Hilda sighed. Letting out her breath in a long, thoughtful way as to give her space to think for a moment. This situation could get complicated.

  Clearly, what Hilda wanted to do was break the colr off of the poor woman's neck and offer whatever assistance necessary. Obedience colrs were fwed, which was probably how this girl had gotten away from her masters, but they were also expensive. Whoever had put one on this elf had invested in putting her to use. They'd likely want recompense for the colr - not a huge problem - and for their property to be returned, a moderate problem. Some asshole would want their sve back.

  Opening her eyes, Hilda appraised the woman again, seeing now that the elf was worse for wear from presumably having spent a lot of time alone in the wilds. Nothing else particurly stood out as notable, beyond that the colred elf was everything she expected from a Vechswood ranger, though most rangers carried a short sword as opposed to a dagger. Shit, had some brazen sver been stealing elves from the border? They probably took her original equipment too. Hilda needed information before she could figure out her angle.

  “Hello,” Hilda said, “what's your name, dear?”

  The elf gave her a wary look before quietly answering, “Dalia.”

  Hilda smiled at the girl, “It's nice to meet you, Dalia. This is my friend Sheryl, and I am Hilda Galea DuSonde,” the woman's eyes perked at Hilda's family name, more likely that she was a border ranger, “though you may just call me Hilda. Might I ask why you've approached us?”

  “I saw an unshackled felind, and thought I might be able to bargain for some warm food. I can pay.”

  “You don't need to pay me for food, Dalia. Take a seat, if you'd like. Would you like some help, as well?”

  “Help? With what?”

  “With that.” Hilda pointed at Dalia.

  Showing some confusion for a moment, the elf raised one of her hands to her neck, touching the colr, “W- With this?” she almost whispered.

  “Yes. I imagine that you'd like it to be removed?”

  Dalia stared at Hilda, eyes wide, dead silent as she regarded the noblewoman. “I would,” she eventually said, “what do you want in return?”

  Hilda smiled at the elf, “nothing. That is the appropriate price for a daughter of the DuSonde duchy to free a Vechswood ranger,” she chided.

  “Then-” Dalia started, but Hilda interrupted her.

  “However.” said the swordswoman, “I'd like you to answer two questions first, if you can?”

  “Hilda! Don't grill her for information for her freedom,” Sheryl compined.

  “That's not what I'm doing!” Hilda whined with a frown, paradoxically dignified in her manner, “I mean. What happened to the masters of that colr, Dalia?”

  “They're dead,” replied the elf, “I'm best with a bow, and they gave a poor command, so I ran away when they were overwhelmed.”

  “Thank you, Dalia. If they were alive and recognized you, then they would probably try to have you apprehended by a representative of the empire which I… technically am. I might have to justify not having done so, Sheryl.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now, my other question is less definite. What are you going to do after I take off your colr?”

  Hilda was unsurprised by Dalia's request in response. However, to Hilda's withheld amusement, the elf did a disturbingly exact replication, in her own manner, of Sheryl's request to join Hilda from a few days earlier. Though Sheryl herself let in a short gasp as Dalia said it, and wheezed into a bubbly ugh after. “No!” She excimed, “I swear we've never met, Hil!” The nickname sent pangs of excitement up Hilda's spine as she took a slow, calming breath.

  Sheryl's fit of ughter armed Dalia, though, “What? What is she ughing about!?” yelped the elf.

  “Oh it's fine, miss ranger. I'm ughing cause I asked that in almost the exact same way a couple days ago!”

  Dalia's frown deformed as she let out a silent, breathy chuckle, with a shocked and confused expression.

  “Of course you can, Dalia. Now let me get your colr off.” Hilda decided that showing off to these two wouldn't be a risk. It was something she now wanted, for some reason, and pity the noble daughter who denies herself her wants. She smiled at Dalia and walked up to her carefully, asking “I'm just going to touch the colr, okay?” Dalia nodded back and Hilda put the tips of her fingers on the thick braided cord of the colr, which promptly turned to ice, then cracked apart and fell away.

  The newly freed elf chirped, recognizing a bit of odd spell work for what it was. “What did you do!?” She excimed.

  “Just some ice magic with a personal twist,” mused Hilda with a smirk. The spell was based on Hilda's background in earth chemistry. It shifted all the component matter around until the target turned to ice, followed by a simple cracking spell. It was inefficient, but it did the trick. Most people in her new world couldn't replicate it either.

  Hilda broke out more rations to make extra for Dalia, extending their dinner. Both of her new companions ate quite a bit, which Hilda attributed to their previous subsistence on sve rations, or probably wild game for Dalia. The elf did expin that her bowstring broke a few days earlier, and she was nearly out of arrows anyway, so she must not have had much recently. When Hilda asked, Dalia confirmed that she spent most of her time hiding from the more threatening monsters in the area. Fortunately they could get any supplies the ranger was missing in Thraes Hold.

  At the end of dinner, the tail end of conversation brought them to the subject of sleeping arrangements. Missing the inception of the discussion, Hilda suddenly found herself in the middle of a heated debate about who slept in which of their two tents. Sheryl was offering for Dalia to use her tent and insisted she would just sleep in the tent with Hilda, who didn't mind either way - at least at first. Dalia said that she wanted to sleep in a tent with someone else, and insisted on letting Sheryl have her own space since the catgirl had also been recently freed. They went on arguing for nearly twenty minutes while readying their camp for the night until Hilda put her foot down since she had somehow become the de facto leader of their little group.

