I got to wear jeans again, today. It was a little colder than it has been, so I put on some warmer pants. Oh boy how I've missed them... They're so freaking good, jeans. I love them! This day has really put into perspective all the other jean-less days that I've lived.

Also, went to have lunch with my granny, today. It was nice! The food was just OK, really, but it's fine. We got soup!

Unrelated, but I kind of felt like writing, so I did. I think it's really bad and cringy, but hey!

Death can be loud and boisterous, at times, but it can also be sudden and quiet; Violent or peaceful; but it is always gruesome. The stomping out of the light of life – either by natural means or by the hand of Man – is always horrific.

Some people, however, are born with that particular circuit misaligned. Maybe because all the little parts that make them up aren’t meant to go together, or maybe because their mother coughed at the wrong time while they were in the womb. Regardless of the reason, that kind of person doesn’t care about life. They don’t see it as valuable – or rather, they don’t see it as any more valuable than any other thing.

That kind of person is dangerous. They’re like a wolf raised as a sheep. They know the value of a life, in a theoretical sense, but they don’t have an instinctual understanding of it. They don’t get it. There’s no reason to be scared of someone like that – at least not by their nature – but they’re dangerous when put in the position to disregard their conditioning. Or, of course, if they weren’t raised by sheep and were never taught proper behaviour.

Then, there’s that other kind of person: the sheep raised as a wolf. Someone that feels all the love, the empathy, the pain of others. A child that feels their own skin ablaze when they see their dad get burned by a splash of hot oil; the teenager that has to go to their happy place when a classmate’s presentation isn’t going well; the adult that walks around with headphones on to avoid hearing an awkward conversation. Well, if raised by a sheep, anyway, that’s how that kind of person turns out. However, if raised by wolves, if they’re shaped and forged by a mother that doesn’t value a life at all and by a father that values a life by how much money it can put in his pocket, then that sheep... It turns into something else.

The wolves are dangerous, but the sheep are deadly.

They don’t fake their kindness, they don’t need to act or deceive. They don’t need to be forced to ignore their programming or their nurture. That kind of person knows exactly what they’re doing. They know the pain they’re inflicting – and they feel it – and they do it anyway. They’re not mindless beasts or ruthless predators concerned only with their next meal. They’re hunters. Persistent, unrelenting. Body after body; they paint their walls red with their prey not because they’re hungry or because it is their nature to slaughter, but with a deeper purpose, a reason that only they know and truly understand. They’re calculating, cunning, resourceful, and most of all, deadly.

A street gang is a pack of wolves, but an empire is a herd.

In Shadow Slave, a few chapters ago, the MC gave this really terrible speech. It was incredibly cringe and self-important. Then, that speech was immortalized in his inventory. As such, I've decided to immortalize the above slosh in this post. It was supposed to be an intro to something else I felt like writing, but then it got a little out of hand and doesn't really work any more, I don't think so. Whatever!