So this is the opening of a story of mine that needs some help from you people. If anyone's interested or if I need to, there might be more to follow, who knows...
“I’m going to marry you someday.”
She raised an eyebrow, suppressing a smile, and he took two quick steps towards where she was sitting. Lifting her hand in both his own, he pressed his lips against it and looked deep into her eyes- fox eyes, he called them, for their sharp corners and hazel colour- with his own blue gaze.
“That is, if you’ll have me,” he added.
She rolled her eyes. “You know I will.” Delighted, he leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Even if you didn’t even bother to get me a ring.”
He didn’t seem deterred, and as a smile played on his lips, he bent down and plucked a blade of grass that was sticking up from the blanket of brown leaves that covered most of the forest floor, and began to tie it round her ring finger. Her heart thumped, but she still laughed, and he brushed the finger with his lips and murmured, “Sealed with a kiss.”
She smiled, looking at the makeshift ring, but the next few months nagged at her despite the happiness of that moment. “Do you really have to leave?”
His own mouth straightened. “You know I do. I’ve already stayed away longer than I should have, I’ll barely make it across the plains before the snow, and you wouldn’t want me to freeze to death, would you?”
She pretended to consider it, earning a nervous laugh. “I don’t see why your brother can’t deal with things in winter anyway.”
“He just can’t. And I told him I would,” he said simply, shrugging his shoulders and she understood. He was never one to break a vow and counting on that, she asked,
“You promise to come back?”
“I promise. As soon as the snowdrops come, so will I. I’ll march down your garden path with the reddest rose I can find in one hand and a ruby ring in the other and I’ll say, ‘Widow Feathers, I demand Rosie’s hand!’”
“Well that won’t get you very far,” she said primly, sitting back on the log and cupping her hands in her lap. “Mama will simply tell you that she doesn’t have a daughter of that name.”
“Fine. Rose Red.” He rolled her name around her mouth and it made her smile.
“Red will do,” she said wryly.
“Yes, I suppose it will,” he said, his face lighting up as he remembered something. He sat down beside her and lifted up the end of one of the glossy brown plaits that ran close to the side of her head before hanging loosely at her neck, and undoing the ribbon at the end.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but he did not answer, instead saying,
“I forgot something. Anyway, I don’t see what she’s got against Rosie as a name.”
“It’s common. She says you’ll meet a Rosie in every town and village.”
“I don’t know any.”
“How many Rosas and Rosellas and Roseannes then?”
He contemplated this, and for a moment she frowned, thinking of all the city girls he would be spend the winter with. “A few,” he said, smiling slightly. “But none quite as beautiful as my Rosie.”
“Oh, psh.” She loved the way he treated her so romantically, but even she had to draw the line somewhere, and she did so at being called beautiful.
He took his hands away from her plait, and in place of the white ribbon she had tied there that morning, was one of brightest scarlet.
“Red will do,” he repeated.
“What would Snow say?” she said, staring at the ribbon. Despite her name, she owned very few red things, and fingered the pretty little ribbon. He always gave her pretty things, and despite herself, she loved them. He saw that in a way no one else did.
“Oh, she’d probably be very disapproving,” he replied, having heard many stories about Snow.
She smiled and turned, twining her arms around him, feeling the coarse fibres in his tunic beneath her fingers. “You promise you’ll come back?”
“I couldn’t stay away longer than I have to.”
“Say it.” For some reason, she clung to the thought that as long as he gave her his word, it would be true.
He kissed the crown of her head. “I’ll promise I’ll come back in spring. I promise to love you and cherish you. I promise to marry you, and take you to the sea.”
She grinned. “Really?” Ever since he had first told her of that huge expanse of water, stretching out forever, she had dreamt about it and asked question after question until he promised he would take her to the city where she could taste salt on her lips.
“Yes. And in return?”
She sighed, knowing she had half a bargain to fulfil, and not one she would enjoy. “I promise that by the time you come, I will have told Mama and Snow about you. And I promise to love you for ever and ever and follow you wherever you go.”
They kissed and she savoured his taste of fine food and mornings, looking at the pink gold light surrounding them. “I should go, Snow will be up and wondering where I am. And you should start out because I really don’t want you to freeze to death.”
“Alright,” he said. “I suppose, if you have to.”
“I’m going to kiss you, just once, and walk away and not look back, it’ll make it easier,” she said, convincing herself as much as him.
“That’s a good idea. Just remember that you’re my Rosie and I love you.”
“And you’re my Dom, and I love you.”
They stood, and rising to her tiptoes she pressed her lips against his once more, for a lingering kiss, thinking of how she wouldn’t see him for three months. She smelt the expensive cologne she had teased him about so much, as homey now to her as the other smells he carried- of late autumn dew and damp leaves.
Then as she had promised she moved away, picked up the little handcart he had filled with wood and without looking back began to walk into the oncoming dawn, squinting, though whether because of the light or to hold back tears she did not know.

