I could sense the suffering. I could smell it. I could taste it. I could almost see it in the air. The door was closed but I knew on the otherside was someone - maybe more than one - who was suffering. And it made me hungry. When did I find out that I could feed on suffering? Get stronger through the mental and physical torment of others? I remembered when I was a young sprite, sitting in the forest on an autumn evening. The leaves were beginning to lose their battle with gravity, and the floor was turning orange and brown. I was alone. Where my brothers and sisters were I could not tell you. Then suddenly I felt something. Something inside me twisted. It was a hunger. I lept from the branch on which I sat and let the feeling pull me towards the source of the hunger. The trees broke into a clearing and there by a rotting treestump was a deer. It was injured. Its blood was pooling around it. It was still alive, but only just.
...
