Gold Rings ⚜️ Bucky Barnes X Reader

3: A New Dawn

Dawn's light trickled through the window of Bowman's wooden home. She loved her natural alarm clock, but she wished it would go off just a little bit later.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!

Yup. There he goes.

Getting up from bed, Bowman got dressed in a simplistic brown wrap and a set of sandals. Grabbing a green scarf, she tied it around her neck and let it hang to around her hips. It was perfect for gathering eggs from her chickens.

"Okay, you little fuckers. You better behave this time!" She joked, going through her makeshift chicken coop and gathering her bounty in the green sash.

"Good morning, Ms. Cluck! My, don't you look lovely today~!" She giggled, running her hand through the back feathers of the chicken.

Returning to her home, she grabbed a wicker basket from a small stack of them in the floor. Bowman had recently taken up basket weaving, mainly out of necessity. However, the nearby townspeople were indespensible in teaching her the skills she needed to live on her own.

Placing the basket on her countertop, she gently laid the bottom of her green scarf in the basket. Untying it from around her neck, Bowman laid the rest of the fabric around the eggs to keep them protected.

Happy with her job well done, she turned to continue her chores for the day.

First: breakfast. Now that she had eggs, she was able to start up a fire in her wood-burning stove. Very few things in her home were not built with her own two hands, and this was one of them. The stove made cooking so much easier than a traditional fire, and cast iron pans were her lifesaver (another luxury she had purchased).

Cracking an egg, she started cooking it on the stove. While it cooked, she went out back of her house. Alongside the back, Bowman had rigged a piece of sheet metal to hang at chin height. It was here in a bed of straw and wild grass that her goats lived.

She had started with only two, who she had named Miękki and Koza - Polish for "Fluffy" and "Goat" respectively.

Very original.

Over the winter, Miękki had gotten pregnant and, just a week prior, had given birth to three foals. Bowman hadn't come up with names yet, but they were already developing personalities.

"Hi Miękki, how are you?" She asked, bending down to check on the three new babies. They all seemed to be perfectly happy snuggling in the hay and nursing from their mother. Koza looked over his herd with a stiff back and high head.

"What a proud paaaaapaaaa..." Bowman giggled, petting Koza's head. Just as she was about to turn back to her eggs, she heard a yell in the distance.

"Song Bird!"

Bowman's head whipped around, smiling when she saw Shuri's head pop over the hill.

"Shuri!" She yelled back, waving her hand in the air. "I'll be just a moment--"

A second head popped over the horizon.

Bowman squinted her eyes, trying to make out their face. She could tell it was a man in traditional dress, with a blue scarf tied across his body. It took a moment to realize that he didn't have an arm extending from the blue scarf.

She froze.

Then, she ran.

Bowman ran through the knee-high grass of her pasture, leaping over the fence as she continued for the road. Her sandals thumped against the gravel path, sprinting uphill to the familiar face.

Without words, Bowman ran into Bucky, wrapping her arms around him. She couldn't stop herself from laughing, her smile chapping her lips. Patting her hands on his shoulder as if to check he was really there, she pulled back just to admire Bucky's face before pulling him full-force into another hug.

"God, I missed you..." was all she could get out.

It was great to be back.