A Show of Strength Finished - Solo

It was still o'dark thirty and AngelFyre had been more restless than usual the past few nights. Sleep was a friend nowhere to be found as she simply could not silence thoughts on a particular train of thought. She would not tell him so directly, as he knew her well enough to know already, but AngelFyre was worried about Simon.

He was struggling so hard this year with his dhampir aura, but the last couple of months seemed to have been particularly hard on him. There were glimmers of her golden boy every now and again, and when he came out, everything was sunshine and warmth and fun and smiles. Everything was as it used to be. But those days were fewer and fewer. He felt far away most of the time, silent with his own thoughts. Little she seemed to do felt like it brought him the joy it once did. She knew he still loved her. He still sought her company every chance he got, but that was almost the extent of the engagement between the two when they were together. She would not have minded but for the fact that she knew it was not who he was, or more importantly, who he wanted to be.

Her thoughts, as always, turned to what she could do to help him. So much was going on right now, and there were three things that she worried might be pressuring him. There was their 1st anniversary, the Spring Court Ball, and her birthday... all hitting in pretty rapid succession. Plus, they had not even spoken about spring break, but she had begun to wonder if time to himself and Aunt Maggie would not benefit him the most. Honestly, AngelFyre was not even sure any of these things were even on his radar right now and that was her biggest concern. He did not even show the level of enthusiasm she would have expected with his own birthday, and that is when her alarm bells really started going off.

She had been reading everything she could about dhampir unsettling auras, but there was simply not that much out there. What concerned her more than she cared to admit was that Simon was likely hatching all kinds of scenarios in that beautiful mind of his that all led him to his vampiric "father". She knew he was banking on being able to get so many answers from Adrian, but at what cost? Already there was a hefty cost being paid, whether Simon knew it or not.

In what she hoped would not be a vain attempt to draw him closer to her once again, she hatched a plan of her own during her sleepless nights. She prayed for him... fervently... each and every day, multiple times a day, but she thought what he could also use was a little more fun, with no pressure on him to create it. She knew he put a lot of effort into his promposals in the past, but she decided to beat him to it this year.

As she had been climbing the stairs to the Owlery, she hoped she was not wrong in her decided course of action. Maybe he really did want his solitude right now, but AngelFyre determined what he wanted and what he needed, in this instance, could be two very different things. Simon could be stubborn, but so could she. She had planned a little fun for him and if that did not do the trick to bring him out of his doldrums, she would keep trying until she found something that did.

Giving up on him was never an option.

As she walked into the Owlery, she stepped off to the left as she did every morning and raised her left, gloved arm. Archimedes flew over to her as always and settled on her wrist. She always brought him a small meat treat which she got from the school elves in the kitchen, and he quickly dispatched it from its place in her gloved hand before beginning to preen. AngelFyre looked him over and smiled as he looked to be in fine health. She walked him over to a lower ledge and encouraged him to hop onto it. When he did, she reached into her pocket and took out the note. She placed it in his leg pouch and then rubbed his breast with two fingers as she said simply, "For Simon Kincaid."