“Rose. I’m sorry we couldn’t have met in better circumstances.”

“Spare me your pity. I just want to relax as much as I can in my final moments. We can talk if you want. But don’t do anything more to remind me how things are. I already know.”

Beth sat next to her, staring out at the forest together with her. They sat like that for a long while.

This time, Rose was the one to break the silence. “When I see that forest, I think… It's beautiful. It’s vast, untamable, incomprehensible. If I had a thousand years to live, I couldn’t explore it all.”

Beth replied. “It’s just… There's a lot of brutality behind that beauty. Almost everything in that forest wants to eat us. It’s barely possible for us to survive out there.”

Rose thought for a while at that, then responded. “Yeah. I guess that’s just the price we pay for all that beauty, that growth. Everything needs food. I guess that’s what we provide to this world.”

“I guess that’s true. Everything needs food to grow. I just don’t see why that food has to be thinking, feeling beings like us.”

Rose looked back at Beth. “What do you mean? As far as I can tell, that’s just the way of the world.”

“That’s not how it is where I come from. I’m from a land called Earth. Have you heard of it?” “I’ve heard people talk about it. Travelers. I didn’t know if it was a real place, or just a story.”

“It’s a real place, alright,” replied Beth. “I grew up there. Crisis had been there too, as a human. We were friends there. We went to school together. I miss it, badly. Everything seemed so much more sane there.”

Rose seemed curious now. “What is it like on Earth?”

“It’s… not perfect. People fight, even kill each other, for various stupid reasons. But they don’t need to kill to live. People never eat each other there! The few who do… we lock them in prison. We just eat plants and animals, not sentient beings like ourselves.” Neither Beth nor Rose noticed the cruel irony in her statement.

A tear appeared in Rose’s eye. “That does sound… like a peaceful place. Yeah, I wish I lived in a place like that. But I don’t. That may be how Earth works, but Felarya doesn’t work the same way.”

“Why not?” Beth asked. Rose’s ears perked up. Beth supposed she must have been surprised to even hear the question. “I mean… those “mouse-people” you eat, what do they eat?”

“Oh, I dunno. Bugs, berries, leaves, roots? I guess I never really asked them.”

“But they don’t eat people, right?”

“I guess not. There aren’t really any people small enough.”

“And yet… they survive, right here in Felarya, without eating anyone! Even though they get eaten by nekos all the time, they still manage to sustain themselves like this.”

“Hmmm… that is interesting. I guess I never really thought about it like that before. But the thing is… I’m not a neera. I’m a neko. They might not be meant to eat people, but I am!”

“Look out at that forest. It’s more vast, more lush than any I’ve ever seen on Earth. And people survive there on only plants and animals. They don’t have to eat anyone! I’m sure neeras aren’t the only thing you eat, right?” “Yeah. I couldn’t survive ONLY eating neeras. But I want to have a balanced diet, you know? Why should I deny my own instincts?”

“Because they’re people too! You realize I tried to say the same thing to Crisis, and she didn’t listen, and because of that… well…” she realized this was going somewhere Rose didn’t want to touch on, and stopped.

Rose sighed again. “I just don’t see why you’re bothering to argue this. It won’t bring back the neeras I already ate, and it’s not like I’m going to eat any more in the future regardless…”

“You don’t know that! Maybe I can convince her-”

“You’re not going to convince her of anything,” Rose cut in. “Many have tried, and all have failed. There’s nobody who loves eating nekos more than her.”

“I’ll try as hard as I can. That’s all I can do.”

“That’s all any of us can do,” replied Rose. “And unfortunately, at least here in Felarya, that often isn’t enough.”

“I suppose I can’t disagree,” sighed Beth. She turned around to face the man in the adventuring gear. He was sitting idly on one of the beds, staring off into the distance and fiddling around with a button on his jacket.

“What about you? What’s your name? What’s your story?”

“Why should I tell you?”

The man’s voice was dripping with contempt. It caught her off guard. “What?” There was a tinge of hurt in her voice.

“Why are you even here? You’re pals with that psychopath. You’re not going to get eaten, like the two of us are. Go sleep on her belly or something, fall asleep to the screams of the people she thinks you’re better than.”

Beth gasped in shock, then tried to defend herself. “I DON’T AGREE with that! I think it’s HORRIBLE! I’ve been trying to get her to stop-”

The man spit on the ground. “Get her to stop!? Filth like that can’t be reformed. They need to be put down.”

“I can’t exactly put her down, can I!? I’m doing everything I can, and that’s the best I can ever do!”

“You really want to help us? Then stop being so high-and-mighty. Tell her you’re ‘food’, just like the rest of us.”

“How would that even help?” asked Beth.

“It would make you less of a monster-loving piece of shit.”

Beth turned away, hurt by his insults. There was not really any point talking to him, she supposed.

She sat down on one of the beds and thought about what the man had said. She was trying her best to be a good person, ineffectual as she was, and yet that man despised her. Her mind went back to what she had said in the stomach, when she’d first found out Crisis ate people.

“Anyone who has it in them to do that is a psychopath, whether they know it or not! But you were so good at pretending to care about those around you, I even believed it!”

It struck her that, with this way of thinking, the man was right. It would mean Crisis was just simply a psychopath, and all attempts to reason with her would be less than useless. It would mean that Crisis only kept her around because she was useful in some way, and therefore she must be helping her eat people somehow, knowingly or unknowingly.

But when Beth thought about it, she knew that wasn’t true. She had no way to help Crisis hunt. She slowed her down, if anything. And yet Crisis still vomited her out, something she had never done before, something which hurt her, simply because they were friends.

Beth knew Crisis too well. She knew Crisis cared about those around her. That hadn’t changed. What had changed was that she now had all these other memories telling her that only certain people were worth caring about, and everyone else was nothing more than food, beaten into her over decades. The only reason she’d thought that Crisis was just simply a monster was that she hadn't wanted to acknowledge that it didn’t take a monster to do what she’d done. If Beth had lived the same life, grown up in the same way, she probably would have done the same thing.

Beth knew that none of this understanding lessened the horror, the pain and suffering and death that Crisis had inflicted on the world. But it did at least leave some hope for future change open, something worth pursuing through any means necessary, whether kind or cruel.

She lay down in the bed, exhausted from the most insane day of her entire life by far. It would still be a while yet before she could actually get to sleep.