*
Did Duessa reconcile herself to the loss of her daughter? She did not.
Did she want her daughter as a husk to feed on? That is what she wanted.
Did she have millions of other souls in her grasp? Indeed she did.
Did she find a shortage of lost souls as she winged through the night, long past curfew? She never found a shortage.
Did the death of a stranger have the same satisfying taste as the death of one's own daughter? Oh, the witch moaned, how could it?
My darling, you are my own flesh. How I need you! The mother's lament floated through the night like a ballad -- echoed like the legendary ladies of the canyon in the old folk song, reverberated in sentimental ears and became heard and misinterpreted by singers all across the land: the cry of a mother for her child.
*
In the same way that, in cheap movies, a psychopathic killer is seen as all but invincible, breaking locks and entering private houses with ease, always creeping just behind the heroine, as if invulnerable in sheer badness -- never leaving tracks or prints, flowing this malice everywhere -- in the very same way, the common imagination will picture the devil as impossibly slick, impervious to all misfortune and unhappiness. People seem to think that every evil plot succeeds. And every plotter happy. But how could a life that is founded upon evil be so grounded in happiness? How could such a parasite -- feeding on goodness and happiness without even feeling them or having them -- how could such a thing summon your envy?
If you believe in God, why allot to the devil so much power? Why do you give the devil a happiness so inappropriate and impossible?
The parasitical figure is the weakest in the world.
She is a virus, she is not even alive. She only comes to life -- or pseudolife really -- when your own will is invaded and you let her drab capsid enter your own warm cell. She does not exist until you let her exist or make her exist.
*
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