Settling down next to the boy on the steps – not really a boy, he’s eighteen, but that is still nearly a decade younger than Rhire, and he looks every bit his age, frightened, lonely – Rhire says nothing for a long while. The boy says nothing in reply, his face drawn and pale, hands clenched tightly in his lap. They shake anyway.

Are you an aasimar? I’ve never met one of your kind before!

Neither have I, so that makes two of us. They had smiled a little bit; the boy had laughed upon realizing it was a joke.

“You are not wrong to mourn,” they say at last. The boy doesn’t look up, but his head tilts, slightly. “No matter that the family you grieve for might have hurt you. It is not a crime to love them still.”

“He didn’t hurt me.” It means to come out harsh, but Joseph just shakes further, and his voice breaks. “He never hit me. He-- he took me in, after--- after. He never-- he didn’t. He didn’t.”