People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back’ - Octavia E. Butler

Lilith might be strong enough now to handle troublemakers herself, but she did not want to do that unless she had to. It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter.

A tree
Cannot grow
In its parents’ shadows.

What will they do when they have only the herbs" he asked her.
"Live or die as best they can," she said. "Everything truly alive dies sooner or later.