The Vaster Wilds

by Lauren Groff

For even a good man was more deadly than the worst of bears,

Perhaps the eternal chain of being was not a chain at all but a ring, one life not ending where the other begins but all souls overlapping.

For, verily, godlessness and murder, the girl knew, were certainly not limited to the people of this new country.

But of course men, particularly the godly ones, have little common sense.

And she began to see now that when god created man and woman together and said to let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, perhaps by dominion god did not mean the right to kill or suppress the fish, the fowl, the cattle, and every creeping thing.

To be alone and surviving is not the same as being alive, she understood.

Though there was satisfaction in the work of her body and her hands, though mere survival was a triumph, she understood now that the long loneliness of such a life she would never choose for herself.