I like treats, too.

[Lust sits there on the basement floor, her legs crossed under her and her hands in her lap.]

I know.

[It wasn't even two years ago that they'd been sworn enemies. But it had been different, back home. They'd all been different. How to explain all the complexities to a child? She sighs.]

Back home, I wasn't a very good person. I believed horrible things about myself, and it made me sad and cruel. I tried to find pleasure in the things I'd been told I should, but there wasn't any. I didn't think I could be good. I didn't think there was any humanity in me. But I've learned the truth since then. I'm not a monster and I never was, and I can be as good a person as I want.

Now I find pleasure in the things I like. Really and honestly like. Now I don't feel sad all the time anymore. And I treated you very poorly, back home, when I gave any thought to you at all. I don't want to treat you poorly here, I want you to have the things you deserve. A home, a childhood, a proper life.

[She's speaking openly to him. He's not so very young that he can't understand. And he isn't a normal child. He's one of them. Which makes him, by some sort of default, family. She tells herself that's all it is, this strange sort of tugging at her soft emotional parts he's begun eliciting. He's just so small and frightened and confused. She hates to see him like that. It's an uncomfortable new sort of instinct she's never encountered before.]

And children like to play. Someone should play with you.