It is important to appreciate beauty, even when it is evil.

I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore. I must try to remember.

They live forever. But many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think they bother with us? We teach them life's value.

And in that sliver of time, I felt the power around me coalesce, malice-hard and sharp as crystal. That this analogy occurred to me should have been a warning.

He was dead again when I got home that day. His corpse was in the kitchen, near the counter, where it appeared he'd been chopping vegetables when the urge to stab himself through the wrist had struck. I slipped on the blood coming in, which annoyed me because that meant it was all over the kitchen floor.

There is nothing foolish about hope.

You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.