CLASS:
CHARMED WINDS
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
(Contains spoilers for "Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart")
There was a window before Ram's gaze. One of great opportunity, a window that would provide a true test of his character, and it was narrowly closing before him.
With it would go all his hopes of keeping fear at bay, and love's vital nectar would slip further from his taste.
He had gone through a month of misery, and emerged from the tempest with one eye locked on to land. Now a new tempest awaited him, and the land awaiting him on the other end, should he make it, was foreign. Different.
Dangerous.
But what awaited him on that side was the key to keeping his fear bottled up, to allow him to embrace the most cherished values of life, a chance to prove he could bend the rules of his reality to suit his new desires.
He thought of the tragedies endured by the two unique souls who come in to his life to light the way. One tragedy was quick, sudden merciless, something he was unable to control, something that took him by surprise.
The other tragedy was slow in its build, it had the regular kind of complications to it, but were also elevated in urgency by the pull of a heartbeat across a thousand world, the aggressive tendencies of a cutthroat warrior race reaching into the spirit of Ram's precious April, and steadily turning her into one of them.
The regular little complication had been her mentally unsound father, who had come to be with his family regardless of court orders and the harsh reality of the sin he had committed against them, the awful loss he had inflicted on them. April's innocence and her mother's ability to walk.
April was poised at one point to make him pay, to add to her already tragic life, a life Ram had tried to provide escape from himself in recent hours spent cradling her in his strong arms, keeping her cheeks tender and light with his reassuring kisses and words that conveyed strength care, and concern.
Perhaps that had been enough, as April held off her attacks on her father. She had inflicted a few wounds on his person through the weapons she had conjured up, but nothing had damaged him to a substantial degree.
When she spared him, when she fought through the Shadow-Kin's wretched influence, Ram could not be more proud. This had been her test of character, and hers proved a noble one.
It's only a pity she couldn't resist the notion to overdo it.
First by restoring her mother's ability to walk, then by opening a tear into Shadow-Kin territory and jumping through it, letting the charmed winds carry her over to a land of new opportunity, and a new proving ground.
A new way to die?
No.
Ram would not permit that.
April may still be connected to the Shadow-Kin, but he had as much right to lay claim to a connection as they themselves did.
His was the best connection, the kind he had shared with Rachel, the kind severed from him by the Shadow-Kin all in the name of a single lonely heart. A heart that dared to beat along with his in the month or so coping with such a burden.
If April could dare a vast dominion to reclaim full ownership of that which once beat only for her, Ram would reach deep down and find the courage to reclaim his light, his friend, and redeem himself for being ill-prepared for the day Rachel's heart beat no more.
All he needed was the window to prove it.
Figures he would have to settle for one about to close.
So he ran, fast as he could, and leapt into the tear, into the window as it snapped firmly shut.
Where he goes next was left up to charmed winds.