Disambiguation

I met Ailis at long last.

She showed up one night at my typically disorganized room. In her simple understated fashion, she reported to have missed me but had taken the time off to think.

(I hadn't even asked why she vanished like that (but I was going to) before she supplied a reason.)

Time to think? I wondered aloud. What did she need time to think for? I thought as long as she wasn't trying to cook we were alright, and that was the end of my thinking.

It must have surprised her that the issues were so obvious in my head. She remained still, saying nothing, until I told her to share what she had been thinking about.

She summarized thus: “Something is functionless in this relationship!”

It sounded wrong. We laughed about it until we were breathless. But she was right. A lot was undefined in that relationship, and yes, we needed to give function to functionless things. We got to it immediately.