09/03/2026
Years passed the way they always do—quietly at first, then all at once.
Life did not stop to wait for her. The world moved on as the world always does.
Quietly, and without the permission of broken hearts.
In the years passed, she did everything that was expected of her.
She married a gentleman of suitable standing. She bore children.
But there was a quiet absence about her, as if a portion of her spirit had been left behind somewhere the rest of her could not quite reach.
And in truth, it had.
It was nearly twenty years later when she returned. The ancient stones were stood there exactly as they had done the night they said their vows.
She stepped inside the circle with trembling hands, and clung tightly in her fist, the letter.
She walked up to the stones and pressed her hand against it.
For a brief moment, she thought she felt a warmth...
He had never left. Not truly.
What became of him was always unknown, regardless of the weeks long search from the Cumbrian lords estate, to find his daughters kidnapper, and even a collaborative search with the Scotsman was to not prevail. He was well and truly lost, and his name became nothing more than a tale...
For a long while she stayed, whispering thoughts inside her mind, too scared to speak them into the circle. Until she asked the one question that had tormented her for years, softly she asked, ‘are you there?’.
She waited.
The wind shifted.
But nothing answered her...
Almost symmetrically through the stone, where neither sun nor season could reach, a lost soul.
He felt her, and for a moment, he thought he heard her speak.
He watched her descend into the mist across the moor. Tormented that he could not follow. He remained bounded to the stones. Neither living nor truly gone, he lingered in that quiet, merciless purgatory where no path led forward.
He remained with his hand pressed to the stone long after she had disappeared.
As though, if he waited long enough, she might return again.
And one day,
perhaps,
the stone between them might finally break.
