The living are always beautiful, she doesn't say. In stillness or in motion, the flow and flicker of them, the thousands of intricate interlocking systems working and failing. The warmth they have, the emotion, the striving and the vulnerability. They're so easy to love. Need is always cold and hungry, always sitting at their hearths, sipping a thin broth collected from the drippings of their feasts, aware of the spread before her and denying herself until that denial too is something to chew on. Things like Need are often predators or parasites on the living. A human mind changes without a human brain to support it.

Of course Palamedes means more of a specific, individual beauty, a hunger more familiar and palatable to the living and to him as only recently dead. He loves Camilla, in much the same way he had when he drew breath.

:While I have you like this-: and Need makes a diagram of what she's doing; while her hilt is in Camilla's hand she can extend a lattice (or is it a wing?) of herself up, tracing the girl's nerves, all the way until it folds like a handkerchief (like a hand?) around Palamedes. While she's doing this he can be awake without running off Camilla's body. It isn't struggling to support his mind and soul. Need is feeding him sensory input that she is picking up herself, he's not directly connected. If Need withdraws or Camilla stops touching the sword, he'll slot right back into place.

:I don't think Mindspeech, or an equivalent, exists here outside of me. But I'm very good at it. I can be a bridge for you.: