A Week with a Prince

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝕿𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖞-𝕹𝖎𝖓𝖊

As they continued on their way once they had eaten and changed their horses, a strong wind started to blow from the shore, carrying the scent, and the muffled sound of the sea crashing against the rocks. The wind finally dispersed the fog, allowing the travellers to take a peek at the world around them.

Not that there was much to see apart from the warm sun shining brightly above them. Taking her hat off, Ginny squinted into the distance-- a faint streak of aquamarine swayed and shimmered on the horizon, where the restless, green sea of grass merged with the azure ocean, before it bleached into the light blue sky. They met no one on the bleak, exposed moors; only a herd of wild ponies, paying no mind to the travellers, grazed nearby, on a safe, dry spot encompassed by the soft, muddy grassland.

"Is this place safe?" Ginny heard the prince ask Garreth as the path they had been following for hours, judging by the course of the sun in the sky, became a long causeway surrounded by shallow pools of seawater. A thin layer of mist rose from the water-infused ground now that the sun neared the western horizon, and the heat of the day started to give way to the chill of the approaching night.

"Yes, but it would be better if we walked and led our horses from here, and then left them under the castle hill," Garreth replied, pointing in front of them, before he jumped off his horse.

Ginny looked where he had pointed-- in the distance, the causeway became a road again, and wound gently uphill, parallel with the shore, leaving the moors behind. Then it reached a steep hill with an impressive, half-ruined, white castle perched on its peak, high above the sea.

"That's Tintagel, my lord," Garreth told the prince. "There is only a narrow, rocky path leading to the ruin, not suitable for horses."

Ginny felt her throat tighten with tears. This was the place she had seen in her dream, just like Lancelot's cloak... What did it mean?

Her knight, who had followed Garreth's example and dismounted, spread his arms towards her in that moment, and she let herself slip off the horse into his embrace.

"What is it?" he asked, noticing her seriousness,  but she only shook her head in reply. She didn't know herself.

Reaching the foot of the hill in silence, they tied their horses to an iron ring inserted into a crevice between two rocks jutting out of the hillside. Ginny smiled; only a man could have thought of creating a spot to tether one's horses safely in this abandoned place, where other men came occasionally, like pilgrims to a holy place of some miracle, to worship a sword thrust into a stone.

She looked up towards the ruin, and when she felt her knight's hand close around hers, she realised that the knights carrying the burning torches and the white banner with the golden dragon, her beautiful dress and the sword she had held, were the only things missing-- this was her dream all over again. Ginny giggled, thinking that she would happily trade the splendid gown from her vision for a life with Sir Lancelot.

He pulled her close to him, kissing her briefly, whispering, "I'll miss that sound."

"Let us go up before it gets dark. Then we can camp down here for the night," Garreth proposed, and they agreed, following him up the hill.

The path was narrow and interspersed with sharp rocks. Ginny hoped that they would be back down before sunset; it would be dangerous to descend after dark.

It didn't take them long to reach the top. The moment they entered the ancient ruin, Ginny felt as if they stepped into another world. The light was different within the white walls; it filtered through the leaves and blossoms of wild, rambling roses twined into a canopy, substituting the crumbled roof.

She saw her knight pluck two of the fragile pink blooms, unleashing their sweet scent. He reached her in the corner of what once might have been a chamber, where she stood silently by an archway, enchanted by the view it offered. It must have been a gate to a staircase leading all the way to the beach in the past; now, there was only a narrow stone ledge above a tall precipice.