"I'm glad you're fine. And it's good to keep busy, isn't it?" Curufin used the same strategy to get through the days and nights. "Say, how's your painting coming along? Any interesting projects in the works?"

The last person departed through the turnstyle, and Curufin felt a kind of emptiness. "Maybe so, though it was important to me the first time I did it. I can't stop anybody from leaving, and I don't know why they're going. But I can say goodbye. I don't know whether they can hear me or not, but if they can, it might be a comfort to them, to know that they will be missed."

He shakes his head. "Anyway, that's better than the alternative, which is that they aren't in any sense here at all, that the train simply provides us with images of the people who have already left. Holograms, or some such thing."