To Maria, sleep was many things. A refuge, a journey, a much anticipated visit to somewhere both strangely familiar and completely new. An adventure.

One of her earliest memories was of waking suddenly from her afternoon nap to find herself in the front yard of their little house, when she'd fallen asleep safely in her bed. In her childlike naivete, she'd been delighted to find that she'd flown there, out of her bed and through her bedroom window to land gracefully, like a bird, on her front lawn. Her mother had scolded her for going outside without permission, and hadn't wanted to listen to her breathless description of what it felt like to fly. Maria tried to show her, stretching her little arms out from her sides and lifting her chin into the air, waiting for the soft wind to carry her. She'd been honestly puzzled when nothing had happened. It had been so easy, just moments before.

It was only months later that she woke to find herself perched precariously on the roof of their house, crouched behind the chimney and watching . . . something. Something that had faded as soon as the chill of the December night had dragged her to a full waking state. Something important. Something she had to see, had to memorize, had to report, quickly, quickly. Her heart was pounding, every muscle in her body was clenched, her teeth chattering with tension and her hands numb from the restriction of blood flow as they clenched around . . . something. Something that wasn't there anymore. The metallic taste of panic, bitter in her suddenly dry mouth, had nothing to do with finding herself, small and cold, huddled on her roof in the middle of the night.

The bottlebrush tree had creaked and groaned as she climbed awkwardly down to her bedroom window. Her mother had woken up, horrified to find her daughter balancing on a branch outside the window and reaching precariously for the sill. Her mom had been anxious, terrified, but Maria had been merely confused. It had been so easy. Why was she making so much noise now? Why did climbing take so much effort? Why couldn't she fly when she was awake?

Naturally her mother had sprung into action. She'd taken Maria first to her acupuncturist ("abnormal sleep patterns," he said), then her herbalist ("try chamomile tea before bedtime"), then her palm reader ("ah, astral projection! She's destined for great things!), and finally to her pediatrician.

Oddly enough, it was the real doctor her mother chose to believe. All kids walked in their sleep. There was nothing wrong, strange or special about it. Maria just had an especially vivid imagination. All kids do it, and all kids grow out of it. The doctor had patted Maria on the head, and her mother on the arm. You're just being a nervous mother. Get better locks on the bedroom window, and sleep with your door open so you can hear her moving around. It'll be okay.

And the doctor had explained sleepwalking to Maria in terms a four year old could almost understand. She was having really neato dreams, he said. They were so neato, that her body wanted them to be real. But they weren't real, and pretty soon she would realize that and stop climbing trees in the middle of the night. That's all! Nothing to be worried about!

Turning back to her mother, he'd told her that the sleepwalking happened when Maria went into a very deep, dream filled sleep, usually several hours after going to sleep. It was the part of sleep that allowed the body the most rest, and it was essential that every person spend part of their sleep session in that deep sleep every night. He didn't want to prescribe any pills that could interrupt Maria's natural sleep patterns. Amy needed to relax, and let Maria grow out of it on her own.

Once again, Maria was confused. Hours after going to bed? That was when the real dreams happened, the ones featuring her mom, or her playmate next door, or the dog she'd seen on television. Was he talking about her regular dreams, or her dream travels? She knew the difference. Didn't he know the difference between his real dreams and his dream travels? She started to ask him, but the doctor had already turned away to make notes on his chart.

But her mother's panicked reaction had sobered and frightened her. And so she was almost five when she stopped trying to tell her mother about the places she'd been and the people she'd seen. She was almost five when she began to keep secrets.

And as she grew older and her life filled with people and events and responsibilities and more important secrets, the sleepwalking incidents did lessen. At least she thought they lessened. She rarely woke in places other than her own bed. Once in awhile she would note that her feet were muddy in the morning, and she would pause to almost wonder where she'd been. Or she would find items out in the living room, when she'd known that they'd been in her room when she'd fallen asleep. But she was busy, and she had responsibilities, and she had secrets, and she didn't have time to ponder the times she would wake up to find herself in the middle of .... something important that she could never quite remember.

