The years had passed. They were no longer a teenager, let alone a young adult stumbling through life. Rony was 30 years old, yet he still felt like a child. He didn't know many things about life, but others he learned through hard knocks and truly traumatic experiences. The death of his father at the hands of a god of death still haunted his mind, although it had happened 14 years ago or that time he was locked up for a year in another universe and almost killed his brother, his counterpart from another universe, 11 years had passed since then. Nor could he forget that time when the world was dominated by a being that was the essence of the accumulated evil of the world, he was almost alone fighting for three long months.
There had been many adventures that had tempered his character. He was still a child, yes, but when things needed a firm hand he did not hesitate to take strong decisions.
Such things Rony Galleon thought as he watched the bride dance. He was seated at one of the guest tables in his ball gown. The girls passing by looked at him expectantly wanting to meet the mysterious man.
"Don't you like to dance?" The girl who spoke to him was beautiful, reflecting an adventure that in another moment she would have been living. "Hey, I'm talking to you!" The girl must have been about 22 years old.
"No, thanks. I'm tasting my glass of rum" was Rony's answer without taking his eyes off his girlfriend.
The brunette sat down next to him and also looked at Marcella.
"Are you the ex?"
"Yes."
"Do you still love her?"
Rony looked at the brunette and scanned her. She was really beautiful. She had an opulent bust and knockout hips, besides showing off her tanned body with the clothes she wore, her tattoos reminded him of a dangerous sorceress who was after him for a while.
"No, he didn't love her," he said quickly. -I loved her for a while and she was my first love, you never forget that."
The brunette nodded thoughtfully.
"I suppose you loved many others, what does it matter if you love someone else?"
The girl crossed her legs seductively. Rony thought what did that woman see in him, he was populated with scars from fights and had a particularly nasty one reflected in his nose and lips made by a hitman of the gods, a human just like him, but one who sought to subjugate the gods more than they already were. Although, yes, his build was athletic, he sought a way not to let it show.
"I don't think your spirit can bear to bond with mine," he smiled.
The girl saw that as a challenge rather than a warning.
"I'm capricious, you know."
"That means you can easily get past me."
"No, it means that what I want I get."
"Sometimes what we want isn't what's right for us. We don't think about the consequences of what would happen when we get it and it's not enough to what we dreamed of."
The girl seemed surprised at his philosophical oratory.
"Besides, you don't even know me," Rony went back to watching Marcella dance with her parents and then with her husband.
She remembered those times when she was 15 years old and he proposed to her. Well, he didn't propose. She did and he confessed to her that all that time he was in love with her. Then she moved away and that was the end of the love. A young man's love. However, he continued to love her for a while and suffered for it until it almost became dark in his future. Finally, he was able to get over her and now he was a guest at her wedding.
"What did you see in Marcella?" the girl was still by his side.
Rony took a sip of his drink, savoring the bitter taste of rum.
"I guess because of her spirit. She was young but she still has her pure and kind spirit like the time I knew her."
"And if she was never as pure as you think she was."
"We all have our dark moments, but it doesn't tarnish our spirit. We just move on and do our best to make up for those mistakes we didn't measure when we were young."
"And what mistakes did you make that you grieve so much?"
The strange thing was that the girl had not wanted to touch him, another one so daring would have done it, but she felt the barrier he was trying to erect over her.
"Mistakes I sometimes regret having made" Rony plunged into her memories.
His first murder was involuntary, he did not measure the strength that gave him the god he carried, he did not measure his anger and succumbed, so it was that unintentionally his conscience was stained for a long time. Then there were all the deaths that his counterpart from another universe had killed in his name and the sorcerer that he had to exterminate so that all the universes could continue to beat without distortion.
"But you said that mistakes can be fixed by your actions in the now. I think you are contradicting yourself."
"I'm just saying that Marcella's acts, whatever you refer to, do not compare to mine. Anyone here her spirit is as bright as the brightest star in the universe. I decided to be alone, no one can bear the burden I carry and you will be less able to bear it by wanting a simple roll in the hay."
"What a captivating woman!" the girl said resentfully, sounding offended.
"It was" Rony smiled and got up leaving the girl alone.
As she walked away she ran into Darley, Marcella's first.
"Master, I see your womanizing days are long over."
Rony gave a crooked smile, it had been a long time since he had seen Darley one of his first pupils. She was still wearing the water ring.
"How many years has it been?" he asked, doing the math.
"Ten long years, master. And it's been quite a few," she said and motioned to a boy and a man about his age.
"Let me introduce you to my husband Pedro Piña and my son Adonis"
Amazed Rony greeted the two characters. The boy must have been about five years old.
"Time is slipping through my fingers," he said without meaning to.
"Everyone," Pedro agreed, shaking his hand.
He looked at Darley, if he hadn't been introduced to his family he would never have thought about it, but even his brother had made a life for himself. The only one who was still acting like a young man was him.
"Are you still in the business of rescuing lives," Darley asked.
"Sometimes I do, while I run my travel company and book publishing company.
Darley's husband smiled.
"I think he's being harassed by my cousin, I apologize," said the man.
Rony looked in the direction Peter pointed and found the girl striding towards him.
"Doesn't that girl ever give up?"
"Florence is capricious," Darley and her husband said in unison.
Rony rolled his eyes. Not even the darkest gods had given him such a battle as that girl.
"That reminds me of how stubborn you were when you were young," said a voice he hadn't heard for a long time.
He stroked the gold necklace that hung from his neck, on it was a charm of a jaguar. The god who lent his powers to play protector of the human world.
"It's been a long time!" said Rony in his mind.
