Far south of the Monastery's graveyard, four girls of the Leicester Alliance sat together at a covered table in a plaza outside the Entrance Hall.
Hilda, Marianne, Lysithea and Leonie — seated in that order clockwise — each had a steaming cup of tea and a slice of lemony-yellow cake before them. The centerpiece of the table was an ornate white teapot to complete the china set.
The pink-haired daughter of House Goneril raises her tea to the sky, drawing all six eyes around her.
"To Captain Jeralt," she remarks simply.
Three teacups rise up next to hers, and the other girls mimic her sentiment.
Then they all fall quiet; sipping at the brown leaf water as the sky continues to unleash its relentless deluge all around their covered picnicking spot.
The rain started to come down hard enough that it became difficult to see through the misty spray rising from the earth, leaving the four seemingly trapped in their own plane of existence.
Lysithea is the first to put her cup back down on its saucer, kvetching about the bitter aftertaste under her breath.
She snatches a hunk of cake off its perfectly triangular slice with her petite bare hand and starts nibbling at it like a rabbit. Her pale, pink eyes close as she moans lovingly at the sweet-tasting treat.
Marianne cracks a bare smile at the sight when she, too, sets her cup down and begins digging into the cake with a fork and knife.
Hilda continues to nurse the steaming cup of tea just under her lips so she could absorb its fleeting warmth, ignoring the cake in favor of looking around at her companions.
"I'm so glad we were able to get together today," she remarks with a peppy tone contrasting the dreadful weather 'today' had presented. "It's been way too long."
"Doesn't help that Marianne decided to transfer out," Lysithea mumbles into her chunk of cake with a teasing spitefulness.
Marianne's silverware clatters as she abruptly sets the fork and knife down.
"I'm sorry Lysithea," she manages to stutter out through a hard swallow. "Professor Hanneman just… Was not a good instructor for me."
The white-haired girl shrugs.
"I don't see why! He's a brilliant magic user. And if you were looking for help on white magic, Manuela would have been a far better choice."
"I'm actually trying to learn a little bit of physical combat right now," Marianne mutters. "With… With lances, mostly."
"What?! Oh. Well I guess sticking by Dimitri makes sense, huh."
They continue to go back-and-forth under Hilda's watchful gaze. But soon her sentry-like vision turns far enough to catch Leonie.
The orange-haired girl was staring down at her untouched cake with a forlorn distance in her eyes.
Hilda frowns, but quickly pivots it into a smile before speaking up.
"How are you holding up, Leonie?"
Marianne and Lysithea immediately break up their side-conversation and look toward her as well. Leonie, the only girl of common blood amongst them, uncharacteristically shrinks into herself under that extra attention.
"As well as I can be, I suppose." She shrugs meekly. "Captain Jeralt- He was my hero, you know?"
Hilda nods as Lysithea finishes off the chunk of cake she'd been slowly devouring.
"Not a bad one to choose," the white-haired girl says with her over-emphatic and serious tone intact, despite the sensitive subject matter. "He certainly got things done in a timely manner."
"Even though it seemed like he didn't want to be here half the time," Hilda adds.
In contrast to Lysithea's eager assertions into the group's conversation that felt tailor-made to present her as a more mature presence, Marianne looks around with a forkful of cake lingering around her lips as she waits for a pause.
"And he was a very nice guy."
She speaks softly into the spongy dessert before silencing herself by eating it.
"Yeah!" Hilda exclaims, surprising Marianne to almost the point of choking by slapping her shoulder in agreement. "He wasn't some secret scumbag like that librarian."
As the rain around them softens, Leonie's stifled sniffles gained prominence.
Everyone turns her attention to Leonie again, finding the usually haughty cavalier unable to glance up from her plate. Her arms were shuttering, and she looked pale.
"Hey?" Hilda calls out to her while starting to reach across the table. "Are you—"
Leonie jumps to her feet, causing Hilda to jerk her hand back. The chair she had been sitting on practically falls over from the sudden movement, but she did not pay it any mind. She leans forward; one hand over her stomach while the other covers her quivering lips.
"I'm… I'm sorry…" Leonie whimpers out, seemingly doing everything in her power not to retch and collapse right in front of her concerned friends. "I can't do this."
She whips around and runs off into the rain, masking the streams of tears running down her cheeks before eventually just disappearing into the fog of the middle distance.
"Leonie!" Hilda cries out, standing up herself as if preparing to run after her.
But she doesn't. Instead, she plops back down onto the seat with a heavy lament.
"Damnit," she hisses through clenched teeth. "I was doing this for her."
