Like all good fictional scenarios, this one has a basis in reality. Operational Security (OPSEC) is the art of preventing an opponent from knowing what you have during times of war. For example, in WWII, the mere knowledge that we had cracked the Enigma was so valuable that we could not simply act on it explicitly. When a U-Boat conveyed its position, we would wait a period of time, then send out a scout plane that "just got lucky" before pounding it into oblivion. Men lost their lives because the leadership could not risk the enemy figuring out that we could read their thoughts.
This means that Alynn should seek to limit her magic use so situations where she just might have been able to survive if she was both good and lucky. The more magic she wants to use, the more hectic and confusing the situation needs to be before she does so.
Fortunately, society has many reasons to believe others are not out to get you. In fact, it's built around trying to support this feeling. As long as you feel that the path someone is taking benefits you or your goals, you tend to let them do it. She should use the power of society to help her blend in.
One of the most infuriatingly powerful ways to disarm her curious foes is to smile. A smile at a choice moment can disrupt the most skeptical of approaches. Of course, she can't just smile all the time. The act of smiling has to be done at the right moment. Fortunately for her, she can read minds. She may not be able to sink a U-Boat with the information she reads, but a smile is innocent enough.
If a smile is not enough, consider what it takes to make something into a performing art. In many arts, we explicitly give ourselves over to the artist for a moment so that they may work their art in peace, without skepticism. If we feel better about ourselves at the end of the piece, it matters not to us whether the mime's invisible wall is real, or whether the magician really pulled our card from the deck.
And finally, if at all possible, invoke things from people's memories. Random chance seems to be a lot more common when thinking of memories than it is with other things (think deja vu). If people can attach personally to what you are doing, there is far more room to allow magic to do its work.
(And, as always with these, I'm going to have some fun writing a scene based on the question. I really love messing with these characters. Its simply fun.)
Alynn knew she was still being watched. The young man thought he was subtle about it, always shadowing her on the other side of the street and peering around corners, but it wasn't hard to spot. Unfortunately, she had bigger problems to deal with. The bruiser in front of her was clearly offended that she had brushed off his advances and intended to correct her choices for her. It wasn't clear whether the knife he held in his hand was intended to cut her flesh, or merely her clothes, but she no intention of finding out.
But he was fast! How could an oaf as massive as that move so effortlessly. Every woman in the realm was taught a few tricks for escaping these situations, but they usually relied on cunning and speed outflanking intent and muscle. There were few mundane approaches to such situations which ended acceptably.
Her attacker reached out from an advantaged position to take control of her neck. Alynn could feel the impending constriction, veins bound against tendons and bone as his hand would begin to bend, flex, and close off her windpipe. Instinct began to take over as her defensive shield welled up, but she consciously held them back. There was no time to go find a new place to live, and the young man was still watching. A flaunting of magic would only hasten her departure amidst torches and pitchforks.
Turning her mind to what she had available, her necklace sprang to life as though of its own mind. The beautiful long, metallic, stalagmite like fringes decorating the centerpiece of the necklace woke up and spun around into the grasp of the oncoming hand. Almost as though it had happened by chance in the melee, all of the metal shards managed to be facing outwards as his hand closed down on them. Startled by the pain, he jerked back, ripping the necklace clean off her neck. "So much for leaving no trace," she thought, but she could tell that was not the worst of her worries. Even without reading his mind, she could tell all she had done is buy herself time.
But time is precious and not to be wasted. She began collecting herself, just as she had taught herself to do years before. Align the crown of the head upwards to heaven, let the feeling of that drip down her spine, aligning with her breath as it slowed its decent through the abdomen for a split second before continuing its journey to root her to the ground. "Magic is a performing art," she whispered to herself. Her awareness expanded outward, taking into account every detail she could possibly use to her advantage.
"What's that, little whore?" the bruiser spat, raising his hands aggressively, small dots of blood welling up on his hand where he had torn the necklace free.
"Have you ever fought against an artform, Charles?" He wasn't going to hear any of it, but for some reason every time his mind tried to shove the words aside, they feinted and kept marching towards his soul. The fact that he had never given her his real name never quite made it to conscious awareness. It sat there just underneath the the surface, like an itch that eludes the scratch. It mattered little anyhow. This was the easy part of the art, the calm before the storm. Charles wasn't even the focus of her attention anymore. He had already decided his fate; it was the young man that was at the center of the show.
Now the dance. She dodged his erratic swings and thrusts with the knife. They never got to flesh, she made sure of that, but it did tear into clothing from time to time. "All part of the show," she reminded herself. "I can buy new ones later." She read into Charles's mind to predict his moves, of course, but her focus was on the young man. Leading Charles, blow by blow, and sometimes with a little telekinetic assistance, she manipulated the fight, not in physical space but rather in the mind of the young man.
She did not know where in his mind she was going, of course. Mind reading to find what you want to learn is one thing, but finding something someone else wants to find is an entirely different matter. She used the circles and arcs of the combat to give him opportunities to guide her further. If he had had any inkling that she was manipulating him this way, he could have shut her down in a moment, but he was lost in the art of the parry and the strike. Watching her lithe body flit around and Charles's massive frame ripple with raw energy -- beauty was enough. He subconsciously led her down the branching hallways of his mind, strike after strike, block after block. Memory seemed so much more vivid while watching the melee.
