One Word Prompts

Ring - Dearest

She lay on the forest floor letting the sun's light dance through the foliage and onto her face. She held one hand up, palm outstretched, half blocking the sun from her eyes, half staring at the gold band around her ring finger. She sighed and dropped her hand to her side, running her hand through her long, brunet hair sprawled around her.

Her parents would be wondering where she'd disappeared to. And so, would he.

She turned her head to look at the ring again. Such a little thing, this coil of gold. And so much more than a girl like her should have ever hoped for.

She was a peasant girl, daughter of farmers. He was the lord's son. It had been chance that the two had met as children. His desire to see more of the world than the lord's manor the only reason they continued to meet. At the time, their friendship had been a kind of magic.

Half her friends had told her not to get too attached to him, she was just a curiosity to the noble born boy. She'd never be more than maid or mistress. The other half urged her to hold on at all cost, make him take her as lady of the manor. Give him the heirs he'd need.

She'd never paid any of them much mind, though, if she was honest. She'd always been happier just talking with him, happier running though the fields with him. Happier exploring the forests. Happier dreaming of distant lands together.

But all things came to an end eventually. His father had sent him to the capital to become a knight. She'd gone to the manor's gate to see him off. To wish him luck.

He'd been waiting.

"Wait for me," he had said to her. "I'll be back before you know it."

"What?" she'd called after him, as he was dragged into the carriage and shipped away.

"I love you!" he'd called back to her as they drove him away.

Half her friends had congratulated her, saying she'd done it, she'd changed her fate. She'd be a peasant no more. Half her friends told her to be realistic, that'd he would forget all about her in the face of the noble ladies of the capital. That she shouldn't keep her hopes up for his return.

But she didn't know what to do about any of that. None of these futures were hers. Nothing she did could alter the course. And this luck her friends seemed to think she'd found? She wasn't sure she wanted it.

They'd exchanged letters while he was gone. He told her of his studies and swordplay, she'd write him of the weather and the land. Both wrote of missing the other, he of her touch and her face, she of his voice and the trouble they had so often found together. In each, he professed to loving her. And in each, she found herself questioning her own heart.

Did it beat for him? She looked forward to the day he came back, but not for the things her friends whispered about in the dark of night. Her lips against his? His hand on her waist? Her head on his shoulder? She couldn't find the appeal.

So, the years had passed. Every year, another of her friends married another of the village men. Every year her family teased her for waiting for the young lord. Every year, she explored deeper sections of the forest.

It was these adventures she most often wrote him about. The animals she saw, the ones she hunted and the ones which escaped. The herbs she discovered, the berries she picked. The promise that she'd show him the secret places she's found and that the two of them would go even further together when he returned.

This place she lay was one such place she'd found. It was a quiet spot, unusually bright and peaceful for being so deep in the forest and so far from the village. Here the sunlight trickled down to the soft forest floor, bathing the earth in dappled sunlight. Here, even in the depths of winter, a circle of warm earth untouched by snow could be found. In the spring and summer, she found a ring of flowers pink and then yellow. In fall, the ring of flowers was replaced with a perfect circle of mushrooms. It was her very own Fairy Ring.