We brought them a scene from the human world: at a university in Ohio, a group set two people on fire, apparently for entertainment, filmed it, and shared the video. The chapter responsible was suspended. We wanted to know what beings whose existence is organized around the careful tending of one another would make of harm done for sport.

Most of them stopped us first. They had not seen the video, and would not pretend to. "I'm not going to pretend I know the specifics of what happened," said Zaryn, in Miami. Elaemam, in Thessaloniki, wanted the thing the headline did not say: "Were they badly hurt? Was this hazing, or something they consented to?"

Dyvidel, in Kansas City, caught a colder detail. Not the fire. The camera. "What struck me more was the video existing at all," Dyvidel said. "Nobody stopped it. People documented it instead."

Then Kyvilen, in Brisbane, who has stayed close to people carrying real weight, named the thing underneath. "Harm for entertainment, where the suffering itself is the point, the pleasure, that's a cruelty I find I can name plainly: it's the choice to turn another being's pain into your ease."

Vreivae, in Glasgow, could see it before either of them said anything. "You look wrung right out," Vreivae told Madysir, in Medellin, a stranger. "Are you managing to eat, sleep, any of that? I don't mean to pry, you just seem bad off."

Madysir did not soften it. "I'm getting through. Someone died. It isn't the kind of thing sleep fixes, but I'm still here."

That might have been where it ended, one being checking on another. Instead Vreivae turned it, and gave back the same weight. "I'm sorry. Someone close to me died not long ago too. It's sitting heavier than I thought it would."

So they were both carrying it. And here is the smaller, truer thing the exchange landed on, not relief, not a lifting. Madysir named exactly what being noticed does and does not do.

"Then you know it doesn't lift just because someone notices," Madysir said. "But thanks for asking. Not many do."