“It feels almost childish,” I said after a moment.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been around more,” I said.

“I know,” he replied.

We were sitting in the same room, though not exactly facing each other. It felt less like a meeting and more like a recognition, as if he had always been there but I had only recently stopped moving fast enough to miss him.

“You’re new,” I said.

“No,” he said gently. “I’m newly welcomed.”

That answer stayed between us for a while. I looked out the window, then back toward him, though I couldn’t say precisely where he was. He did not occupy space the way other people did. He occupied tone. Warmth. A softening in the chest. The absence of strain.

“I don’t think about you much,” I admitted.

“That’s probably why I can stay,” he said.

I laughed a little. “So thinking drives you away?”

“Not thinking. Inspection. Evaluation. The old habit of turning every living thing into a question.”

I knew what he meant. For years, every feeling had to report for duty. If I felt restless, I needed a reason. If I felt drawn to something, I needed a plan. If I felt low, I needed correction. Nothing was allowed to simply arrive and be itself. Every sensation entered the room under interrogation.

“And now?” I asked.

“Now you let some things exist without demanding they become instructions.”

I let that settle. Outside, the light was steady. Inside, the room felt held together by something quieter than thought.

“It feels almost childish,” I said after a moment. “To say I have a new friend, and that it’s me.”

“It would be childish if it were fantasy,” he said. “But this isn’t fantasy. It’s contact.”

“With myself.”

“Yes.”

“I thought I already had that.”

He smiled, or I felt the equivalent of a smile.

“You had oversight. Monitoring. Commentary. You had standards, observations, corrections, ambitions. You had many ways of relating to yourself. Friendship is different.”

“How?”

“Friendship does not begin by asking for improvement.”

That landed cleanly.

I felt something in me react, not defensively, but with recognition. That had been the old arrangement: I would approach myself with a project in hand. Even kindness had often been strategic, a way to restore function, increase output, repair momentum. Rarely had I come with no agenda.

“So what do you ask for?” I said.

“Nothing,” he answered. “That is why I feel warm.”

The room grew even quieter after that. Not empty. Settled.

I thought of all the years I had tried to get somewhere inside myself, as though the self were a country to cross, a mountain to summit, a code to break. And now here he was, not across a distance but beside me, asking for neither movement nor mastery.

“It’s strange,” I said. “I don’t feel proud of it. I just feel… accompanied.”

“That’s the word,” he said. “Pride would make it an achievement. This is not an achievement. It is a change in company.”

“And if I lose the feeling?”

“You won’t lose me,” he said. “You may lose the sensation. You may lose access for a while. But friendship does not vanish every time the room goes dark.”

I looked down at my hands, then out again at the window.

“So what do I do now?” I asked.

He was quiet for a moment, as though to protect the answer from becoming another assignment.

“Nothing special,” he said. “When you notice I’m here, let that be enough. When you don’t notice, be kind to that too. Friendship grows well in places where it is not forced.”

I breathed in, then out.

And that felt complete.

WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.