"That's really beautiful," Marisa said, finding herself teary again over the story. She set her cereal down, because she'd watched that old video compilation of people crying while eating and while theirs had seemed pretty fake, she didn't want to accidentally become part of that particular meme just because she couldn't stop shoveling in Cheerios while crying about someone's pre-existentialist deathbed grieving. She busied herself with a napkin instead to dab at what she couldn't blink away while she thought about it. It was a bit of a surprise to find herself resonating with the story so much, but it was sad and sweet and while she felt like she did a fairly good job of appreciating beauty in her life, she was also a sensitive girl and it had been a hell of a few days. She was still sort of off-kilter.
"Sorry," she said, once the leaks had been addressed and she once again had her cereal in hand. "That was a really good story. Is it a parable from a specific text?" If she was less well-read in any particular area, it would probably be philosophy, not because she didn't like the subjects but mostly because her interests ranged more towards the sciences, history, languages. But if philosophical texts had stories like those, she'd been missing out.