The search for the holy, for the sacred, and the spiritual, always ended up at the bottom of the bottle for Shane. He had no reason to believe, he had no reason to think, still, that a superior force was guiding people through life.
Why, if so, would they have taken his two closest friends, why, then, would they have cursed him with the darkness broiling in his weakened mind, why, certainly why, would they have let him become the eyes of his world’s deepest disappointment, the sorry gaze, the buffoonery looking back at him in the mirror every morning.
If he was to be let down by an invisible force, Shane would rather it’d be himself. If the belief and reverence of a superior entity was promising him a better afterlife, he’d rather wave it away. Doing all this for a lifetime, and be rewarded with more lifetime was not in his future plans. Should he had any.
So when you slipped the mermaid pendant around his head, and promised him you would love him, the floor of an immense cathedral could open to swallow him up and he would welcome the cold of the sacred marble. You knew his grief, you knew his gratefulness could fit on a post-it note, and you knew you were part of it.
You have not lifted the curse berating his mind, but you’re a soothing force, a calm reliability in the waves of the gray tempest of his brain. So when he said: “Did you know ‘Shane’ means 'Gift from Yoba’?… What a joke.” you were quick to grab the blue pendant that made him yours, and let him know the gift of everyday by his side was far greater than any golden light.