01.06: Allora

MONARCH
I could see the girl looked in a bad way, she had on an old combat jacket, a disgustingly dirty dress and one sneaker. If that was blood on her legs she was injured and needed medical attention.
I looked at Jack and he nodded before moving off to intercept whoever it was with the dog. He didn’t need me to tell him they were bad news. A terrified injured girl being pursued by people who were only missing numbers, pitchforks and burning torches to be an angry mob.
“Go away, I’m not going back,” she called out.
“Makes sense to me,” I called back, “I don’t think I would want to go back either.” Her fear had been tangible and no one in their right senses would want to return to the source of that. I had seen many times here in America that my accent got people’s attention, maybe that would work in my favour here. Someone who sounded like me was unlikely to be an associate of her pursuers. Mind you if she had seen or read the Hound of the Baskervilles recently she might think that the English aristocracy were not that averse to chasing young women for their own sport.
She yelped in pain and I used my ‘Push’ ability on her to stop her moving and possibly falling. This was a low level verbal command with a fair bit of mental compulsion behind it. I told her to move back to the trunk in her cocoon. This ‘Jedi Mind Trick’ (Jack’s term not mine) worked on most people so long as the instruction was relatively simple and not an extreme thing to do.
I had completed my survival training some months back and found scaling a tree an easy thing to do. Reaching her crystal construction easy enough but I stopped short as Jack and I already knew how sharp these shards could be.
“Hi,” I said beaming a smile, “my name is Jamie. Down there is my friend Jack. And I think you might need some help. Can I help?”