“Err,” Eva shifted her weight, running a hand through her hair. She was in Farmer Jim’s farmland again. This time, contrary to the stiff nature she was treated with last time, Jim was bawling in front of her, blowing his nose onto a piece of cloth every now and then. Through his squeaky sobs, Jim explained, to an Eva who had to filter his words, about how his precious cabbages are being eaten by a couple of deer that entered his farm every other night. He had tried everything to chase it off, apparently. In fact, he recollected much to Eva’s amusement, the moment when he chased one all around the farm only to have it lead him into a pool of mud where he, unfortunately, he said, had fallen face first and crushed a cabbage he held under his weight.

After going through it all, he decided to give Eva a chance, promptly writing a letter to the local inn where she stayed. The wind mage received it early that morning from the inn owner who had, with her very loud voice, woke Eva up from her peaceful sleep. The owner, a prideful woman in her thirties, looked irritated as she thrust the letter on her face and left. Only half awake, Eva read it through a yawn, folded it, threw it to a side, and took another nap before waking up around eleven. Now an hour later, she was patting the poor farmer’s back, trying to get the grown man to stop crying.

“And then, and then, Eva-chaaan,” he cried, “five of my poor cabbages are gone! My Cathy, Bella, Mary, Ron, and Rina,” he sobbed harder. He named his cabbages? Eva quickly slapped a hand over her mouth. She tried, desperately, to stop herself from laughing her head off at the thought of a man in his fifties going around the field naming each and every cabbage in it. The task proved to be difficult because something close to a chortle escaped her lips and Jim instantly turned to her with a frown. “Is this funny, Eva-san?!” he balled his fists at her, making Eva put her hands up in a surrendering motion. “No, no, not at all, Farmer Jim,” she made it sound convincing enough because Jim simply narrowed his eyes at her and then went on bawling again.

Ten minutes later, he finally calmed down enough to give Eva proper instructions on what to do. She may hide somewhere in the farm and wait for the deer to arrive. Once they do, he said with a malicious grin, kill them and take it back to him. They make amazing soup from what Jim told her and it looked like the man was determined to have it for dinner. “Someone else will be joining you since I put up a request on the board before I remembered about you,” he suddenly dropped it on Eva and her smile faltered for a second. Here she thought she was special since he personally sent a letter to her. She sighed but nodded. “I understand but when are they getting here?”

After a while spent in comforting the sobbing farmer, Eva was starting to get tired of the whole thing when she heard soft footsteps and a shadow falling beside hers. She turned to face the girl, seemingly around the same age as her, with vibrant rose hair falling behind her and lit up golden eyes. Eva took a moment to glance at her and spoke with her usual pleasant mask, “Ah, I’m Evangeline”. She returned the quick smile and gave Jim another reassuring pat before walking out to the cabbage field where, just as usual, rather delicious looking cabbages grew all thanks to Jim’s effort. She looked around a bit, spotting empty patches and a slightly old, put together looking fence that had white paint peeling off its wooden surface.

Her mouth drew to a thin line. The fence looked like it was just repaired which meant something broke it. Before she could voice it though, farmer Jim was right beside her nodding his head. “Yes, they broke through it. It can’t be helped, the fence is really old and I haven’t gotten around to building a new one yet. But, you can ignore that for now. I just want those damn deer caught and roasted,” he grumbled, his expression turning from sad to angry and back to disappointed again. “My poor cabbages,” he sniveled, but before he could once more start sobbing, Eva reassured him that none of his cabbages will be hurt again and that he can count on her and Diana to get them.

But Diana was right. They had to wait for night to settle in and everything to go absolutely quiet before they could chase after the deer. However, they needed a plan. Chasing after those two things all around the farm would most likely be tiring and counterproductive. They should lure them somewhere and then kill them. But where? Eva tapped a foot on the ground as her eyes once again swept over the entire area, landing, just a little further from them at the opposite right corner of the farm, on a shack built for keeping tools, fertilizers and other farming goods. It was big enough to fit probably three people inside and it didn’t look like two deer would be a problem.

“I think I know what we can do,” she turned to Diana. “We should use that shack. I think I can lure the deer into it. You should hide in there and kill them just as they arrive. This way, they won’t really have that much space to run around in and we won’t waste too much of our energy. Since they like cabbages a lot, I think we can use a few as bait,” she explained but waved a hand over farmer Jim’s face in defense at his ready to burst expression. “But of course, we won’t let anything happen to the cabbages!”

Everything fell silent after that as they awaited night’s arrival. Eva spent a while checking out the shack and clearing a few things out of the way while Diana…she wasn’t sure what Diana was doing but she knew the mage was near. Once the sky darkened and the stars accompanied a beautiful half-moon’s arrival, Eva hid among the cabbages, lying low with a huge cabbage in her hand. She thanked heavens that she had decided to wear something black that day, it made her difficult to be seen when there was no light except for the moon’s pale glow.

She heard them before they appeared. Two medium sized deer, wide eyes searching for most likely the best cabbage in the farm. They spotted her cabbage from a few feet away and Eva was careful as she crawled back a bit. They stopped, stared at the moving cabbage in confusion but tried again, taking a couple of curious steps towards it. She crept back once more, slowly, but fast enough. The process continued for a while until they were near the shack and this was probably the difficult part. With a swift movement, she rolled the cabbage into the tiny building and reeled back into the shadows. When they chased after it into the shack, Eva closed the doors, trapping them inside with Diana. The rest was up to her and hopefully, it would go well.