PART III — THE RING AND THE TRUTH
She reached the old birch tree before she was ready.
Her feet recognized the place before her mind caught up.
The ground looked disturbed.
Not freshly dug — just softened, as if someone had brushed snow away earlier.
Her breath trembled as she knelt.
Beneath a thin layer of powder, something gold caught her eye.
Her Comet Ring — the one she thought she’d lost. The one she dropped when she’d run sobbing through these woods after the fight. The one she’d never gone back for because she was too ashamed.
And tucked under the ring?
A single note.
I kept everything you dropped. You weren’t ready to come back for them then. You are now. — A.
She sank onto the snow.
The name hit her like a warm wave.
A.
Her sister.
The person she had fought with.
The person she had loved fiercely and lost painfully during that winter — not to tragedy, but to stubbornness.
To pride.
To silence.
Her sister had been the one behind the footprints.
Behind the boxes.
Behind the notes.
Not to frighten her.
Not to haunt her.
But to return what she abandoned —
the pieces scattered during the worst night of their relationship.
The ring.
The pendant.
The earring.
Fortune‘s Turn Necklace | Gilded Link Necklace
And, beneath them all, the truth:
You can pick up the things you dropped. You can fix what cracked. You can come home.
She pressed the ring to her chest.
In the clearing behind her, fresh footprints approached.
But this time, she didn’t run.
She didn’t hide.
She turned toward the trees,
toward the person she had been avoiding for a year,
toward the warmth waiting at the edge of the cold.
Sincerely yours
