They have an understanding, Shepherd and Companion. They recognize in one another a life shaped by others, for others, the hands not of individuals but of organizations untouchable and cold. Sometimes late at night they can find some comfort, turn together from the new, unfamiliar warmth back to the nostalgic cold and mirror it for each other, for a time.

He confesses to her then his reasons: decaying faith, blossoming doubt, his reasons for shunning the corridors that made him.

She, too, has her reasons, for doubt, for sacrifice, and a new, fragile belief.