Raoulin is not even a little bit calm! But Raoulin is also heading away from Jenny at the fastest pace he can dignifiedly manage, looking for the event steward (who was the event steward again?) and Arnkatla and Layla.

She can start stripping off armour and just dropping it in a pile at her feet, just in case she has to interact with police. Nicole knows how to interact with police and she's pretty certain she can communicate that she's a friendly professional even in armour, but there's really no reason to take any risk of being perceived as a threat.

She suddenly wishes she was in the sort of ultra-neat office clothes she wears to work. Actually she wants a clipboard right now. Her clipboard is a way better shield than her shield. 

Never mind that. Radiating calm and poise. 

"Not sure about the exact number, I think it's something like two hundred and one South Farm Lane..."

She ought to hand Jenny off to someone reassuring before she goes off to check the road. "Ludmila will have the exact address and I think that's her heading this way now." 

"Iomedae! Please slow down!" Haley shouts. Nicole told her not to make Iomedae feel cornered or chased down, and this would be much easier if Iomedae would simply slow down to a nice calm walk so that Haley could also proceed to follow her at a nice calm walk. Surely this would let Iomedae feel more... free, or alone, or whatever it is she needs to feel? Haley's out of breath already. 

The thing Iomedae needs to feel is "not trackable by the local nobility" and she does not expect slowing down to be conducive to that!

"Please?"

At least this is a big open field and hard to lose track of someone in. But if Iomedae gets to those trees on the horizon then Haley is toast. 

She will turn around once. She will say, "I no take any thing. I no think you have honor to make a foster child of a holy warrior, and I no think I can serve God as a foster child of America. I pay Robert and Jenny for my food, if I live. Goodbye."

Then she'll turn around again and keep running.

Okay but like what does any of that mean

Haley is pretty certain she has not had any interactions with Iomedae which were particularly dishonourable. She has shown Iomedae pictures of her cat! She thinks Iomedae is weird as hell but she's never said that out loud! She doesn't think anyone has asked Iomedae to pay for any of the food, SCA events are always overflowing with free food and she even was volunteering at the bake sale so she wouldn't have had to pay for muffins!

"I really don't want to have to tell Nicole I lost you," she huffs as loudly as she can between heaving breaths. Sprinting gets very tired very fast. "Can you at least just please stay where I can see you?" 

This is frankly an extremely bizarre request to make in response to "I consider your government illegitimate and am escaping slavery"!

Iomedae does not slow down at all, and keeps making for the trees.

Haley thinks she is making extremely reasonable requests! Iomedae is clearly a teenager having a mental health crisis, and Haley's been there, and she understands wanting some space and needing to be alone but she thinks Iomedae needs to use her words to ask for those things!

"Fucking hell, Nicole's going to kill me. Iomedae! Can you please just tell us what's wrong!" 

"If she kill you for not catching me you come with me and I will try to keep you not dead!"

"Right, that's why I need you to slow down! Just a bit! Please!"

Yes! Okay! She has found the way to get through to Iomedae! Maybe they can bond over how deeply fucking intimidating Nicole is!

This is probably going to get her killed but she was probably going to die from the minute she started this and she should actually help Haley flee, if Haley's offering to. She stops, and takes the moment while Haley catches up to search the nearby ground for a rock so she's not totally unarmed.

It's farmland! The rocks get carefully removed by farmers and thrown into ditches so they don't mess with ploughing or harvesting. There's not much more than a small pebble. 

Haley catches up to Iomedae, puts her hands on her knees and nearly throws up. How is Iomedae in such good shape? Did she get raised by people who were confused about the concept of school and instead sent their kids to the gym for eight hours a day? It would explain a lot!

"Thank you," she says once she has enough air. "I know it's hard sometimes when the adults won't leave you alone." 

"We need get to lotstrees, so they no can see us. We go one hour into lotstrees, so even if they come with dogs, not take dogs so far. Then we wait twohour, and come back at dark. Not safe to be in lotstrees at dark, not safe to be out of them at sun. You have knife?"

Um

"They're definitely not coming with dogs. If you're actually trying to run away from your foster parents this is a terrible way to do it, they're going to bring cars and helicopters... wait, are your foster parents abusing you?"

Would that explain why Iomedae is always telling everyone she's a foster child in such a miserable way? If that's what is going on then she's down to help Iomedae hide, actually, Nicole will totally not kill her for that. 

"Cars no can go in the forest. Can helicopters?"

"Yeah there's not really forest around here with thick enough cover that overhead cameras won't see you. We're like ten miles from civilization max. I have no idea if they send helicopters out that fast but they're a lot more likely to because you kinda bolted in broad daylight."

Her question has not been answered. Haley is deeply, deeply concerned. She doesn't really care what else is going on, she's not okay with potentially being complicit in child abuse. "Are you trying to actually run away? Like for real?" 

"Yes. For real. Probably we die today but maybe not if we run fast, if it takes them long time send helicopters. Come on." And she starts jogging towards the densest trees on the horizon again.

She is deeply on board with helping Iomedae escape if the kid actually believes there is any chance her foster parents might literally kill her, because that's awful and horrifying and maybe Iomedae needs a basement to hang out in for a few days while the cops get their act together and decide to take that seriously, but why does this have to involve jogging? 

Okay, worst case scenario she has her phone in her belt pouch (she even got a belt pouch custom-sized for it because most of her SCA outfits don't have any pockets) and she can just wait until Iomedae calms down and then phone someone for help?

She reluctantly jogs after Iomedae. 

She's pretty sure the cops have already been called so her only job is to stick with Iomedae and make sure she doesn't end up alone and unfindable, right? So if she's going to follow Iomedae, and Iomedae is determined to run and hide, she... may as well actually help?

"Finding a barn is going to work a lot better than heading for the trees," she says, not quite sure why the hell she's playing along with this. "Big farmhouse that way probably has one." 

"Not a barn here. Run a hour, then a barn maybe. Here they look." In an hour Iomedae can be eight miles away and that's a lot more potential farmhouses. ...six miles, maybe. Haley doesn't seem very good at running.