RubyRuby,
I love that story!
Here were my three: 9 Swords-The Hermit-King of Cups
Lecia is a princess. Beautiful, smart, intelligent. She was reared in her childhood by wisewomen tolerated at court under the auspices of wetnurses and nannies. She has grown up strong willed and been trained to use her mind. As her girlhood passed and her womanhood blossomed, she ripened to marrying age and was promised to a king in a union that would stabilize political ties. She is smart enough to see the advantages of this and feels drawn to her duty. She has convinced herself to submit to her nuptials, but the night before her wedding she awakes from a terrible sleep. She feels the teachings of her past call to her, and knows she cannot deny who she is- a strong woman meant for more than spinning and keeping house in a strange man's castle. The owl, an old familiar of one her beloved crone caretakers of childhood, bids her to leave and follow him to a place she can escape.
She so flees and is guided to the house of an old man, dressed in ragged clothes. He doesn't look like much, but he guides Lecia on a path back to inner truths and the wisdom she pondered in her youth.
As for her jilted groom......
Having never met her intended, Lecia does not know him, only that the idea her represented to her was something against which her mind and spirit rebelled. But her intended is not a man of action or extreme force. He does not ride forth from his castle to seek her. Nor does he mean to claim her back by force, dragging her kicking and screaming from her hidden and austere life in the concealing cliffs. Instead, he was a man of great feeling and would not make a choice of the heart without the power that knowledge of his intended would bring him. He had to know who this woman was and what kind of queen she would be.
As the weeks passed with the strange bearded man, Lecia began to wonder who he really was. He seemed kind enough but kept much to himself, and encouraged her to simply... be. She did not dress in finery, but wore a simple woolen shift much like the man's old robes. Lecia found she was growing into herself more than she ever had. She rediscovered simple joys and truths as she quietly read, gathered herbs, and meditated through the days and nights. She wore her hair down her back, or in a simple braid as she had when she was a girl. She began to shed the manners and rules of polite behavior she had learned at court that concealed her true independent nature.
One night, the man joined Lecia at star gazing out on one of the cliffs. This was unusual, but Lecia welcomed his presence. She had begun to love her host as a peaceful and caring man. As they rose together to return to the small shack, he stumbled and fell on the rocks, crying out that he had surely cut his leg on the shards of his broken lantern. She ran to him, and cried out herself. Her heart immediately lept to her throat and her hands, full of caring, made to help him up and ease his suffering. As she bent over him, she saw that his cloak had been loosed and his countenance had completely changed.
He was no longer an old man, but a man only a bit older than herself, with the same burnished hair, like polished cherrywood, and a short brown beard of one more youthful.
Indeed, to add to this shock, Lecia found that not only had she been tricked by clever diguise, but that this young man now before had not even been hurt at all.
He explained to her color drained face that he was indeed her intended, and the past weeks and months had been only a charade to discover her true heart and nature. As anger flaired in Lecia at being manipulated and deceived, the man's dreamy eyes looked up at her. She found herself going liquid inside, drowning in the pools half covered by his heavy lids.
Lecia knew instantly that she would be his queen. She knew that she had met her match in love, and that life with this man would, at times, overflow with rewards. And yet, she knew that while she would forgive him, she would never forget what he was capable of. Perhaps she had finally met her match...
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Sorry it was so long, everybody. My libran nature makes being concise very difficult!