Spice and Wolf - Volume 9 - Chapter 3.5

INTERMISSION

The human is a weak creature indeed.

It has neither fangs nor claws nor wings on which to flee.

So to protect themselves, humans must use their minds—technology, strategy, or…

Every creature, human or animal, shares a common method of self-defense.

And that is to form groups.

A single sheep is weak. But a flock of thousands need not flinch at the attack of a few wolves.

By functioning as part of that group, a single animal can find safety, surviving to leave behind descendants.

Humans are the same; they come together to live in groups, and those groups eventually came to be called villages, then cities, as they drove back the darkness of the forest.

But it is also the way of the world that groups formed to protect their members will struggle and fight with other such groups—for a group created for self-defense must necessarily regard outsiders as enemies.

It is like a single great beast, and for a single powerless creature to receive the benefit of that beast’s claws and fangs, they must think of themselves first as part of that creature rather than as a single individual.

When the beast turns right, they must turn right. When it runs left, they must run left. And when it wishes to eat fowl, a fowl they must hunt.

Even if that fowl happens to be their own beloved songbird.

The human is a weak creature indeed.

Here in this world where the gods have long remained hidden in the mists, humans cannot survive on their own.

So to protect themselves from the darkness of the forest, they become a single beast surrounded by walls of earth and stone.

Even though they know full well that having borrowed that great beast’s power even once, they will never escape its yoke.

Betrayal is never tolerated.

Such is the only way to survive the storms of fate that buffet the world—by the bonds of blood and solidarity.