[/html]She knew her father would be disappointed with the way she'd turned out, if she ever saw him again. She remembered all the good things he had taught her and all the philosophical traps and fallacies of their world, but they were thinks she recalled after the fact, after she had already acted to the contrary and fallen into pits of despair and spite and maliciousness and it was too late to change her mind. She judged. She judged prejudice while acknowledging that that was probably a prejudice in itself. People all had their reasons, their perspectives, their explanations and justifications. She had hers.
It was easy to guess that every subsequent member of a group or class was like the few unpleasant and vile creatures you'd met before and remembered so well. A wolf killed your brother while you watched, once. Hate all the wolves. A coyote terrorized you as a child, once. Hate all the coyotes. You lost your leg in a fight with a dog, once. Hate all the dogs. It was easy. People liked easy. And it was safer that way, too, wasn't it?
But Cassandra only stroked the horse's nose, giving no outward sign of her judgment, and her own prejudices. "I've not known wolves to be more or less intolerable than anyone else," she said with a shrug, "But there do seem to be a good number of them in the area, so if you don't like them, it may not be the best place for you."
"I grew up near a town called Thornloe. A mixed pack lived there, mostly coyotes and hybrids." Ordinarily she would not divulge this information, instead giving some talented lie, but Thornloe was no more, and she doubted many would have heard of it anyway. Especially not a dog from "the forest" and another who had never heard of coyotes at all. You mustn't judge, Cassandra. But she was judging with information she'd been given, not appearances, at least. Self-justification spurred everything on. "I have family here somewhere," she continued. "I've never met them, but I think it's about time." If they were as horrible as she'd been told, then maybe she could turn her back on everything in the past, stop chasing phantoms, and finally do something else with her life.
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