The training was four months. Most of it was about restraint.
You did not advise. You did not ask questions designed to clarify what the client wanted, because that was a form of advising. You did not reflect back what they had said, because that was a form of steering. You sat. You were present. You witnessed. If the client went through, you noted the time and filed the record. If the client did not go through, you noted that also. Either way you walked them back to the road and said goodbye and drove home.
Olen had done this three hundred and forty-one times.
The client today was a woman in her mid-fifties who had found her save point eight years ago in a garden on a Tuesday afternoon. She had come to a navigator in the first year, a different one, and had not gone through. She had come back three times since. She had not gone through any of those times either. She had booked today's session four months ago and had come alone, as people usually did.
They stood at the edge of the save point. It was in a field outside the city, the kind of field that existed in the gaps between development. The coordinates were precise enough: the client knew exactly where to stand.
She asked Olen what he thought she should do.
He said: I'm not here for that.
She nodded. She had known he would say this. She had probably needed to ask anyway.
She stood at the edge for a long time. The field was quiet. A bird crossed in the distance and did not come back. Olen had learned to be comfortable with intervals of this length. The work was intervals.
She took a step back.
He waited.