Adeline walks away from Villon toward the distant walled city of Le Mans, wearing George’s oversized boots and trying not to think about what she has lost. As she moves along roads and skirts villages, a smooth, чужer voice needles her thoughts, and she hides from passing travelers, scavenging fruit and water from an orchard when hunger becomes too sharp.

When she finally stops to examine her feet after hours of pain, she finds no wounds at all: no blisters, no blood, no sunburn, despite how real the suffering felt. Unnerved by the mismatch between sensation and evidence, she lies in a field under open sky and clings to memories of home—her father’s workshop, her mother, and Estele—while checking that the small carved wooden bird she stole is still in her pocket.

Holding the bird, Adeline realizes she can keep what she steals, even if she cannot write, speak her name, or leave lasting marks. She tells the carving her life story like an anchor, unaware that her memory will not fade even as everyone else’s does. In the dark, she senses the night watching back, as if the stars outline a face, and she fights the impulse to call out to whatever presence haunts her.

A sudden downpour forces Adeline into the trees to shiver through the night, repeating her name and history like a mantra. In the morning, starving and dizzy, she returns to the road and crosses a field of vivid yellow flowers that briefly overwhelms her despair with wonder before the landscape dulls again.

Drawn by the smell of baking, Adeline enters a village square where women tend loaves at a communal oven. With no coins and unwilling to trade away her wooden bird, she creates a distraction by startling a mule, then snatches a hot loaf and escapes. Eating in the shade at the town’s edge, she steadies herself and continues toward Le Mans, deciding to start her story over under the name Estele gave her: Addie.