People in this area formed closely knit packs. They would step up to defend the people they cared about far more quickly and easily than they had with my appeal to help strangers just minutes ago. I didn’t trust them to remain peaceful if this kept up.
Yikes. That sounds like a recipe for street brawls, and on a larger scale, gang wars or riots.
What the hell was I supposed to do with them?
As lost as I felt in that moment, I managed to look calm. My bugs gave me an awareness of the situation, and my eyes swept over the scene to get a sense of the mood and what people were doing.
Looking calm is important. It contributes to her air of authority and order and makes people more likely to listen to her.
I spotted a mother picking at one of her son’s wounds, and I realized what she was doing. I hurried to stop her. “What are you doing?”
Yeeah, that doesn’t sound good.
Riding the highs and the lows of emotion from the past hour or two, I might have come across sounding angrier than I was. She quailed just a bit.
Oops.
“He has glass in his arm.”
And if you take it out, it’ll leave room for the blood to come spilling out.
He did. There were slivers of glass no longer than the nub of lead in an old-fashioned pencil, sticking out of his cuts.
It just occurred to me that on top of all the wounds themselves and the property destruction that’s going to make it hard to find warm places to sleep, there’s probably a high risk of infections from these wounds too. Eesh.
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