QUOTE : I play the scenario of the hero out in my head, and in doing so I revel at the thought of boldly abating the darkness and saving the day. Yet, until I face the searing scourge of battle and am thickly bloodied by it, I will not understand that to imagine oneself as a hero without being laden with the scars of battle is fiction only. And if I am sufficiently brave, maybe someday I will turn that fiction to fact.