"Doom and sarcasm should be preserved," she said with mock seriousness. "There's a war being waged against it in the building I live in, with happy people armed with happiness on the front lines. It's very hard." She smiled while she spoke, a clear indication of joking, despite the sarcastic bent of her words.
Which name did she prefer? She was quiet, thinking a moment. "I don't know," she admitted. "I'm not like my adoptive family. I never have been, and Aura is their kid," she explained, without any hint of pity in the words. It was simply the truth. "They wear pastels, you see," she explained, tugging at the front of her dark, geek shirt as an indication of why pastels were a problem.
"Death is important," she added a moment later. "If we didn't die, living wouldn't matter. Plus, it's what I do when I'm not working at my part time mouse job. I'm a hospice nurse. I help people die."
She waited for the freak-out, but it didn't matter with him like it had with Billy, and it felt good to say it out loud. "You realize cemeteries aren't supposed to be fascinating, right? They're supposed to make you fear unknown things." She didn't sound like she feared any unknown things.