"I think the sun knew that the man could never actually take his children back. It's like if you were about to eat something, and I took it from you and rubbed my tongue on it, then offered it back. No matter how much you wanted it originally, it would still be somewhat spoiled." Shrieky would never do that, of course. Once you had licked something, trying to give it away was rude.

Peering down the train lines, he answers the question, a little absent mindedly, "Not from my home. I had a friend, before I came here, who left me for a year, to marry a woman on another continent. That was one of the stories they told him while he was there."