Finding Contentus

Chapter 33: The R&R Tale (2)

"Chief—" Ramsis retracted, his sickening smirk deteriorating.

"No, Renero." Ramsis advanced with an air of lethargy but earnest curiosity.

"Let me ask you this. Do you think it is possible for all people to understand each other completely? With all our differences."

Renero gave him a long silent look with half lidded eyes that stretched for deep thought. Possible? Possible. Possibilities.

Boldly enough, Renero couldn't help but feel himself arching a daring and baiting eyebrow at Ramsis in amusement to ask a question of his own. "Did you ever understand your wife completely with all your differences?"

Now, normally one would think that asking such a question to a person who's love of his life was no longer with them would be done in order to provoke a heated reaction.

To antagonize and to purposely hurt with salt to never healing wounds. In this case, the opposite happened. Bizarrely, the two men held a tense gaze that could either rupture volcanoes or cause them to cease rupturing altogether. Before, the unthinkable happened.

They laughed. Together.

Softly at first and awkwardly at that. Before their laughter turned into the type of shared comfortability you would hear from two friends who had just told an inside joke to each other that those around them wouldn't get or understand.

Only them.

"I must say, that is one thing in my life I never managed to conquer and probably will never conquer. Understanding women, and how their minds work," Ramsis said, calming himself down, and for once, his grin afterwards looked the healthiest it could ever look discounting the other half of his damaged face.

Renero couldn't help but let out another laugh.

"And they feel the same way about us men. It's maddening and makes no sense. But as the saying goes, a man cannot live with the "wo" of man, and a man cannot live without the "wo" to of woman to complete him. Although I put much more credence on the latter. Women are truly one of the most magnificent and fascinating specimens this universe could have possibly created. Imagine a world without them? I'd kill myself. Wouldn't you?"

Renero was somewhat hoping the lighthearted look he gave Ramsis would allow the grin on his face to remain for just a little while longer before they descended back into the pits of hell.

Unfortunately—

"Only if I could..." The grin on his face, while still looking the same, displayed and had an entirely different feeling to it that his eyes compensated for with the dimness seen in them.

His grin turned weak and his eyes didn't just look sad... they looked... disappointed, pitiful and crushed at the fact that they weren't allowed to rest.

It almost looked as though he was about to just crumble under the crushing realization and was merely enduring the agony of living like an unbreakable curse, causing an abundance of sympathy to strip away Renero's own expression of momentary merriment.

Just when I was foolishly hoping we could at least have one tiny moment of silliness that wasn't of misfortune. Renero sighed depressingly, getting back to the question from before in seriousness.

"I think it's not a matter of possibility, since yes, all people 'can' and have the potential to understand each other. I believe it is more befitting to ask whether or not people are 'willing' to try and understand each other completely. As that can be rather hard. Not just hard in terms of difficulty but... extreme incompatibility when they may not even understand themselves, let alone others."