She wears her joys and sorrows in her hair in the form of pink and blue beads.
Only one other person in all of Spira knows about them, and she loves him because he helps her remember.
And to him it seems like it's too often that she shows up on his doorstep with a small block of wood and offers her knife – hilt first – to him.
And even though she says nothing at first, he can tell just by her expression that it's the blue stain he'll be reaching for today. And he thinks it's been too long since she's asked him to make her a pink bead.
She doesn't understand that joys should out-number sorrows because she's had far too many sorrows in her life already, and she thinks it's normal. She doesn't understand that every time he makes her a new blue bead, his heart breaks a little more.
But he never tells her. He lets her do the talking while he carves away the angular, rough edges from the wood, while he whittles a hole through the center, while he carefully, evenly applies the bright blue stain.
And she talks a lot while they sit, waiting for the stain to dry. Sometimes she laughs, sometimes she shouts, but mostly she talks and cries.
And then, when the bead is dry, he delicately twists a new braid for her, slides the bead on the end, and fastens it in place.
She thanks him for listening, for making her a new bead, and reclaims her knife on her way out.
And he wonders how long it'll be before she's back for the next one, how long until the next death or heartbreak or other tragedy that devastates her once again. And he opens his desk drawer, drawing out the handful of pink beads he's already made for her, just waiting for the day she'll come to claim them.
A little handful of happiness she'll never know he wants to give her.