Her face contorted and squished around as first her brother tried to give her a hug-- she really needed to teach him better about how to do that because it wasn't a very good hug, but he'd tried and that was what counted most-- then he tried to smile at her. And that was just as important as him trying the hugging, because Than didn't smile much. He almost smiled. The corners of his eyes would crinkled up, and the corners of his mouth would twitch, and really, he did a corner-y kind of smiling that was just Than's. So for him to do a smile smile? That was a big deal. Then he told her it was alright.
Thanatos was a wonderful brother. Some of her brothers didn't try to tell her things or explain things or even stop to look at her mud pies. They had things to do, like clomp around in big doomy boots and make people cranky and unhappy, which Lottie didn't like much but everybody had a job to do. That's what Mother said, everybody had a job to do, and people couldn't apprecidate how much good things were good unless they could compare it to something bad, so that's what some of her brothers and sisters were for. They were important.
But Than always seemed more important than the rest of them. He was always busy, so that meant important, didn't it? He was always busy, always gone, but he still tried to hug her and smile at her. So Philotes decided she was just going to have to help him so that his busy would be less busy. And that way she'd get to see him if she helped him, if she did his work with him. She didn't care if she wouldn't like it. She'd like being with Than. That was the part she wanted.
So when he said it was unpleasant sometimes, it made her pause. It made her blink. Because if Than did it then it couldn't be that bad, because Than was good. But he wouldn't lie to her either. So, trying to find an answer to that, all she could think to say was, “Why?”