Siobhan balanced awkwardly on the tiny rock she found in the fields surrounding her father's manor. She clenched her hands into fists, closed her eyes tight and jumped towards the ground, doing her un-acrobatic best to spin while she fell. The back of her shoulders hit first, the force rolling her over in the grass.
She hadn't expected her shoulders to sting so much when she put a hand to the ground and tried to push herself up. Or the back of her neck. It was starting to give her a headache too. She figured she was lucky she hadn't hurt herself badly, all she wanted was to make it look like she'd taken a fall - even if the fall she had in mind was from the back of a horse and not a premeditated tumble from a rock. Speaking of the horse, he was watching her placidly, switching his tail side to side and bowing his head to nip at the grass. She'd tried scaring him away, but the most the old gelding did was pin his ears at her and continue following her around.
It wouldn't work if she walked back to the manor with the horse on her heels if he was supposed to have shied, tossed her and run off. Looked like it was time to mend her tale somewhat. As long as she had a story to accompany losing Jammas' ring she couldn't care less of what it was.
The offending ring was still on her hand, loose and ugly as ever. A simple brass thing with roughly hewn leaf, the very same one she was sure he'd taken from the finger of his sweetheart when they were betrothed. She hated it. Siobhan plucked the other rings off her hand, rings that were sized to her finger and mostly crusted with opals. Once the non-offensive rings were secured she raised her hand and flicked it behind her. Jemmas' ring shifted halfway up her finger, but snagged on a joint, she flicked her hand again and it went soaring off. She didn't hear it land, didn't want to, she didn't want to know where it was.
Smiling contently, she placed the other rings back on her fingers, looking long at the one she placed on her pointer finger. It was yellow gold, to set off the darkness of her skin, with an oval shaped opal surrounded in green and grey stones. Her father gave that one to her, saying that it went well with her eyes, which like the stone in its center shifted between greens and greys. So many of her family and friends chose to give her opals on her name day and other holidays. Would it have inconvenienced Jemmas so much to have a ring made for her, one that would fit with the rest of her jewlery. Something she could flaunt without someone making a remark about how a similar ring was seen on the Lady Prenal's daughter's hand just a month prior.
Perhaps her fiancé was angered because he couldn't marry his sweetheart - she'd feel the same if she had one. If he was angry he must have been even angrier at the choice of his betrothed. She and Jemmas could never stand each other, ever since they were children they were always pulling each others hair and pushing each other around - behavior that grew into arguing and ignoring each other as they themselves grew. Her elder sister, Honore, had eyes for him, couldn't father have seen that? No, he wouldn't have seen it even if he could, he'd long promised the Jemmas' father the most comely of his daughters for his first-born son. Or so he said. That seemed like a stupid promise to make anyone. What did an heir need a beautiful wife for? Most importantly, how did she get that title bestowed on her? All of her sisters were beautiful, they were Kriin, beauty ran in their blood.
Sighing, she sat and smoothed her skirts. The horse inched forward and prodded her bare shoulder with his nose. She ignored him, raising a hand to pat her hair, which was the same rich dark red as a raspberry and considerably frizzed from her tumble. If only there was some way she could make her father change his mind about her, make him see just how good a match Honore and Jemmas would be. She had to talk to mother again once she was home. So far, she hadn't been able to do much, but at least she could see just how bad this union was. If there was a way for her to escape, it truly lay with her mother...
She flopped back on the ground, wincing at the stab of pain in her shoulders and stared up at the sky, tracing over the patterns of the clouds with her eyes.
