“How much energy they put into harming each other. How little into saving.”

“He was safe for the moment, here in the playground, but people all over the world were suffering, starving, fleeing, killing one another as they waged their wars. How much energy they put into harming one another. How little into saving. Would it ever change? What would it take to make it change? He thought of Luxa's hand pressed into Ripred's paw. That's what it would take. People rejecting war. Not one or two, but all of them. Saying it was an unacceptable way to solve their differences. By the look of things, the human race had a lot of evolving to do before that happened. Maybe it was impossible. But maybe it wasn't. Like Vikus said, nothing would happen unless you hoped it could. If you had hope, maybe you could find the way to make things change. Because if you thought about it, there were so many reasons to try.”

“And it takes so much energy to stay angry with someone who cries so much.”

“Mutually counting on each other, watching each other's backs, forcing each other to be brave.”

“I also want to tell him how much I already miss him. But that wouldn't be fair on my part.”

“It's weird, how much he's noticed me... And apparently, I have not been as oblivious to him as I imagined, either.”

“And how I watched my little sister become a human torch. Closing my eyes doesn't help. Fire burns brighter in the darkness.”