The bell tower of St. Athanasius Seminary rang with a kind of solemn cheer that first morning—cheer for those beginning a great vocation, solemn for those realizing how far from home they now stood. Autumn lay like a coppery quilt across the grounds: rust-gold leaves, crisp air, the scent of cedar from the cloister walk. New students—wide-eyed, anxious, hopeful—moved through the campus like pilgrims trying to pretend they weren’t lost.

Tristan Greene stood among them, though slightly apart.

He was tall, thin, sharp in the angles, with thoughtful hazel eyes that took in everything even when he didn’t mean to. A well-thumbed prayer book sat in his pocket like a touchstone against fear. He had grown up in a small parish in Oregon, surrounded by fir trees and familiar faces, and the city—loud, churning, smelling of diesel and ambition—had begun to swallow him whole the moment he stepped off the bus. His mother had cried at the station. His father had tried to hide pride under a stern façade and failed.

Now, standing beneath the gothic archway of St. Athanasius, Tristan felt an ache that went far deeper than homesickness. It felt like stepping off a cliff into vocation, not knowing whether God’s hands were beneath him or if he was simply falling.

A few yards away, another newly arrived seminarian sat on a stone bench, his suitcase beside him, his posture stiff with the effort of not sagging. He was blond, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered—a Montana kid through and through. He looked like he belonged on a ranch with a lasso, not in a cassock with a breviary. His name tag read Lance Lake, and he did not notice Tristan watching him.

Or rather—he hadn’t, at first.

But after a few seconds of silence, Lance looked up, eyes red-rimmed as though he had very recently lost a battle with tears.

Tristan startled and glanced away. He hadn’t meant to stare.

Yet Lance, instead of bristling or brushing past, gave a small, tired half-smile. “You lost too?”

His voice was low and strained, but kind.

Tristan exhaled. “Completely.”

Lance patted the open spot on the bench. “Then sit. It’s miserable to be lost alone.”

Tristan took the seat.

That was how it began.

I. The First Week

Orientation at St. Athanasius was designed to be uplifting. In theory.

In practice, the days felt long, the nights longer, and everything foreign: new spiritual directors, new schedules, new expectations, new visions of holiness they all feared they couldn’t live up to.

Tristan kept mostly quiet through the workshops, absorbing information like a sponge, rearranging it into meaning with the internal discipline of a future teacher. Lance, on the other hand, tried—he truly tried—to engage, but his eyes drifted toward the windows, where he imagined endless Montana plains and his family’s lodgepole pines.

They found each other repeatedly, as though drawn by gravity.

At meals, they sat at the same end of the table. In chapel, they knelt in the same pew. When the rector assigned them to the same first-year formation group, they exchanged glances that said Well, of course.

But the first real conversation happened in the dormitory hallway on Friday night, when the ache of the first week finally cracked both of them open.

Tristan had been trying—to no avail—to call home. The reception was terrible; the building’s thick stone walls swallowed signal like a beast swallowing its meal whole. He stood by the one window where the bars wavered between one and two, muttering, “Come on, come on,” like a prayer.

Lance stepped out of his room across the hall and paused.

“You too?” he asked.

Tristan almost laughed. “Yeah.”

“Mom?” Lance guessed.

“Yeah. You?”

“My grandmother.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Called earlier. I kept it together while she talked, but afterward…the homesickness hit like a freight train.”

“I get that.”

And Tristan did. He didn’t just understand it—he lived it.

Something in Lance’s expression softened at being understood.

“Look,” Lance said, leaning against the wall beside him, “I know we don’t really know each other, but if you ever want to talk or just sit in silence or, I don’t know, pray… I’m here.”

Tristan swallowed. “Same.”

A long, gentle quiet settled between them before Lance gave an almost shy smile. “You hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Cafeteria closes in fifteen. Come on.” Lance nudged him lightly. “We can race.”

“You’re twice my size,” Tristan protested.

“Then you have twice the motivation.”

They ran. Tristan didn’t win, but he laughed the whole way.

And Lance laughed with him.

It was the first time either of them had felt lighter in days.

II. Letters From Home

Weeks passed. Routines formed. Homesickness didn’t go away, but it became manageable—like a chronic ache instead of an open wound.

On Thursday evenings, letters arrived.

Tristan often received long, thoughtful ones from his parents—pages of encouragement and parish gossip. Lance, though he didn’t always admit it, lived for mail call. His grandmother wrote with shaky cursive and relentless affection, telling him she prayed for him every morning at sunrise.