The dance came to a close as she let Charles overextend with the knife and slapped it away from him with one fluid motion. She had hoped to take hold of the knife, of course. It's always better to have a knife than not. However, that wasn't the way it would work. She could now see how she was going to escape this predicament in the young man's mind. Sadly, that path did not let her take control of the knife, so instead she slapped it skittering across the ground. Charles, undaunted, assumed a street boxing stance and lunged into her.
The first two blows were the easy ones. A tired street boxer has very little control over their center of gravity. It was easy to yield backwards, barely touching each fist as it went by. The third blow was the tricky one. If she wanted to finish the spell she was working on the young man, the fight had to play out just the right way. Killing Charles would be easy at this point, but she needed to do it right. But she was tired, and while nobody else could tell from the outside, from her perspective she could see she was making mistakes. The precise movements she sought for her spell were fading away. With a burst of effort she gave him a magical nudge, begging him to attack the way he needed to.
Strike three, complete. He swung wide, but with such force and missing by such a hair's breadth that her dodge left her ribs exposed. She lost control of her center for a split second, making it hard to cover this weakness. This was not the spell she wanted to cast over the young man; there was no room for weakness in it. She could feel his mind slipping away from the memory she so desperately needed him to remember. There would have to be a strike four, and it would hurt. Bad.
Charles's hand plunged into her abdomen like a rock into a pond. Alynn's nerves lit up like wildfire. She would have loved to rebuff him with magic, but that was not the options she had left, not if the spell was to be completed. Instead her muscles shifted the other way, guiding him off the course he thought he was on, but deeper into her self. She could feel the deep pain as his fist dug deep into her uterus, all but tearing into it. A flash of desire to send him careening off with magic surged forward, but was suppressed. To do this right, she had to use muscle: muscles Charles had never fought against before, so could never see coming. The uterus is made primarily of muscular tissue; it fit the bill.
With these final muscles coming into play, she drew Charles's fist to its final resting spot: just against her center of gravity. Of course, with combat, the center of gravity moves constantly, but this was not a normal combat posture she had put herself in. A third party observer, immune to her magic, would see an astonishing thing unfold. For a split second, with his fist deep into her reproductive organs, she stood straight. Remarkably straight, as though he did not even exist.
This, of course, was a posture she had trained long before. Wielding magic with wild motions is easy, wielding it standing still without moving is far trickier. She had spent hours standing motionless in this position. It was her position. This was her home; he was on her home turf now.
And for a moment, Charles felt peace. Not the usual peace from ale, or even the post coitus relaxation flat on his back in bed. Deep down peace, that nothing could go wrong. There was calm in her center. Deep, utter calm.
And so he did not even notice as she smoothly slid forward, putting him far too unstable, backwards where his instincts would take over and bring him upright, but they did not. When his instincts finally awoke to what happened, his muscles tensed in a wave, launching him up, trying to regain balance. Perhaps he could have stopped it, but in the calm he felt no need to.
Even as his body rose off the floor and impaled itself on the sign post behind him. Blood welled in his throat, but he never even choked. His face remained calm, all the way up until the light faded from his eyes.
Alynn turned towards the young man, like an actress on stage facing the audience but respecting the fourth wall. Her clothes tattered, but somehow preserving decency, she stretched, using magic to cause a brilliant light to shine from her exposed skin. Internally, she winced at the pain, but she never let it show. This spell had been costly, and she wasn't about to let some mere pain prevent her from closing it.
Eventually, the light faded. Alynn bundled up the rags of her clothes to give her as much cover as possible, and ran off. The young man did not follow her, still enraptured by a scene that, as best as he can tell, was played out especially for him in his mind. After all, how could she possibly have picked the same courtyard from so long ago. He had replayed that horrid scene from his youth so many times that it had lost all its color, and yet the pain on the young woman's face as her clothes were torn from her was still oh so evident. She must have been 16, 17 at the most, but now all that she was was a memory tucked deep away, fading. He had tried to hold onto that memory as tight as he could, preserving something, but nobody would even admit to her name. She lived in his mind alone, a source of morality and justice for him. A source that had faded, and he had faded with it. He was of no gentlemanly stature, making a living by lurking. Lurking was what he was good at.
Now the image was different. Now the story had a different ending -- literally a miraculous ending. Color sprang back into the image, strengthened by the sight of Alynn in her dazzling glory. He knew not who Alynn truly was, or why she was. But he knew she'd given him something he thought he could never possibly have again: a purpose backed by morality and justice.
The next day, Alynn walked the streets like nothing happened. She walked past the sign post where a few men were trying to take Charles's body down, and gawked just like any other bystander. She didn't even seem to have a limp, unless you watched extremely closely. The young man stared at her - she didn't even look the same in daylight. There was something magical the night before, like what stage lighting does to expose a character's soul. Today, it was just daylight.
She turned towards him - perfectly towards him. She looked him in the eye for just a spit second, and the smiled. It was some mixture he had never seen before of dead weariness and complete carefreeness. It lasted just a split second, and then she was gone.
He went on about his day. Mind you it would be the same old questionable activities for now. It would be a while before he could find a job that did not call for lurking in the shadows, but he'd wait for his chance. This Alynn character was an interesting one. She clearly had something special, but what was it? Every time he looked back to the fight, he found it remarkably hard to see Alynn's face without seeing the face of the woman from long before as well. Memory had always been confusing, and something told him this one was never going to get any better. Far better to take the gift he had received and leave her be.
