Once upon a time in a faraway land, there lived a knight called Ruta. Every day, she would set out from the very small and broken-down castle where she lived in one room, check on the three peasant farmer families that lived in her neighbourhood, and then spend the rest of the day seeking for adventure in the surrounding countryside. Some evenings she went to Court, which was held by a local prince at a larger castle, and attended the banquets and gatherings. She was not, however, well enough connected to be one of the day crowd.

Also, Ruta the knight did not currently own a horse.

One day, as she was seeking adventure in a place she had not often been before (a bridge had recently been constructed over a river, making travel in that direction much more practicable) she heard a sweet voice singing.

Pity me, for I have lost my sheep
Nowhere can they be found
Are they underground?
Return them safe by nightfall
When the wolves will be out

Ruta hurried in the direction of the voice, which was now repeating,

Pity me, for I have lost my sheep
Nowhere can they be found
Are they…

"Hie, shepherdess!" Ruta called out, hardly out of breath at all because she was used to hurrying about on foot.

The shepherdess, who had been sitting down on the ground, jumped to her feet and turned around. She was a very beautiful shepherdess, wearing a green cloak that made her eyes also look very green, and holding a tall crook. She also appeared to be, Ruta noticed in some confusion, quite sufficiently supplied with sheep. They stood, or lay, or sort of knelt, or wandered slowly as sheep do, all around the green hillside. But perhaps some more were missing?

"Can I be of assistance?" Ruta asked, remembering to bow at the same time. "When did you last see your sheep?"

"They're right here," said the shepherdess. "Right—there and there and there, as you can see."

"But you'd lost them?"

"What?"

"You just said…"

"Oh. I was writing a song."

"About lost sheep?"

"Well, I'm a shepherd, I wanted my song to have some sort of conflict and sheepish conflicts are the only ones I know much about. Anyway, if I'd really lost all my sheep I'd hardly be sitting around singing about it?"

"Oh." Ruta felt sheepish herself. "It's just… not like any song I've ever heard."

"Where do you hear songs?"

"At Court." Ruta stood up straighter. "They sing about… um, battles, and Ladies, and the coming of the dawn. Knights and shepherdesses…"

"Are you a knight?" the shepherdess asked.

"Yes, of course! My name's Ruta."

"I'm not allowed to talk to knights."

"But why?"

"Hm!" said the shepherdess, lips pressed together and nose in the air.

"Please, I'm not going to hurt you."

"Hm!"

"Come on, look at me, do I look dangerous to you?"

The shepherdess rolled her eyes in exasperation and broke her silence, which had lasted only a few moments. "What do you want me to say to that? That you don't look dangerous or like a knight, or what? Knights are dangerous!"

"Only to evildoers!" Ruta said firmly.

"What?" The shepherdess laughed. "That's really stupid. Knights are trouble, everyone knows that."

"Well then… I'm a different kind of knight. A good, not trouble, kind. The kind that helps people!"

"Oh, really?"

"Yes! What can I do to prove it you?"

"Umm…" the shepherdess leaned on her crook and looked around as she considered. "You can… take off all your clothes and armour!"

"What? I'm not taking my armour off!" (It was only leather armour, but still.) "Or my clothes!" (What kind of a request was that?!)

The shepherdess shrugged. "Fine then, be that way."

"No, I mean—something reasonable! A… a quest! A-anyway…" Ruta suddenly felt uncomfortably hot, but more in the face than under the armour. "You might be wanting to steal my armour!"

"What?! Whatever would I want to steal someone's armour for? Sheep are almost totally peaceable animals."

"I-i-it's just," Ruta said, stammering badly, "th-that's what I heard shepherdesses do."

This shepherdess raised an eyebrow and shot her the most unimpressed look. "What, in the songs?"

"S-sometimes," Ruta said, feeling more and more sheepish.

"I don't want to steal your armour. Anyway, what kind of way to do it would that be, 'hello please remove your armour so I can steal it'?"

"Well, I suppose… in the songs, usually… the shepherdess seduces the knight first and while he's helpless…"

"Sorry, she seduces him and makes him helpless?"

"Y-you know, men after they… after… they're…"

The shepherdess was looking at her with one raised eyebrow again.

"You know! All…. spent and helpless. I don't know! It just goes like: they lay they down together, in the green green grass, and then when he wakes up his armour is gone! S-sometimes that's how it goes anyway."

"Eh, well… no, I don't think I've ever tried anything like that, thanks for the idea though."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean that I thought you…" Ruta trailed off miserably. "I'll… I'll just go, shall I?"

"No, don't go!"

"What?"

"You… you may stay, knight," she said, very like a lady. "I am extremely bored."

So they talked. Days out on a hillside composing songs with none but sheep for company apparently gave one quite the appetite for conversation if an elliptical way of conducting it.