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The night was dark, and sticky with the heat left over from the steaming day just passed. She could feel the massing of the enemy on the other side of the rocky outcroppings that gave her shelter, like a cold, malevolent pressure that made her shudder despite the heat. The battle would come tomorrow, no matter what, and her duty needed to be done quickly, quickly, so the leader would know how many would come to this battlefield, so the proper preparations could be made. And she was torn by her duties.

She was the eyes of her leader, of his army, and everything depended on doing this right. There was not the slightest room for error, and that was why her leader had asked her to do this. She was the most skilled in this rare talent.

But her soldier's sense of duty warred with her intuition and instincts. The leader was far more to her than the military genius that this war depended upon. She had loved the man for many cycles now, and had in fact refused to put her talents to further use in this war unless she could be stationed by his side. And everything in her revolted at letting him out of her sight now. She couldn't shake the icy foreboding which warned that there was a far greater danger threatening him than the enemy's army, massing in the valley below.

But she had her duty to do, and the more quickly she performed it, the sooner she would be back in the encampment with him, where they could hold each other in privacy after the endless meetings of strategy were finally over. Where they could again comfort each other in this place of pain and death and despair.

With an effort she calmed herself and focused. Holding firmly to the small device that assisted her in cloaking herself in the darkness, she allowed the small breeze to lift her quietly above the harsh outcroppings, and over to the valley below, where the enemy's camp lay clearly visable to her seeking eyes.

And an eight year old Maria woke slowly, sluggishly, on the soft lawn of their backyard. The clear white moon drifted down on her as she stood, eyes half closed and arms stretched to catch the breeze.

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Maria was in third grade when the first time she saw him. The new boy at school, with scruffy, dirty-blond hair and wide, suspicious eyes. She froze when she caught sight of him, standing stiffly at the edge of the playground. For a strange moment the world around her slowed to an agonizingly sluggish pace, while the sound of her own breathing and her heart pounding threatened to deafen her. The hard punch of emotion, of memory and crystal clear recognition, left her gasping.

And just as quickly, the odd moment was over. He was just a new boy in class. He was silent, sullen, and he turned his shoulder and avoided her eyes when she made a tentative attempt to make friends with him. He was easy to dismiss, easy to ignore as the years passed in the bright, active, social whirl she surrounded herself with.

When she did see him it was with a vague shudder, and a prickling on the back of her neck that taunted her, even as she announced "alright, that guy creeps me out."

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Maria had never been interested in babysitting. She was an only child, and small children, with their endless questions and energy, made her vaguely uneasy. She always preferred to earn money in other ways, and Liz's parents always let her help out at the Crashdown. Liz was an only child too, and so Maria's exposure to small children was limited.

When she was 13, her mom sent her to the grocery store for spaghetti noodles. (Only her mom would spend an entire day preparing marinara sauce from scratch, only to realize at dinner time that they were out of vermicelli). Hesitating in the fresh produce section, trying to remember if they had the makings for salad at home, Maria became aware of the weight of someone's stare. Someone's eyes were upon her. Off to her left, just beyond her peripheral vision.

Could it be Doug Sohn? Oh, God, why hadn't she cleaned up a little before going to the store? It was Murphy's law that the one time she left her house in the paint-splattered shorts and a too-big cast off t-shirt of her moms, she would run into the great love of her life.

Turning her head slightly, she was frozen by the intent gaze of a small boy, about six years old, standing near the organic produce. In a moment that seemed so familiar, time slowed down to an agonizing crawl, and the din of the grocery store faded beneath the distant roaring in her ears. She was vaguely aware that she kept a firm grip on the package of vermicelli as she crossed the small distance between them, of crouching down so she was on eye level with the boy.

He was small, with the slightly drooped features and slanted eyes generally associated with light retardation. She'd never laid eyes on him before in her life, she was sure of it, but it didn't seem to matter and he was holding his arms out to her with a blinding smile, and she, who avoided small children, was reaching out to hug him close to her, feeling indescribable emotions of joy, of pain, of memory and recognition. His small hands patted her face and shoulder, his smile broke her heart and she felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes.

