Then I took it out to the pool to play with more. I put the reclining lawn chair in the pool then started playing with my toy and as I did I kinda got...nervous and kinda felt like somebody might be watching me so I started looking and then that when I saw our friend. you know how embarresing that is to get caught like thatI couldn't say or hear him since the radio was so loud and I was naked so I just dropped off the recliner into the water to cover myself up. He then found away to remove that. He heard Mizi chuckle to herself, settling into her seat.“You don’t need to be ashamed of worrying about your flock,” she added. “I’d be more concerned if you didn’t.”“Crew,” he corrected.“Crew, flock, pack,” Mizi replied with a flutter of feathers that might be analogous to a shrug. “The lines are getting pretty blurry.”It had been a good hour, and Ben was starting to get more worried. The cold was creeping in, too. Mizi was starting to shiver, and he could see his own breath.“I see. But something is different about this battlefield, something substantial is altered. I cannot feel it, I cannot define it and yet it is just as tangible as the bullets that we fire or the pain we feel in our legs when we march into the mountains. We may be here in Afghanistan, yet we know that what we are fighting for is farther away. What we are fighting for is at home. It is in the houses on Main Street, USA. It is in the offices, in the fire stations and in the restaurants. What we are. She was gorgeous and immediately I was smitten by her. She had a smile with bright eyes that could light up the room. But we didn't start out craving each other's bodies. Working closely together we got to know each other. She was incredible. Smart. Funny. Passionate about all the same things as myself. We grew really close. We were both married, so we never acted on the feelings that grew between us, but they were there. We knew they were. We just lived responsibly. Until the trip. We had.