A/N: This is a new collection, having listened to Headspace's sleepcasts (without the narratives), they spawned the next series of stories!
Enjoy!
By the River
Audrey had a secret.
She had many secrets to be fair, and she seemed to collect more of them as she grew older but this was Her Secret, her childhood secret and she was loathe to share it with anyone.
She closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face, the noise of the bees visiting the flowers nearby would have made her grandmother scream and run from the fuzzy winged insects in fright, but Audrey had no such qualms.
The soft splashes of the water were something bobbing up and down beneath the surface, it might be a fish, it might be a duck bobbing for food, Audrey didn't open her eyes to look.
This place was magical in an entirely mundane way. It was her hiding spot and had been since she was five years old when Ben had pulled her pigtails and told her he would never love such a girlie girl who screamed when a ladybug landed on her hand. But that was a long time ago, and a whole story away from where she was now. She was twenty something, visiting home and hiding in her spot to escape her family.
Shutting out the unwanted thoughts Audrey zoned back into her surroundings and let life drift around her. She drew her focus back onto the noises of the wind in the grass, and the rippling of the water as it flowed through the edge of the estate. She kept her mind on the feeling of the warmth on her bare skin, and she noticed that the wind was tickling the hem of her skirt at her thighs. There was a sensation on her ankle that told her an ant was exploring over her leg and with one gentle movement she deposited the ant on the nearest leaf and closed her eyes once more.
The bird above her chirruped, and she knew enough of their language from her mother that they were scouting for her. Her whistle back was quiet and it made the birds pause before they took off once more. She asked for some time to herself and there was a trill that made her smile. They had told her they would look for her a little further downriver.
She could hear the machinery in the next field along; it was almost harvest time and the farmers would be making sure everything was ready for one of their busiest times of the year. It was a soft thrumming noise which she identified as Mr Simmons tractor, a huge part of her childhood that made her smile to herself.
She sank back further into her hiding place and almost jumped when she heard the quiet ribbit of a frog. The wind picked up again, rustling the grass a little harder and the splashes changed slightly. Something had dived in from the shore, but the 'quack' she heard put her mind at rest once more.
Audrey's mind started to wander, she had opened her eyes slowly and was watching the patterns in the clouds shift and move with the summer breeze. The low droning buzz of insects was a comfort and the occasional noticeable noise of a cricket brought memories flooding back. While she may have kept her downriver glade a secret, she and her friends had certainly tramped the boundaries of the castle grounds when they were kids. They went on adventures through the "forests" and hiked under "mountains", letting their imaginations run riot.
Despite her weird fear of ladybugs, Audrey was fine with most creatures, it was a natural trait of being a princess and she had many conversation with Barbara the Squirrel, who had told her rather crossly that just because she was a princess didn't mean that she could rename the animals as she pleased. That's when young Audrey had learnt to respect the animals around her, and she took back the names of Fluffikins, and Bluebell and Sweetums and learned that their actual names were Ash, Rowan and Ardi. As such, she was a familiar sight to many of the river dwellers, and even when her mother sent the animals to look for her, unless it was urgent they would leave her in peace.
Starting to feel too hot, Audrey sat upright once more and shifted on the dusty bank. She dipped her feet into the cool waters, relishing the cold and splashed her toes smiling at the droplets of water thrown across the surface of the river.
She nodded at the ducks that had come to say hello, and stared upriver. It took a moment, but she realised the river was rippling wrong, something was coming upstream. That meant someone was coming upstream. Her quiet moment was over, and with that Audrey pulled her feet from the water and started to pad back towards the castle with damp toes, shoes swinging from her fingers.