A Non Special Day Solo Finished

It was a good thing Ruka had sent an owl to Jack's parents the moment he'd gotten permission to do so, because he hadn't quite expected this day to come as soon as it had. It had felt strange, really, to be writing to people who had done so much for him already without ever having met them before, but he had managed to get everything in there he had wanted to.

The letter had been full of gratitude for everything; the offer of letting him stay with them during the summer and all his new clothes most of all. As he had said he would he had written a whole paragraph about the fact that everything Jack had picked out for him had been perfect and that he genuinely liked all his new clothes rather than just finding them to be more practical than all his old hand-me-downs. 

Once he had been done writing out his thanks, however, he had squeezed in a question he had hoped wasn't going to come across too strange, and - whether Jack's parents had wondered about the question or not remained a mystery - less than a week later he had gotten the answer he'd so desperately been waiting for.

As soon as he had read the response to his letter he had gotten to work. Without a lot of resources and no real financial means, it was always an issue to handle these kinds of situations, but this time he at least had a vague idea of what he wanted to do. Sneaking out a knife from the Great Hall after lunch, Ruka had made his way to the Grounds to find some pieces of woods that he could work with well enough and brought them to his favourite spot by the lake, right under a large tree, where he had started his project.

It had taken him a long while - Genuinely he had been finished just a couple of days before he had needed it to be done - but after a lot of work cutting and carving the wood pieces and sanding them with small rocks wrapped in an old T-Shirt, Ruka had finally managed to create a lovely little round bowl of a light colour with a matching lid. He had even managed to carve some patterns into it which he was particularly proud of, and the lid fit on top without any difficulties which had been his biggest concern.

The smallest and darkest piece of wood, however, was what was going to be found inside his self made bowl; With a lot of concentration and determination, Ruka had managed to make it relatively flat and smooth before working on getting it to be vaguely flame shaped. Burning a couple of branches out by the Grounds, he had used a hot piece of black wood to burn a fire like pattern into the small token he had created before smoothing it out with the knife. At the tip he managed to make a relatively small hole, just enough to maybe put it on a necklace or even a keychain if wanted. 

Once the fire pendant was completed, Ruka had put it inside the bowl and wrapped everything up in parchment paper as neatly as he could possibly manage before tying everything up with a plain piece of thread.

Once the day had finally come, Ruka woke early - too early for breakfast - so he gathered his little parcel and the envelope that contained just a small note, got dressed in his school robes and made his way up to the Owlery.

He was feeling good, he had to admit as he skipped up the stairs. While the first couple of days of trying to make good life choices all day long had been a bit of a struggle, Ruka had managed to attend every single meal time and even eat at least a portion of something each time, had gone to sleep at decent times and actually slept through unless nightmares ripped him from his slumber every once in a while, and even his hands and arms were looking much healthier thanks to the Burn Healing Paste Alan had gotten him.

Despite the fact that he sometimes still found himself a little frustrated with the ultimatum Jack had given him, Ruka found that he was doing pretty well so far, and a month of trying to make decent life choices didn't seem like such a big deal anymore. 

As he reached the West Tower, Ruka took a deep breath before sprinting up the last few steps to the Owlery, face immediately screwing up at the smell that met him upon entering. The memory of cleaning owl crap off the various surfaces of this place was still fresh in his mind.

Shaking that thought, Ruka made his way towards some of the bigger school owls he could see, humming lightly as he reached a hand out to gently stroke the feathers of a large grey one with beady yellow eyes. "Alright there?" he asked the owl with a little smile and waited for a moment to see how willing it seemed to deliver any letters for him. 

It didn't move away, which was a plus, so Ruka took that as confirmation that he was allowed to tie his parcel and letter to its leg, which he did.

"This is important," he explained seriously as he double checked that everything was fastened tightly enough. "So don't mess this up for me, please." Giving the owl another little pat, he stepped back before giving it the location to deliver his parcel to. The Slytherin Dorm was also specified on the envelope of the note, but Ruka wasn't completely sure yet how the Owls always seemed to know exactly where to go, so he figured it wouldn't do any harm to give some verbal direction as well.

"Off you go," he told the owl brightly, watching as it fluttered away like it knew exactly where to go.

Which it probably, hopefully did.

There was a chance, Ruka knew, that the owl would find someone else in Jack's dorm, but that was exactly why he had kept his note short and vague.

The envelope, aside from having a specified location on it for the owl, simply said "Jack" right in the middle of it, and inside there would be a small card he had drawn a little candle on the outside of. Inside the words were written in blue ink.




Ruka hoped, of course, that his parcel would get into the right hands, that Jack would be around to receive it before anybody else did.

And aside from that, he really hoped Jack wouldn't mind having an owl occupying his dorm room for however long it would take him to return to it.