The music was only in her mind, but it was all she needed. She began to move, slowly at first, then picking up speed as the silence around her continued and the music within her never stopped. She knew her parents probably wouldn't be all that thrilled to see her doing this, as they never liked her dancing, but she didn't care.
All Katherine Hillard cared about right now was just the dancing. Faster and faster she moved, her feet carrying her into a sort of joyous state where nothing but the moves her body made and the song flowing through her mind mattered. Parents didn't matter. Homework didn't matter. Sleep didn't matter.
The only thing that mattered was what was going on. What she was doing. What she knew now in her very core she was born to do. Her diving would be taking second place now, despite the fact she was just as good at that as she was at this it seemed. She wanted to do both, and as she took each step, the future began to show itself to her as clearly as daylight.
His face appeared to her as she twirled, long hair and sparkling eyes and an emergence of darkness and light in him that drew her as a moth to the flame. As she gazed at his face in her mind, a name solidified in her soul, the name of the one to whom she was drawn, for whom she had been born. It was a name that would never be forgotten for so long as she lived. The name of the one person that she could ever, would ever, love.
Thomas Oliver.
A small smile touched her ten year old features. What else did she have to do?
He's so gorgeous. She moved delicately, lightly. For the past seven years she had toned her body in every way possible, dancing, diving, learning a little of martial arts, anything that would keep her in shape and help her with the things she had to do. Lately, however, she couldn't seem to get her mind off Tommy. He went out with what's her name the other day....that redhead in our homeroom. He said they had a good time...but that's not what I heard. Kat had practically forced herself not to cheer when the girl in question had complained over lunch, loud enough for half of Angel Grove High to hear them, that Tommy hadn't kissed her once the whole evening.
She had worried that her friend and leader would be trying to replace Kimberly in his life as he started to date again. But none of the girls he asked out looked anything like her old friend. Is he trying to avoid her memory by picking those who don't look anything like her? Or does he just want to be with someone so he won't be alone?
"Kat?" she looked up at the sound of her name and smiled briefly at the handsome Red Ranger. Her heart almost stopped as he slowly stammered out a request for a date with her. "Sure..." she breathed the response as if it were the very source of life itself.
Every doubt she'd ever had about what Tommy was trying to do vanished as the next few days happened. Despite the loss of Jason as Gold Ranger and the destruction of the Machine Empire, things that should have taken up his entire attention, Tommy always found the time to do something especially nice for her. Kat had never before felt so loved or so full of life.
About a month after they began dating, a full moon rose in the skies behind her house. It called to her in a way that she had never before thought anything could, all memory of that one night having faded from her mind. Carefully she went outside, and her mind was at once in awe of the silvery light pouring down over everything.
She could hear the music in her mind. A song of love and light and magic. As she had seven years earlier, she began to dance. Not a dance of the future, this time, however. A dance of the present...of completion, of redemption and renewal. Of love and eternity.
Of just herself....and the music.