At the beginning, Audrey had woken around sunrise, if you could call it sunrise, under the endless grey haze, every day like clockwork, like someone had rung a bell next to her head and demand it, but as the days turned into weeks turned into a month now, and there wasn't anywhere specific to get to or do, no chores, she'd gotten more and more used to sleeping in and waking leisurely.
It was probably midmorning when she opened her eyes, rubbing her cheek on her pillow and guessing she had a good while before her next lesson with Adam. She can't say what exactly she'd been looking at or thinking when her gaze snagged on an unfamiliar shape. She was used to clothes appearing in her closet or coming back to her room to find something she'd requested delivered in her absence.
But she hadn't asked for anything last night,
and something was sitting on the corner of her desk. Audrey pushed up, focusing. There was. She pushed the blanket back and slipped out of bed, bare feet padding over to the desk and its strange new thing. A brown paper wrapped package, with a string tied around it, and a small card. She reached out warily, but the card opened to reveal her name inside it. In The Host's ever so familiar script.
It felt queer, which was probably dumb, right? Even if he had filled the whole house for all of them. But there hadn't been things that looked like gifts. Even something as small as this. Audrey picked it up. The package fitting neatly on the palm of her hand. She held on to it with those fingertips and tugged off the string. She dropped that on the desk and went at the paper.
Inside of it sat
a small ring box, which she flipped open, to discover, as was predictable by the box, if just as baffling,
a ring. No less confusing, but
simple and beautiful. Gold, with a design of diamond shapes at the front for display, and small circular shapes inside the diamonds.
Audrey stared at it foreignly, at a full loss why their Host would have given her a ring. She hadn't felt the need to wear any extra ornamentation during these days and weeks, except to more formal occasions when it was left out, with a dress for her. Yet, she could barely drag her eyes from it to look around her. The rest of her room looking the same. Bearing no more clues than it ever did. Her eyes going back.
She pulled it from the soft bed it was nestled in, looking at it between her fingertips. She held the ring up to the light of, well, the haze of midmorning streaming in her gauze curtained windows. No engraving. This was all so very strange, and yet, with no one there, even as she looked toward her door, she turned it over, giving it another look, and tired it on a finger.
A perfect fit.
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