Ease

Ease watched him pace. "You did a good mend," she said gently. "I saw it. It was real. And now the hardest part — the part nobody warns you about. You have to let the tide come back on its own."

Bram spun around. "But I said sorry! I did it RIGHT! So why aren't we okay yet? If I just go ask one more time—"

"Ah," said Ease softly. "That's the trap. You did the mend right — and doing it right doesn't mean you're owed a fast yes. A real sorry is a gift you give. It's not a coin you put in and get forgiveness out the bottom." She nodded at the slow water. "If you keep going back to ask are we okay yet, over and over, you turn your sorry into a demand. Now they have to take care of your worry on top of their own hurt. The mend stops being for them and starts being about you again."

Bram stopped pacing. "But the waiting is awful. Not knowing is awful."

"It is," Ease agreed, with no false comfort. "The waiting is genuinely hard. That's true." She did not pretend it away. "But the waiting is part of the gift. When you let them have the time they asked for — without pushing, without checking every five minutes — you're saying your pace matters more than my worry. That's one of the most caring things you can do. And it's quiet. Nobody claps for it. You just... let the tide be the tide."

Ease showed Bram what patient waiting actually looked like — not cold distance, and not anxious hovering, but something steady in between.

"You don't disappear," she murmured. "Vanishing says I gave up on us. But you don't hover either, asking and asking, because that says hurry up and forgive me. You just stay warm and steady where they can find you. You leave the shore clean and open. And you carry your own worry yourself, instead of handing it to them to soothe." She traced the tide line in the sand. "If the waiting feels unbearable, that's your feeling to tend — that's a job for the still water, for steadying yourself. Not a reason to go knock on their door again."

Bram felt the truth of it land. The urge to rush back and ask are we okay wasn't really about his friend at all — it was about his own discomfort with not-knowing. And making his friend cure that discomfort, right now, would be asking them to do the work of their hurt and his worry.

"So I just... let them have the time," Bram said slowly. "And I take care of my own worried feeling myself, instead of making them fix it."

"That's the whole thing," Ease said warmly. "Offer the good mend. Then hand the pace to them, completely. The tide knows when to come in. Your job is just to keep the shore clean and stop trying to pull the water with your hands."

So Bram did the quiet, hard, generous thing. He didn't go back to ask again. He left his sorry standing — real and complete — and he let his friend have the time they'd asked for. When the worry rose in him, he tended it himself instead of carrying it to their door.

And the tide did what tides do. In its own time — not Bram's — his friend came back. Not because Bram pulled them, but because the shore had stayed clean and open and unhurried, and that patience had felt, to the friend, like being truly respected.