Quest 131

( Private//Hackable by Friends )

In Daventry, there are people, and there are monsters, and it's really rather easy to tell the difference between one or the other, since people are people and monsters...well, it's hard to mistake a monster for anything but a monster, really. I've had more than a few monsters try to eat me in my life--a dragon, a troll, an ogre, some hags--but I always knew they were monsters, and there was never a doubt in my mind that they might try exactly that. Monsters don't tend to be very subtle when it comes to wanting to eat you, really. Ogres, in particular, are remarkably blunt about that sort of thing. And the hags I encountered even took the time to ask if I'd like to join them for dinner--though the stewpot they had boiling in the middle of their cave didn't leave many illusions about what exactly they'd meant by that.

People aren't monsters. I've always known that. But it wasn't until I came here that I started to realize that monsters aren't always monsters, either. I've known a few very polite vampires in my time here, for example. And I've met a few witches, as well, and they're not at all like the witches I've known back home. I once knew a witch so incapable of love that when someone tried to induce it in her, it killed her instead. The ones I've met here aren't like that at all.

What makes a monster? Perhaps it's being so incapable of love that the thought of remorse never even occurs to them. That dragon wouldn't have thought twice about eating me, and neither would the troll or the ogre. The hags certainly didn't. They were ready to eat me as soon as I wandered into their cave, without a single care for anything else.

The curse yesterday tried to turn people into monsters. But today, I think, is the real test of whether or not it succeeded; the worst curses are always the hardest to forgive, and yet they're the ones that need forgiveness the most. And a monster cares nothing for remorse or forgiveness.

Is this enough to stop calling this a mild October, I wonder? There's still fifteen more days to go, after all.

Todd, let's go riding today, if you have the time for it. Let's see if we can't run the fastest race of all time and outrun all this, if we ride fast enough.