Supposedly implacable political foes survey a new political landscape, writes Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor.
Where now for the peace process and all its apparent paradoxes? Perhaps the only answer is that we may not have an answer for some time yet.
Certainly the signposts pointed last week more in the direction of protracted suspension of normal business at Stormont than to any hope.
The British government, reportedly in some kind of shock following the striking gains by the DUP at the cost of Independents, and the eclipsing of the SDLP by Sinn Féin, is content to play a careful game.
Mr Paul Murphy has already met representatives from all the parties during the week. But, as he confirmed to The Irish Times earlier, he was opting to listen rather than lecture.
That said, his letter to the parties, co-signed by Mr Cowen, made it clear that both Dublin and London will review the agreement - not renegotiate it. They were backed up in this by the respected figure of Richard Haass, who made no secret of where the White House stands.
Despite the governments' commitment to the agreement, some of the parties they both relied on so far are in real difficulty.
The SDLP is in turmoil, with questions being raised about its leader and the campaign it has just fought. Some whisper about a Mallon leadership or merger with Fianna Fáil or Labour. No one I have spoken to appears to have asked themselves what is in it for either party to merge with the SDLP.
The Ulster Unionist civil war has picked up where it left off, with ever more strident calls for Mr Trimble to quit and overt challenges on policy. There remains a sense of crisis deferred in the UUP - the only argument being when the ruling Ulster Unionist Council is recalled. Its a.g.m. is in March, but Jeffrey Donaldson could push before then.
The Rev Ian Paisley astonished more than a few when he emerged from his first meeting with Mr Murphy at Castle Buildings last week. Reporters, huddled in the drizzle, expected a tub-thumping Paisley. What we got was a conciliatory statement littered with words like "progress" and "constructive". It is possible that the DUP could, rather like the Molyneaux leadership of the UUP before 1995, form a policy out of inaction, waiting instead for subsequent elections to bring yet more prizes.
Others believe, however, that the party still appears to talk with two voices. Mr Paisley's threat to expel anyone who talks to Sinn Féin has not been retracted, despite the fact that members of both parties have dealings with each other regularly on councils.
Mr Paisley denounced Mr Haass during the week as an IRA sympathiser, while his deputy leader Mr Robinson acknowledged the Bush envoy's courtesy and fairness.
Only a fool would talk up the evidence of DUP division, but only a fool would deny there are grounds for confusion about party direction either.
Most puzzling of all for some is the very fact that five years of the Belfast Agreement - the great truce between conflicting political traditions on this island - has produced the opposite to what they had envisaged. The "centre ground" and the small parties have lost out.
Yet for all that, the outlook is not entirely gloomy. If anything, the IRA campaign seems further away now than it did on the eve of polling.
What we have now, in an admittedly weary but nonetheless calm atmosphere, is the final squaring of the North's supposedly irreconcilable political forces.
The "settlement" of 1973 was a truce between Brian Faulkner's unionists and Gerry Fitt's nationalists. The rest were outside the fold.
The agreement five years ago, after some tortuous dealings, produced a truce between David Trimble's UUP and Sinn Féin - with the IRA on ceasefire. Mr Paisley was outside the fold.
Now the DUP and Sinn Féin are in a position for encounter. It could be the most crucial engagement yet.