What do you want?”The question stunned him. He could say he wanted nothing, that he felt like nothing, that he counted the days until darkness. Hecould say: Happiness beyond all worlds! A life of peace and love, entire and whole! He could say he wanted everything and nothing all at once. He thought for a moment, as the birds sang in the trees, of how often he felt like this.

That is what Lincoln saw in them, this love in all his friends, who held a close place in his heart, and Oscar, the one dream of his soul. He found it in them, in all of them, with their dirty pasts and their still recovering minds, in their words and in their friendship, and in their souls that spoke to each other in the mist of the clouds or the surging of the trees that knew that, in eternity, they would always find beauty. And that was an incredible world to wake up to.

But now they were done running, lying, hiding, apologising, pretending. They were there because they wanted to be, because they had gotten there from years of fighting alone, and had stayed when they found they didn’t have to anymore.

They were so peculiar, these days. They were so absurdly hopeful that their faces had taken on some of the stupidity of domestic beasts.

Delight, pain, agony, ecstasy, rapture, woe—what curious things.He made himself promise to never ignore them again.