The purple bloom covering the walls of the abandoned cottage made it difficult to find a window to pee through.  He thought it a place not worthy of their personal mark on it, but his friend disagreed.  It’s hiding something, he said.  In fact, his friend declared it their civic duty to investigate — “Some things demand answers.”  He pointed his friend to the difficulty posed by the dense undergrowth everywhere, yet since the investigation was duty to friend so was it to him.  They then entered a parallel world.  Their joint focus coalesced on where the door to the cottage could be.  They would burrow their way through the undergrowth from a spot closest to it.  They proceeded to do just that, in three spots, and each time hit wall.  The third time, they stumbled from out of the undergrowth with deep bloody pricks on hands face and body.  Those wounds did not heal till when they ran into each other two decades later on a hike across a lush river valley and embraced with a, Why so long?  Leaning against a tree, it slowly came to them that an explanation may lie in a habit each had since fallen into.  Whenever either felt confined to duty, they both set off for long treks out in the open.  As they were then doing.  Mostly to feel small, insignificant.  In reaction, they now thought, to it having become duty in their teenage friendship to always play big and strong.  Even now, as they took leave of each other, they tried to execute a big man’s handshake, but caught themselves and shared a simple nod instead, as the friend then continued on down the trail and he looked around for a spur to veer off on.