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"How was school, honey?"
She tries to make the kids' favorite meals on their first day of school, but when she asked Iomedae's favorite meal the girl first stared at her blankly and then after some extended clarifications proposed that they could roast a pig, and she can't actually roast a pig, so dinner is pork chops, and potatoes, and salad from the farmer's market. Iomedae is not a picky eater.
(The girl is in fact clinically obese. The doctor suggested they talk with her about cutting back on junk food, but the social worker said that was a bad idea, with a kid new to care - don't restrict her food access at all, just get her more exercise. So Jenny signed her up for swim lessons at the YMCA and for track and field at school. Iomedae balked at the swimming lessons on the grounds that swimsuits were immodest, and they do actually make hijabi wetsuit things but apparently not in her size. Hopefully track and field she'll actually enjoy.)
You know, sometimes the world is very complicated and confusing and he has absolutely no idea what's going on, but it's generally free to just be nice. Iomedae seems distressed suddenly. He can get one of the blueberry muffins and show it to her in case she didn't understand the question.
"Don't mind Lady Katherine. She's just had a rough week, I think."
Right, okay. Iomedae can tell that the other girl was angry at her, and has angrily decided to go to the evil lady in the fancy dress, and you don't need to know anything more than that, really.
Iomedae carefully sets down the roll of stickers and turns around and flees for her life.
She's quite fast when she's pretty sure she will be dead in thirty seconds if she isn't fast enough. She's going for the nearest stand of trees and once she's under cover she'll have to head, ugh, directly into the forest unarmed, but sometimes forests don't kill you and angry Evil baronesses who specifically became angry on hearing Aroden's name always do.
"Wait a second - where -"
Oh he definitely said the wrong thing. Raoulin has definitely absolutely said the wrong thing and - no, he definitely cannot chase down the teenage girl who is running away from him, that would look absolutely terrible. He is also not going to turn invisible or summon a horse in broad daylight in front of mundane people. He just has to accept that Arnkatla is going to have so many things to say about this and he is going to apologise a lot.
....He did not think blueberry muffins were that terrifying?
Is Jenny still in line of sight? He's going to have to leave the stall unattended and go fetch Jenny, if not. He really hopes Iomedae understood the part about magic being secret.
...what is her knight doing, why is Iomedae sprinting into the woods, how did the bake sale idea go this badly, and why does she ever leave any of her friends unsupervised?
The event is being held on a farm in southern Virginia, not that far outside town. Iomedae will rapidly discover that the forest is barely wide enough to provide the illusion of privacy to the event site. On the other side of the trees there's more farmland - lots of big open fields edged with thin paved roads and narrow copses of trees.
Not a lot of cover for someone who wants to get lost. Unless she wants to try and hitchhike; there's a car heading down the road at fifty miles an hour.
That's very dangerous, unarmed, though probably not as dangerous as staying. ...but she shouldn't drag someone else into the Evil noblewoman's anger. She freezes indecisively at the treeline. Are the Evil noblewoman's people chasing her yet?
Not yet. No dragging anyone else into it; she'll proceed on foot in whatever direction looks like it might offer cover if she gets a mile's head start.
"I am so sorry - I really have no idea. Katherine left to go speak to Elynor, I offered her a blueberry muffin for all her hard work, and she just took off."
Nicole has finished her tournaments for the day and had been debating between de-armouring or fighting pickups. She is apparently not fighting pickups.
She will come over at a light jog.
"What's going on? Do I need to fetch the event autocrat?"
"I'll fetch them, you go after her?"
He looks at Jenny. "If that's okay? Has she run off like this before? Will it be okay if Nicole fetches her or do we need to call the cops straight away?"
She is not going to be fast enough in armour to chase down Iomedae! Nor is she going to catch up if she takes the time to de-armour!
"If we don't know where she is I need to call the police," says Jenny. "She's never done anything like this before, I don't understand - IOMEDAE!"
Iomedae can hear Jenny shouting but frankly Jenny is probably safer if Iomedae runs away, she is the kind of well meaning naive person who'd probably try to intervene when the noblewoman kills Iomedae.
"She can't have gone far - it's all farmland around here. If you legally need to call the cops, of course call them. I do want to make sure she's not running into the road or something, so I'll get some people to look for her and I'll go straight to the road and make sure it's safe."
Nicole radiates calm as hard as she can. They are not in the middle of a city, there's really very limited ways for Iomedae to be in any danger right now, and it's pretty important that Jenny not sense any resistance to the idea of calling the cops.
"I have to tell the event steward regardless. I'll-" send someone other than Katherine, who really is a terrible pick for this right now, "I'll get Arnkatla and Layla to go look for her."
Neither Arnkatla and Layla will be in armour, and they're both particularly nonthreatening older women and Iomedae will recognise at least one of them?
Nicole notices Haley having appeared, looking concerned, at her elbow. "Alright, try to get eyes on her so she doesn't go anywhere dangerous, but don't try to force her back, okay? That's not your job."
Nicole is slipping into the familiar mode of managing a mental health crisis. There's... now that she thinks about it, probably quite a lot of overlap between how to deal with prisoners and how to deal with foster children. "Don't make her feel like she's being chased or cornered, just try - oh, don't let me delay you, just go."
Being chatelaine doesn't normally involve very much sprinting but she's not going to complain about a chance to go above and beyond!
Haley's not that fast on her feet. She's enthusiastic about putting in the effort in front of everyone, but she's probably not going to catch Iomedae.
"Thank you," says Jenny, in fact somewhat soothed by how calm everyone seems. "I'll, uh, call the nonemergency line just so they know that we're, uh, looking for her, and hopefully she comes back before they get here to help."
Iomedae has fallen back from a flat sprint to a 'trying to outrun a horse over a long distance' pace, not because she's winded but because if she waits until she is then she'll be slower in the long run. She thinks maybe on the horizon in that direction there is a forest; spending the night in there would be suicidal but she can go in, lose pursuit, and probably find her way back out once it gets dark. She's unarmed and she hates it, but she can't think what to do about it; she's pretty sure paladins cannot steal even to save their life.