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“But that was before everything changed with Sophia and Galvin, before you knew what kind of woman I am. But at the end of the year, when you told us the truth of who you are, had you invited us to help you find Valia’s brother, to help you fight the Profane in Handent, we would have jumped at the chance, but you never asked.”

Sophia mulled over Shannon’s words, then turned as Noah came down the stairs. “Hello, Noah,” she said with a bashful smile.“Sophia, so nice of you to visit. What’s going on?”“Can we talk? It’s important.”“Of course. Please, take a seat.”Shannon bowed. “Please excuse me, I’ll start the tea.”

Maybe you and I do deserve to suffer for our wrongdoing. If that’s so, then it means that when things get painful, when things get difficult, we don’t have the luxury of quitting. We don’t get to end our lives to escape what we did. Whatever form the pain takes, we bear it, we endure it, we welcome it, all while we try to make this world a place where people like us, like how we used to be, have no place, and the people who would be hurt can instead live in peace. The next time you encounter an obstacle you cannot overcome, when you just want to curl up into a ball and quit on the world, remind yourself that you don’t deserve the peace of surrender. You have to keep working, to keep fighting, to keep suffering, until the day when you’ve fully repented.