"There are a lot of Chukchi beliefs like that. And a lot of Russian jokes about them, too. I don't know much about the actual science of stars. But I know they look different down here out of the Arctic Circle. Different in a good way, not a bad one," he clarified, growing more comfortable as the embrace went on. He could live like this, really just being close to someone who understood him. Ilya didn't need the world, he just needed not to be alone.

"What kind of things?" Ilya's curious still about how Dolemeck's mind works, how someone raised in such a less than ideal situation who had something so awful happen to him can be so smart and strong and yet so very human at the same time.