It was very nice to talk to someone not at Court. (The peasant farmers didn't talk to her very much, and they were very busy.) Wanda seemed to note at once all her inadequacies as a knight ("you don't have a horse") and then pass over them as if they mattered not at all. Each found the other's life interesting and incomprehensible.

("I have the rents from my tenant farmers, but I feel bad about taking them sometimes, and the harvest this year was so hard on them…")

("…I'm not here quite all of the time… At night I put the sheep away in the thing—and there's another boy with the next flock over so we look after each other's sheep if one of us wants to go shopping… But otherwise I don't see much of people, so I make up songs.")

Her name was Wanda and she shared her bread and cheese, about which Ruta later felt terribly ashamed. It was a better meal than she could normally have hoped to have that day.

When they parted, Wanda told Ruta she'd see her later, and, thus expected, Ruta walked back to see her almost every day after that.

"You're bleeding!" Wanda ran up to her, dropping her shepherd's crook.

Ruta put a hand to her face. "Oh, blast it, still? I'm sorry—I shouldn't have come."

"Yes you should! Are you badly hurt? Do you need the witch, or the priest?"

"No, no, I'm… I'm fine." She sat down on the grass with a bit more of a bump than she'd planned. "Ow."

"What happened?"

"I didn't block and I didn't jump back quick enough." The blade had flashed right before her face, the cut across her forehead had hardly hurt at all compared to the mental preoccupation of what had almost—

Wanda could see now it wasn't an endangering wound, but now she was the one thinking of the almost.

"Your eyes—right there, any lower and…" She pulled herself together, and with her knife made a snip and then tore a strip off the bottom of her apron.

"Don't—that's…" Ruta had only ever seen her wear that one apron.

"Oh don't argue, you're bleeding all over, it's yucky." With a little of her jug of water she dabbed around the cut, then tied the cloth around Ruta's head. "Well now you just look strange, but. So what happened, was it an adventure?"

"Another 'knight', actually." Ruta shook her head. "I mean I do understand why you don't like us. This one was chasing after one of the peasant kids with a sword, I don't know why."

"So you got in the way?"

"Of course—that's what knights… what they should do."

"So I was wondering…" Wanda began, another time. "How it works, the other bit of being a knight you talk about, the wandering bit."

"Well I… seek adventure… and maybe I find it."

"And how does that work for things like… getting money. Earning a living."

"It is for chivalry, mainly. Honour."

"But, your tenants are never going to pay enough for you to buy a horse and eat," Wanda said flatly.

Ruta sighed. "No, probably not. Of course, the dream with the knight-erranting is you go on a quest and slay a dragon or rescue a damsel or both and then you get her hand in marriage and even-up-to-half of a kingdom."

"And… that's your dream?"

"Ideally, I suppose… Right now, owning a horse is the dream."

"And um, I just wondered," Wanda went on, uprooting blades of grass in front of her, "with the marrying the damsel daughter of the rich king business. Wouldn't they expect. You know. Pro-geny."

Ruta hunched shoulders and stared at the horizon. The sun would soon set, she should be making her way back. "I would think so," she said.

"And… I haven't said anything but aren't you… a girl too?"

"Yes."

"Do… the people at court mind?"

"Most of them don't notice. Anyway, if I was a heroic knight no one would care one way or the other!"

"Oh." Wanda seemed to be thinking about this. "The funny thing is," she said after a moment, "anyone can be a shepherd; the sheep aren't picky."

"Buy a lute," Wanda commanded, very like a lady.

"A what?"

"A lute. You know, strings, dum dum dum plink plink plinky…"

"I meant, why should I buy one?"

"I think… they're probably less expensive than horses… I had one, but it wouldn't stay in tune and I sold it."

"But why should I buy one?"

"So that! I can teach you to play, and then you play my songs, and then you can be one of those guys that does that."

"Troubadours."

"Yes, them. That's a thing knights can do too, right?"

"Yes… But I can't play your songs!"

"I said, I teach you, then you can."

"But they're yours, I can't just…"

"Ruta, look! I'm not the one who goes to the court where people listen to these things. And, I have enough to eat most of the time. So I think you need them more than me."

Ruta had bought her lute and music lessons had commenced. The sheep didn't seem to mind, or possibly to notice. Wanda was interested to learn the common genres of songs at Court, and was quickly penning her own versions—or rather, she would sing them and Ruta would make a basic notation.

Now, Ruta wanted to write songs of her own, or at least co-write. She wanted to write a song about…

"Wolves, why?" asked Wanda.

"Do you not like wolves, then?"

"I'm a SHEPHERD. Wolves are big trouble, worse than knights! Once I had to hit one in the face with my stick and run away! A wolf, not a knight, although… eh. So… are songs about wolves… popular at court?"

"No… it's more an idea of my own… A knight who goes and lives with wolves for a year and, and learns their ways. I just thought that sounded nice."

