Tansy Darnell?
That sounded exactly like a native Eldorian name.
"My mother is from Eldoria. She gave me the name," Tansy said, a soft smile playing on her lips. "I cherish it deeply."
She cherished absolutely every single thing connected to that country.
"..."
Charlotte instinctively almost gave her real name, but to avoid any unwanted complications, she defaulted to her childhood nickname. "Just call me Lottie."
Lottie?
She was impossibly gorgeous, and her nickname was just as endearing.
It was exactly like that old Eldorian saying: love me, love my dog. Because she loved him, she inherently adored everything connected to his homeland.
"Why are you flying solo today?" the shop owner asked cheerfully, totally oblivious to the tragedy. "Where's your boyfriend?"
Boyfriend?
Those two syllables felt like a jagged knife twisting brutally into her chest.
The sheer, suffocating agony instantly drained the color from Tansy's face. Her forced smile shattered, exposing raw, bleeding grief.
He was gone!
He had walked out of her life four years ago, carrying nothing but absolute hatred for her!
"..."
Immediately sensing the devastating shift in Tansy's demeanor, Charlotte stepped forward, smoothly shattering the suffocating tension. "Miss Darnell, what was it you wanted to recommend?"
"A Personal Seal."
Looking back at Charlotte's striking face, Tansy's eyes softened completely. "This shop... my boy... my ex-boyfriend is the one who brought me here."
The shop specialized in premium custom agate, with the vast majority of their inventory exported directly to Eldoria.
Back then, she had been agonizing over what to buy him for his birthday, and he had simply dragged her here.
They had custom-designed a seal together. It had his name meticulously carved into the base and featured an internal spring mechanism.
That was the very first time he had shown her his real Eldorian name. The characters were so impossibly complex that, to this day, she still couldn't pronounce them.
But she knew exactly how to carve them: Donald.
He had sworn to her that he would carry that seal with him for the rest of his life.
Every single time he pressed it to paper, he promised he would think of her.

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