"She kind of eats everything. She likes.... Sunday Mass? She's Catholic...honestly the thing she's been most excited about since she was placed with us is the SCA, so I don't understand why she'd run off..."

Nicole is all too familiar with this particular kind of failure. She's seen the adults produced by a system that didn't care about whether they were exposed to sushi or Puccini or Casablanca or Le Sserafim or jasmine tea or early Le Guin or actually classy cars like a Miura or Ghost (only ever jacked-up Mustangs), just so long as they were passing tests and staying safe and not having any of the wrong (sex or drugs) kinds of fun and not doing anything that would get them sent back to juvie. She talks to adults every workday who never particularly had anything beautiful worth fighting for, or never even really found out what things they liked or who they were because nobody told them that was important, and sometimes whose defences have been put so thoroughly up that it's difficult to get them to regard even a mention of Shakespeare with anything but cynicism or hate or despair. 

She can't judge Jenny for it. The system is that way because keeping certain kids safe and vaccinated and out of juvie is already a full-time job and taking them to Turandot is an impossible ask. It's just that often she thinks graduating and working a job and staying sane would be an impossible ask for her if she had never had Deep Space Nine or Victor Hugo to lean on. 

...She'll introduce Iomedae to kpop if and when this all blows over. 

Radiate calm. Radiate calm. She's getting tired of radiating calm. 

"Sunday is tomorrow, though, right? So I'm sure she'll come back for Sunday mass - she's so serious about religion, I can't imagine her skipping it."

"Oh," says Jenny hopefully. "You're right, I think it's required by the religion actually? But I don't want her to spend the night out on her own - what if something happens -"

"I'm hoping she comes back before dark. I'm sure she doesn't want to spend the night outside in the cold, either. If it gets to dusk and we haven't seen her, we can update the police and see what they say?"

Nicole trusts her barony to get this sorted before dusk. Though she's also very conscious of the fact that her knight asked her to get away if she could, and she - well, she could try passing Jenny off to Ludmila, but she doesn't actually want to bring Jenny back to site and risk her overhearing anything that she shouldn't. She can't get a good sense of the situation from the glimpses at her phone she's stealing whenever they stop the car. 

"I think I might call them again now, and tell them that we still haven't found her? It'll be easier for them to search before dusk." And she pulls out her phone to repeat the exact same conversation with 311 again.

Cináed stands not far from site, just a little ways into the treeline that Iomedae first fled to, where he can see the fields on all sides of him. He has left his sword and his armour behind, and wears a simple dark tunic (patched with dark blues and greens from many repairs) and a long pure-white feather tucked into his bycocket. At his hip hangs an unusually nice silver mug. In both hands he bears his banner, a long polished oak staff topped with a faded scrap of a pennant. It is no longer possible to quite make out whether the banner depicts a leafy forest pattern intentionally or if it is an illusion produced by the way it is faded and restarted. When he moves, the orange sunset sunlight streaming through the trees seems to follow him. 

In how he scans the fields and straightens his shoulders there is a distinct sense that he is comfortable commanding all that he sees. Cináed has never struggled with the virtue of franchise. He has been given a mission, and this is his little copse of trees until his mission concludes. 

He plants his banner firmly in the earth and looks up. It flutters above him in the breeze, and a warm - though perhaps bittersweet, perhaps nostalgic or longing - smile spreads over his face.

"Know me by my intention," Cináed commands. 

Haley is very carefully navigating around the back of site, planning to try and move through the bushes and then sprint the last section to her car, when she suddenly becomes acutely aware of the location of a banner.

She can't see the banner. It's over a small hill and past some trees, in the other direction to where she's looking. She's just extremely aware of it. Someone wants to talk, over there, and the image of the fluttering banner comes unbidden into her mind's eye with the strength of the memory of a favourite song. She knows exactly every step she'd take to get there. 

"Did you just feel something really weird?" she whispers to Iomedae. 

" - yes." Specifically, now that Haley calls attention to it, she's pretty sure that's an enchantment.

Obviously things enchanting you to come and talk to them are not, generally, safe to go and talk to. "We no should go there. If they want to talk, ring ring."

"Oh, I turned my phone off. You think I should call?" Haley says, still whispering even though she isn't sure why (if anyone's in earshot they're also probably in line of sight and they're caught anyway). It's the aesthetic the principle of the thing. 

"No! No now. Now, go far. But when we are far, we can still talk, by God of ring-ring."

"It's called a phone. Telephone. Phone for short. Or a cellphone or smartphone or a mobile or... wow, I'm so sorry about English being like that," she whispers.

The banner is still very obvious. It's not compelling her to come, or even really summoning her, it just.... feels very very easy to know exactly where it is, like a bright light blinking in the middle of her vision.

She shakes it off and tries to ignore it, and it obligingly fades in prominence as though it's just a bright colour in the corner of her eye. Haley ignores hundreds of unread Discord notifications on a daily basis and finds this... mostly tolerable. 

Iomedae has never heard of a friendly enchantment. Usually things that lure you want to eat you. She nonetheless finds it tempting - he wants to talk! - but reminds herself repeatedly that once they're at a safe distance they can talk in a way that doesn't get them killed. On the phone. Telephone. 

She isn't exactly ignoring it so much as trying to keep it on her left. They'll talk. She desperately wants to talk. They'll talk when they're safe.

Cináed intends to talk. He does not have a weapon on him - no sword, no bow, he's even taken off his knife. He intends to explain his understanding of Aroden, which he expects to be both practically useful and fascinatingly illuminative to Iomedae.

That's about the limit of what he can broadcast, and he's got a spectacular headache from that much. He hopes those were the right notes to hit.

The banner flutters madly above his head, far faster than it logically ought to in the gentle breeze. 

Haley isn't particularly good at being strong or fast or tough, but she's small and unobtrusive and very light on her feet, and that helps a lot when it comes to stealth. She moves very very carefully right up to the edge of the field with the parking area, shades her eyes, and scans the lot for danger.

Nobody is in the parking lot, but just beyond the parking lot she can see several dayshades still up and several people moving around.

It's dusk, and Haley thinks that might actually be the best time for this. At night the car's lights will be painfully obvious as soon as she turns the car on, and in the daylight they might be more easily spotted moving across the car park, but right now there's just enough shadow to make people squint, just enough of a warm orange-pink tint to the light to soften their outlines, and there's an incredibly helpful breeze which sets the tree-shadows moving so their scurrying won't stand out as the only movement in a still calm scene...

"My car is the pink mini cooper," Haley whispers to Iomedae. "You see it? Just next to that big red truck. We stay low so we can't be seen through car windows, we can sneak right up to it..."