I often wonder what would have happened with our lives if subsequent events had not taken place. Would Raven have found an outlet for her anger against the persecution of mutants we both felt building up amongst the normal humans? Would she and I have continued as we were, or would we have become something more, or even something less?

I shall never know, because an abomination swept across the world, tainting entire continents with his evil.

I had seen the result of Hitler's grotesque efforts at eugenics but, compared to this, Hitler was a child playing with an ant farm. Raven and I both lost dear friends there, so I mean no disrespect to those lost in the Holocaust, but Apocalypse cast a far wider, darker shadow than the Nazis ever did. Never has a being been more accurately named.

Raven and I watched on in horror, both uncertain what to do, the sheer scale of it all leaving us reeling. However, on the day my powers saw down all the depths of time available to me and saw only devastation and horror on all sides, I made my choice. I recall the day with perfect clarity. We had come back to my hometown, thinking it might be isolated enough to afford us some small measure of security until we could sort out a plan.

Instead we arrived to find that Apocalypse's troops had swept through the town two days previously en route from New York to the heartlands. Parts of the town were little more than ruins, and David had been one of those rounded up and publicly executed as a "genetic undesirable." David's mother told me about it with tears in her eyes -- maybe she still really didn't know what they had meant or, more likely, had blocked it out. I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth, not like that. Even Raven wasn't sure what to say, and made do with a mumbled word of sympathy.

Still somewhat shocked, it was later that day I found myself talking to Mr. Harris, who was my neighbour living across the street. We had never really had much to do with each other, but I was disgusted to see several timelines of our conversation where he was sneering about what had happened and about how "at least some good came out of all this Apocalypse stuff, fewer goddam faggots." He was daring me to say something, something that would get me into trouble with the authorities; I could sense it even without second sight and I was sickened.

I mentioned this meeting to Raven, who turned icy cold with fury in a way I'd never seen before. She may not have liked David much, but that was not the point. The following day, Mr. Harris was seen by several people frequenting a cafe, the one which was generally known to be the local discreet haunt for gay men and women. Over the next few days he was seen publicly denouncing Apocalypse all over town. He was taken away by Apocalypse's forces shortly after that and was never heard from again. I never asked Raven where she had been going when she had slipped away over those few days, but, then again, I didn't feel inclined to tell Apocalypse's troops that I knew for a fact that Harris had been at home during at least one outspoken diatribe either. I'm not proud of that last part, but I've never lost sleep over it either.

What I did to Raven was another matter. It was a combination of losing David and realising that I had deliberately, if unconsciously, manipulated Raven into doing what I was too scared to do, that led me to make one of the most important decisions of my life.

I decided to shun my power totally and withdraw from the world around me. I decided I would sooner be blind for life than see the horrors that were still to come. I should have been stronger perhaps... I know that Raven never forgave me for that choice, but she was always stronger than I.

That was the start of the rift between us. Raven set out to survive as best she could in this bleak new world, and left me behind. She said that she would have no more dealings with someone who chose to close their eyes to the world around them without trying to make a difference. Perhaps she also resented being used as my personal angel of vengeance, but part of me knows that Raven might very well have acted as she did anyway, without my unspoken prompting.

She told me she was going to go and seek out her mutant son. (There was something about the way she unconsciously stressed the word "mutant," that made me suspect there may have been other children who were not mutants and who were presumably therefore in less danger.) The revelation came as a shock to me as I had never even known she had a single child, never mind more than one. She had always previously hinted that changing appearance all the time made it impossible to carry a child to term. She told me that his name was Kurt, and that she had had to abandon him in Central Europe, leaving him where he would be found by a local Romany tribe. The way that the world was being torn asunder, families ripped apart by Apocalypse's whim, had clearly made her only child uppermost in her mind and she was determined to find him one way or the other.

I couldn't go with her, I wouldn't go with her; I just wanted to be left alone, I said.

"Fine," was Raven's final word to me as she left. It was the last word she said to me for many years. Perhaps she cried, perhaps she didn't, I never knew. I was only a blind woman after all.

