To eat or be eaten, to escape or be taken...a matter of utmost importance to the one concerned, yet it happens all the time and we don't even notice.

I know what the world is like. Nobody does anything unless there's something in it for themselves. But there are some people who do more than they have to for what they get in return, and those people are kind right to the heart.

Don't fret, boy. I'm not so foolish as to ridicule the myths and legends of other people. For countless generations, people, no matter where they're from, have been trying to understand this world of ours.

But look around at this world, how perfectly it's made. Flowers can't move, yet the insects come to them and spread their pollen. Trees can't move either, but birds and animals eat their fruit and carry their seeds far and wide.

Balsa seemed invincible, endowed with powers no other warrior could match, but in her profile he could glimpse the shadow of a young girl, hurt and buffeted by a cruel and hopeless fate. If he had never experienced what it was like to be at the mercy of fate himself, he would not have noticed, but now he could see it with unbearable, heartrending clarity.