After several minutes of discussion, of which Jack could only think he was the main subject based on the frequent gestures and looks in his direction, the severe looking older lady left and returned with a crystal ball. "Really, a crystal ball? Is the old lady a fortune teller?", Jack thought sceptically.

But he went along with it, approaching the pair when Confucius indicated for him to come closed. He was startled when she offered the clear globe to him, with Confucius encouraging him to take it, but shrugged and took it, bracing himself for the weight since everything here was a lot heavier to him than it looked.

He needn't have worried, as the sphere was almost weightless.

But now what? He was standing there with the globe in his hands and no idea what to do with it! Was it some sort of gift? He tried peering into - maybe he'd see visions? Nope. So he just stood there, holding it with both hands waiting for something, anything to happen.

Which it did, if you counted the Head Mistress reaching out and taking it back... The Head Mistress looked at him, properly, with a frown creasing her forehead, before exchanging a few words with Confucius.

"I didn't believe your message about the boy, but your conjecture is correct!", she said to Elder Li. "His life energy is there, but that's it! How does anyone grow almost to adulthood and gather no elemental energy at all? I'm surprised he's not a drooling idiot!".

If the boy had any energy at all besides the very feeble life energy, it wasn't registering on the evaluation orb. "Have him come over and do a few odd jobs, that way I can observe him myself?", she asked.

"Hnn", Elder Li responded in the affirmative, before gesturing for the youth and his niece to follow.

After the brief visit to the compound, the trio returned the way they came to Conficius' residence.

Seen from the outside it was larger than many of the homes he'd seen further out of the town, which made sense if Confucius was the town healer. Healers always did well for themselves, didn't they?

The afternoon and early evening was uneventful, with just the routine eat-and-meditate sessions.

However, not long after he'd returned to his room, there came a knock on his door, followed shortly by the figure of Jun walking into the room. He was disturbed to see her fish a lizard out of a pocket, but it made sense when she encouraged it to attach itself to what he'd mistaken for a coat hook nearby and it stuck it's bulbous glowing tail in the air. Lizard lights!

Since he was sitting on the bed when she entered, she dragged the stool over and sat down opposite him. She took out an orb similar to the one he'd seen her use before, and he could feel quite strongly that she was asking him if he knew what it was. Jack shook his head.

This orb was smaller, about the size of a pigeon egg, and white, which she passed to him. Jun took out the orb that he'd seen her analysing before and held it up, miming looking at it to him, reinforcing it with a sentence that he felt to mean look, concentrate. He held up the small white orb she'd handed him and focused on it.

Nothing.

He shook his head helplessly. He could swear that Jun rolled her eyes at him, before miming going into the meditative pose he'd been using. Aha! He calmed his breathing and cleared his mind, as much as he was able, and tried again.

In his mind he saw the room he was sitting in. And any time he focused on an object in the "room" in his mind, he would hear a sound and see what looked like a pictogram! Was this a language primer, or at least a dictionary?

He toyed around with it, focusing on different objects in the mental room and seeing that whatever he focused on, or even thought about, gave him the same vision-sound-pictogram sequence! But what about an object not in the room?

He pictured the courtyard, and success! If he concentrated on the objects he could envisage, he got the same result!

When he saw Jun standing up to leave, he wanted to return the valuable orb to her, but she refused to take it and pressed it back into his hands, before leaving him to his thoughts. He experimented a bit more with the orb, although he could feel that it was extremely mentally taxing to use.

He pictured innumerous objects, and for each one he was presented with what must be the local pronunciation of the word as well as the written form - but there was a limit. If he pictured something from his life back home, a scant week ago, there was often no response.

It appeared that there simply were no words in this language for cell phones, video game consoles and all the other gadgetry that he'd been surrounded with all his life. Excited, he lost track of time playing with the orb until exhausting overwhelmed him.

The next morning, he accompanied Jun to the courtyard for their morning meditations, but on his return to his room he found a different set of clothing waiting for him. Was he heading out again?

It wasn't until Jun rattled off a string of words to him that he realized that he could actually understand some of what she had said, and not just a feeling of her intent. The intent was still there, but words such as clothes and door he could clearly understand! The words still sounded foreign to his ears, but his brain was managing to translate them - was this a side effect of the orb she had given him?

He hastily got dressed in the new clothes provided, although he frowned when he realised it looked a bit like a workman's overalls. Where was she taking him?