It looks like they’ve noticed she’s missing.

The sun had almost passed beneath the horizon by the time the elves had noticed Sera was missing, or at least that’s what it seemed like to Vrasus. He didn’t hold it against them; the elf children were given fairly free reign over their free time, even those as small as Sera, and few incidents seemed to happen because of it. He guessed they were forbidden from leaving the village and were expected to return at dusk. Perhaps such actions were common sense amongst their species, an instinct or some ingrained behaviour? Regardless, the system seemed to work well; he hadn’t ever seen an elf child outside of the village unaccompanied by adults, until today with Sera anyway.

Because of this there wasn’t much commotion about her disappearance. At the moment it looked like it was just Neltu and a few other people who were looking for her, and from their behaviour it appeared they thought she was simply hiding somewhere as opposed to actually missing or in danger, like this was just a game Sera was playing. This relaxed atmosphere didn’t last long though.

About half an hour later, just as the sun passed into obscurity, Neltu and the elves were looking more serious but still not hugely distressed. Vrasus guessed that mostly they still suspected Sera was hiding but at this point they had grown tired, displeased at her behaviour. Still, on their faces slight expressions of worry would occasionally flitter across their faces.

A full hour after they started looking, they were definitely worried.

At this point they were walking through the streets calling out for Sera. Vrasus supposed that the whole sleep after dusk thing was a fairly large part of their culture, as it was only around then that the elves started growing worried, and the situation went from nothing to a big deal very quickly at that point.

Vrasus did want to somehow inform Neltu that Sera was with him, but he simply didn’t have the means to do so unless Neltu came to ask. Recalling the respect that the elf showed before made Vrasus feel some guilt, but he once again reminding himself that it wasn’t his choice to withhold Sera’s location.

This is not my fault.

Feeling guilt, Vrasus was reminded of his desire to be able to communicate with the elves. He was very pleased with his progress today despite his mistake with staying in the flows for too long; luckily the therapeutic effect they gave him almost made up for it and so at this point he was convinced he could communicate his intensions to the elves by speaking a broken form of their language, providing he could come up with some way to speak. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow he would be relatively fluent.

Returning back from this thought, Vrasus continued watching the elves search for Sera. A few had entered the surrounding forest at this point, armed with bows. Luckily Vrasus could see that the nearest Plain Ones were quite the distance away and so the elves were completely safe, the bows unnecessary. If people were being put in danger by this he would be getting concerned.

Not my fault.

The fact that the elves appeared to be mobilising warriors to search for a lost child left Vrasus with a positive impression on their people. Considering Sera was related to Neltu, who had a high standing amongst the elves, this action wasn’t so surprising, but Vrasus couldn’t help but approve of the amount of effort they were putting in. Based on this he figured it wouldn’t be too long before Neltu would come to ask him about the matter, after all it’s not like he and Sera were unrelated. Likely the only reason Neltu hadn’t already come to him was on the off chance this was nothing or unrelated to Vrasus, which would be embarrassing too say the least, perhaps even dangerous if the matter were to enrage Vrasus (it wouldn’t of course, but Neltu didn’t know that).

Surprisingly though, the first one to come to him wasn’t Neltu.

It had been almost one and a half hours by this time. Vrasus noticed that Neltu was often glancing towards his own colossal body in the distance and figured the elf would come in only a few minutes, but before he had the chance another elf came to the hill; the young boy who was often found besides Sera. From the past two days of observing the elves, Vrasus had come to learn the child’s name was Draza, and the tree was fairly certain that he was Sera’s cousin or some similar form of family. At the very least they were related, this he was sure of.

Draza was currently standing across from Vrasus, panting fairly heavily with a determined expression on his face. He had also joined in the search for Sera, then a few minutes ago began running to Vrasus; evidently he either guessed Sera would be here or did so some time ago and just now worked up the courage to check. Either way, the fact that Draza, a young elf whose age barely surpassed Sera came of his own volition did build a positive impression of him in Vrasus’ mind; bravery was something he could respect, especially in the current situation.

Good kid.

Without taking the time to catch his breath, the elven child hurried up towards Vrasus whilst anxiously looking about in all directions. Although Draza seemed nervous, perhaps even afraid, he didn’t allow that to slow him down for a moment as he investigated the surroundings. It was somewhat darker out now but it still didn’t take the child long to notice the hollow, or the fact it was currently covered up with a barrier of roots to stop the draft for Sera. Of course the young elf had no way of knowing their true purpose.

Likely, Draza assumed that Vrasus was forcibly keeping Sera within the hollow, and before Vrasus even had a chance to remove the barrier the child had already jumped towards it and started trying to tear it apart with his bare hands. He clawed away at the barrier almost like a wild animal, shouting and yelling. It sounded like he was trying to comforting the girl who was ‘trapped’ on the other side.

Draza’s attempts to pierce the barrier were of course futile; it may have only been made up of a thin layer of threadlike roots but that was equivalent to a steel mesh in this case. A child’s hands had no chance, but his tenacity did impress Vrasus, his determination to free his relative. The small delicate hands of the child verses the web of threads, each harder than rock, Draza was surely feeling no small amount of pain in his hands and yet kept on going. To this show of willpower put on by the young boy, if Vrasus had a face he would probably be smiling right now.

After a moment Vrasus slowly pulled the roots away to reveal the entrance, and the small girl within. He had no intension on preventing Draza from reaching Sera after all, and besides the child’s yelling had long woken up Sera. And she did not look pleased.

Draza had a huge grin on his face the moment he saw Sera was unharmed, but that expression turned to shock very quickly due to what happened next. Whilst she crawled out of the hollow Sera immediately began screaming at Draza, enraged, and once she got within distance started hitting him and grabbing his hair. She had a violent expression on her face, infuriated from being woken up, which Vrasus understood considering how tired she looked when she got here earlier. Of course Draza looked far more confused.

As she continued her assault the poor boy curled in on himself, an utterly lost expression on his face whilst he futiley attempted to block her attacks. Of course this was merely a fight between children, and Sera wasn’t completely crazy, but it still appeared quite painful for Draza. Perhaps if this was between two adults the scene would appear very cruel, but it was only between children and Sera wasn’t really hurting Draza, so it wasn’t so bad.

Although Sera grew tired and by the end wasn’t anywhere near as fierce as when she first started, the violent beating continued for a solid couple of minutes before the girl calmed down. Vrasus hadn’t seen Sera so angry before, indeed he hadn’t seen her express even close to that amount of emotion before, and couldn’t help chuckling to himself when observing the scene in front of him, although this made him feel some guilt because of Draza’s state. Vrasus felt pity for Draza; it was only a misunderstanding, but as a result of his action he now had quite a few scratch marks on his arms, and Vrasus was sure he had more hair before.

Sera finally seemed to have calmed down enough for the two children to exchange a few words, at which point as far as Vrasus could understand the conversation devolved into Sera scolding Draza for waking her up and thinking Vrasus was trying to eat her or something, whilst Draza scolded Sera for going off on her own. Although he was mentally laughing at the child-eating-tree comment, Vrasus did agree with Draza; Sera had been brash to come here alone, and at the very least she should have old somebody. He had no problem with her coming here, but her way of going about it produced quite a few problems.

Just as the children had begun their second (and thankfully less violent) argument, Neltu and several other elves arrived atop the hill.