"Yeah. He sure was, uh." 

"...I'm half-human."

The only thing that comes to mind is 'do you want a hug' and offering physical touch is -- not really a thing he can do at the moment. 

"I'm sorry," he says instead. 

"I mean... it's not..." He tries to form his mouth around words. "Human children are so good. And then they get older and... we don't know a lot about adult humans but they're. Less good. They hurt kids a lot."

"...kids hurt other kids too. I think everyone just hurts everyone." 

"I mean, they often don't mean to, and it's usually because other people are hurting them first."

"....as someone who got bullied for being weird all through elementary school, they often mean to. But I'm not going to disagree with you that lots of adults hurt people." 

"...sorry. I didn't mean to. Get all depressing. I really just wanted to ask what the purpose of fish was."

Shrug. "It's fine, I think most conversations I have will turn depressing. They're a thing to take care of and they're seen as a low-effort version of a more interactive pet. Not that nobody ever has super high-effort aquarium setups but I think those people get a different thing out of it than a kid who asks for a goldfish for Christmas and I don't actually know any of those people well enough to have asked." 

"..........yeah I'm probably pretty depressing too. Because. I like people." 

"...that's the least depressing reason to talk about lots of depressing things I've ever heard. I say that flippantly but also I mean it as a legitimate compliment." 

"I was on naughty-and-nice duty before I was Santa's assistant and... being on naughty-and-nice duty is awful."

"...that's the one where you watch what kids are doing, or —" 

"Yeah-- at the time we watched them all the time but that took a lot of elfpower so we could only do it in New York and we were going to have more elf kids to make up the shortfall but I figured out how to make it so you could just watch the kids at random times and still figure out how naughty or nice they are on average--"

"— you independently invented random sampling? Cool." 

...oh gosh Sasha keeps making that face at him. It's a very good face.

"Yeah, that's why I'm Santa's assistant."

"I don't think I'm getting across how cool I think that is but yeah." 

No, it does, and his brain is completely failing to process it.

"It's really nothing."

"It's not, humans figured it out — I'm not sure how long ago actually — and it gets used in all kinds of things, it's incredibly useful and you just, independently derived it from nothing — that's not nothing." 

A really cute person keeps saying nice things about him and it is making him squirm in his seat.

"It was really very obvious-- you just have to watch them enough, and spread out so that it's not just a weird week--"

"Well, I'm still impressed." 

"...you keep saying nice things about me."

"Nice things keep being true." 

He should probably redirect the conversation to be about the Generic Winter Holiday spirit. 

Instead, he bounces.

.....cute. 

"Do we know what the Yule spirit is shaping out to look like? — also, did the other santa have more policies I should know about."