002: Paradox
Her life, her world, is one of paradoxes.
The Dark Other who regularly sends money home to her parents to help support them after retirement.
The Light Other who drains the happiness out of an entire crowd to gain some infinitesimal win for a 'just' cause.
The vampire that drinks only from cows and works at a blood donation bank to help keep humans alive.
The Light mage who keeps his beloved in a shoebox, except for one hour a day.
As is true for most people, Katya survives by excepting rather than attempting to explain the paradoxes. That Dark Other got that money by tricking some other poor couple into a bad investment deal. That Light Other was trying to save the world. That vampire isn't old enough yet to feel the true bite of the hunger it has been designed to feel. That mage... No one questions that mage. Her life is its own paradox, the girl given to healing but trained to be a ruthless fighter, the vivacious and gregarious charmer who trains her dogs to attack human and Other alike if they get too close to the house. It doesn't need explaining. It just is.
Sometimes, when very drunk (or not nearly enough), after a long patrol (or after too long on vacation) they will talk about the oddity that is their world. What is good, what is evil. Why aren't they the same as Light and Dark? The newer ones will argue that they are exactly the same, of course they are, but the young will do that. She did that, once. Before she had to walk away the first time a vampire proved he had a license to hunt the woman he was draining, one signed by the Night Watch. Before she wiped the cheer clean out of the mind of a little boy to use to strengthen her attack on a rampaging Dark witch. Before she'd spent forty-five minutes of that precious hour raging at the only person besides Boris Ivanovitch who would listen to her rage after she discovered the werewolf they were after was only trying to defend its children, and was responded to only with sad blinking.
Because there's nothing to say.
Light is not good. Dark is not evil. But they tend to align along those lines, on the whole. And the cases where they don't?
It is what it is.
The Dark Other who regularly sends money home to her parents to help support them after retirement.
The Light Other who drains the happiness out of an entire crowd to gain some infinitesimal win for a 'just' cause.
The vampire that drinks only from cows and works at a blood donation bank to help keep humans alive.
The Light mage who keeps his beloved in a shoebox, except for one hour a day.
As is true for most people, Katya survives by excepting rather than attempting to explain the paradoxes. That Dark Other got that money by tricking some other poor couple into a bad investment deal. That Light Other was trying to save the world. That vampire isn't old enough yet to feel the true bite of the hunger it has been designed to feel. That mage... No one questions that mage. Her life is its own paradox, the girl given to healing but trained to be a ruthless fighter, the vivacious and gregarious charmer who trains her dogs to attack human and Other alike if they get too close to the house. It doesn't need explaining. It just is.
Sometimes, when very drunk (or not nearly enough), after a long patrol (or after too long on vacation) they will talk about the oddity that is their world. What is good, what is evil. Why aren't they the same as Light and Dark? The newer ones will argue that they are exactly the same, of course they are, but the young will do that. She did that, once. Before she had to walk away the first time a vampire proved he had a license to hunt the woman he was draining, one signed by the Night Watch. Before she wiped the cheer clean out of the mind of a little boy to use to strengthen her attack on a rampaging Dark witch. Before she'd spent forty-five minutes of that precious hour raging at the only person besides Boris Ivanovitch who would listen to her rage after she discovered the werewolf they were after was only trying to defend its children, and was responded to only with sad blinking.
Because there's nothing to say.
Light is not good. Dark is not evil. But they tend to align along those lines, on the whole. And the cases where they don't?
It is what it is.