"It manages as it always has done. Always. Impermanance is one of the truly reliable qualities of life on any world. People are born, and they die, or are swept away on adventures of their own. We waltz in and out of one another's lives so frequently it's little wonder the world itself fails to take notice of us coming or going. How often have you looked through an old address book and realized you've not spoken to your friend in months? In years? When was the last time you thought of your primary school teachers? Or noticed the name of a bus driver? My dear, we are shadows. We remark upon each other in dappled light, we collide like meteors and those scars stay until they are covered in the sands of time, or erased by other collisions. The only reason all of us don't lie down in sleep never to awaken is that striving to make something that will stay with the world when we are gone -- we fight and make love so that something of us stays as proof that we were alive. A mark on someone else's life. A child born, a song written, a tree planted, a man killed, a life made better or worse for us... but the world, my bieuty... she never notices at all."
Even at his most contemplative, he seems to speak with a sort of lightness in his voice. Even death could sound cheerful coming from him. From his tone, it seems that his observations are not condemnations to loneliness -- his face shows a hint of wonder, as if all the world, both the good and the bad, was a great secret he was allowed to know.
"The world manages," he says quietly, "the same way we all manage when we miss something we have known and been accustomed to for some time. We are missed, and then forgotten, unless we make it not to be so. Do you smoke?" he asks, offering her a cigarette.