Ida hunched over her drafting table. Lately her pages had mostly been filled with copperplate calligraphy, but today she was repeatedly practicing a symbol. It looked like a knot, with three petals, with a ring passing through them.
She remembered it from a dream. She had been in a large cavern. There was music. There had been guards. There had been a throne, and on the back of the throne was this symbol. She had spoken to the guards, and they encouraged her to sit on the throne. She did, and it was a comfortable chair. She remembered sitting high up, looking out on the guards arranged on either side, with the torches lining the cavern. But then the king was there. A large man, long curly beard, carrying his crown in his hand. The King had spoken to her in a resonant baritone, very politely. Offered to let her wear his crown. Ida turned him down. He turned his back on her, speaking to his guards.
At that she had woken up with a start. Had she presumed too much to sit on his throne without his permission? Had he been about to kill her?
It was such a detailed dream. She could remember the music ... dum dum dum dum dum dum dum ... and the symbol on the throne. And the helmets of the guards. And the sparkle in the King's eyes.
Her father looked over her shoulder. "Ah, Celtic illumination?" he asked.
"I don't know what it is," answered Ida. "I saw it carved in the back of a throne in a dream. I'm trying to capture it."
"That's a Celtic trinity knot," said her dad. "A link, proper, not a knot, since it requires two strands. The three-pointed one is a lefthanded trefoil, or overhand knot. The ring going through it ... it looks like an alternating knot. That's where every string alternates overpass, underpass, overpass, underpass."
"What is Celtic?"
"You know, like the Book of Kells?" he said.
Ida punched that into her cell phone. Her eyebrows raised, and she was clearly no longer available to talk to, so her dad went on to do something else.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "Your Just The Average Teenager That Sits In Their Room All Day Doing Their Own Thing. But You've Started Having Weird Dreams About A Throne And You've been Drawing Symbols That You've Never Seen Before. You Dont Know What's Happening But Your Determined To Find Out."