🎀

[That contact, small as it may be, provides reassurance to her in its silent communication of trust. They both were forced to reveal secrets they wanted no one to see, and it would have been easy for him to recoil from the entire situation and also from her. That not being the case comforts her greatly, and while she still doesn't grasp his hand, not wanting to make him feel as though she views him as so needy for compassion (and, perhaps, also not wanting to insert herself into the space that's so jarringly empty in the absence of his left-behind loved ones), she does run the back of her hand along his in a gesture of quiet support.

They may not speak more as the procession completes its journey to where the river trickles away and becomes a rivulet, but their unexpected commonalities may have irrevocably changed the way they see each other.]