In the Forests of the Night

Love is the strongest emotion any creature can feel except for hate, but hate can't hurt you. Love, and trust, and friendship, and all the other emotions humans value so much, are the only emotions that can bring pain. Only love can break a heart into so many pieces.

Those who cannot be aggressive are hunted down while they shiver and hide because the night is dark.

I am one of them. I am also Rachel. I am Risika

Vultures devour the fallen. Hyenas destroy the weak. Humans kill that which they fear. Survive and be strong, or die, cornered by your prey, trembling because the night is dark.

It is a cruel thing to do, to cage such a beautiful, passionate animal as if it was only a dumb beast, but humans do so all too often. They even cage themselves, though their bars are made of society, not of steel.

Are you a god now, Risika, deciding who is to live and who is to die?

Humans are often this way. They go about their lives, constantly working, complaining of boredom one minute and overwork the next. They pause only to observe the niceties of society, greeting each other with 'Good morning' while their minds are somewhere else completely.

I fed on one of the true monsters—one of the many 'witch hunters' who interrogated and jailed the accused, seeking guilt where there was none. How humans can do such things to their fellows is beyond me. They torture, main and kill their own kind, saying it is God's will.

I fought; I fought for the immortal soul the preachers had taught me to believe in. I do not know whether I ever believed in it—I had never seen God, and He had never spoken to me—but I fought for it anyway, and I fought for Alexander.