Ophina Village, ordinarily peaceful, received a crowd of unwelcome visitors.
Soldiers in full armor surrounded the small village, and Elos walked into it with a column at her back.
The thin mist of early morning was cool, and unlike the air in the castle, this damp air carried the faint sweetness of earth.
The sky was on the point of light and not yet light, and the great majority of the villagers were still asleep.
Elos went straight to the residence of the lord of the place.
The main gate was forced open, and she walked into a somewhat old yard. There was nobody in it, and a weak light came from a guest room in one corner.
Elos closed her eyes. Ella's family was even further down in the world than she had imagined.
Elos found the master of the house soon enough — that baron.
"Excuse me. Where has Ella gone?"
Hesitating, Elos still asked it herself.
"...Gone. She came back last night. I did not let her stay. I told her to go back to your castle."
Ella's father kept his head down, and Elos frowned.
Ella plainly would not go back of her own accord, and in the pitch dark she could not have got far either.
"Search."
Leaving the baron's shabby residence, Elos set them to searching the whole village.
Villagers came fuddled out of sleep and were frightened out of their wits by the soldiers, and only settled once they noticed House Beaumont's crest on the armor.
Not brigands in full armor, not bandits out foraging off the land, and certainly not an enemy nation's army, but the Duke's army. Nothing to worry about.
They searched all the way through, and before long only one place in the village was left unsearched. The cemetery.
Elos pushed the cemetery gate open, gathered her skirts, and walked slowly in.
Crosses stood in rows, mounds of earth laid out in order, and there was something of decay in the air. Elos rubbed at her nose and looked around, and she saw a person.
The pink-haired girl lay curled up, draped across one of the mounds. She seemed to be sleeping soundly.
***
Ella was sleeping very sweetly. She was out in the open, she was lying on the ground, she had no blanket and no fire, and even so she felt good.
She had a dream. In it she had never transmigrated. Studying was exhausting, but she had family, and friends, and teachers, and a whole class of classmates.
A smile came to the corner of her mouth, and then — Ella was woken by pain.
"Nn... nrgh, ah?!"
A heavy, muffled cry. A foot had come down hard into her stomach.
She rolled off the mound, curled up, and forced her eyes open through gritted teeth.
Her vision was blurred, and in the haze she saw that ordinary, thoroughly unremarkable school again.
Then the last of the dream went, and what was left was reality: Elos standing there without expression, and her own father, who would not help her.
Realizing it, Ella sniffed, and the hand pressed to her stomach trembled faintly with the pain.
For no reason she could name, she thought of last night's promise with Sephone. In the end they had not managed to run away after all.
"You can certainly run."
There was none of the usual allure or mockery in Elos's voice, none of that affected awkwardness. Her voice was cold.
"Achoo!"
Ella sneezed.
She had taken a hard kick the instant she woke, and she could not quite get to her feet.
Ella put out a hand and caught Elos's ankle, and her fingertips touched the white cotton sock, and Ella saw a crack run through Elos's expression.
"You..."
"Shh. Can we call a truce?"
Ella got it in quietly, before Elos could start the interrogation. By now she knew she could not get away.
She should have known better than to come back to this village, she thought... though not coming back would probably have made no difference either, and she hadn't taken much in the way of food with her when she ran.
"...A truce?"
Elos came back to herself, and laughed out of pure anger, and looked down with something like amusement at the girl curled on the ground like a large prawn.
"I mean, I'll go back with you, and you won't be angry. All right?"
Ella tried it out. Nothing much could be read out of those golden eyes. Only, judging by the redness of the rims and the tracks beside them, she had been crying. Last night, presumably.
Looking at that pitiful face, Elos could not understand how Ella was capable of saying such a thing at such a moment. Her thick-skinned indifference had reached a certain level of mastery.
"Are you joking with me?"
Elos plainly could not accept anything of the kind. Make a great show of finding her, then bring her back with no punishment whatsoever, and let her dare to run again next time?
She was not going to let Ella leave again. That pink-haired idiot belonged to her.
"..."
Something like I-knew-it went through the back of Ella's eyes, and the disappointment was gone as fast as it came. She shifted a few times and curled into a ball.
"Then hit me a bit more lightly."
Her ragged clothes were smeared with mud. Ella had her back to Elos, and her voice shook slightly.
Ella did not know what Elos would do to her. All she could do was pray the punishment would not be too severe. Her palms cramped with the ache in her chest, and Ella closed her fists and let none of the hurt show.
Looking at her, at this refusal to take in either salt or oil, the point between Elos's brows twitched. Was she genuinely not afraid of her at all?
"Hoo... come back with me. I'll deal with you once we're there."
She had nothing to hand, and Elos herself was not especially strong, so she gave up on punishing Ella where she stood.
Ella got unsteadily to her feet. Her right leg had healed most of the way thanks to the potion, and the small cuts the branches and brush had opened were nearly closed too, leaving only dried blood behind.
Ella followed Elos out.
***
In a small room that had everything it needed, Sephone slowly opened her eyes.
"Nn... did I, did I fall asleep? Is it morning? I have to go and find Big Brother Ella."
She had a stuffed-full pack in her arms, the things she had put together the night before.
Two changes of clothes, and some dry food.
Her whole mind on running away with Ella, Sephone put out the oil lamp in the room and went outside.
Outside, the sky had already lightened, and Sephone tightened her hold on the pack. She seemed to have overslept.
In the yard the baron was eating flatbread with a bowl of soup. He glanced at Sephone and said nothing.
Leaving the baron's residence, Sephone went straight for the cemetery. Today was unlike other days: the villagers did not seem to be about their work, but were all standing together at the roadside.
Sephone reached the cemetery quickly. Its main gate stood wide open, and there was no shadow of Ella anywhere inside.
Her pupils contracted. Sephone understood that something was wrong, and she turned and ran back.
"Big Brother Ella... Big Brother Ella... Ngh!"
She stepped on a patch of soft mud, and the pack in her arms hit the ground and the dry food rolled out of it.
Sephone had no attention to spare for any of that. She scrambled up in a rush and ran on, ran with everything she had.
At last, at the village's edge, she saw the escorting soldiers and one ornate carriage in the distance.
Ella had... Ella had been taken.
Sephone stood there dully and watched the column from far off.
"It's me... it's because of me... if I hadn't fallen asleep, if I'd left with Big Brother Ella sooner..."
Sephone said it to herself. Ella had got away with such difficulty, and had been dragged back.
Sephone could not bring herself to imagine what humiliation and torment she would meet. She looked in silence toward the baron's residence, and then lowered her head and went back to pick up the dry food and the clothes she had dropped.