"But the same sun that warms also burns.  You light a candle, sometimes you burn down your house.  Maybe there's some kind of order to the universe, but it isn't a<i>moral</i>order.  When I kill a deer to eat of it, I give no regard to the pain of the deer.  When someone dies in a fire, the flames neither laugh nor cry," he said.  "It's a cliche, but it happens to be a true one: the day you're born is the day you start to die.  We are<i>born</i>for death, and I think the world is the same.  The world will die as certainly as we will."<br/><br/>He poured more water over him, started to dry himself.  He would start to walk towards the fireplace in the other room since the temperature plunged as the night went on - and passing a window shows that heavy snowflakes were falling in slow, dense waves.  In wolf form, he didn't mind the cold at all, but his human form wasn't as tough to freezing weather and appreciated the warmth of the fire.<br/><br/>"We create our own meaning.  We are all born.  We all die.  For a while - a brief, painful, glorious while - we are alive.  It is in my nature to enjoy that while I can, even though I know it will end.  Everything ends, but it didn't mean it didn't happen.  Life - being alive - is a fuck you to the chaos.  It's a fuck you to the witches and their agenda, it's a fuck you to the leeches, it's a fuck you to whatever maniac set this in motion - whatever god or goddess or devil or - and I think this is most likely - the idiot, mindless, unscripted whims of an uncaring, unthinking fate."  He looked at her, toweling off his chest, and shrugged.  "It's the only move I have that matters.  We<i>must</i>face the gallows, but I believe we can choose how we face it.  If that's all the choice we've got, I'll spit in my executioner's eye."