“Friends?” She repeated, and the flame of sadness in her eyes burned even brighter. “I have no friends.”
Eliol almost gasped in surprise. How could she have no friends? Without friends, how...
“Then how do you catch grasshoppers?” He couldn’t hold back and asked aloud. “And play with stones by the river? And how do you build sandcastles or crawl through the abandoned mill? All the children in town gather there.”
The more he spoke, the more he noticed that there was nothing in Tisseh’s eyes but the flame of sadness.
“You’ve never caught grasshoppers,” the boy suddenly realized. “But... it’s so much fun!”
Tisseh just smiled a little sadly. Eliol was about to rejoice that she had at least shown some emotion, but then the servants approached them.
They were two middle-aged women, dressed