"Well it certainly doesn't sound very likel…" They were sitting side by side with the lute on the ground between them, and Wanda suddenly snuck a glance sideways and saw Ruta's face. "…like anything anyone will have heard before, so, it's a good idea, let's try it!"

"Look, look!"

"What is it?"

"This," Ruta said impressively, and held out her hand. On her middle finger was a thick gold ring with a red gemstone.

"That's… very pretty," Wanda said, sounding a bit strange. "Where did you find it?"

"I didn't find it, I was given it!"

"Who by?"

"A lady at court! Because of my song—I mean your song—the song I sang last night—not the wolf one—are you alright?"

Wanda had gone very red in the face. "Mm!" she said, with her lips pressed together.

"You're not… what's the matter?"

"Mm! Fine!"

"Wanda…"

"I can't give you things!" she wailed.

"What? I don't want you to give me things!"

"Oh!"

"I mean—why would I want your things?"

"OH!" Wanda was gripping her shepherd's crook very tightly.

"I mean! You already give me so much, I don't need physical things from you; Wanda I want to give you something if only I could! And the ladies at court don't mean anything to me, but they have just piles of gold and jewels, they don't need them!"

"Oh." Wanda snuffled and wiped her nose. Then burst into fresh tears.

"What? What have I done now?!"

"But what if, what if you're breaking their hearts?" Wanda sobbed.

"Oh…" Ruta sat down and put her arm around Wanda's shoulders, which was awkward in armour, even if it was only leather. "Oh, that's alright… I don't think the people at Court have hearts."

Wanda made a noise that could have been a choked giggle. "They might," she said, still crying.

Ruta sighed. "I know. You're right. I'll… I'll give the ring back, I'll say I can't accept it, and I don't want to give false hope."

"No," Wanda sniffed. "You should keep it, it's the prettiest thing I've ever seen. Keep it but tell her and say you're sorry but a conniving shepherdess seduced it off you and now you don't have it."

"I can't lie like that!"

"Dishonourable?"

"Very."

"I'm sorry. I ruined this, and you were so happy."

"You are right though. It's the honourable thing to do."

"She didn't want it!" Ruta exclaimed as soon as she came within hearing distance. "She called me arrogant and presumptuous and didn't I know my place as a lowly musician and how dare I assume this mere trinket came with any whisper of a promise when none was nor ever would be given, and she would never dream of taking back a gift, how could I debase us both so—isn't that wonderful!?"

"Wow, is that really how they talk?" Wanda laughed. "Hey, free ring, and you keep your knighty honour and everything, that is fairly wonderful."

Ruta sat down in her usual spot and stretched as Wanda opened the lunch basket she always brought.

"The thing is, though," Ruta said, sobering. "I'd accepted the idea, I'm not keeping this, and I… Can I give it to you?"

"Oh! Oh I don't, I don't need this…"

"I know you don't need it—will you accept it?"

Everything stopped.

"Yes," Wanda whispered, the colour shock-gone from her face. "I. Thank you. I thank you, I." She took a deep breath. "Look, if you ever need money, more than usually, tell me and we'll sell it. We're not like the people at court, these things aren't meaningless to us."

There was no point arguing so Ruta didn't, but instead:

"You just said we and us a lot."

"Yes."

"Is there… is there an us? Are we… the—the same, or together, in some way, or—"

"…if you want." Her voice was so tiny all of a sudden.

Ruta swallowed. "I, I do want," she said thickly. "Do you—is that why you were upset? I didn't realise but… I want you to keep the ring and think of me when I'm gone, is that very selfish of me?"

"No," said Wanda, "or… or if it is, anyway I don't want you to go away…"

"I won't, then," Ruta breathed. "Oh, Lady."

"Lady."

Then lay they down together in the green green grass.

When Ruta awoke, her armour was gone. Not only was she not wearing it—obviously—but it wasn't where she'd rather haphazardly left it on the ground. It was gone. Panic flooded her. She felt sick. Surely, surely not, after all that had happened… Ruta in a daze started to put on the rest of her clothes. The ring was gone too, but then she'd given that away after all…

"Hey, how do I look?"

Wanda stood above her, wearing her leather armour and a big grin.

"Sorry, I just… borrowed it. I wanted to try out… Could you teach me knight-ing?"

"What?" Ruta blinked.

"Like I was teaching you singing and lute and stuff. It sounds fun. 'Course I couldn't ever really do any, because someone has to look after the sheep…"

"—I could. Look after the sheep sometimes, if you want to go questing…"

Wanda laughed. "Um I would definitely have to teach you about sheep! But—really?"

"Yes! I'd like to! We could sort of… trade, you know, back and forth. Armour for sheep. Oh, what, no, that's stupid, what am I saying…"

Wanda crouched down. "Say share, not trade."

On her knees, Ruta leaned towards her, kissed her.

She took Wanda's hand in hers and placed it over her own heart. "Share with me?" she asked.