We have grown to trust blindly in our senses of balance and reason, and I can see where the mind might fight wildly to preserve its own familiar stab… - Shirley Jackson

I don’t like the younger sister,” Theodora said. “First she stole her sister’s lover, and then she tried to steal her sister’s dishes. No, I don’t like her.

Around her the trees and wildflowers, with that oddly courteous air of natural things suddenly interrupted in their pressing occupations of growing and dying, turned toward her with attention, as though, dull and imperceptive as she was, it was still necessary for them to be gentle to a creation so unfortunate as not to be rooted in the ground, forced to go from one place to another, heart-breakingly mobile.

Only human beings and rabid animals turn on their own kind,