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Sarah and Richard ate mostly in silence within the picturesque dining room. A large meal of roast chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, steamed broccoli, and buttered biscuits was arrayed across the glossy sheen of an imported oak table. An expensive, espresso colored grandfather clock stood monolithically in the corner and ticked away each uncomfortable second.

Tick...tock...tick...tock...

"Pass the biscuits please," Richard requested of his son Eric.

Ten year old Eric, who idly used a fork to push the mostly uneaten food around his plate, seemed oblivious to his father's words. He instead stared absent-mindedly through a cold-frosted sliding glass door and into the darkness of the early winter evening.

Richard sighed heavily before he said calmly but sharply, "Eric."

Hearing his name snapped Eric from his reverie. The young boy moved his head and turned his pale blue eyes quickly to the left which caused his straight, crow black hair to rustle against his cheek. Eric locked gaze ever so briefly with that of his father before he cast his gaze downward.

"Sorry dad," he apologized before he lifted the glass dish that contained the biscuits and placed it within his father's reach, his eyes never lifting their sight from the table top.

Sarah listened to the brief interplay between father and son, sensitive to the fact that Eric still felt he had been punished unjustly. Being a good and loving wife she had to stand firmly behind any discipline meted out by her husband Richard, but inwardly Sarah was very proud of her son. Eric had protected his sister even if how he'd gone about it was wrong.

She reached across the table, touched Eric's hand with an understanding gesture, and asked, "It's the best thing in the world that Zerra has such a caring brother, Eric, but you know why you've been grounded, don't you?"

"Yes," Eric responded flatly, his voice devoid of expression.

"You broke the boy's nose, son," Richard explained in an even tone. "He had to go to the hospital. You could be expelled."

Eric's younger sister Zerrafina, who had been silent to this point in their family's evening meal, interjected, "But...Tommy was hurting me, daddy!"

Zerra's brilliant, emerald green eyes glistened softly with moisture, the eight year old on the verge of tears at the fresh memory...

Tommy Jensen, for some unknown reason, had been picking on Eric's sister for a couple of weeks. It was mostly just verbal taunts during recess and the occasional spitball hurled during class, but this afternoon Tommy had pinned little Zerra to the ground in a little-used hallway after school. The bully was roughly pulling Zerrafina's long, straight locks of cornsilk blonde hair with one hand while he used the other arm to grind the point of his elbow painfully against the sternum of the much smaller girl.

"Whatchu gonna do, whatchu gonna do? You gonna cry?" the heavier Tommy ridiculed with a cruel derision in his voice as he used his greater size to keep Zerra from struggling free.

Zerrafina was crying and begging for Tommy to stop when Eric, who had been searching for his sister so they could head home together, heard her plaintive cries. Eric had run toward the sound of his younger sibling's voice when he turned the corner and took in the scene.

"No one hurts Zerra," Eric growled in a low, menacing, almost animal voice.

Tommy looked up at the sound, and his eyes grew as wide as saucer dishes when he realized Zerra's brother was charging toward him at a dead sprint. To his detriment Tommy froze with sudden panic and fear as the older boy barreled toward him.

"RRWAAAA!" Eric bellowed as he swung his thick math book sideways and double-handed like a baseball bat.

-THOCK-

The heavy textbook connected solidly across Tommy's face, threw the boy backward, and broke his nose in the process. After a sparse moment of shock had passed Tommy began to cry tears of pain, and a low moan of agony escaped his lips as blood poured profusely from his nostrils. The injured boy clamped his hands instinctively to his face in a mostly vain attempt to staunch the flow.

In the meantime Eric helped lift little Zerra from the floor of the dark brown, carpeted hallway and asked, "Are you alright? He didn't hurt you bad did he?"

Zerra sniffled once and replied, "No...I'm...I'm okay now that you're here."

She looked up into her brother's pale blue gaze and saw the undeniable love and concern written upon his face as plainly as if she were reading a book. Her heart swelled with happiness, and Zerrafina suddenly felt safe and warm. It was like staring into the eyes of a guardian angel whose soft, feathered wings were draped gently around her in a warm halo of light like an impenetrable armor that could easily deflect the world's worst slings and arrows.

Zerra hugged her brother with a sudden tighness and said, "Thank you, Eric. You're the best brother I could Escort ever have."

"It...it was nothing," Eric responded as he suddenly felt a bit uncomfortable at the attention.

"I think you broke my nose," Tommy wailed painfully through his sobbing.