One evening, Tristan found Lance sitting in their usual pew in the chapel, shoulders shaking silently.

Concern shot through him. “Lance?”

Lance didn’t look up. He held a letter in both hands, creased from being opened and closed too many times.

“She’s sick,” Lance whispered. “Grandma. They didn’t want to scare me, so they softened everything, but I can read between the lines.”

Tristan sat beside him.

“I feel like I abandoned her,” Lance added, voice breaking. “She raised me. I should be there.”

“You came because you were called,” Tristan said gently. “She knows that.”

“It doesn’t make it easier.”

“No,” Tristan admitted. “But it means she’s proud.”

The candlelight flickered over Lance’s grief, shaping it into something almost holy.

Tristan didn’t offer empty promises. Instead, he slid his hand over Lance’s and held it steady—firm, quiet, anchoring.

Lance looked at their intertwined hands, then at Tristan. His eyes were glassy, but clearer now. “You always know what to say.”

“No,” Tristan murmured. “I just stay.”

Lance gave a fragile, grateful nod.

After that night, they prayed evening prayer together in the chapel every day. Sometimes silently. Sometimes aloud. Sometimes with laughter. Sometimes with tears.

Together, they carried each other.

III. A Battle of Wills, a Mystery of Grace

Seminary academics were no joke.

Greek verbs tormented half the class. Philosophy had the other half questioning their entire existence. Church History threatened to bury them all beneath dates, councils, and long-dead emperors whose names were nearly identical.

One afternoon, Lance stormed into the study lounge and dropped his textbook onto the table with a dramatic thud.

“I’m going to flunk History.”

“You’re not,” Tristan said without looking up from his notes.

“I can’t even keep the Councils straight. Nicea? Chalcedon? Constantinople I, II, III? Why do there need to be so many?”

Tristan chuckled. “Because heresies don’t take breaks.”

“I swear they multiplied just to spite me.”

“Sit.” Tristan patted the chair beside him. “We’ll make mnemonic devices.”

“Oh good,” Lance deadpanned, “because nothing says holy tradition like cartoons drawn in the margins.”

“Exactly.”

For two hours, Tristan explained, sketched, quizzed, and encouraged. Lance listened—really listened—and finally said:

“You’re good at teaching. Like, really good.”

Tristan blinked. “You think so?”

“I know so.” Lance pointed at him. “One day, you’re gonna be the kind of priest people learn from without even realizing it.”

Heat rose to Tristan’s cheeks. He wasn’t used to praise that sincere.

“Thanks,” he said softly.

“You earned it.”

Then Lance failed to stifle a grin. “Now draw me another cartoon of Chalcedon.”

Tristan tossed a pencil at him. “Get your own.”

They laughed for minutes.

Brotherhood, they discovered, thrives in laughter as much as in prayer.

IV. The Night It Nearly Broke

Winter descended on St. Athanasius like an ancient monk’s cloak: heavy, cold, somber.

Lance’s grandmother worsened. Tristan’s father lost his job. Homesickness surged again, merciless.

One night, after a brutal exam week, Tristan found Lance outside in the courtyard, sitting on a stone ledge dusted with frost. His breath fogged the air. His posture was rigid with anguish.

Tristan approached quietly. “What happened?”

Lance didn’t look at him. “Grandma’s in the hospital. Pneumonia.”

Tristan sat beside him slowly. “I’m sorry.”

“She told me she’s ready to go if God calls her.” Lance’s voice trembled. “But I’m not ready. I’m nowhere near ready.”

Tristan’s heart fractured.

Lance wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm. “I feel…untethered. Like everything is slipping.”

Tristan spoke carefully. “What do you need right now?”

Lance shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Then,” Tristan said softly, “I’m staying.”

Lance let out a long, shaky breath, and finally leaned—just enough—to rest his head briefly on Tristan’s shoulder.

It was instinct more than thought when Tristan wrapped an arm around him.

They sat like that for a long while: two seminarians under a winter sky, matching each other’s breaths, grief and comfort moving between them like a whispered canticle.

Finally Lance whispered, “I’m scared, Tristan.”

Tristan tightened his arm slightly. “Then we’ll be scared together.”

Lance nodded against him.

And in that quiet, soul-deep moment, something clicked into place—something beyond friendship.

Brotherhood.

Forged by loss. Strengthened by faith.

