As quickly as they'd adapted to everything else, Chéri returned to a state of normalcy, neutrality. Malachi waited a moment in silence before he looked at them again, and his hands came to rest behind his back, clasped together.

"I am not telling you anything, really," he admitted with a smile. They seemed so eager to get some sort of definitive answer out of him, like everything he said had a purpose beyond simply winding them around. He was not so eager to tell them if there was.

"If that is what you want from me, then I forgive you. But I don't see anything you've done wrong, apart from being alive like the rest of us. You seem to think that of yourself, if you thought that I would reconsider my offer."