Since first glimpsing Thom's handsome smile after Sunday chapel services years ago, the farmer's daughter Lucy knew in her fluttering heart that only he could make her spirit truly soar. But rigid local traditions barred unsanctioned romantic interludes separating hardworking commoners like themselves from indulging secret courtships better suited to carefree poets unbound by harvest expectations.

So Lucy fostered her fondness through subtle gestures - weaving Thom blue cornflowers matching his bold eyes for buttonholes, preparing him savory onion tarts perfected to suit his seasoning as a budding underground cook. In kind, Thom's own admiration shone through whittling Lucy fair angel trinkets from Treak Cliff's stones on breaks while tunneling perilous Blue John fluorspar deep beneath the dales.

The glowworm-lit caverns and glittering banded veins provided Thom's laborer wage. Yet how Lucy wished theProgress Commission committee would cease demand for ornate decorative Blue John exploding overseas. She overheard elder miners dread their duties shoveling powder kegs deeper towards pockets of deadly firedamp gas looming. But authorities spurred digging relentlessly on.

When severe tremors collapsed the main ventilation shaft trapping Thom's crew on sweltering hellish levels, only Lucy's hand-lowered canteens sustained the excavation team as they meticulouslypicked through debris choking all exits. Days later against dire odds hope emerged - rescuers breached a narrow crevice to starving soot-streaked faces beyond. But Thom's strong embrace stayed woefully absent from relieved faces stumbling into dawn.

Instead a remorseful foreman conveyed witnessing Thom deliberately enter a known danger tunnel searching for survivors prior to its complete fiery implosion moments later.Stable dynamite stores had detonated ahead of schedule, forever sealing off the annex. All evidence pointed to Thom's body lay scattered inside amongst tunnel supports cracked by the blast force.

Upon hearing confirmation her darling lay forever entombed down in lightless stone according to the stony mines inspector, Lucy's countenance drained of all spirit. At home her distraught father clasped the frail lass, despairing over losing wife and babe himself to youth plague years prior. But Lucy's essence had shattered fully with Thom gone.

Under moonless clouded skies she wandered through the miners’ graveyard the pair often secretly met by, vigil candle illuminating markers bearing too many youthful mine accident deaths. Finding Thom's newly etched name upon the freshest granite rock beside his brother Titus' resting place felled her fully. This would stand as Thom’s only memorial left unrecovered from depths colder than winter soil...

Wailing prayers into the abyss, Lucy plunged into the same ill-fated Blue John pit that had swallowed her beloved without mercy. Icy flooded tunnels rushed down, down through lightless veins nourished by two lovers' spilled blood till at last Lucy and Thom reunited in mineral halls untouched by mortal limits where their entwined souls glimmer yet. Now local legend says some spelunkers hear spectral singing echoing the old mining hymns on anniversaries or glimpse will o’ wisps dancing along bygone paths - signs that love’s light endures in places earth cannot invade nor yet extinguish all desire’s buried promise.