Marianne rests a hand on Hilda's leg, rubbing it calmingly.
"It's okay," she remarks in a somewhat assuring voice. "I think it was a lovely attempt, Hilda. She just needs time."
"Yeah."
Lysithea's agreement was passive. As Marianne and Hilda look toward her they'd see why: She was distracted; mentally undressing Leonie's slice of cake as she picks up the departed girl's plate and slides the discarded dessert onto hers.
"Lysithea!" Hilda yells.
"What?" Lysithea brushes off the borderline-disgust with a shrug before picking up the entire new slice of cake and biting into it.
She hadn't even finished off her first piece.
"It's not like she's going to be eating it anymore, is she?" Lysithea's words come out in the spaces between her eager chewing. "It would be a shame to let such a scrumptious sweet go to waste."
Defeated, Hilda drops her head into her folded arms on the table and sighs.
In a nervously half-hearted attempt to console her, Marianne reaches out and starts patting the top of Hilda's head. That leads Hilda to peek out toward her.
"Thanks," she says, muffled by her arms.
As she lifts her head back up, using her bent-up right arm as a brace, Hilda catches Marianne smiling and returns one of her own.
"You know…" Hilda's voice trails off wistfully while brushing one of her ponytails over her shoulder. "Seems like you've been downright chipper the last few times I've seen you. Compared to earlier this year, anyway."
Marianne immediately looks away to hide the heat rushing to her cheeks.
"I don't know that I'd say that," she stutters out — though it doesn't sound entirely too convincing. "In fact, I've been rather distraught recently."
"Distraught?" Hilda sits up straight, concern tugging at her lips. "Over Jeralt?"
The blue-haired girl goes to speak, but leaves her mouth silently hanging open as a realization clearly washes over her. She didn't actually want to get into this. Yet she had backed herself into a corner, and now both Hilda and Lysithea were keeping her trapped there with inquisitive gazes.
Why couldn't she have the constitution to just escape into the rain like Leonie?
"Maybe?" Marianne ekes out while slumping further into her seat. "I've heard rumors about strange people appearing in a nearby forest after the chapel attack. But everyone is still so hurt, would be right to give them more to fret over?"
Before Hilda has the chance to speak up, Lysithea drops the remaining bits of her cake back onto its plate and leans in with a squint.
"Why are you gathering intel about strange forest activities exactly?"
Marianne drains of color as she faces the interrogation she had feared. Hilda seems less suspicious than the younger Golden Deer girl, and even looks shocked at what came across so blatantly aggressive.
But Lysithea was one who always felt a need to assert herself, to prove that she could play five moves ahead of her contemporaries despite their seniority.
Marianne knew she needed to work around that.
"It's… Just… Um…"
The rocky start draws deeper contemplation from the white-haired mage, who covers her mouth with interlacing fingers.
"Come on Lysithea," Hilda interjects in a clear attempt to de-escalate the tension. "This is Marianne we're talking about, you're acting like—"
"No."
Marianne reaches out to interrupt Hilda, surprising both of the other girls.
"You don't need to defend me Hilda, I understand her concern." Though it made her feel sick, Marianne keeps as confident a poise possible. "With everything that has happened lately, it only seems right to question everything."
She looks to Lysithea for confirmation, and the young girl provides it with a nod.
"Back in Edmund I had a few of our servants patrol the woods to make sure the wildlife was thriving," she says. "It always made me feel comfortable to know that there were animals around to fall back on if my adoptive father got too overwhelming. So when we came here, I found some members of the Monastery willing to do the same."
As Marianne tells her tale, Hilda smiles encouragingly and Lysithea begins to look remorseful, casting her eyes aside.
"Sounds just like you, Marianne." Hilda chuckles and shakes her head.
"It does," Lysithea mumbles immediately after before speaking up again. "I'm sorry I doubted you, even for a moment."
The cleric breathes a sigh of relief.
"Though if you really think what you've heard is concerning, it would be wrong to keep it to yourself." Lysithea's stern comment earns a nod from Hilda. "Any glean of possible information we can get on those dastards would be beneficial, don't you think?"
"I do," Marianne acknowledges with a nod. "I'll talk to Dimitri at least, see what he has to say.
As Hilda and Lysithea break into some other mundane conversation, Marianne stares off into the rain. Any semblance of joy she'd started this outing with had sunk back into her typically sullen disposition.
It seemed her friends had not caught her lying through her teeth. But even if they hadn't this time, who knew when more questioning would come?
The longer she could keep concerns about her hidden crest to herself, the better.