The man sang in a voice as deep as the ocean and the woman hummed along. She let his arms envelop her and fell into his embrace. She let herself be loved. It wasn’t forced upon her but on her own terms. No longer an object having something done to her, no longer a helpless victim, but a participant happily involved. Soft honking came from the goose that had snuck its way into their house and hearts. The man complained that he was running out of things to rhyme with the honks. She told him that lyrics don’t need to rhyme, but he insisted anyway. There were other things he insisted on. He had to do the locks three times before being satisfied. He must ward off trespassers. He needed to keep those close to him safe. In the same way he could never know why she flinched with such fervor at minor things, she couldn’t understand his caution.
Then some gold had been stolen. She did not see it happen but she heard it. She was emptying a closet when the sound of unfamiliar footsteps and metal clinking against each other scared her into hiding. She only knew it was safe to leave when the man found her. Since then he had been tense. The windows had been boarded. He would second guess how many times he checked the locks and then start over. He spent more and more time wandering the rooms. It unnerved her but the thought of being caught off-guard like that again was downright mortifying.
A boy wanted to help her. Or was he a young man? She couldn’t tell. He had the goose with him. He said he knew how to escape. There was yelling. A part of her knew it was the man trying to protect her but another part only knew that yelling people must be avoided or she’ll be hurt. She followed the boy. She couldn’t recall when a thick vine sprouted up the cliff near the house but she was climbing down it with him anyway. After being on solid ground she should have felt safe but she couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. She couldn’t think. Then she saw the boy bring an axe to the vine. Then she saw the man climbing. Then she saw him fall.
After living with them for a while, the mother of the boy would retell the story of her son’s adventure, but changed things. The vine became a massive bean sprout, the man became a monstrous giant, and the woman was deemed so lacking in autonomy that she became a shiny trinket. The woman wanted to correct the mother but she was afraid of how she would react. The woman lived under her roof with nowhere to go and no idea how to make her sympathetic to him. So she just did what she was good for and sang.