I sought peace, but my times with David and Raven had left me unused to absolute solitude. Eventually, when I dragged myself out of the well of self-pity I was wallowing in, I realised that there must be other people like myself, human and mutant alike. Those who sought a different life to what the reign of Apocalypse had brought. I was like an old-time preacher preaching of a different way of life, a life of peace.

Ironically enough, to start on this path required an act of violence. I faked my own death in a house fire, so no one would connect my future actions with my past self. From what I can tell no one was too surprised when a blind person's house suffered such a horrific accident. Saddened, but not surprised.

Though I was frequently rejected violently by those I spoke to -- they were too busy scrabbling for survival to entertain dreams of peace -- I began to gather converts too, most notably Cain, a giant of a man who was literally as solid as a mountain, but who was amongst the most gentle souls I have ever met. I have found it difficult to imagine that there was much truth in his claims to a violent past -- difficult, but not impossible.

As I gathered support, I realised we needed somewhere unique to found our enclave, somewhere that the tyrant could never find us. The world is quite small and his reach vast, so we needed somewhere special. No country could accept us without incurring the wrath of the Destroyer, and we might well find ourselves sold out by politicians or mob rule. We needed secrecy above all else.

I even went as far as to approach Magneto himself for assistance, but he could not help, being too busy organising his new resistance movement, the X-Men.

I didn't actually meet him of course, but his daughter, a charming young woman called Wanda. She conveyed an invitation from her father for me to join his team in an advisory capacity if I would allow my powers to return to me. Though I respected their aims, and she and her father respected mine, I suspect we all knew our paths were too different for it to work. It was not to be my destiny to be a costumed adventurer. Wanda and I parted on good terms, though I understand she was killed not long afterwards, a terrible loss both to Magneto personally and to their cause. I can only console myself with the thought that even if my power had been functioning, I wouldn't have been able to see far enough into the future to warn her.

I often hear about Magneto from newcomers. He's married now, and I hear his wife is a lovely young woman. She must be quite a remarkable person to have earned a place in his heart. Maybe I will meet her someday.

My followers and I searched for a place of our own, but could only find annoyingly vague references to obscure and strange locales that might suit our needs: a lost city in the Himalayas where an advanced people dwelt in self-imposed seclusion; a city in Brazil that seemed like Ancient Rome and was protected by a powerful sorceress; a strange "Savage Land" in the Antarctic where the climate was as balmy as the tropics. They all sounded equally improbable, but the improbable was rapidly becoming the norm.

It was Cain who believed the Antarctic Savage Land was real. He claimed to have spent many years as a mercenary and recalled that a...colleague (with the frankly unlikely name of "Parnival Plunder") claimed that it was quite real. He was so convinced that perhaps we all started to believe it; our only problem remained how to find it.

One of my first followers was named Amelia. A mutant, her ability to transform herself and others into an insubstantial mist-form allowed her to travel unobserved and over vast areas with minimal risk of discovery. She searched the Antarctic for months for us, before eventually finding the Savage Land.

Amelia returned to show us the way to a sheltered valley she had picked out for us, but the cost of her search was high. She had spent so long as a mist that she could no longer remain truly solid herself. She managed to transport us to our new locale but after that she could never reintegrate properly and knew that she would soon drift apart forever.

Amelia and I grew very close in her last months, talking with each other long into the night, and I still miss her company. She was an intelligent, forthright woman who was not afraid to speak her mind. She spoke eloquently about the potential of peaceful co-existance. I use many of her lessons myself, to teach newcomers the rules we live by. At last she could no longer stay together, and dissipated into an evening breeze. I sometimes wonder, in my more fanciful moments, whether she is still present in any form around us.

It was shortly after Amelia's death that I learned that I had my own price to pay for my decision to cut off my second sight. My gift tapped into chronal energy, and I was still sensitive to time in a unique way. However, with me consciously focussing on not seeing the future, the future sought another outlet through me. I eventually found that my powers were no longer sight based, but triggered by touch. I was no longer strictly precognitive, but psychometric -- I could see the future (and sometimes the past) of anything or anyone I touched.