"You didn't wait for me" he whispered, his blue eyes searching hers.

"No, I couldn't" she answered softly, and her own voice was suddenly as unrecognizable and foreign to her as the words that came out of her mouth.

He favored her with another beautiful smile, a smile of joy, of warmth, of happiness, and for a disjointed moment through the sting of her tears she thought she saw his features shift into someone, something else. "S'okay" he said quietly, and once again he was just a small disabled boy, someone she'd never seen before. "What's your name now?" he asked, cocking his head in a strangely adult manner, his blue eyes holding hers.

"Maria" she managed to choke out, drawing back from him as the confusion began to take hold of her. "I'm Maria."

"Timmy! Where have you been?! How many times have I told you not to wander away from me....." The woman rushing up to them almost broke the strange spell holding Maria in its thrall. She took Timmy's hand, thanking Maria for her help, drawing the boy away.

And his eyes still held hers even as his feet moved away. "Bye" he mouthed quietly to her. And Maria was abruptly alone in the suddenly noisy grocery store, gripping her package of vermicelli, gasping for breath and shuddering as her control returned and the vivid, almost-memory faded.

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As only a brother could be, hers had simultaneously been the best thing in her life, and the bane of her existence. He'd been proud and brave and crazy, a passionate patriot obsessed with the civil war that had caused such strife on their planet. He'd volunteered them for Seeing duty without consulting her, never considering that she was frightened of the violence, panic-stricken at the thought of actually facing the vile barbarians that threatened their armies. She'd sworn that she would never forgive him for committing her to this duty, but of course she had. He was all that was left of her family, and she would've done anything to stay with him.

And so they'd become soldiers, and their rare Seeing talents had made them invaluable to the military. And putting their talents to such extensive use had strengthened both of them, filling them with a giddy power they almost couldn't encompass.

They worked most efficiently and easily when they worked together. But she had not been with him when he died. She'd been on leave, spending a few precious days with the military leader she'd fallen in love with. And her brother's strength had not been enough to save him when his cloaking flickered and the barbarians shot him out of the twilight sky.

She had been far away when he had died, but had felt it happen, as twins did. They had been through many lifetimes together, and had chosen to share this life in the close psychic bond natural to twins. The guilt of leaving him to See alone, the agonizing unravelling of their bond and the nothingness she felt when she reached out to her twin almost killed her. He was gone, gone far beyond her ability to See. But she dreamed of him, again and again, dreamed of hearing the echo of his voice from a far distance, of seeing a glimpse of his face through a crowd.

Only her lover was able to comfort her. Having borne similar losses in this unending war, he was the only one who truly understood her anguish. Their bond deepened and stengthened. She must be certain to allow nothing to happen to him, ever. Not just for the sake of winning the war, or for the benefit of their people, or the peace of their planet. But because she couldn't take another psychic amputation and continue to exist in this life.

And Maria woke slowly, curled in the corner of her mom's living room, the blanket from her bed pulled over the back of the couch to form a small, tent-like enclosure. Her ears echoed with whispered words of love and support and commitment, from someone who had been there holding her close, only a moment ago.

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Maria was fifteen, and studying for her freshman history mid term exam. Always an indifferent student, desperation had forced her to come up with a brilliant plan. Instead of reading and re-reading her history book, instead of making flash cards to quiz herself on dates and events that had little meaning to her, she had devised a shortcut. With her portable cassette machine at her side, she would read the relevant chapters out loud, and record herself reading them. Then she would play the tape, all night long on an endless loop, thereby imbedding the information in her brain while she slept. She would arrive for her first period midterm not only fully rested and alert, she would arrive completely prepared, with all necessary history statistics completely memorized.

"Genius" she congratulated herself, settling down with the first relevant chapter of history open in front of her, microphone in hand. "Absolute genius."

But she was asleep in less than ten minutes, and her trusty machine taped three paragraphs of history book text, and two hours of her own even breathing.

