Of Blood and Snow

Nostalgia and a Ring (4)

Mina could not help but feel a sense of nostalgia and familiarity touch upon her thoughts during her brief encounter with Dimitri earlier. It was as if she had met him somewhere.

"Mother, who was that man? Why was he here?" questioned Mina.

"Mina, dear, I've told you several times that he was the new villager that settled in a week ago next door to us," remarked her mother. "I just invited him over for a brief talk after he so kindly offered us a lovely house-warming present," she says while pointing to a rare bouquet of blooming red Queen Elizabethan roses, coincidentally Mina's favorite type of flowers, sitting peacefully and radiantly on one of the upper shelves.

"I have not had the chance to tell your father yet, but I also invited Dimitri over to dine with us tonight," her mother says while tidying up the small house with the hay-bristled broom.

With the mention of her father, Mina remembers her outburst of concern from before and quickly reminds her mother that Father cannot and should not participate in the hunt. His leg, injured in an accident when a large log fell directly onto his left knee, now leaves him wobbling with a cruel limp in numbing pain. To see him still working in the woods, trying to make a living to sustain his family despite his setback, makes him one of the strongest role models in Mina's life.

Stopping her sweeping and wiping off a bead of sweat that rolls down her forehead, Mina's mother states blatantly in a one breathed sigh, "Mina, I will have a talk with him when he comes back for dinner, but for now, please help me clean up and prepare the food for later."

Reluctantly, as Mina begins to straighten up her closet, a heavy silver necklace with a glowing ruby falls down from one of her coats.

"Peter," she mutters quietly sinking to floor and gathering the necklace within her hands. It had been three months since she had last seen him, three months since her sister's death, three months since Tristan formally set foot into her household. No one had spoken of the arranged-marriage between her and Tristan since then, but she knew that the impending marriage was inevitable and soon.

Slowly standing up and closing the armoire door, Mina finds herself before the mirror where she gently unclasps the silver metal hook and slides the necklace in place onto her neck and close to her heart. The ruby, now in its proper home, glows with an absolute eye-catching luminosity even in the dimly lit room with only one lantern and no sunlight streaming in from the window.

Deep into the icy woods, a certain heartbroken Peter fervently chops up wood with the rest of the other woodsmen, including Mina's father. With each swing of the axe, he begins to flashback to the warning Mina's mother had given him on the night of Lucy's funeral when he tried to pay his respects.

"I know what you are trying to do. Stay away from my daughter. I know what a woodsman makes. If you truly love her, you will stay away," warned Mina's mother with an icy tone and piercing eyes.

Sighing and motivated to swing harder as ever to blow off steam, he remains aloof from the other workers, especially because of his proximity to Mina's father. However, in the midst of all this built up tension, the soothing thought of joining the hunt tomorrow night seems to relax Peter's conflicted emotions. For he reasons that if he should die a noble death in the fight tomorrow, he would go down as a hero, and Mina's worries about having to choose would no longer plague her mind.

At the village square, the bell tower clock chimes with an eerie 12 o'clock clangor causing several black crows, previously perched in comfort, to lift off and fly away in a squawking fear. The clouds, still ominously heavy, block any sunlight trying to seep through, making a dark afternoon pass as night.