Elodie Laval is eighteen and moves through rooms like light deciding which edges to keep. To those unused to sign, her hands seem like quickbirds; to those who know her, each gesture is a sentence with grammar learned at a sister's side. She was the shop's momentum: welcoming a farmer in rain with a towel, finding the one spool of thread that will not fight a needle, translating a stranger's accent into something her father could weigh. She teased the mastiff in the square by pretending not to notice it until the last moment, then offering a palm as if giving the dog a choice in whether to be brave that day. Small mercies gathered around her: a child's torn kite re-tied, a fisherman's complaint turned into a plan rather than a wound.
When she fell in step with Anais, neighbors shook their heads in two directions at once-worry tilting one shoulder, respect lifting the other. Elodie did not take heavy things when she left. No cloak for deep night, no basket for long errands. That tells its own story: she expected to return, or at least expected a conversation shorter than a journey. What she took instead was that particular readiness people have when they decide to stand beside someone older whom they trust: a posture that says, if this becomes larger than us, I will help you carry the edge that cuts your hands.
Her absence rescripts the village. Guillaume's knots are neat but hesitant, as if string could mishear him. Louise's questions hang in the air one heartbeat too long before anyone brave enough translates. In a place where fear has begun to borrow the voices of reasonable men, Elodie had been a corrective. She did not argue that things were safe; she argued that people could be kinder while they were afraid. That work is harder to shoulder without her. Rowan does not sanctify her; he simply notes that when some people leave, rooms lose their corners and become thresholds to worry.
If Elodie returns, Gascar will adjust its mirror and call itself better for having waited well. If she does not, the measure of the village will be the space it still makes for her sister to be understood. Either way, the square remembers how her laughter rose over the clink of mugs like a seamstress humming to set her hands at ease.
New information obtained during session 2
Hugo and Sylvie suggested Elodie's kindness and use of balm-mint may explain its presence in Pierre's cup. This linked her indirectly to the hunter's last known hours.