“I’m not sure we even knew, really. But going through the rituals felt important somehow. It’s like we wanted something to happen. Something that would tell us we weren’t alone in the world or that there was power we could tap into.”

Truman understood.

“I still feel that way, I think. Like there’s forces out there that I can feel working, but I want to know how to tap in. Not god or anything. More like…something outside that’s made of the same stuff as something really deep inside me that I don’t even know how to access.”

Ash’s hair was a windblown cloud around his shoulders and his cheeks were pinked from cold. He tipped his head back and looked up to the ceiling. “Do you ever think maybe it isn’t something that’s out there but just something we choose to do? Like…that there’s this…I dunno, this well of power and control that we can tap into inside ourselves. But then the world gets in the way. The world, circumstances, other people, like, squeeze it out of us. Make it smaller and smaller until it’s gone.”

Truman reached a hand out and found Ash’s rough fingers. He twined their hands together.

“Yeah, maybe. Then you have to get away from that stuff to refill it. Or…biggen it. That’s not a word. Biggen? What the heck?”

“Enlarge?” Ash offered.

“Yeah. Like, for me, that’s how the cemeteries at home are. It’s not because they’re cemeteries Or, not mainly. It’s because they’re these repositories of so much history and feeling. Over the decades and centuries, so many important emotions have happened there. It becomes like a bottomless source of feeling and beauty and personal history. So spending time in them always fills me back up. I leave feeling like that well or whatever is bigger, deeper, fuller.”

“I feel that way about the ocean,” Ash said. “Especially in the spring, when the air is warming up but the sea is still holding on to winter. It’s a never-ending engine of change. It never looks exactly the same for two seconds in a row. It’s so deep and vast that things inside it are unlocatable. You could just disappear into it and have a whole world of possibilities. Just looking at it, especially when no one else is around. Especially in the moonlight. Fuck, it’s so magical.”

“I love hearing you talk like that,” Truman said.

“Like what?”

Truman shrugged and flipped over on the couch to face Ash. “Like, often you’re so practical and, like, controlled. It’s cool to hear you be more expansive.”

“I am pretty expansive,” Ash said.

He said it with the inflection of a joke, but Truman didn’t laugh. “I can tell,” he said.