A bloodied longsword lay neglected beside the warrior's hand. A warrior wounded in the fight, slumped in a field of clover and rosemary. A helmet lay nearby, one cheekguard missing and its burnished form scarred by the blows of a battlemace.

The roar of combat was a little way off, ebbing and surging on the rocky hillside below. The enemy were giving throat to their bass, grinding warcry and it echoed harshly in the Valley of the Temple. The sun was sinking in the sky but there were fully three hours until dark -- plenty of time to lose the war, if that was what the gods willed.

Laura found the fallen warrior about that time. Kneeling beside the supine figure, it was but a moment to determine that the arrow which had pierced the scale armour of this comrade would be mortal. In washing the blood from the cruel blows to this warrior's head, Laura realised it was the Sayer. She pulled the Sayer close to her breast to comfort him, for she knew the time of keening was near.

The Sayer rallied for a moment. His eyes fluttered open weakly as he looked up at Laura.

"Don't cry, It doesn't hurt any more," he said.

Tears rolled down Laura's cheeks, the first water she had tasted in eight bitter hours. The Sayer was one of the members of her clan. She had been so afraid of this battle coming. In anguish, and in her helplessness to do anything for her kindered spirit, she hugged the Sayer to her.

The Sayer gasped and sighed at the same time. It was a breath both of extinguished pain and the half-surrendering of the soul. A life about to knock upon the Eternal Door.

"I'm not afraid any more," whispered the Sayer, as Laura lowered her soulmate so she could see his face. He smiled lovingly at Laura, and relaxed.

It took a few moments for Laura to realise the Sayer was gone, but then she began the keening, so that should her kindered-spirit have no strength to knock on the Eternal Door, then Laura's cries would alert the keeper to open it wide.

Love is as much about letting go as it is anything else. The desire to possess, own or dominate and its mirror desires to be possessed, owned or dominated all feed from the one shallow bowl; they are divisions of a limited supply, not the creation of an endless supply.

Love is the bolt of blue energy that arcs between two electrodes; if one electrode subsumes the other it ceases to have the potential to create the spark.

Love gives without thinking of receiving and receives without thought of possessing. Love is an unsophisticated, impressionable child open to all wounds yet trusting and hoping it will get none. It is the ability to share without fear, to trust without qualification, to embrace for the sheer joy of contact, to suspend belief in the ordinary and make that brief, personal and indescribable contact by touching another soul.

Love braves all fears, bridges the chasms of all unknowns no matter how slender the tightrope, love holds on where "common sense" gets giddy.

Love salves pain, shares disaster and holds the hand of the dying without hesitation or reservation. In grief, love should be the bridge that nurses us to our brighter future as we honour and remember and yet release without forgetting the one we love. Love is not selfish, because love knows that as long as that special person in our life is upheld and remembered in our love, they are never truly dead.

Love is always a beginning, never an end; it always reaches out more than it draws in. Its greatness is in its ability to transcend all bonds and barriers, its effects may seem imperceptible but they're omnipresent and irrevocable. Hate just gets more press. Love, enduring love, doesn't need words to survive -- it is found in the tantalising touch from a soul we admire and whose warmth we desire to return in kind.

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