We Will Run Away Together. Just the Two of Us: Chapter 1

The morning sun pierced through the window like an ill-mannered guest. With a groan of utter contempt, I yanked the blanket over my head. Yesterday’s toil had stretched into the absurd hours of the night. After completing my chores far later than anticipated, I spent the better part of the evening counting my miserly stash of copper coins.

Sleep tugged at me as I worked, which necessitated counting the wretched things not once but several times. The grand total? Eighty-nine coppers. A sum so pathetic I could scarcely stand the sight of it. I required five silvers, a laughable ambition in my current state. One hundred coppers amount to a single silver, and fifty silvers create a gold coin. Have I owned a gold coin in the past four years? Oh, indeed I have, in dreams so fantastical that even my subconscious was mocking me.

This incessant struggle for coins was maddening. The life of a peasant is a relentless exercise in humiliation. But why was I brooding over such matters this morning? The answer is Kyle.

Ah, Kyle. Recently, he celebrated my twenty-third birthday by presenting me with a new pair of shoes. A thoughtful gesture as they replaced the pitiful scraps I had worn for the past four years. And yet, this act of kindness has ignited a fire in me, for I had intended to gift him a new pair of shoes first!

Kyle is my husband, fourteen years my senior. Tall and robust, with the sort...