It was both a potent new gift and a curse. If I touched a living thing flesh-to-flesh I could not control the cascade of unwanted images that would flood my perception. Imagine never being able to touch another living person without getting lost in their thoughts. It's not something I would ever wish on anyone. Inanimate objects were less problematic, but still could carry impressions of those who had been in contact with them.

I believed that by withdrawing from interaction with the world I removed my ability to see how my interaction might change the future. I no longer saw multiple visions of possible futures, I saw with absolute certainty what would occur. Now, I wonder whether that was mere cowardice, and my constant refusal to act meant that I resigned myself to the most likely future and ignored the others.

Despite this, Avalon was now established, but we soon realised that we were now too isolated, and it was not possible for others to find their way to us. Having sought secrecy for so long, we realised we might selfishly have cut off our only means of long-term survival.

We were still discussing plans of action some time later, when a young woman simply appeared out of thin air in a flash of, so I am told, silver fire. She was barely skin and bone and was near death from exhaustion, and accompanied by several children who were in little better condition.

Her name was Jemaine Szardos, a young gypsy woman (barely a girl, really) from a long family line of sorceresses. She told us that Apocalypse had launched secret attacks against many mystics around the world in the weeks before his first major offensive. The scope and unscientific nature of their abilities made them too much of a wild card for his tastes. Her mother Margali had been an accomplished sorceress who died in a conveniently spontaneous plague outbreak that sounded like the work of Apocalypse.

Jemaine herself had barely escaped. Knowing she was dying, Margali had used the last of her magic on a shielding spell for the children, and Jemaine had used her nascent skills to teleport them to safety. She had hidden them from the clean-up crews that Apocalypse had sent in, refining her powers as best she could on her own to find them food and clothing.

Then something she said made me start. Her adopted brother was a mutant, a boy who was a physical mutant with blue skin and yellow eyes. She told me that a similar-looking woman calling herself "Mystique" had come to claim him, threatening to hand them over to Apocalypse if she didn't get to take him away with her. Jemaine never did find out how this woman had tracked her down, but she saw little choice but to agree to the idea; and Kurt seemed willing enough, perhaps sensing a real familial bond between them.

I was appalled at the thought that Raven would endanger children to achieve her ends, but I hoped it was just a bluff. Now I am not so sure. I was surprised when Jemaine told me that "Mystique" had told her to try and find Avalon as there the other children might be safe, but it did suggest that Raven was not a lost cause.

I will never know what good fortune allowed her spell to locate us or transport her to us safely. She says it has something to do with being a witch: "If you play with Fate, then Fate will occasionally play with you." That was enough of an explanation for me.

Her magic bolstered the protective shields that some members of our population maintained to protect us from most forms of detection that Apocalypse could conceive.

In the outside world, word of Avalon spread a little at a time, whispers of a haven for all who sought peace, and in time Jemaine took on the role of Ferrywoman, preferring her own company and shunning most human contact except her former charges from the tribe. I think the loss of her brother hit her hard. Sometimes she would slip and say "brothers" instead of "brother," and I sensed unspoken tragedy in her past, but that was the norm in this Age of Apocalypse and I chose not to pry. Jemaine was eager to play her part in maintaining Avalon; in some ways I think we reminded her of her old tribe.

Though she usually worked on the last stages of the passage to Avalon that the refugees took, I know that Jemaine would sometimes use her magic to vanish and reappear with individuals who never needed to take the Devil's Gallop. No one ever commented on her choices, but they always seemed to be timely and appropriate. I suspected some form of magical divination, but that was Jemaine's business and I never argued with the results.

Those of us who were the first arrivals knew we could never leave, lest one of Apocalypse's tame psi-rippers tear its location from our thoughts. The Ferrywoman has proven immune to all forms of psionic coercion, but even she has to be careful as Apocalypse has far less subtle methods of interrogation available to him.

