At the Jersey family estate, Bethany and Jocelyne sat together on the couch in their living room. Mother and daughter were doing nothing: they were just staring at a large clock on the wall. Or at least, Jocelyne was staring at him without even blinking, while Bethany's eyes went from her watch to her daughter about every ten minutes.

Finally, the older woman tried to break the ice: "Jocelyne, honey, do you want to read a book?"

"I don't want to"

"Do you want to watch tv?"

"No, thank you"

Bethany sighed. "I know what you're thinking, starlight, and believe me when I tell you that staring at that clock won't change anything. You should try to distract yourself"

"Mh" was the only response from her daughter, who didn't move her gaze from her watch an inch. Bethany shook her head: when she made up her mind something about her, her daughter became really stubborn.

It had been nearly a year since the events that marked Jocelyne. By now the girl had already turned thirteen. In all that time, she had rarely left her room except to do chores. If before her abduction she used to wander around the house whenever she had the chance, now she had turned into a sort of cloistered nun. It was rare that she spent time with her parents, except in exceptional cases. Like that day.

"The trial has been over for an hour. Dad should be back in a moment"

Her words turned out to be correct: just ten minutes after she said them, Markus Jersey entered her house. "Hi, Jocelyne, Bethany"

"Welcome back, husband" his wife greets him.

"Yes, hello, dad," Jocelyne said as she stood up and strode towards him until she was less than two feet away from him. "How did it go?"

"The trial was long, but we finally got a sentence"

A year had passed, but Jocelyne still hadn't received a single sparkle of justice. Markus had indicted the Magni family as soon as he learned who was responsible, but just opening the trial had already been a feat. The judges did not want to antagonize any of the families and the other heads of families did not take kindly to the situation.

The Magni family had tried to get Markus to drop the charges in many hands, from simply offering him money to proposing business deals. The other families had also advised him to accept. But Markus had refused everything and continued on. There had also been threats, but nothing had been enough to make him give up.

Armed with the best lawyers, Markus had managed to open the trial, but the judges exploited every legal technicality to postpone the sentence. The Magni family had continued to bribe the judicial authorities in the hope that he would surrender. Despite this, Markus hadn't given in. And finally, after about a year, a sentence was reached. However, Markus knew Jocelyne wouldn't like the outcome of the trial at all.

"Our lawyer, Mr. Specter, was very competent," he explained. "The damned judge wanted to delay again, but Mr. Specter cited two legal practices that forced him to conclude the trial today. The court was very reluctant, but in the end..."

"What is the sentence?"

Jocelyne's voice cut off Markus's explanation midway. The man bit his lip. "Jocelyne, I want you to understand that our lawyers and I have done everything possible..."

"What is the sentence?"

"...but the Magni family has the backing of Mr. Kimber, and as you well know he is the richest man in the nation, and has greatly influenced the judgment despite..."

"What is the sentence!?"

Markus didn't seem to be able to look his daughter in the face. He knew what he would find, and he was afraid of it. "The Magni family will be forced to pay a large refund to our family, as well as let us exploit a large part of their possessions for free for the next five years, and obviously they will have to disown the now deceased Mika and apologize publicly"

Silence fell in the room. Markus continued to stare at a random point in the room, not wanting to lower his gaze and meet his daughter's. Bethany looked at her husband with a strange expression, a mixture of resignation and compassion.

Then, Jocelyne's voice reached her ears. "So that's all it is? A sorry and a little humiliation?"

Markus just nodded. "Our lawyers did our best, but your kidnapping was not the first precedent and no judge would ever go against Kimber. Also, no one felt that the situation should be taken seriously..."

"…because I'm a woman," Jocelyne hissed.

Markus remained silent, not having the courage to confirm this statement. "Anyway, the Magni family didn't come out unscathed" he said trying to sweeten the pill. "The economic damage they have suffered is quite large and with this humiliation they have lost a lot of credibility. Almost all their allies have already abandoned them and my spies have confirmed to me that Kimber himself told their breadwinner that this will be the last favor he will do to them. Within a few years or a decade at the most, the Magni family is likely to fall into ruin. Isn't that enough for you?"

