Circling just close enough to hear, Alloran laughs sardonically. From him, part of a species that does not vocalize or have anything like the human laughter/sobbing reflex of short stuttered inhalations and exhalations, that's a series of something like painless static pops of emotion.

The nightrender notices the breeze from his passage and looks up, head tilting. The flying alien is too far away to get its full effect and it is intelligent enough to realize that even if it can climb the AT bubble, Alloran can fly away. Still.

<So you're one of those! I'm not going to argue that.> During his long infestation, the two and a half decades where Alloran's mind and body were completely at the disposal of the Yeerk in his brain, he had learned that he couldn't stay in true and total despair at all times. His main resorts had been daydreaming and going long periods without conscious thought, just an awareness of the body he could not move, that went on doing things without his willing it. There's a kind of appreciation in non-thought. Of course, now that he's not infested he has to work to not blank out or get caught in daydreams. <All the same, if there's beauty in chaos it ought to be there in calm too, don't you think?>