After their picnic in the forest, Princess Maja thought about Peter a lot.
She thought about his smile. She thought about the kiss. She thought about his wooden furniture and his nervous hands.
But she also felt something else. Something uncomfortable. A small, quiet worry in her chest.
Was this the right thing? she thought. Is it too fast? Is it too soon?
She didn’t have the answers. So she did what she always did when she wasn’t sure about something. She said nothing, and she waited.
Peter, on the other hand, could not stop thinking either. But his thoughts were different.
He wrote her another letter. He chose every word carefully. He rewrote it three times before he sent it.
No reply came.
He picked a small bunch of wildflowers from the hill near his workshop and left them at the castle gate with a note.
The note said: “I hope you are well. Signed, Peter.”
The flowers were taken inside. But still, no reply came.
He felt a familiar feeling growing in his stomach. Not quite sadness. More like worry.
The kind of worry that whispers things you don’t want to hear.
What if she has changed her mind?
What if she is pulling away?
He sat at his workbench one evening, turning a small piece of wood over and over in his hands.
He wasn’t making anything. He was just thinking.
His friend Thomas sat across from him.
“You look terrible,” Thomas said.
“Yes,” said Peter.
“What’s wrong?”
Peter put the wood down. “I think she might run. I think she’s scared and I don’t know what to do about it.”
Thomas was quiet for a moment. Then he said: “Then don’t chase her. Just… stay close. Let her see that you’re still there.”
Peter looked at him. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” said Thomas.
The next morning, Peter didn’t write a letter.
He didn’t leave flowers. Instead, he walked up to the castle — not to the gate, but to the small market just outside the walls, where he knew Maja sometimes walked on Sunday mornings.
He set up a small table and put three of his best wooden pieces on it. A small bird. A smooth oval bowl.
A tiny chair, no bigger than a hand.
He didn’t look for her. He just worked, sanding the edges of a new piece, calm and quiet.
After a while, he heard a familiar voice behind him.
“You made these?”
He turned around. Maja was standing there, looking at the small wooden bird in her hand. She wasn’t wearing her crown. Just a grey coat and soft boots.
“Yes,” he said simply.
She turned the bird over carefully. “It’s beautiful.”
“You can keep it,” he said. “If you want.”
She looked up at him. There was that worry again in her eyes — he could see it clearly. But there was something else too.
Something softer.
“Peter,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry I didn’t reply.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
“It’s not that I don’t… “ She paused. “I just need a little time. To be sure.”
Peter nodded slowly. He wasn’t going to rush her. He wasn’t going to push. He just looked at her calmly and said:
“I’m not going anywhere, Maja.”
She held the small wooden bird a little tighter. And for the first time in days, the worry in her chest felt just a little bit smaller.
She smiled — not a big smile. A small, careful one.
But it was real.
She walked home slowly that morning, the wooden bird in her coat pocket. That night, she put it on the windowsill next to her telescope.
She looked at it for a long time before she closed her eyes.
And slowly, peacefully… she fell asleep.
The end.