He quickly realized he had said the wrong thing. His survival instincts kicked in and the hairs on his body stood on end, as if they sensed a ruthless predator nearby. And then he heard his daughter's voice, but it was different than usual: her timbre made him shiver. "Father, look at me"

Markus didn't want to do it, but appealing to all of his willpower she lowered her gaze until she met his daughter's eyes. And in an instant he remembered why he was so afraid to do it. Normally, Jocelyne's face was always smiling and sunny, so innocent that it looked like an angel's one; but in that moment, it seemed to Markus that he was looking at death incarnate.

There was no sign of kindness, no smile, no jovial expression; Jocelyne's entire face was drawn up in a hard, stern expression, with her lashes and lids drawn down so far that a few lines had formed on her forehead. But what really scared him were her eyes. They were empty, flat and soulless. Markus couldn't see any sign of his daughter in them. The only emotion they expressed was judgement: the man felt as if he were facing a supreme being who had to judge him for all the faults he had committed in life.

Markus had only seen those eyes once, when her daughter had been furious with him for how she had used her. This time, she had seen them for a mere instant, when Jocelyne was walking away after taking all of her anger out on him, and that instant had been enough to terrify him. That flat calm that his daughter's eyes expressed was frightening. Looking Jocelyne in her eyes at that moment, Markus got the impression that she could have killed a person without blinking. It was as if her soul had left her body.

Then Jocelyne spoke, and Markus didn't remember ever hearing so much hate in his daughter's voice. Her words seemed literally laced with poison. "Every night... every damned night, I relive that hell, in ten thousand different ways and scenarios, and believe me when I tell you that there is no limit to the creativity of the mind. Whenever I'm alone, even if I'm in my own home, I feel fear gripping my heart and I can't help but constantly look over my shoulder. When I step out of these four walls, I feel like a wolf is lurking behind me and is ready to pounce on me, even though I have ten or twenty soldiers to protect me. I can't eat anything without remembering everything I had to eat in the forest. I can't lie down on a bed or sofa without thinking about when I was supposed to sleep in the leaves. I can only shower because I can't take a bath in a tub without imagining a giant crocodile leaping out of the water to devour me. Every time I go out into the garden and look at the trees, I see myself standing on one of them waiting for a monstrous predator find me or the dinosaur that was protecting me and kill us both. Every time a man touches me, even if I know him and he's kind, I instantly get goosebumps. I don't know how long these traumas will stay with me, but it's clear by now that I can say goodbye to my childhood and probably a good part of my adult life. So no..." Jocelyne's tone got so hard she sounded like she was chewing on iron. "...that's not enough for me"

Markus Jersey wanted to say many things at that moment. He wanted to say that he was sorry. He wanted to admit that he had failed as a father to him. He also wanted to hug her daughter and hold her close. He couldn't do any of it. Those terrifying eyes had frozen every muscle in him. He could only watch helplessly as his daughter gave him one last, blank, soulless stare and then turned her head to head for the door.

Suddenly Bethany's voice brought him back to reality. "Jocelyne, don't talk to your father like that!" the woman yelled. "He did all he could. This sentence is probably the best a woman has ever received in this country. If that's not enough for you, what more do you want?"

"What do I want?" Jocelyne had stopped as she grabbed the handle, and in that moment she gripped the metal so hard that she Markus thought she was going to bend it. "I want to see them gone! Every single one of them! Every single fucking bastard son of a bitch in this goddamn nation! I don't care who they are or what their background is, I want to see them in a grave!"

And having said this she went out slamming the door. Silence returned to the room.

Bethany sighed. "When that girl gets rude, it means she's really mad" she murmured. "Sorry, you know that..."

"Yes, I know. She has every reason to be so angry" Markus said. "I'm such a failure as a father"

"Don't say that. You did all you could"

"And in any case I still have a daughter in the throes of traumas from which I don't know if she will ever get rid of, and for which she will never get justice"

Bethany put a hand on her husband's shoulder. "You aren't omnipotent. A parent can do anything for a child, but there are limits that cannot be crossed" she said. "Let's forget about what she said, at least for now. We'll talk to her later, when she's calmed down"

"She's never going to calm down, Bethany" Markus whispered softly, then trembled slightly. "In those eyes... they are my daughter's eyes, the same eyes I look at every day, but when I stare into them when she is judging me, or is judging someone else... they look like the eyes of a demon to me. Everything she went through… it broke her. It seems to me that the smiling Jocelyne we spend time with every day is now just a facade, and that other one is her true self. A constant emptiness filled only by anger and hate, which will not stop until he gets revenge"

