“Miss Mona Lisa,” Sir Truncator said, “you can choose either this man to die,” he pointed to one of the gagged men sitting in a chair, “or that man to die,” he point to the other gagged man sitting in another chair. Mona Lisa bit down on her tiny thumbnail. She was six years old.
    “Which man do you think should die, Mona Lisa?” Sir Truncator asked, coaxing out her answer. Mona Lisa was a very pale little girl with dark circles around her large eyes and dull brown hair that hung limp at her shoulders. She looked like a young corpse in the stale lighting. “Which one do you think should die?”
    Mona Lisa closed her eyes, listened, then opened her eyes again to look at the two men. Both of them wore panicked expressions. Mona Lisa turned and ran from the church in which she stood.
    “Mona Lisa!” Sir Truncator called. He motioned the church’s guards to go after her. “Mona Lisa! Don’t run away from what you are!”
    Mona Lisa ran through the rotten town of Rim. She ran through the run-down, ghostly suburbs lining Rim. She ran through fields of white dandelions and around a murky pond. Once she came upon a moor bedded with soft, pale grass, she stopped to rest. She sat down and surveyed her surroundings. Rim was out of her radius of sight. Tall, ancient trees loomed here and there on the moor, but for the most part it was just gray skies and still grayer clouds amongst her.
    “Mona Lisa,” she heard a whisper come from far off, perhaps in the clouds, “don’t run from your gift.”
    Mona Lisa held her dress made of scrap black fabric, buttoned up with a few black buttons, in fists. “It’s not a gift,” she told the whisper.
    “Mona Lisa,” the whisper continued, “not all gifts are pleasant.”
    “Leave me alone,” Mona Lisa said. “I want to listen to the wind.”
    So the voice of nature disappear for a while and let Mona Lisa listen to the wind. The rustle of the grass was comforting; Mona Lisa quite enjoyed it.
    After some time in silence, nature spoke to her again. If Mona Lisa had to guess, she’d say it was probably a tree, or maybe the pond: “You’re special, Mona Lisa.”
    “I’ve been told,” she spat. “Sir Truncator tells me all the time.”
    “Kill, kill, kill,” Mona Lisa heard in the distance. It was probably a far off colony of grass.
    “Your gift is not what makes you special, Miss Mona Lisa,” the original whisper told her, “it’s all the power that lies in your grasp that makes you oh, so special.”
    “I know,” Mona Lisa clipped. “I have the power to carry out nature’s intentions.”
           “No, Miss Mona Lisa,” the trees—she was certain it was them now—told her, “you have the power to carry out your intentions.”
           Mona Lisa bit down on her thumbnail. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, looking up to the heavy clouds. They were like charcoal cotton balls in a painting embodying the abandoned. She saw a small red, yellow, and blue kite wandering among them.
           “Have you ever considered that the whispers are not ours, but simply your own?” The trees asked. “Your own power extended through us?”
           Mona Lisa considered it. “But that doesn’t make sense,” she mused after contemplating, “I can’t be you, and you can’t be me.”
           “Why for not?”
    “It simply cannot be.”
“This is where you misunderstand, Miss Mona Lisa,” the trees said in a voice above a whisper, “we are one. It is not that you are under our influence: it is that you have a reach beyond your own containment.”
           “You have nature’s power, Miss Mona Lisa,” the pond chimed in, “you have the consent of our will.”
           “I see,” Mona Lisa whispered. She lifted one arm and swept it through the air. The arms of a nearby tree swung with mirror to her own. She inhaled slowly and deeply through her nose. The pond swelled. She eyed down the charcoal puffs of clouds. They rolled into convergence at her will, and down came the red, yellow, and blue kite.
           Mona Lisa reached out above her head to grab the kite. It was dirty and worn. It seemed it had been wandering for a century.
           “I see,” she said again to the kite, louder than before. Her courage amassed inside of her. She laid down the kite in the grass at her bare feet. The drear blades clung to it. Mona Lisa turned, and Mona Lisa ran.
           “Kill, kill, kill, kill,” the grass chanted in her wake, complying with her feet so that she very well glided.
           “We are your kin, we are you, lovely Mona Lisa,” the clouds and pond sang alike, a great army of thundering cumulonimbi following her and dark water trickling in her wake.
           The trees lowered their voices back to a whisper as Mona Lisa ran to what she was: “Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa.”
           Mona Lisa ran through a field of white dandelions. Mona Lisa ran through run-down, ghostly suburbs. Mona Lisa ran through rotten Rim. She threw open the doors of the church, coming upon Sir Truncator and his two imprisoned men still waiting for her.
           “Ah, Mona Lisa,” Sir Truncator drawled, strolling over to her, “I knew you would come around, my dear. Who do you think should die, Mona Lisa?”
           Enraged Mona Lisa was, but tranquilly so. She knew what she was. She had a gift. She glared at Sir Truncator, summoning the howling wind. She inhaled long and deep, calling on all surrounding waters. She raised her arms high above her head, then spread them wide: she invited in the arms of trees.
           The church flooded from ceiling to floor; the walls were battered and thrown away by the gales of wind; and Sir Truncator was seized by the branches of great, ancient trees. The two men in the chairs were released by her consent, and they ran from the site. Sir Truncator, however, received no such grace: he was flooded by the hurricane, battered by the tornado, and torn apart by the trees.
Now, when Mona Lisa walks through the cemetery, she can hear the faint thanks from the graves, for she brought justice to their sorry state.