“Everything in moderation. Too much of a good thing will eventually become a bad thing.” - Old folk saying.
“I still find it… hard to understand why so many people are so… selfish, if what you described is true,” said Kino somewhat reluctantly.
“Oh, the analogy I made just not?” asked Aideen. She had explained how most of the world went to Kino by giving the girl an example where there were ten apples and ten people to share them. In a perfect world, everyone would take one of the apples and share the rest with the others. However, the fact was that more often than not, one person would take nine of the apples and leave the last for the others to split amongst themselves, if that. “It’s sadly an all too common sight in the world, honestly.”
“Like I told you last time, everybody has desires. Some amongst them however made the choice to indulge in theirs a bit too much, which leads to excesses, more often than not,” explained Aideen. “Now, I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing to have desires. In fact, it’s a very normal thing for anyone. The problem starts when you’re not in control of your desires and are instead controlled by them.”
“Can you give me an example, big sis?”
“Sure. For example, here,” said Aideen as she casually plucked a ripening peach from a tree growing by the roadside and tossed it to Kino. The girl caught the fruit and nodded in thanks before she rubbed the outside of the fruit with her tunic’s sleeve to clean it. The fruit made a crisp sound as she took a bite and chewed happily.
“You like peaches, no?” asked Aideen after Kino ate around half of the fruit, to which the girl replied by nodding her head vigorously. “Now imagine if you’re so obsessed with them that you ended up picking all of them from the trees, leaving none for others. You probably have some desire to do that if you could, but wouldn’t act on it, right? Because it’s not a nice thing to do?”
“Mmm-hmm,” replied Kino while chewing the last of the peach in her hand, leaving only the core.
“For some, they wouldn’t care if it’s a nice thing to do or not. There are many people out there who would go out of their way to hurt or otherwise make other people suffer purely for the sake of their own desires,” elaborated Aideen as they walked. “Celia, sorry for having to call on some of your past, but do you still remember what the bandits that caused your deaths accosted you for back then?”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Mostly for money, at first,” said Celia without much preamble. While the memory still pained her, she had gotten much better at dealing with what had happened in the past. It was not like she could change it, anyway, and letting it continue to haunt her would also be a pointless thing. “Then they were angry and killed grandpa after they saw how little money we had, and took me for… wait, should we be talking about this in front of her?”
“Fair point, maybe not yet,” admitted Aideen with a nod, somewhat happy to see that Celia was more at peace with her past compared to before. “But as Celia said. Some people were willing to kill and abuse other people purely out of their desires. In this case that’d be their greed for money as well as to vent their frustrations when they failed to get enough of it.”
“While there are certainly some bandits out there who were forced into crime by circumstances and only did it because it was the only way they could survive, I can personally confirm that the bandits Celia ran into weren’t that sort,” she added almost nonchalantly. “After all, I do make certain that those I kill deserve to be killed and would leave the world a better place without their presence.”
“You… killed them?” asked Kino as she quailed somewhat from the realization.
“Not everybody in this world deserves mercy, Kino. Some people are little better than animals that only know how to bite others. Some others are even worse than animals, beasts that would even prey on their own flesh and blood and exploit them for their own selfishness,” said Aideen vehemently. “Honestly, there are many people where the world would be better off had they been drowned at birth.”
“Sad matter of fact is, girl, that being too nice would just get you exploited by the unscrupulous scum of this world. It’s far from the best place to live, but everyone had to make do with what they got,” Aideen continued before Kino could say a word in protest. “For that reason, you will need to learn when you can be nice to people, and when they do not deserve it.”
“How would I be able to learn that?” asked Kino rather timidly. The only time the girl had done anything violent in her life had been by accident, so she was somewhat uncomfortable with the topic. Aideen felt that it was something she would need to learn as soon as possible, though. Someone as naive and trusting as Kino would have been devoured alive by some of the rotten scumbag she had seen otherwise.
“Oh, don’t worry. After you learn and understand more, it will become more obvious which people are good and which only deserve a one-way trip to Tohrmut’s realm,” assured Aideen. “The nasty man had been negligent with your education after the old man was gone, so first we’ll rectify that. You’re quick on the uptake, so I doubt you’d have much problem catching up.”
“Okay… I guess I’ll take your word for it then, big sis,” said Kino with a nod of her head. The girl was still somewhat uncertain about things, but she at least knew that the big sisters before her had brought her out and taught her many things, and had been nothing but nice to her. She felt that she could trust them, and followed behind them as they walked with reassured steps.