Beside Me Singing in the

I originally posted this story on LiveJournal in November 2009. It's inspired by a traditional source. Since the source isn't a common one, I thought it would be fun to post the story without mentioning it and see if anyone called me on it. More than a year later, no one has and I'm feeling a bit guilty. So, without further ado:

This story was inspired by an episode from the tale of Math Son of Mathonwy, one of the collection of Welsh tales known as The Mabinogion. I first discovered these tales a few decades back on the shelves of the town library. The original tale doesn't go into detail as to what the three years in the wilderness would have been like for the couple involved, and this question's been a long-time lurker around the edges of my mind.

The title is also borrowed - it's from the Edward FitzGerald translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I was led to it by playright Eugene O'Neill, who stole another phrase from FitzGerald's translation as a title for one of his plays.