V. Spring Comes, as Spring Always Does

When spring arrived, it came fast—green bursting through the thaw, birds singing like angels rehearsing. Lance’s grandmother recovered, slowly but steadily. Tristan’s father found new work.

For the first time in months, the two young men breathed easier.

One warm afternoon, after a soccer game between first-years and third-years (in which the first-years lost catastrophically), Tristan and Lance collapsed on the lawn under a budding maple tree.

Tristan groaned. “I don’t think my lungs have recovered.”

Lance wheezed, “Third-years are demons.”

A pause. Birds chirped overhead.

Then Lance said quietly, “Hey… thanks for sticking with me through everything.”

Tristan turned his head. “You don’t thank a brother for being a brother.”

Lance smiled softly. “So we’re brothers now?”

“We were from week one,” Tristan said. “We just didn’t know the word for it yet.”

Lance stared at him with an expression Tristan couldn’t quite name—something tender, steady, reverent.

Then Lance reached out his hand.

Tristan took it.

No ceremony. No vows. Just a simple, wordless promise.

VI. The Pilgrimage

Every year, first-year seminarians took a silent retreat at Lakeside Monastery—three days of quiet, reflection, and guided prayer.

Tristan and Lance walked the wooded trail together, though silently, as required. Yet silence with a person you love—not romantically, but deeply, fiercely—is its own language.

At a clearing overlooking the lake, they paused.

Tristan felt God in the breeze. In the water. In the presence beside him.

Lance finally whispered, “I almost didn’t come to seminary.”

Tristan’s eyebrows rose.

“I was scared,” Lance admitted. “Of failing. Of leaving home. Of not being enough. But now…” He looked at Tristan. “I can’t imagine having done this without you.”

Tristan exhaled shakily. “Me neither.”

Lance hesitated. Then he said something so soft Tristan almost missed it: “You’re my family now.”

VII. Trials of Year Two

Year Two tested them.

Pastoral fieldwork placed Tristan at a hospital and Lance at a nursing home. They saw suffering. Loneliness. Death. Grace. Miracles.

Tristan found it both beautiful and overwhelming. Lance found it both rewarding and terrifying.

Some nights they returned to the dorm drained beyond speech.

Lance once collapsed into a chair and whispered, “I walked Mrs. Henderson to the edge today.”

Tristan sat across from him. “Did she go alone?”

“No.” Lance’s eyes glistened. “She held my hand.”

“Then you gave her what she needed.”

Lance swallowed hard. “She said I reminded her of her grandson.”

“You probably did.”

Lance rubbed his face. “Why does God trust us with this? Why—why us?”

“Because we’re available,” Tristan said softly. “And because we’re willing.”

Lance looked at him. “Are you ever afraid you’re not enough?”

“Every day.”

“Me too.”

Tristan reached across, squeezed Lance’s forearm, and said, “That’s why we don’t do it alone.”

Lance nodded.

That became their mantra.

VIII. The Rift

It happened in the middle of winter, year two—small at first, then snowballing into something sharp and painful.

Tristan, overwhelmed with assignments, withdrew. Lance, overwhelmed with fears about his sick grandmother’s relapse, pushed Tristan away before Tristan could read into his unraveling.

Miscommunication bred hurt.

Hurt bred distance.

One night Tristan snapped, “If you need space, you could just say so.”

Lance shot back, “I don’t need space—I need a friend who isn’t too busy for me!”

Silence detonated between them.

Tristan’s voice cracked. “I’ve never been too busy for you.”

“Well it feels like it!”

The argument spiraled, raw and unfiltered.

Finally Tristan said in a whisper, “You’re my brother, Lance. Why would you think I’m ever walking away?”

Lance froze.

Tristan continued, voice trembling, “You’re scared. I get that. But don’t punish me for caring.”

Lance’s anger dissolved as suddenly as it had flared.

He sat down hard, covered his face, and said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m terrified I’m going to lose the people I love.”

Tristan sat beside him, gently pulling his hands from his face. “You haven’t lost me.”

Lance’s breath hitched. “Promise?”

Tristan didn’t hesitate. “Always.”

Lance collapsed into him like someone who had been holding himself together too long.

Tristan held him until the shaking stopped.

Some bonds are strengthened by conflict.

Theirs was one of them.

IX. The Calling Clarifies

By the end of year two, their callings became clearer.

Tristan discovered a love for teaching Scripture and Theology. Professors noticed. One encouraged him to pursue advanced studies.