We grew in strength and confidence over the years, and Avalon prospered. Life was hard work for us all, but none starved or went without shelter. Those with mutant powers used them for the benefit of all, as did those with purely human skills. Some used their own names, others used nicknames or new names they picked themselves. We never asked questions in that regard. Harmony was maintained by all and for all.

For my part, I made sure the message was passed to Raven that she would always be welcome in Avalon if she ever sought peace. She never took me up on that offer, but I know she became involved in the ferrying process and even had a base of operations elsewhere in the Antarctic.

It took me a while to realise that there was now no one in the world who knew what I looked like, other than Raven. My old life as Irene really was over, but I still made some of the best friends of my life here in Avalon; Jennie, who could turn herself as thin as paper, but whose thoughts and dreams were deep; Lillian, whose diamond-hard skin hid a vulnerable soul, and the man who called himself Timeshadow, who had been a loyal servant of Apocalypse once upon a time, and who was able to shift backwards and forwards in time for a few seconds. Some unspeakable experiment of the Dark Beast now forced him to forever live a frustrating five seconds in the future, out-racing some horrible agony that I could never, mercifully, perceive. I did try taking his hand once, but the temporal feedback nearly burned out my mind and his screams were louder than mine.

Then of course, there was Douglas. My adoptive son was one of Jemaine's "special cases," but on first meeting Douglas seemed one of the most utterly ordinary people I had ever met. I didn't even suspect he was a mutant at first and very few people ever did unless he was using his powers. He was as traumatised as many who came to us, who had only ever known the reign of Apocalypse for his entire life, but still with that independent spark burning inside him that typified those who found their way here.

However, when I first took his hand in greeting (as I do all newcomers), I was astonished to see how much our destinies would intertwine, with each other and Avalon. He was a lost child and, particularly as it was around the time of the anniversary of both David's death and therefore Raven's departure, I was feeling very alone. We would each fill a void within the other. There is a certain petty part of me that wonders how much of the adoption was me wanting to prove to Raven that I could be a better mother than she had been, but I try not to think about that too much.

Douglas reminded me of David in some ways, not physically, certainly -- David had been very dark with black wavy hair -- but in his manner, his way of speaking and listening, and of asking questions more eloquently with his eyes than he ever did aloud. The fact that I could practically hear him blush whenever certain of the young women of Avalon were mentioned also told me he was different from David in at least one other way.

As soon as he learned of my sensitivity to skin contact he always wore overalls and gloves around me, even when it was uncomfortably hot to do so, just so there would be no accidental physical contact to disturb me.

Douglas never spoke about what happened to his birth parents, but whatever it was had a lasting effect on him: the many nights he awoke shouting their names in the months after arriving were testament to that.

It affected him in other ways too; though mature in manner most of the time, there were moments when he seemed to regress to a much younger age, playing with butterflies and staring at the beauty around him as if it were brand new and he'd never glimpsed it before. A moment later he'd be back to his normal self. When I quietly asked the mentalist -- known informally as "The Psi-chiatrist" -- about this, he assured me it was not a serious problem. In many ways I envied Douglas those moments of innocence.

Avalon had been starting to splinter into disparate factions because there were not enough common languages to communicate properly. We had been small at first so it wasn't a problem, but now we were large enough for it to be a serious consideration. Without communication such situations usually deteriorate swiftly and my dream was within months of crumbling.

Douglas knew his powers were linked to language and did his best to act as an interpreter, but he couldn't be everywhere at once. Over time, and with training from several of the resident telepaths, we discovered a new and unexpected aspect of his gift. It was likely we'd never have found out about it if we hadn't been so desperate.

Rather than having to do all the communicating in person, we found he could spread a psychic field around Avalon that allowed all residents to tap into his power. Initially it allowed people to understand whatever was being spoken by anyone else, but the power was cumulative too: people started to learn each other's languages simply by being near Douglas. He created, albeit indirectly, a new and invaluable unity between our inhabitants.

