When I was fifteen I fell in love. Maybe it was the first time. Maybe it was the last. He was tall with long blonde hair. Big, clear blue eyes. I loved him. I still do. And after all this time, he still haunts my dreams.

I never told him how I felt. But I think he got a hint because of the way I couldn't let go when it was time to say good-bye. I knew.

He danced with me. He is my dancing boy and I felt the heat of him against me and the rhythm of the dance and the vibration of the music as it shivered through the air around us and beneath our feet.

He wrote to me. I was his Aurora Borealis. Luckily, he got to see it. I still haven't. One day, perhaps, I will look in the mirror and see myself reflected in the sky. Still, I imagine the Northern Lights.

And I imagine the dancing boy who made it just two months past sixteen.

I've learned to bury grief because tears bring nothing. I convert it all to anger and channel the anger into madness and madness into power.

I've learned to take explosions and commit them to that anger and let the transformation occur. I've learned not to hate. I suppress the hatred and turn it into sadness each time I think of it. Each time I think of a suicide bomber, or a mastermind behind it, or the population that condones it or says nothing to stop it, I turn the hatred to sadness and the sadness to anger and the cycle begins anew.

And still he haunts my dreams. But we have a home now, yes? And peace is just a dream. An unattainable dream. But for every life saved, so is a world. The price is another world.

Some bargain, huh? But a bargain I'm willing to make. A bargain I'm willing to be martyred for, execute orders for, pull triggers for. So the dream may remain a reality. So the love may not be in vain.

So now I am afraid. Because each time I find someone, they slip away into the Other World. Who will it be next time? Do you understand now why I keep so close a watch? Why I love so fiercely every single person? Why I cry at partings and greetings? Why I strain in between? No do you understand? Because time is precious and too short. And I am afraid to love but cannot restrain my heart.