Less than three

Marching band is an exhausting thing.

I swear, you spend years and years marching around on field, but you never totally get used to it. You get better, and you don't get as tired, and it even comes to the point where the other member of the band will even look up to you, come to you for advice, or even just watch the moves you make, how you carry yourself, and how your eyes look, and try to model themselves after you... that is, until they maybe figure out that you have no idea what in the hell you're doing.

Really, love is the exact same way.

You know it's there, and you don't deny that the effect of it is something very real, but you'll never understand it. People will fall in love, maybe around you, with you, or even just the notion of you... maybe you'll fall in love too. You'll break rules, challenge standards, swings fists and generally raise Hell all in the name of protecting it, until you realize that it wasn't something to protect, that you were the one being abused, or that you had got so caught up in protecting it that your perfect diamond had reverted back to a bitter lump of coal.

You'll be told that it was coal all along, and you know that they were right, but it still hurts, and you aren't any closer to understanding it, or more importantly, understanding yourself.

And we all know the next part: The one we pray for by night, and live for by day. The radiant dawn... the angel.

A chance comes, and for whatever reason, you take it. You go out on a limb, forget about the past and jump

If you're lucky, the angel you thought was looking at you will catch you... but you realize one last thing in the process. She was falling too. You saved each other from your own fears, and along the way, dreams came true