Disclaimer: All characters in this story are fictional
And any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
~Prologue~
My name is Aramil Darksabre and this is my story. I signed up for the Marines at 17, with parental consent; did my tour after bootcamp and AIT, Sniper school. I graduated at the top of my class. After AIT I did my tour in the Middle East, when I came home I was offered a spot at Special Forces School 'cause my commanding officer put in a recommendation for me. The only downside to my career in the Marines is I got in trouble a lot 'cause the strangest things always seemed to happen to me. Not always dangerous or bad, just strange and on the rare occasion it compromised a mission. I was given a medical discharge at the age of 28 for partial deafness in my right ear due to my partners Armalite misfiring causing scarring to the right side of my face. Though the nurse at the Veterans Hospital tried to convince me the scars just added a "roguish quality" to my looks, I'm still convinced that it just makes me look like Frankenstein. I moved away from my parent's home in Texarkana, Texas and moved to Durand, Michigan when the V.A. released me. All my life I've had a knack for working with metal, especially when it comes to making blades such as knives and swords and even some intricate, artsy type things that I used to cheer up my childhood friend Sapphire Darkmoon when she was sick or just down, by making her flowers and sculptures of bunnies, horses, and other animals she enjoyed. My life's ambition at the time was to make a weapon that best represented who I am, so I spent months looking online and through books and other references for just such a weapon. I eventually found it in a dream I had, I called it an Ashandari. It has a long study handle, like a quarterstaff, with a two and a half foot curved blade on one end and a metal spike on the other to balance out the blade. I finally made one a year after I moved to Michigan. That first year I spent getting a full time job and gathering the material I needed to start my career in smithing. The reason I wanted to start smithing professionally is 'cause at the age of thirteen I was apprenticed to a master smith my parents were friends with who lived in Okinawa Japan and he taught me ways of folding and forming metals I never dreamed of, I excelled at the training even though I was quite often distracted 'cause of problems at home, but despite those distractions I sped through the six year apprenticeship in a little over four years. When I completed my apprenticeship, though he was upset I didn't stay the full term, even though he admitted I had learned everything he had to teach me, he gave me my first personal set of tools as well as the supplies to setup a small forge. He then offered me a full-time job in his smithy which I respectfully declined. I spent my savings on getting my new livelihood and myself on a ship back home. When I got there my parents and Sapphire met me at the docks to pick me up. In my old pickup my parents told me when I had finished loading everything into the bed if I wanted to setup my forge and open a shop as I had planned I would have to do so elsewhere, that they just didn't have the room or the facilities to accommodate a smithy. I packed everything in the bomb shelter my granddad built and joined the Marines that week, partly so I could get the money together to move and open my shop, but mostly just to piss off my stepmom. They gave me their permission 'cause I told them I would pay them for storage from my salary, and it got me outta their house that much quicker.
~Chapter 1~
October 2012.
I've been in Durand for two years now, I have a part-time job working at the train yard near where I live. I also supplement my income with my smithing. I do repairs on farm equipment, forge and repair plows, perform body work on vehicles and farm equipment, make and sharpen blades of all kinds, etc... I'm currently unmarried but I am dating my childhood friend Sapphire who goes to the same church as me, we've been dating for over a year now. On Sundays I volunteer at United Baptist Church in the bus ministry. We worked on the same bus after I joined the church. I was the song leader and she was the assistant bus captain. At first the bus director was against us dating because we each had problems in our past that we were getting his and our pastors counseling for that neither of us thought we would ever be able to get through, and we were both at the end of our ropes, literally. This last year has been the best time of our lives, we have not only opened up to each other about parts of our pasts that we had kept hidden but we discovered that together we are able to not only get over our histories, but through teamwork and faith we have overcome that which held us "captive". Things couldn't get much better for us, We now have our own bus route at the church, I'm the captain and still song leader and she is my assistant captain and secretary. Our director, seeing what has been accomplished through persistence, faith, teamwork, and eventually love yes I used the "L" word, thinks the best thing that coulda happened to us was getting together. Her family on the other hand, well they hate my guts for dating her or at least her dad and older brother do, even though her dad gave me his permission to ask her out. He told me it was going to be funny when I asked her out 'cause he just "knew" she would turn me down and laugh in my face. He said I needed to learn it the hard way though. I don't think he realized I was friends with her for many years when he sent her to live with her aunt. I think now he's just mad that not only did she accept my offer of dinner that night but that it has grown into something that could become more permanent. I took her out for her birthday last week and we had a day on the town. One of the places I took her (and some may think it cruel) was to Horde's jewelers and let her look at the rings and things I can't remember ever having an interest in before. The real reason I took her there was that (hopefully) she would pick out a wedding set she wanted. 'cause I was hoping she would pick out a ring for herself, I did buy her a diamond heart shaped necklace for her birthday, and she did pick out a set she liked though she doesn't know that I saw her pick it. The next day on my lunch break I got on my '92 shadow and road out to Horde's again and bought her the ring set she had picked for herself. I had them put the rings in 2 separate boxes, the engagement ring in its own box and the his 'n' hers wedding bands in another one. I put them in the lockable trunk of my shadow and went back to work, that evening I stored the rings in my safe and went to bed. The next morning I called my pastor and Sapphire's pop and arranged a meeting with them for that afternoon. I took the engagement ring with me in my laptop backpack in case they wanted to see it, I also prepared what I was going to say to them 'cause I knew they would drill me hard to find any hidden motives I might have for Sapphire; to make sure I really loved her and wasn't just proposing to her for some other reason, such as a sick joke like Mr. Darkmoon would accuse me of trying to pull on his daughter, or to break her heart intentionally to try to hurt the whole family. I knew her dad still hated me but I knew that with pastor there everything would be ok and her dad wouldn't get the chance to shoot me like he promised to do on several occasions. At the church, pastor invites me into his office which is when I see that Mr. Darkmoon brought Sapphire with him, I ask pastor under my breath why she was here when the reason I asked for the meeting was to get permission to ask her to marry me. Pastor told me he would ask her to leave till our meeting was over. When he asked her to step outside the office her dad got upset and said
