Chapter 6: A choice to make.
It was around noon when Guinevere finally arrived home from the woods. She had left the house earlier almost six hours ago, in the early morning, in her quest to find her man — and she had.
There was probably no one else in the entire kingdom of Llanrwst that was more confused at that moment than Guinevere was. The events of the morning had left her more puzzled than she had ever been in a long, long time.
She had finally found the man she had been looking for thanks to a little bit of mischief on her part, and although he was rather unyielding at first, she managed to convince him to open up just a little bit, so she could get to know him. His name was Leander, and he lived in a small house in the woods all by himself, away from everybody else. He had no family — they were all dead, according to him, no friends at all, and lived a solitary life. Those were about the only bits of vital information she could get from him as he kept everything else about his personal life hidden from her.
Guinevere, undeterred by his cold attitude, had made up her mind to get to know more about this man that she was now very strangely attracted to, albeit slowly. She will gradually become his first friend as time went on, this she hoped. After all, she had made considerable progress that morning with him. That raised her hopes. However, an unexpected turn of events had taken her by surprise and apparently destroyed such hopes — Leander, all of a sudden, had let her know that he never wanted to see her again. In fact, he had grabbed hold of her and sternly warned her to stay away from him if she didn't want get hurt, to which she agreed to. Then he sent her away.
"Guinevere! I have been looking for you since morning. Where have you been? Where did you go?!" Kendryck's voice sounded, interrupting her thoughts as she arrived back at the house to meet him sitting outside the house, sharpening his sword.
"Good morning father." She greeted.
"It's not morning anymore, it's afternoon." He corrected.
Guinevere looked up in the sky. She had not realised that it was well past the morning time and it was now afternoon...until now. "Ohh," She simply muttered.
"You've not answered my questions, young lady. Where did you wander off to this morning? You left without saying anything, without warning. You haven't done anything in the house this morning. You didn't clean up the house, you didn't make breakfast, you didn't get water, you just left, and now you're back, six hours later? What's that supposed to mean?" Her father continued. He was quite furious with her, and she knew it. He didn't always become like this with her, but now that he was, she knew she had to apologize to calm him down.
"I'm sorry father. Uhmm... something came up actually. I had to go see a friend of mine, it was quite urgent." She explained, quickly thinking up a makeshift story to which to use satisfy her dad. "Unfortunately, I was held up, and the entire thing took longer than I had thought it would. I'm sorry about that. I'll go do the chores waiting for me now."
Her father didn't query her anymore after that.
Throughout the rest of that day, she had one thing in mind — her encounter with Leander. She could not help but wonder what had gone wrong, what had made his countenance to change all of a sudden. Things had been going fine, they had been talking, he had even managed to smile a bit, so she had felt that she was finally getting through to him. What happened? There was definitely more to that than he was letting on, something he wasn't telling her. Of course, he had hardly told her anything about who he really is and about his personal life, information that he refused to share, but for him to give her strict orders to stay away from him and never ever come to see him again and even forget about him, there was definitely something strange going on with him.
These thoughts lingered in her head for the next few days. "Why did he send me away like that? 'Stay away from me, for your own good, as well as mine', he said. What did that mean? Or perhaps, underneath all that apparent hostility and coldness, was he trying to protect me from something? Was he trying to keep me safe?"
She was always in her thoughts so much, it seemed like whatever it was she was doing, her mind was always far away. She could be washing the dishes, or eating, or sweeping the house, or playing with the dog Rufus and at the same time be thinking about everything surrounding Leander. Her father noticed it one time when they were having dinner and asked her about it. She kept on playing with her food and appeared to be absentminded, so much that he noticed.
"Are you okay, love?" He questioned, suddenly snapping her out from deep in her thoughts.
"Uhmm yeah. Yes I'm fine. Why'd you ask?" Came her immediate response.
"Well I know you well enough, daughter, and I can tell that something is definitely bothering you. You've been like this for awhile now, something's eating you up. What's that?" Kendryck pressed.
"Uhmm... don't worry about it dad. Yes, there's something I'm bothered about, but it's nothing too serious."
"Does it have something to do with Prince Owen?"
"What? No, nothing at all with the prince, no problems at all. Me and him are cool."
"Okay then, might it perhaps be what you spoke about that day?" Kendryck inquired further out of concern.
"What I spoke of? What exactly might that be?" Guinevere wondered.
"That day when you were gone all morning. You said that there was something urgent that came up, something important. Could this have something to do with that?" He reminded her.
"Ohh, that. Well y-yeah, it's related to that in a way, it does have something to do with that. But don't worry, I'll figure it out myself, father."
"Oh I see. Well, I might not know what the problem is, but remember what I always tell you. Trust your instincts and follow your heart. Perhaps you have found the answer to whatever it is that is troubling you, you don't just see it yet. Find it, and you'll be alright." He concluded.
Guinevere paused for a moment and thought about those words. They struck something inside her, the things he said. She came to a realization.
"Thanks a lot for those words father. Perhaps they were just what I needed to hear, what I needed to be reminded of. Once again, you're the best!" Guinevere expressed happily, now smiling at her father. He simply smiled back and continued eating.
Her father's words seemed to remind her of something, of what exactly she would do in a situation like this. That night, as she lay on her bed, she made her choice. She knew exactly what she was going to do!
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone