While she prepared, Ryn thought of her mother. She missed not having her there. Sometimes it had seemed her mother was antisaddness, or perhaps just pure happiness. After she had disappeared into the shadows that surrounded the island, Ryn was Devastated. Her father was a different story. He loved her, sure, but with a quiet love that made you wonder if she was ever really there. It was always Mom who took them to the park, or played four square, or stayed up late at night to help them recite their line for the school play hundreds of times. So to Ryn, parents were opposites, a sun and a moon.Her parents had always worked hard and taught Ryn to believe in everything she did. She remembered the peace before the war with the darkness, the anarchy  of the elders,  the argument where it all started, and  the darkness, the darkness that had come from her. She remembered what the city had asked her to do.It had been simple, they said, just take a drink of this and think of all the hate and sorrow, and especially the darkness inside you. In reality, they only created a monster to serve them. They sold rich people safety,and if you couldn’t pay, to bad for you. The danger had begun with her hatred, the city said, and would end with her life. They were bad people at heart, and they thought that people were for nothing more than their ease and comfort, but they will never know what it's like to always remember the ones you love disappearing into an approaching dark, abducted in the night.