The next day she helped weed out the garden, insisting that she still owed them for all the meals and for two night's sleep now, while Jonathan went out to the fields. When she asked what he grew, he said "A bit of this and a bit of that, really. We grow for our own use as much as for selling, so there's a patchwork of different things. Some wheat, some potatoes. Some hay, of course, I'll do three harvests of hay this year, we had an early spring. Which means I may have the third harvest to sell, if it all goes well. And I grow pumpkins. They sell well, and keep well too, we'll eat them half the winter. And we've a little orchard. Mostly apples."

"I bet it keeps you busy," she said.

"That it does."

"Well, lending a hand is the least I can do. It's not as though I have anywhere to be, yet."

And so she stayed. There was never any shortage of work for her to do, and she didn't mind working. She'd been as tired after fights, and after the endless rounds of training that had prepared her for them. And as satisfying as battle and adventure could be, somehow the farm work was even more satisfying. The kingdom had to be defended, yes, and she was proud to be one of the defenders, but it felt now as though she were countering the death she'd dealt by dealing in life. Her sword and her chain mail stayed in the corner of her attic room, gathering dust, as the summer passed into fall. She was definitely needed during the frenzy of harvest time, and worked harder then than she'd ever worked in her life. But that deep satisfaction stayed with her. Stayed until the late autumn day when a white dove came down from the sky while she was helping prepare the kitchen garden for winter. She sighed to see it, but raised her arm for it all the same. The tiny slip of parchment it carried was magical, and as she unfolded it, it grew to a sheet she could read without squinting.

Jonathan gaped at her as she read it.

She folded it up, and it didn't shrink again. "Tell her I come," she said to the dove, and threw it back up into the sky with a whir of feathers.

"You're one of the Queen's Own," said Jonathan, as the dove vanished into the sky.

Ariana nodded. "Yes. And I've been summoned. I'm sorry. I would have liked to stay longer, it's been... very nice, being here, doing something other than fighting. But my queen needs me."

Jonathan just nodded mutely, shocked. That he had been living with, had been using as a farm hand, even! one of the elite adventurers that served Queen Tara directly was impossible, unthinkable, and yet undeniably true. He was still standing, stunned, when Ariana came out of the farm house. Her mail coat looked bright in the sun, and she rested her hand on the sword at her belt for a moment, re-accustoming herself to its presence there. She walked down the path to the road that led to the village and eventually to the river and the route to the Queen's Tower. She turned, though, as she passed through the gate.

"Jonathan... I truly have been happy here. Would I be welcome if I returned, when this is done?"

He blinked. "Of course!"

She smiled. "Then expect me back to help with spring planting, at the latest," she said, and with a leap and a thunder of wings far larger than the dove's, though they were just as white, she vanished into the sky.