The spectacle leaves you breathless. War is having fun with you.

Since you’ve met, he has made the incredible effort of introducing you to every scenario that might belong to his category. Which, in summary, seems to include everything:

from the struggling football club trying to climb out of relegation to the heroin addict trying to get clean while fighting to obtain his next fix (“We are at constant war with ourselves,” War reminds you, “Much like in the rest of history, wars happen simultaneously.”

“Who wins out?” you feel the strong need to ask. War roars with laughter and you roll your eyes), from two empires fighting over land and women to the young man trying to find purpose in the midst of everyone’s overwhelming expectations.

“You fight all your life,” lectures War at the end of the day, “Peace is what you hold onto, what you cling to – an idea, mostly an idea, sometimes a feeling in the aftermath, whether of triumph or defeat – or a lesson in between that tells you all of your struggles are worth something. Whatever it is, whatever you choose it to be, it keeps me alive and in return, I keep you alive.”

You stand before the memorial thinking through the deaths that are laid at its feet, the women raped, the bayoneted infants. War shifts closer, slides an arm under yours and you lean into him.

“I have to find ground, is that it?”

He thumbs through your hair and laughs. You feel his palm softly above your heart.

“But you already have.”

I go back to that story every time.

It was an early schoolday morning. Our knees were pressed against each other as we sat on the common room floor, waiting for the class adviser to administer the ritual morning prayers.

Like good Catholics, morning prayers always began with the sign of the cross. But being what I was working to become, I didn't lift a finger. Billie did. She sat across the room from me and she did everything they asked because she was smarter. She didn't want any trouble. There were lots of time for that: in the corridors, in the letters we passed to one another between classes. But not here, not in their prayer hall.

If she was the sly one who followed the rules, she did so for the both of us and left majority of the mischief up to me. I wasn't reckless, I was just precocious. I didn't have the patience to lie for longer than necessary, so when we were asked us to bow our heads, I kept mine raised high and proud watching over the dark crowns that prostrated towards the holy book in Mrs. Jose's hands.

Most of my classmates wrote it off as a quirk. They knew Billie and I weren't believers, but we were nice people, allies to both saints and sinners. Billie was a liar and I was an asshole. But we were good friends and good people. Surely there was a footnote in the Bible for people like us.

But do what we, well, I did long enough and the cordialities eventually give way for the disquieting curiosity to unfurl.

Bo-o used to sit right next to me. That day, she turned her head when I didn't make the sign of the cross. Leaning over, she whispered, "So, who do you pray to?"

I looked at her and then at Mrs. Jose, to see if she was watching. She wasn't, her old, weary face pensive and buried in the gospel she was reading.

"What do you mean 'pray to'?" I whispered back.

Bo-o shrugged. "You know, like Jesus. Who's your god? Who do you lean on when you're in trouble? Who do you talk to?"

I frowned.

"No one."

She searched my face quietly. Then without a word, she bowed her head again and pulled her clasped hands closer to her body.

I didn't know what to think or feel after that. I probably didn't give Bo-o much to think about as she did me. Most atheists who I knew back then could affix an easy answer to her question. Like, well, we liked to believe god's inexistence narrowed down the responsibility and moral decisions into our own hands. Accountability, humanism, reason.

But suppose our troubles couldn't be solved by pure logic alone. Where did we non-believers get the sense of moral propriety that we needed to make decisions? A universal guideline? Historical deductions? Intuition?

Through the years, I began to look into a massive collection of other people's thoughts and feelings, their anecdotes and their histories, their wisdom and follies. This gambit was rooted in the philosophy that the best clue we had in learning to understand the world was not god, but each other.

A higher power, a compassionate overseer of souls and secrets, was a fine thing to imagine. Men can be so disappointing, after all, and we seemed to give one another a good reason to need the input of Jesus Christ and his friends.

Still, my best friend and I stayed the non-believing course, finding neither comfort nor trepidation in the absence of god.

"We make it up as we go along." It seemed like a good plan when Billie said it. We used to talk all night about the misgoings of the world and how we thought we fit right in.

I never felt comfortable with consulting other people's thoughts and feelings to complete myself, but I eventually learned to let go of the underlying self-absorbed ambition. I began to understand that there could be no concept of self without the other. Billie and I, Bo-o and the believers, and the whole wide world - it didn't matter really where we thought we found our guidance. At the end of the day, I figured, we were all in this together.

How many children do you plan to kill today?

They were sitting on the edge of the dock, seabirds sailing high and ships flying across the grey horizon. She leaned back leaving the long line of her brown neck stretched bare for him to relish.

It was the perfect moment to say something. The truth's been a long time coming and he wasn’t short of reason to bring it up. But courage was hard to come by this late. Looking away, he took a hit from his dying cigarette before tossing it into the bay.

“They’re all happy now, aren’t they?”

She was talking about their heroes, all the rockstars they used to listen to. Their iPods sat between them quietly taking judgement as she dispensed it.

“Married, settled down, sobered up, living the lives they thought they could avoid. The Strokes are with offsprings, Jenny...”

He added with a smile, “Ben’s got Zooey. You heard the latest DCFC album yet?”

They laughed. It was warm and familiar and laced with a sense of resignation.

After a moment, she solemnly declared, “Everyone’s either happy or dead.”

He looked at her for a while. “Maybe it’s a sign it’s time we grew up too.”

The sea swelled moving sideways and splashing the wall. Droplets of water caught their bare feet.

Now that they were older, they realized the world was just as they left it. Cold, bland and ever moving, not spending a single second to rue their imprudent teenage rebellion.

Who the hell did they think they were anyway?

Youth was just an interlude, a few years for those willing to spend it. Now that chapter was coming to a close. They were berthing on rigid land and signing up for a life that required them to cast the past 20 years in mere memory. Neither of them needed to imagine what was waiting for them in the city. They both knew too well.

As resentment began to dig in, the sun steadily rose from the ashen sea.

As if on cue, he began to sing - “And it’s time to live in the scattered sun”.

She looked at him and wondered if the nerve to get up and leave permanently was ever going to come. On the other hand, how long down the road did she still have before she turned back and found nothing but her shadow on the trail?

"Waiting for you - to tell me what's wrong. This is the strangest life I have ever known."

They swung their legs over the edge and swayed as their shadows striped across the empty quay.

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