Lance discovered a gift for pastoral ministry—comforting the dying, counseling the lonely, blessing those who felt abandoned by God. The rector said he had “a shepherd’s heart.”

They celebrated each other’s gifts without envy.

One evening after a formation conference, Lance turned to Tristan and said:

“I think you’re going to change people’s lives.”

Tristan laughed softly. “I think you’re going to save them.”

Lance smirked. “We’ll make a good team.”

“We already do.”

That truth filled them both with a quiet warmth.

X. The Crisis of Faith

Every seminarian hits a wall.

Tristan’s came unexpectedly, like a sudden storm. He woke one morning with doubt clawing at his chest—doubt about worthiness, calling, ability. Doubt about whether God truly wanted him.

Lance noticed immediately.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

Tristan didn’t deny it. “I feel…lost. Spiritually. It scares me.”

Lance sat beside him. “Hey. Look at me.”

Tristan did.

“You’re the most faithful person I know,” Lance said steadily. “But even if you weren’t, I’d still stand with you. Doubt isn’t the enemy. Isolation is.”

Tristan’s eyes stung unexpectedly.

“Talk to me,” Lance said.

So Tristan did. For hours. About fears, about vocation, about inadequacy. Lance listened without trying to fix everything. And when Tristan finished, Lance said:

“Walk with me.”

They went to the chapel. Not to pray. Not at first. Just to sit.

Lance finally whispered, “You held me through my fear. I’ll hold you through yours.”

Tristan exhaled shakily. “I don’t want to lose this.”

“You won’t,” Lance promised. “We’re brothers.”

The words settled into Tristan’s heart like steady light.

XI. Ordination Approaches

Years three and four blurred in a whirlwind of pastoral assignments, late-night study sessions, shared meals, shared exhaustion, shared joy.

They grew older. Stronger. Holier—not in a pious, unattainable way, but in the grit-and-grace way of men shaped by sacrifice and mercy.

On a warm spring evening—near the end of seminary—they stood on the chapel balcony, overlooking the courtyard where they had first spoken years before.

“Hard to believe we started here,” Lance said.

“Terrified and lost,” Tristan added.

“And now?”

Tristan smiled softly. “Found.”

Lance nudged him. “Not bad for two homesick kids.”

“Not bad at all.”

Lance grew quiet. Then: “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being my brother. For staying. For everything.”

Tristan swallowed. “You’re my family, Lance. You always will be.”

Lance’s voice thickened. “After ordination—wherever we’re assigned—we’ll still call. Visit. Pray together.”

“Of course.”

Lance looked directly at him. “Promise me we won’t drift.”

Tristan didn’t hesitate. “I promise.”

They clasped forearms, a gesture ancient and unbreakable.

Two men. Two callings. One brotherhood.

Forged through tears, laughter, prayer, conflict, doubt, and devotion.

XII. The Day of the Beginning

On the morning of diaconate ordination—one year before priesthood—they vested in the sacristy side by side.

Lance trembled with awe. Tristan steadied him.

“You okay?” Tristan asked.

Lance exhaled. “Yeah. Just…my whole life’s about to change.”

“Ours,” Tristan corrected. “Together.”

They processed in.

The choir sang. Families wept. Professors smiled.

And when the bishop called their names—Tristan Greene and Lance Lake—each stepped forward, hearts pounding, not alone but bound by a brotherhood stronger than blood, distance, or fear.

When they knelt to be ordained, they knelt as individuals.

But when they rose, they rose as brothers committed to a shared mission: to serve God, to serve people, and to support each other for the rest of their lives.

Epilogue: Where Two Roads Continue

Years later, they would serve in different parishes—Tristan as a beloved teacher-priest, Lance as a compassionate pastor—but their bond would not weaken.

Weekly calls. Annual retreats. Late-night texts. Occasional tears. Frequent laughter.

Once, after a particularly hard funeral, Lance called Tristan and whispered, “I need my brother tonight.”

And Tristan answered, “I’m here.”

Likewise, when Tristan battled burnout, Lance showed up at his door with nothing but prayer, food, and presence.

Their vocations grew. Their lives unfolded. Their ministry bore fruit.

But the greatest gift God ever gave them—besides calling them into service—was giving them each other.

Two lonely seminarians.

Two aching hearts.

Two souls drawn together in the quiet, holy rhythm of shared grace.

A friendship strong enough to be called family.

A brotherhood that began on a stone bench beneath a bell tower, with a simple invitation:

“Sit. It’s miserable to be lost alone.”