"Then you're doing no better and no worse than the majority of human kind, I think." I've heard. After all, what experience did she have with normal people, really? "At least you're struggling against them, hmmm? You could be wallowing in them, like me."
She laughed, a brittle, dry sound, eyes straying to the heap of shattered clay spilling out the trashcan near Arkady's feet. Once upon a time, it had been a collection of beautiful miniatures of the denizens of the carnival. After her last fit, they amounted to little more than chalk.
The realization seemed to sober her, and she cut herself off abruptly. "But what am I saying? I can't know what it's like to live forever, to see the things you have...to suffer as perhaps you have suffered. Are still suffering, when you think no one sees." She hesitated a moment, then cross the room to him. She didn't take his hand, but she let hers dangle close enough to his that the heat--just above 101 degrees--warmed his skin. "Does it help, that we all love you?" she asked, almost timidly. "At all?"