Bethany sighed deeply. "I know" she admitted. She had noticed him for a long time now. Markus wasn't that good at reading his daughter's emotions, but a mother's watchful eye couldn't be fooled. Those little gestures, those movements, that light in her eyes, were all signs that Jocelyne showed every day and that revealed unequivocally that by now her smiling and jovial face was nothing more than a mask that hid innumerable scars that burned continuously. "But unfortunately we can do very little. Apart from providing her with all the support at our disposal and having her have sessions with psychiatrists, what else could we do? We are not gods, neither you nor I, Markus. We can't magically make those wounds disappear" she said. "All we can do, in cases like this, is wait, do everything in our power to help her, and hope"

Markus clenched his fists. He didn't know if he was angry, disappointed in himself, resigned or tired, or all of these things together. "I need to distract myself" he finally said, eager to escape that crappy reality for a while.

Bethany nodded. "Me too. Come, let's go to the room"

The two quickly made their way to their bedroom and there they threw themselves on the bed. There had never been love between them, theirs was a relationship born of an agreement between their families, but neither of them had ever disdained the other's body. And especially in the last period, both of them had started to want to make love more often: at least, in that moment all their desperation vanished, even if for a very short time, leaving room only for passion and desire.

*************

Jocelyne couldn't stop running. She'd been around the house three times already and the servants had probably started to worry about her or think she was crazy, but she didn't care. She just wanted to run.

Why? She had waited a year to see those responsible for her kidnapping pay dearly for their crime. She had dreamed several times of seeing them in chains, or at least in a prison. Even her exile would have suited her.

Instead, that accursed nation in which she lived had not guaranteed her any justice. Money and excuses? What kind of justice was that?

Jocelyne was furious. All the justice she had imagined was shattered in the face of harsh reality. She would get no compensation for all the trauma she was forced to endure.

Jocelyne, she knew that punishing those responsible for her wouldn't cure her of nightmares and depression, but at least she could console herself with the thought that she would set a precedent. Knowing her story about her, people would have started to change their attitude towards women, at least for fear of suffering the same fate as her tormentors. Instead, that trial had shown that men could do whatever they wanted and they would come out clean. All her pains had been for nothing. More girls like her would have been kidnapped and tortured and no one would have ever stopped that.

She wanted to see them burn. All of them. Those damned judges, those fucking heads of households, those damned politicians, everybody. She wanted to see that rotten nation burn!

She almost threw up when she realized what she had just thought. Her body trembled. Had she really just imagined watching the nation burn? And did she like it?

Not only criminals lived in Odaria. Most of the population, as in all world states, consisted of good people. And she had just thought of burning them and had smiled imagining the scene.

'Am I really such a bad person?'

She knew she should hate herself for what she had just thought, but as hard as she tried she just couldn't. All she could do was keep running.

She didn't know where all that energy came from. Her sweat beaded her forehead, her leg muscles ached, her lungs burned, but she couldn't exhaust all that energy that kept pervading her body like an electric shock.

She circled the house one more time, and she probably would have done it many more if she hadn't bumped into something soft that knocked her off balance and knocked her to the ground.

"Miss Jersey, are you all right?"

Jocelyne opened her eyes again and managed to focus on Jackson's face as he held out his hand. "Ugh… yeah, I didn't hurt myself. What did I bump into?"

"On my tummy" Jocelyne looked towards where her voice had come from and discovered that the source of hers was Abe. "Forgive me for getting in the way, but we called you several times and you didn't seem willing to stop, so..."

"D-Don't apologize. Thanks" Jocelyne stopped him trying to get to her feet, but her legs couldn't hold and she fell back to the ground. That energy that had animated her until a few moments before her had vanished. She now she was barely able to move. She felt pain in her spleen and muscles, a clear sign of all the effort her body had just made. "Please… take me to my room" she murmured in a thin voice.

Abe and Jackson looked at each other with a strange light in her eyes, a mixture of concern and pity, after which her big man grabbed her with her powerful arms and lifted her with the help of her head of security.

Neither of them said anything on the way. They knew Jocelyne's mental state wasn't good at the moment. But they walked as slowly as possible, as if they hoped she would tell them something.

However, Jocelyne didn't say a word. Finally, it was Jackson who broke the ice: "Miss Jersey, if you need help with..."