It wasn't until weeks later, long after the history exam had been barely passed with a C-, that she realized there was more on the tape than the sound of her own gentle snores. Rewinding the tape in preparation for a music compilation and testing it at random, she was shocked to hear a voice on the tape. A low, rather deep voice, almost unrecognizable to her ears. And what chilled her was not that the flat, dark voice was unmistakably hers. Or even that her voice was speaking an odd language composed of soft, sibilant warbles and slightly slurred tones. What made her gasp as her heart began to pound, what made the hair stand up on her arms and the back of her neck, was that she almost understood it.

She was too frightened to listen further. She erased the voice from the tape, and the memory of it from her mind.

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Maria watched Michael through narrow eyes. What was it about him? She must have asked herself the question a thousand times in the four months they'd been "dating."

He never bothered with his appearance. His clothes were wrinkled, mismatched, ill fitting and smelled vaguely musty. His hair was clean, but never combed or styled. It was soft, but smelled like economy sized generic shampoo. He never had any money, and he never wanted to go anywhere or do anything that didn't involve investigating his non-human status. They didn't agree on music or the enjoy the same kind of movies. He took her car without asking, and usually returned it empty of gasoline and damaged in some way. He never asked her how her day had gone. He never called her just to say hello. He was completely self-absorbed. He wasn't thoughtful. He wasn't kind. He wasn't tender.

Her mother was suspicious of him. Her friends, even Liz, felt sorry for her. He must be the world's worst boyfriend.

Why on earth did she bother with him?

Just then Michael glanced up from the grill, his eyes searching through the kitchen window until they found her, standing motionless by the soda machine. His face softened infinitesimally, the hard eyes warming as he looked at her. His full, soft mouth quirked, just a bit, at the corner, and with exasperation she felt her insides turn slowly to mush.

Michael set down his spatula and disappeared from her view, appearing a moment later through the back door and walking to her side. He reached out a tentative hand and touched her forearm with his finger, running it down to her hand and curling around her fingers for just a second. "Hey" he said, quietly, not meeting her eyes.

"Hey right back at you." she said with an unwilling smile. His mouth quirked again, in the almost-smile that had come to mean so much to her, and her heart melted. His touch generated the same rush of feeling it always did. The heart-pounding lust that made her feel like she wasn't getting enough oxygen. The love that made her content just to be in the same room with him. The inexplicable tenderness that made her want to wrap her arms around him and shelter him from the world. And the protectiveness, so fierce and deadly that it almost frightened her. The feeling that she would do anything, anything at all, to keep him safe.

She watched him walk back to the kitchen, and turned back to cleaning the soda machine with a smile. There was no explanation for her feelings. Despite his looks, his attitude, his lack of fashion sense, and his non-human status, something about him spoke to her, on a level too deep to be identified. Despite her best efforts to talk herself out of it, there was a strong, inexorable pull that would not be denied. She was finished questioning it.

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Living with a new age hippie like her mother had acquainted Maria with all the possibilities. Astral projection, past life regression, poltergeist activity, spirit guide channeling, time travel, reincarnation. Her mom had, at one time or another, embraced them all. Maria, oddly enough, had never fully embraced any of them.

She'd been having vivid almost-dreams and sleepwalking her entire life. Was her dreaming body taking her places her mind was reluctant to go? Or was her soul trying to re-live another life, and in the process dragging her hapless body around? Was she recalling events that had truly happened, or anticipating things that would transpire in the future?

Or did she just have an especially vivid imagination?

Maria had always looked forward to sleep time. And as she got older, she knew why.

Events were clearer in that strange, dusky, muddled threshold between sleeping and waking. Daily life and its frustrations and joys made sense, melded fluidly into a larger picture. Although she could never quite capture the perfect clarity held during those peaceful moments, she did know that for just an instant, however long it truly lasted, she had a firm grasp on the big picture.

She knew Michael, and her love for him and her need to protect him rang with truth.

She knew that Roswell's resident aliens were not the only ones in town with complicated pasts, and promises to keep, and obligations to fulfill, and responsibilities to carry out.

When she was awake, she had no answers. Perhaps that should have frightened her. But even if she didn't have the answers, even if she wasn't seeing the big picture, she knew that she was a creature who had learned hard lessons at a brutal cost. And she was determined that history would start here.