Bravo! What a bittersweet and heart-aching tale. You're a gifted writer with phenomenal attention to detail (Germanic?) and cunning poetic subtleness (Celtic or Anglo-Saxon?).
He'd been out watering his crop again, she notices. She’d steal it if she knew where it was. Go west. But she softens at the sight of the dog; she cannot quite yet leave a man who tends to plants and puppies.
What I like about the story is that it feels suspended in time and place, like a dream that made a great impression but only the delicious fragments remain. It is a great interpretation of the prompt.
...there are the waves of bodily desire and the desire of the soul for something steadier. When her soul is not fed, there is an awful gulf between them, and despite his sad efforts to fill it, he does not know how.
THankyou so much, @litguru! YOu know, it's based very much on memory, though of course to make it stick, I had to give it certain details that weren't quite accurate or even real, if that makes sense. It's like all these fragments put together to recreate something that didn't happen exactly like that! So that's probably what gives it it's dream like quality.