"I don't need it. Thank you"

Jackson bit his lip. "You know, we learned about the trial and..."

"Don't tell me about it!"

Jackson almost jumped back and Abe stopped his walk. They had never heard Jocelyne talk like that. "Just take me to my room!" she growled with a scary look.

The two remained motionless for a moment, then Abe said: "Rafiki, I'll take her. There's no point in going in two"

"But..."

"You have some tasks to finish. I'll take care of it here"

Jackson looked at Abe searchingly, but then turned and walked away. Jocelyne didn't know what they had said to each other in that silent communication with her eyes, but she honestly didn't care. She didn't care about many things anymore at that moment.

Abe carried her to her room in religious silence. He didn't say a word and didn't even look at her. When they passed servants, Abe simply nodded for them to go away.

Jocelyne was initially happy with it. At least for a while she basked in that silence. However, her silence soon began to grow oppressive, nearly crushing her. Even so, she Jocelyne did not speak.

When they arrived, Abe entered the girl's room and laid her on her bed. Jocelyne's weary body seemed to melt as she touched the comfortable mattress. "Thank you. You can go now"

Abe nodded and headed for the door. However, when he arrived he stopped. "Miss Jersey, I know you are upset at the moment and I understand it. However, I take the liberty of giving you some advice"

"I don't want it. Just leave"

"I'm afraid you'll have to push me out the door to shut me up"

"Asshole. You know perfectly well that I can't get up, and that even if I could I would never be able to push you away. You're too big"

"Yeah. So you're forced to listen to me"

Jocelyne was tempted to grab the first available thing and throw it at her head, but she held back. "Okay. What do you want to tell me?"

Abe sighed. "It's not an easy time for you and I understand it, but believe me when I tell you that running away and running all over the house won't do you any good. Nor will it help you lock yourself up and push away the people who love you"

Jocelyne gripped the mattress. "Shut up. You don't know anything"

"No, it's true. I haven't been through even a tenth of what you've been through. But I know what it's like to be angry at life and at the world" said Abe. "I recognize your gaze. You just imagined seeing the world explode or burn"

A vice gripped Jocelyne's heart. "I never imagined anything like that" she lied shamelessly.

But Abe didn't give up. "I grew up in a rundown orphanage. I never knew my parents, I just know that they abandoned me there and never came back for me. The people running that place were awful and you had to constantly fight to get food" he said. "I remember well what I felt. For a long time, I was filled with anger. I would not hesitate to commit the worst acts of crime. Whenever I hurt another child, or stole money, or committed any crime, I told myself that since I could not be I was happy, there was no point worrying about other people being happy. But then, one day, Jackson's mother found me"

Jocelyne wanted to ignore it, but she couldn't stop listening. Her story was interesting to her. She didn't know Abe had been through so many things. "It happened by accident. I had gone to her to get treatment for a slight fever, but she quickly realized that the fever wasn't my problem. I wanted to leave, but she offered to stay for dinner. Every day I was going to leave, but she asked me to help her with the sick, or clean the bandages, or dry the clothes, and in the end I always ended up staying for dinner.And every night, she would joke with me and not she treated me differently than Rafiki. No matter how much I grunted, how much I screamed, how much I insulted her at times; she never stopped smiling at me. And slowly, that anger I had started to disappear. The monster I was becoming recoiled in terror from the face in the light that woman carried with her until she disappeared completely. And before I knew it, I had become part of the family. Those actions that before I had done without blinking, now seemed cruel to me. That kindness and generosity that Jackson's mom showed to her patients of her, who before her had seemed senseless and foolish, now she appeared to me noble. That woman had gone from a mere tool to heal from fever, had transformed in my eyes into one of the bravest and most kind-hearted people I have ever known, one to whom I would entrust my very life. Thanks to her, I gained a mother, a brother, a home, a family... a future. If I'm here today it's only thanks to her. If I hadn't met her... I don't think I would have ever been able to get rid of that anger that burned like a fire inside me"

Abe's hand gripped the handle and lowered it slightly. "That's why I repeat to you: don't keep everything inside and don't push away the people who love you. I know that after what you've been through, an act of love now seems like a weakness to you. But it doesn't do you any good. It doesn't do anyone any good. If you continue like this, sooner or later that anger will end up swallowing you and you will collapse" Abe opened the door and started to leave, then turned to look at her. "I don't know what you've been through and what you're going through now, and I doubt I'll ever figure it out. No one really understands how painful a wound is if it's not inflicted. But, I can try. I want to try. Jackson wants to try too. Your parents too. We are all on your side, miss Jersey: never forget that"

And having said that, he went out and closed the door. The oppressive silence returned to cover every noise in the room.