  “Actually,” Hilda said with a conciliatory smile, “I'm so sorry to ask this, but if the two of you don't mind, I think I'd like a night alone to collect myself. Is that alright?”

  Neither woman could come up with an objection and quietly deferred to Hilda. They were all shortly in their tents and readying for bed. She hadn't really been lying about time to collect herself either, since the sudden appearance of another stray woman had her a bit flustered.

  Hilda figured that if Sheryl and Dalia were going to keep arguing about sleeping arrangements like this then they'd just have to get a bigger tent in the future. Then no one would have to be isoted and alone in the wilderness at night. They could share the space, and there shouldn't be any awkwardness around each other because they were all girls. Right?

  There were more serious worries for Hilda too. She had promised a favor to her sister Ana to find out about the goblin cn near Thraes Hold. The most anyone knew in the north, and apparently even in the capital, was that a well empced cn of goblins on the frontier had made themselves worth negotiating with in the past few years. The mercenary guild and Count Vasi were both silent on the matter, but word had finally started to come out about the cn of ‘monsters’. Even with help from mercenaries, the local military couldn't summon enough force to stamp them out without unnecessary losses, so the count and the guild were trading with the cn for profit.

  Most nobles who had concerns about the cn were frivolous at best and genocidal at worst, but Ana was reaching out at an opportunity. Unofficially, the DuSonde family was a bit of a rogue faction in the imperial peerage, and Ana saw the goblin cn as a potential ally. Hilda was hardly interested in being high minded enough to engage in such political maneuvers, but Ana chose this, of all things, to call in the favor owed for the original sin of the DuSonde sisters. See, both Hilda and her oldest sister, Cecilia, were unfit within greater imperial society as daughters of a duchy because both of them preferred the company of other women to that of men. The military daughters impolitely declined any and all talks of political marriage, and disappointed many a noble looking to connect with such a powerful family. Ana, the middle sister, was straight, and happily engaged to the third imperial prince, providing much more than three minimum political ties that the DuSonde family needed to have with the empire. Cecelia and Hilda had joked about Ana ‘taking one for the team’ and both meant it when they said they felt they owed their now-princess sister for it.

  Ana wanted a detailed report on more than just the goblins, too. Hilda was to find out as much information as she could reasonably collect in Thraes Hold to send back to her sister in letters. She had actually caught onto Ana's pns, but she wasn't sure what the end goal was. Ana and ‘his highness the prince’ were trying to maneuver for control over the frontier, for some reason. The area was being managed by a count at each major outpost that all reported to Margrave Keln, who oversees Beacon. If the prince was handed power over the frontier, he could change that structure.

  But Hilda didn't know what the prince and her sister wanted it for. There were plenty of valid reasons, and before running into Sheryl, Hilda had spent most of her journey pondering over this. Why did Ana want to know so much about the state of the frontier?

  Honestly, Beacon seemed safer than Hilda had expected. They were still a couple days out from Thraes Hold, but they hadn't really run into any monsters yet. Not that Hilda wanted to have to kill monsters for self defense, as opposed to killing them for money, but she still had expected things to get more dangerous by then.

  With all the things that kept Hilda's noble head buzzing about, she fell asleep shortly. In the meantime, Dalia was teasing Sheryl. While they were settling down, the catgirl had made a few bitter comments at the elf, who eventually decided to amuse herself with the situation. They were ying on their respective bedrolls and facing away from each other when the ranger struck.

  Sheryl muttered, “bet you were lying about wanting company.”

  Abruptly, Dalia rolled herself over and cuddled her cheek between Sheryl's shoulder bdes. “I wasn't,” she whispered, “I've been alone for weeks. Avoiding people for my own good.”

  Sheryl stiffened up, unsure what to do about the sudden contact. She defaulted to chiding Dalia further, “you just wanted to spend the night with Hilda.”

  Smiling devilishly, Dalia pulled herself up to murmur into Sheryl's neck, “I did, but so did you. Or maybe you're disappointed that you were my second option?”

  “What?” Sheryl squeaked, “N- No, I… not you, Dalia.”

  With a dejected whisper, Dalia whined in Sheryl's fttened ear, “you're not attracted to me?”

  Sheryl felt like she was freezing and burning at the same time from the elf's antics. She was definitely sweating, which made her needlessly anxious about the contact. Despite recognizing Hilda's attraction, the felind had little real experience, and had no idea what was happening let alone what to do about it.

  So she just answered the question, “I'm attracted to you.”

  Nuzzling her chin into Sheryl's neck, Dalia practically purred, “I'm happy to hear that, Sheryl. I'm attracted to you, too.”

  The cat's mind went bnk and Sheryl simply replied, “Oh.”

  With a low, soft giggle, Dalia asked, “can I hold you?”

  Even less thought came to Sheryl, somehow. “If you want,” she mumbled.

  Dalia's hand wrapped around Sheryl's waist and rested on her stomach. She gave her kitten a little squeeze, murmuring, “Good night, Sheryl.”

  “Good night?” Sheryl whispered back in confusion, but the elf was already asleep.