"'How do we learn to walk and ultimately run'?" She answered it herself. "By falling down, we crawl back up and keep going. There's no sense in being upset that you fell, or that you feel a certain way about falling. It's a part of the process as anything else." Her father always used to say that and for the most part it had ... Made her a little more reasonable, not necessarily made her feel better. "Only getting up halfway and never really walking again would qualify as weakness." At least that was how she felt about it.

"Also, the only thing that might be genuinely achieved from throwing up nails might be an infection, and then it would be such a pain to talk or even frown at people, and what's life without any of that?" It was sort of a weird, vaguely humorous thing to say. She tilted her head in a bit to kiss his forehead, nothing but comforting affection in it. "And you've nothing to thank me for. You're bound to the worst of it, if you need something I can give, of course its yours." And that might mean giving him space, being near him every instant, or giving him more control because he felt a lack of it. That was just ... How she loved. Nothing more, nothing less.