Isolde grew up in the Dunnick highlands, a shepherd with a large herd. She was her father’s favorite and given everything he had to give. He traded for beautiful blue dresses, sweet fruits, and soft pillows so she could live happy and carefree.

But she could not remain her father’s little girl forever. She met someone, a handsome woodsman named Eric. They met while she rested under a tree, and that’s where he found her napping. The herd had spread wide, and she awoke in a panic, but Eric helped her gather them all again. They worked together til sunset and she came home late that night. In her excitement and relief, she told her tale to her father and did not see the bittersweet sadness in his eyes.

She saw Eric again the following week. And the next after that. And then almost every day. They talked of life and their dreams. Slowly, she noticed that his dreams became her dreams. And that hers became his. They talked of a life together. And one day, under that same tree they met under, he knelt down and asked to be her husband. He presented her with a bracelet of wooden beads, carved from a branch of that very tree.

Their plans were not to be. When the Rennets came with their press gangs, Eric was scooped up while looking for Isolde. But her father had already hidden her beneath the floorboards, clutching her bracelet and praying to any god that would hear her.

She’s tried to live on since then, but she remembers the lover that was taken every time she looks at the wooden beads adorning her wrist. She will find him one day.

-Curia Rectus Archive