Ironically Douglas himself never has been much of a talker, often going for hours without saying a word, simply because he felt he had nothing worth saying. An inferiority complex is a luxury few can afford these days so, partly out of respect for me, but mostly because the inhabitants of Avalon truly valued and liked their young interpreter, everyone went out of their way to involve him in discussions. Gradually he came out of his shell and I customarily took him to meet newcomers, so they would be sure of a welcome in their native language, and he would be sure to expand his circle of friends. It was the sort of thing a mother should do, I felt.

I recall the time that a large purple wildcat appeared with Jemaine. It took Douglas more than a few minutes to establish that this was a mutant werecat with a viable, if non-human language, rather than a "mere" freak of nature. I can recall them yowling and hissing at each other for so long that people thought he was being attacked and came to help us. With the help of our telepaths and much patience "Macavity," as we agreed to call her, became our best hunter of small game, though she still rarely socialised, apart from with Douglas and myself.

Mercifully for someone who has to translate so much, Doug has always been a good listener (another trait he shared with David). Often he was the only one who would spend time with Cain, as his constant rambling about his dead stepbrother did tend to grate on people.

Again, I wonder how long things might have lasted if it weren't for that thrice-damned monster Apocalypse and his insane schemes. Now however, I know things cannot be the same no matter what happens next.

Raven and her own son arrived in Avalon, seeking me. What I thought would be a gloriously happy day -- and those are so rare now -- possibly proving wrong the prediction I had seen when I touched the woman calling herself Switchback, instead brought about that very chaos.

Even my joy at hearing Raven's voice again was curbed by the bitter edge it had picked up, and our first words were harsh ones. I chose not to mention to either of them the true identity of the Ferrywoman -- if Jemaine had chosen not to reveal herself when they arrived, it was not my prerogative to do so.

Her son was little better, belittling my efforts whilst knowing nothing of the struggle that we had endured to make a life here. Had I had the time I would have tried to make him understand, but there was no time, no time at all.

A group of Apocalypse's killers had trailed Raven and Kurt. They called themselves the Pale Riders: a walking corpse called Wade and a psychotic killer called Damask, who spread destruction as soon as they arrived. I guess there must have been others who didn't make it, as surely even Apocalypse would not be so arrogant as to only send a two-person assault team against a large gathering of mutants.

The damage they wreaked was enough, though; an explosion they caused caught Douglas in its blast. Without thinking I knelt and checked him for injury as best a blind woman can. I was relieved to find no wounds but I was so caught up in that relief that I cradled his head, and in doing so I touched his flesh. In that unspeakable moment I saw the short and violent chain of events that will lead to his inevitable death. I have seen that he will die saving me so that, in turn, the world might stand a chance of freedom despite Apocalypse's efforts, though at the cost of Avalon itself.

For the first time in decades I have truly tried to activate my second sight again, to see if agreeing to leave now might in some way change the path of destiny, but I have spent too long limiting my power for me to be able to restore it at such short notice. Any action I could take might make things infinitely worse for us all.

It also hurts knowing that Raven's son will say almost exactly the same, hurtfully honest, things to my son that Raven said to me, just before we parted. Douglas, though, will have the courage to understand what is being said to him, and that understanding will cost him his life.

At a deep level I know that, even if I could see a path of events that saves him, I might not take it, because to do so would only deny him the right to make the choices that he will make, and Avalon has always been about freedom. I hate myself for that thought, but cannot eradicate it.

I cannot see beyond Douglas' appointed death -- it was his timeline I was seeing -- but I know what I will do. I will leave Avalon and its survivors behind me, probably forever. Magneto has sought my help in arranging the ultimate defeat of Apocalypse and, even if it means dying myself, if I can make that hideous creature suffer for even a moment then I will do so. I will not waste the opportunity that Doug will buy for me, for us all.

Humans say that the worst thing that can happen to a parent is to outlive their child. For a precognitive mutant, I assure you there are far more painful destinies.