This plain gold ring's got a story to tell.
Engraved "Sweet Sixteen" it was a birthday present from April's abusive father: the only pretty thing he ever gave her. April comments sadly that "he must have won a poker game or something that day", but despite what she says April is very fond of her ring.
At the beginning of the game April has lost her ring, but it is soon found by her landlady, Fiona down the Border House's sofa. April is very puzzled about how her ring ended up behind the sofa cushions to begin with, however. Fiona shrugs it off, saying that the ring probably slipped off while April was watching the Screen, although April says she hardly ever wears it and that she has been keeping the ring in a box in her room. How it became lost remains a mystery.
April uses the ring to bridge the current in the frayed wires of the "mystifying" machine that regulates water pressure for the Border House. Later, during the Trial of Spirit in the Guardian's Realm, April is faced with the spectre of her father and transformed into a helpless little girl. When her father beckons her threateningly, April shows him the ring to remind him that he really did love her after all. It also seems to remind April that she loves her father, and she passes the Trial.
Trivia[]
While pure gold is a conductive metal, the ring should not have been able to bridge the current on the machine. Ragnar responded to this criticism by saying: "let's just say Daddy-O was a very, very cheap man, and that alloy may have *looked* like gold to an inexperienced eye. So there."