Winter thawed, but they spoke little. Instead, they wandered the river paths, trading quiet gestures as though silence were their first language and speech merely dialect. Eli read Braille poetry to her fingertips though neither was blind—it was his way of proving that meaning can live beneath surfaces. Maris answered by restoring old clocks in her workshop then letting them ring their newly healed chimes at sunset outside his window. Friends asked why they were "taking things slow." What the friends could not see was how their spirits were already sprinting ahead, vaulting fences words could never cross. Loving him with soul, Maris discovered, meant listening for the conversation beneath heartbeat and breath.
