The sky is burning. Set alight by the sun sinking into the ocean. The earth burns. Behind us, green hills and grey houses are stained gold and red and purple. Before us, the ocean glitters, golds and oranges and silvers flitting on the surface like the light glinting off just-polished coins. Your black hair reflects the sun too, San. It's gold and red and shines like the fire that covers the landscape and rests in your soul. The violent beauty of the sunsets out here always reminds me of you. Chaotic and devastatingly beautiful.

The wall of fog moves in quickly and the earth is underwater. The reds and golds of the burning landscape are replaced with cool greys and slate-blues, calming the fire before darkness can swallow the light. The day ends softly, calm and serene and without the violent fire that seems to protect you from the world. You're like the fog when we're alone, painting everything in soft tones with words so calm and caring it's hard to imagine they come from the same person.

I know better, though. You're the fire and the fog, one no more beautiful than the other but each perfect in it's own way. Both fighting to keep the darkness away.

For so long, the darkness prevailed San. You let it swallow you up, lost in a starless night and kept from the world by that ink-black fear. You were lost for so long, you seemed to know only the darkness, never remembering the light that was calling to you. I thought you didn't want to fight it, but you just didn't know you could.

You learned though, and you fought so hard. When you finally found the light, it wasn't the beautiful contradiction of the sunsets that seems to reside within you now. It started like the dawn. The grey of first light piercing the darkness that kept you from me, kept you from even yourself. The colors of the world were pulled, slowly, from the darkness.

Now you're an endless sunset, never fighting to keep the darkness away. Never needing to. Your passion like fire and your serenity like fog are safe from the darkness that you once thought was never-ending. That you now know this, now embrace this, makes me prouder than I have ever been. I don't know if you'll understand when you look up at me, shivering slightly in the damp almost-dark, and ask me what I'm thinking about. All I can do is marvel at the beauty of your contradictions, and at the fact that you are, finally and completely, mine.

You have that look again, like you're pondering the great mysteries of the world. When I ask, you talk of sunsets and darkness and ask me if I understand. I do. I also know that you are neither of these things. They are beautiful, like you, but they are violent and fearsome. You are not the sunsets, which fight so hard just to be, and you are not the darkness, you never could be.

Only once did I think of you and darkness. I watched as you walked away, leaving me to be consumed again by this inescapable darkness, this ink-black fear that I tried so hard to fight. What I couldn't see was your light, your beautiful eternal light. I see now that I was too lost in the darkness. I was trying to drag you down with me into that prison I had made for myself.

You are the vibrant colors of the world on a cloudless afternoon. Beautiful confident sunlight that seems to bring with it an all-consuming warmth and comfort. You need not ever fear the depths of the darkness that follows the day. You are the light of dawn that forced back the darkness and ink-black terror that kept me from you. The light that pulled forth the colors of the world and showed me what true beauty really is.

You have been and always will be my guiding light, my everything.

There is no light, no life, without you. You say I'm like the sunset. I guess that's true. It must be, because just as the sunset stands between daylight and nightfall, I will always stand between you and the darkness. Keeping your eternal sunlight from ever being extinguished, even for the shortest night.