Once upon a time, a little girl was happy. She was happy because her mother and her father stood alongside her.

Her family loved her a lot, as she was a single child in this family.

She also had a lot of friends who she enjoyed playing with.

The little girl was happy, and everything was fine.

But one day, monsters appeared in the forest nearby. Wearing plates of metal and spikes of fire, they slaughtered the little girl’s friends one by one.

To protect her from harm, her family hid her away, hoping the feeble cache was enough to foul the monsters.

At the end of the day, the little girl found her hometown burned down, her family and her friends were gone. She was sad because she was left alone.

As she was now alone, the little girl decided to travel around the world.

While traveling, she met those monsters again.

They were piling stones on each other to build large huts. They were razing down forests. They were crossing plains and seas aboard constructs of wood.

Those strange monsters terrified the little girl.

However, one day, she noticed the monsters caging other monsters. Big monsters. Same monsters. They caged a lot of different monsters.

So the little girl thought: “Maybe they also caged my friends and family!”

Then her adventure began.

She would look for traces of those strange monsters who hunted other monsters.

But sometimes, they also killed those monsters they caged.

So the little girl prayed.

She prayed that those monsters were malign enough to capture monsters, but not cruel enough to kill them.

She relied on humanity’s sick behaviour to find her friends and family.

She hoped that humans would be mischievous enough to keep her people alive as pet or at least as plaything.

She hoped that humans would be sadistic enough to not let her people die too soon so she could rescue them.

In order to not be alone anymore, she had to rely on humanity’s darkest side of personality.

And now that she learnt the truth, the harpy was sad as she never has been.

When she lost her friends and family, she was sad.

When she found out she had to survive alone in the wild, she was sad.

However, none of those memories could be compared to when she had to accept she was alone, again, but now forever.

She would never find friends again in a world where monsters only believed in killing other monsters.

She would never find a family, for she knew she couldn’t bear a child too.

The little girl was sad, for she already knew she would be lonely for the rest of her life.

“Philad!”

Hearing her name being pronounced by someone, the little girl turned her head towards the stranger.

She recognized him, he was the only good human she had met during her journey.

The only one who didn’t try to harm her. The only one who didn’t thought about caging her.

But as he looked at her face, he failed to say another word. Never in his life had he seen such sadness and hatred in someone’s eyes.

“Stop fooling with me, monster!” hurled the king as he managed to free one arm which he used to hit the harpy.

Her leg hurt from the blow, it wasn’t enough to break a bone, but sufficient to ignite her feelings.

In retaliation, she cried and cried and teared out the old man’s other arm.

Then she snuck her talons inside his rib cage.

Then she invoked flames to char his face.

The little girl was sad. But more than anything else, she was furious too.

Furious, because she prayed.

Furious, because she hoped.

And in the end, she recovered nothing.

Her eyes finally considering the carnage under her feet, Philad broke down in tears and curled up in a ball.

But when a warm hand touched her shoulder, she jumped away from the prince who tried to console her.

Then, a thought terrified her to the core.

In a world full of monsters, only one person extended his hand for her to grab.

It was fate at play, the Day Goddess’s wish to give her solace.

Like a mother pitying her lonesome daughter, She made them met.

Solace in the hands of a human. But how could the harpy find solace now that her hopes were crushed?

“Philad, wait!”

But it was too late. The play was at its end.

The harpy flew through the window, leaving behind only a single purple feather.