Perhaps if Ishiah had been human from the start, he could have offered more. Noted the fact that every day one spent with companions was probably one more than they should have expected, that the glass was just as easily half-full as it was half-empty. But Ishiah didn't see the world through hues either rose or blue, didn't adopt the mindset of whoever he spoke with, but instead measured everything in terms of probability. Emotions in of themselves were still not something he could always accept for what they were, feelings that could be entirely arbitrary or set off by details that one couldn't always sense. When Lucy spoke of expecting people to go, Ishiah simply saw it as a fact — that everyone on the island was bound to leave at some point, that one would always feel like the last person to remain on the island because they could never be made aware of their own departures. It was every bit as plain as the fact that there would probably come a day, too, when Robin Goodfellow left him, whether on the island or back in Manhattan, because forever was simply not something that the puck could conceive of or resign himself to.

The sadness which increased with every day of Ishiah's mortality and every second of his time as a human, he didn't understand, and could hardly acknowledge that he felt any more than he could detect the slight change in the hue of the sky every time the sun rose. On some level, though, it was still there, the transition to a human state.

"You won't really be the last to go," he pointed out, the quiet of his voice used in deference and with respect. "There will be people who leave long after you have. But you will probably experience more departures of friends. I wish I could tell you what the purpose is, but I don't know of it, myself. At least this place usually seems to have the decency to keep children with their mothers, which is more than I could say for Earth."