The next week was pretty mediocre, my parents grounded me for staying out so late so I sat in my room, contemplating life, like you do, until, the night before me being grounded was lifted, I heard some shouting outside so I looked out my window. There were some humans that weren't from our little town, shouting to Mr. Grayson, the people who lived across from us as well as cousins to the monster representative in the royal court.

I ran downstairs, and out the door to hear that another party of extremists saying humans and monsters shouldn't be together and stuff like that. I had heard it all before for it had happened many times before, but not to the extent these people were about to go to. It was pretty dark, so holding a torch was not out of the ordinary, but what none of us saw coming is when one of the extremists stepped around Mr. Grayson and threw a fire lit torch straight onto his house! The tongues of fire started engulfing his home, enveloping everything inside of it.

I ran inside to get a bucket, and quickly got water from the well, as others were doing. I saw Gabriel, an orphan who was working around the village for food, next to me carrying an old bucket. I ran over and threw it onto the house. Yet, even with all of us helping it wasn't enough. I ran to get another, and another, but slowly, the fire grew and no one could stop it. I ran to get one more, in a desperate attempt to save the house, but something miraculous happened with that last bucket.

I through the water onto the home, and the bucket slipped through my hands and got away from me. It flew, with the water, onto the house, but then, something... just something came from my hands, something cold. I didn't know what it was, but it carried from my hands onto the building, totally ignoring wind, and the fire slowly went out. With whatever it was, stopping, I looked down at my hands to see that they glowed, ever so slightly. I ran back into my house and back into my room and quickly shut the door. Looking back down at my hands, they looked normal, no longer glowing, as if nothing had happened. I sunk back into my bed slowly letting sleep carry me from my many thoughts.

The next morning, I quickly ran downstairs and saw that my gem was sitting below the mail slot. This must of fallen out of my pocket during the confusion last night, I thought to myself. Picking it up, I quickly ran over to the Hoffend's house, where Thalia lived and explained to her about everything that happened last night. "Yeah, I was watching from my window, and I saw you do, well, yeah. Can you do it again?"

"I don't know, I could try though," I replied

"Maybe we should do this outside instead..."

"It'll be fine, I'm not like I'm going to burn the house down, maybe just make it a bit colder," I insisted, "And besides, we wouldn't want anyone else to see."

"Okay, just don't make any rash decisions," Thalia replied, just a little bit worried.

"Can you get me a glass of water?" I asked.

"Sure, I guess. Why?" she replied taking a cup on the counter and putting it in front of me.

Okay, let's do this I thought to myself. Slowly, I raised my hands on either side of the cup, hoping to freeze the water and closed my eyes and concentrated. Come on, Come on, Come on! I opened my eyes, to see if anything was happening, yet the water wasn't freezing, it wasn't even getting cold. "Aargh! this isn't working!"

"Tali? Thalia are you down here?" Thalia's mother was coming down the stairs, " heard someone else, Tali?"

"Yes mom, I'm down here," Thalia replied, "and so is Alexander, you know him."

"Oh, hi... Alexander"

"Hi," People had been looking weirdly at me ever since the fire last night, and I really didn't like it.

"Um... Hi Mom, Alexander and I have been trying to, well,"

"Yeah, I get it," her mother replied, "You know, if you're looking for that kind of help, there's a certain Gurdle in the next city up north, I think his name is Tareche or something."

"Um... Gurdles, are those green tortoise-monsters, right, with the colored shells?" I quickly whispered to Thalia.

"Yeah, I think so, at least. You'd probably know better than me. To be honest," She whispered back.

"If you want I could take you guys to meet her!" Mrs Hoffend replied with practiced enthusiasm, "It'd be fun, I could go see some of my old friends up there. I think R. lives up there now."

"Great! Hopefully I'll get some answers there."