The first dream came when I was ten years old, training far from home to be a hero.

I was in a glade at night. Everywhere I looked, the cool, deep greens were touched by silver moonlight. I walked forward with my hands out, hesitating. I remember how damp the forest leaves felt under my feet, how the night breeze felt like someone breathing softly in and out. A sweet scent bloomed on the wind's tracks. I could never describe it again, but my homesick heart lifted.

I heard the sounds of two feet against the grass of the clearing. They didn't sound like they were running, so I eased closer, pushing dewy leaves aside. Around me soft lights bobbed as though waiting for me to push forward, lighting my way with a glow that waxed and waned.

The soft lights that had guided me rushed forward to illuminate the form of a small figure dancing alone. I had never seen a dance like that before, not my home village's prized folk dances and not the sword forms I practiced at the hero training grounds every day. Nor had I ever seen such a dancer, so graceful and so precise. The lights, which I recognized with a jolt as fairy lights, ebbed and flowed with the dancer's elegant gestures. Even the arch of a wrist, the point of a foot, the sweep of a leg downward felt beautiful past bearing. The fairy lights blurred together, forming ribbons of moonlight that glittered as the dancer leapt about the glade.

I saw the dancer's face, finally, the face of a young boy who had not yet reached even my age. His hair was a stubborn, sunny gold that did not match the moonlight. His mouth was set in a small frown. But in his eyes, which were green and blue like the sea and not like this forest, I saw someone I recognized. I was training to be a hero. I could not say he was not doing the same thing.

He turned again without seeing me, leaping into another magnificent set of twirls so high and so graceful I thought he must have been calling the wind. That was when I saw the small fairy wings on his back, two upper and two lower that seemed to catch light and hold them. He whirled and whirled without losing energy or speed, though his chest heaved with the effort. Behind him elegant curls of moonlight traced his wake, perfect in shape and form. All the while his blue and green eyes shone like steel.

I couldn't say how long I watched, admiring that strength and elegance and the determined spirit in those eyes, until I woke up.

When I woke up, the barracks around me were ugly brown stone as always, tapestries of a foreign flag hung across them. I threw myself into my training for the day as I did every day. But instead of thinking with longing of my home and family, I thought of the fairy boy I had visited in my dreams. It didn't matter that I had surely invented him out of my own loneliness. If he could command moonlight with a gesture then I could command the sword with my whole body. It was possible. We were heroes after all.

The dreams did not come frequently, but always it was the same glade, the same fairy boy. I learned to recognize the trees, the flowers and the rocks, the path towards the clearing where the fairy boy always practiced. I never hid, but he never noticed me.

He leapt towards perfection breathlessly. I clambered on the rocks behind him, but I was going where he was. I would make it there.

In only a few dreams the fairy boy had learned to make the ribbons of moonlight form the ghosts of things, animals, people. A few dreams later and the figures moved and talked, scenes shifting, vanishing. Always he danced, pouring his heart out through his fingertips and the tips of his toes. His stubborn, sunny gold hair grew longer, sometimes braided, sometimes pulled into a simple tail or bun. He sprouted tiny sets of wings at his wrists and ankles. They too caught the light. He looked like a blade out of the forge, shining and lovely. The look in his eyes never changed.

I too was growing and progressing, though I couldn't share it with him. I too was learning my dances of sword and shield, the complicated rhythm of daggers and the mighty, exhilarating rush of a greatsword. He was always alone in his glade and me, I was always alone in my training, so I could relate. My journey on the rocks of perfection was hard-fought, and I could see from his expressions, usually fierce, sometimes stern, sometimes so vulnerable I ached for him, that he battled hard also.

Ultimately I did what I had come to the hero training grounds to do: I left a hero, with all the skills I would need to do great honor to my family and country. I didn't know yet what the fairy boy wanted to become. But I had no doubts he would become it.