"Everything is breathing, Julian. It’s just moving slower than us," she replied, her thumb tracing the curve of a painted hill.
"No," Julian said, his hand covering hers on the workbench. His thumb brushed against her knuckles, a deliberate, grounding pressure. "I want you to keep it. I realized today that I’m tired of looking at things through glass cases. I’d rather be the person making the marks."
She looked back at the locket, then up at him. "It’s a lot of work, keeping something this old beautiful."
Her thumb hovered over a tiny crack in a landscape. It was a gesture of muscle memory, a quiet ritual of assessing what was broken and what could be saved.
He walked over, standing close enough that she could smell the faint scent of old paper and peppermint. "I found something. It’s not for the gallery. It’s for me."