Jocelyne stared at the ceiling, drained of all energy. Get rid of anger? She felt it was easier to cut off her legs. Talk about it with someone? She could have tried…but she felt it would be futile. She had already spoken to numerous psychologists and psychiatrists, but no one could truly understand what she was feeling. And in a way she didn't want the people close to her to understand that.

Didn't she want to look weak? It was absolutely true. Abe wasn't wrong. Ever since she came back from that hell, she was terrified of showing her emotions to anyone. She knew that if she did that, she would collapse and she would cry like a little baby. She didn't want to see the pitying looks from her parents. She didn't want to see sympathy. She didn't want to be seen when she was so… weak. Being weak seemed a mortal sin to her.

'Why?' she screamed in her head as she bit her lip. 'Why did all this happen to me? Why can't I live a normal life anymore? Why!?'

She wanted to leave everything behind her. She wanted to forget. She wanted her 'happily ever after'.

In the stories, when the main character came home, he or she was always happy. No matter how tough the challenge, how monstrous the enemies, how many comrades he or she had lost along the way: at the end of the story, there was always the 'happily ever after'.

Lies. They were all lies. The adventure could end, but the worst would come later. The monsters of the real life could be defeated, but the demons of her mind would haunt her forever.

She didn't live in a story. That was the reality. In reality, a person who goes through terrible things will never fully recover from them. Those traumas of hers would haunt her until the end of her days, and there was no psychiatric treatment that could undo them.

See the world burn? The more she thought about it, the more she didn't think it was a bad idea. Burn everything, every single human being, good or bad. Let the flames devour everything, until the fumes from the fires had covered the atmosphere and the green and blue planet he was supposed to live was transformed into the gray pallor of death.

She was tempted to slap herself. How could she think things like that? They were wicked. No, they weren't evil, they were just unhealty. She was really going crazy.

With all the energy she could muster, she rolled onto her side and looked at her nightstand. Her books were stacked badly, and next to them was a small model she had made herself out of clay. She wasn't certainly a good artist, but the model was detailed enough to recognize the shape of the spinosaurus that had saved her life.

She sighed as she watched it. For an instant she seemed to come to life and she thought he saw him hunting among the trees in the forest.

Yes, the forest…

She missed the forest.

She didn't believe it was possible. She had hated the place while she was there. Yet, she now felt that she much preferred him to the human world, or at least to that rotten nation where she lived.

In the forest she always had to keep her guard up, but she was free. No human bullshit. There was no one ready to put a gold collar on her and lock her up in the house. There weren't even people who pestered her to find out how she was doing. She didn't have to worry about politics, economic matters, family relationships, and she had always been too busy to think about revenge.

The more he thought about it, the more the forest seemed to him like a paradise where evil thoughts could not reach it. It was dangerous, sure, but at least it was fair. Here, the only thing that mattered to him was his personal strength, whether it was physical strength, ingenuity or mimetic skills. Everything else didn't matter. Jocelyne felt much more at ease than she in that simple world, rather than in the hypocrisy and wickedness of human beings.

She had sometimes imagined it. She had found herself fantasizing about her and the spinosaurus staying together in the forest. Every time she imagined the most terrible predatory dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodiles, snakes, monsters of all kinds, wild tribes, even a demon once; and yet, when she thought about it, she always smiled. She didn't do it willingly: she just started imagining those things, and suddenly her lips curved by themselves in a genuine smile. A sincere smile, not like the ones she sported most of the time.

But she knew hers was just a silly fantasy. Her path and that of the spinosaurus had now separated. Who knows where he was at that moment? What was he doing? She wouldn't mind knowing. But unfortunately she did not have the gift of all-seeing.

She felt she was regaining some strength. Appealing to them, she rolled onto her side and reached out to reach the nightstand drawer. She opened it and took out a bottle of water and a can. It was a box about twenty centimeters long whose initials read 'happy pills'.

Jocelyne took two pills, put them in her mouth and took a sip of water, after which she looked back at the ceiling in the hope that the antidepressants would take effect soon.