Zerrafina loosed her embrace as she felt her brother gently try to move away. Eric took two quick steps toward Tommy. The bleeding boy cowered and cringed at his approach.

"And if you ever touch my sister again I'll break your arms," Eric threatened in a dire tone that left no doubt in Tommy's mind he was deadly serious.

Eric turned away, took his sister's hand, and said, "C'mon, Zerra, let's go home..."

It was at that moment the school counselor, Ms. Vale, walked around the corner and asked, "What is going on here?!?"

Richard saw his daughter's coming tears and tried to forestall them by saying, "Honey, I know what Tommy did was wrong, and I'm not saying Eric shouldn't have done something to stop it...but..."

"Richard," Sarah admonished, "we've already been over this."

"I know," her husband grumbled before he fell silent and continued to eat.

"Sweetheart," Sarah said as she turned her focus to her little pumpkin, Zerrafina, "all that matters right now is that you're safe and sound. Hopefully Eric can learn from this and do better in the future."

Her mother's words seemed to have a soothing effect as Zerra visibly calmed. The eight year old girl seemed to ponder something very intensely for a moment.

"Eric's the best brother ever!" Zerrafina suddenly declared, "And when I grow up I wanna marry him and be his wife!"

Richard choked on a mouthful of food, coughed, and laughed at the same time as he tried not to spit his dinner everywhere. Sarah joined in and laughed so hard she snorted twice. Eric's face turned bright red with embarrassment as he looked over at his sister. With a child's innocence she smiled at him with her biggest grin.

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Zerrafina stared wistfully at the framed family portrait from a decade ago. It had been taken only days after the "Tommy" incident. In the photograph Sarah and Richard smiled beautifically with their children in front. Each was dressed in what one would call "their Sunday best". Sarah had a hand on her daughter's shoulder while Richard did likewise with his son. Little Zerra had a seraphic smile on her face. Eric's smile, however, looked a bit forced, the young boy still feeling a little raw at the time about his extended grounding. The picture evoked a mixture of emotions within the eighteen year old high school senior, and her eyes began to become misty.

"I will not cry," she thought to herself as a lone tear rolled down her soft, youthful cheek to betray her intended stoicism.

It had been a mere two years since her parents had been taken from her, killed in a freak car accident while on their way home from a show in the city. The wound still hurt, and it had been a long, hard road to get to the point she didn't cry herself to sleep most nights. That was but one thing of which the photograph reminded her.

"This is when I truly began to love Eric," she mused. "Not like a sister loves a brother, but like a woman loves a man. I had no idea at the time, but this is when the seed was planted."

Her wonderful brother, Eric, had always been there for her. He had always been her closest friend. No matter the span of years that separated their ages as they grew up Eric was never embarrassed to have his little sister tagging along. Even when they became teenagers he always had time to help her with her homework, or to help her memorize her cheerleading cheers, or even stay up late on weekends just talking about everything under the sun. Zerra's brother was somewhat introverted and had never had a plethora of friends. She sometimes wondered if it was because she had monopolized all of his teenage years. Eric was personable enough and a great listener, but he never seemed to truly open up for anyone but his sister.

Most notably, though, he had been there for Zerra right after their parents had died. Only days after the terrible, life-altering accident the State decided it would be in Zerrafina's best interest to move her into a foster home. This was despite the fact that her brother was eighteen at the time and of the legal age of majority. They had no other living relatives in the US, only an uncle in the military who was stationed in Germany and in no position to care for a sixteen year old girl he'd never met. Eric fought the State's decision.

"Oh how Eric had fought," Zerrafina recalled fondly.

With their parents barely laid to rest, and Eric himself no doubt feeling just as angry, stunned, lost, and confused as Zerra felt, he mounted a legal battle in court to gain custody over his sixteen year old sister. It had Escort Bayan taken months. Months of her being stuck knocking around a foster home with three other kids she didn't know and two adults she understood even less. What got her through the roughest three months of her life was Eric's frequent visits...and his promise.

"I will get you out of there," he'd told her the day she was forced to move from her deceased parents' home and into foster care.

Zerrafina most remembered that last court hearing. Eric had been unyielding in his stout refusal to back down from what must have been an incredibly daunting task for one still so young. The judge, despite Zerra's own positive testimony on the stand, had been quite dubious at first, but Eric produced affidavits from past employers at his summer jobs who attested firmly to Eric being a fine and responsible young man.

Her brother showed piles of paperwork from the medium sized tech firm he and his sister had inherited upon their parents' deaths, and explained the details of P