Status Updates From Artiglio

She gazes at the grandmother and her granddaughter; they are truly endearing. She likes to watch people whose lives aren't shrouded in darkness, who have put down roots under rays of the sun. If only she could own something of that life by gazing on it...if only she could dare enjoy the feeling of being part of a scene like that, just for a moment.

Hornclaw has enough affection for this work that she doesn't want to retire with her reputation tanked, and while affection is a strange way to describe it, she feels connected to the work as if by an umbilical cord. An umbilical cord that manages barely to provide just enough nutrition before suddenly wrapping itself around your neck, choking you to death.

As the media fanned certain stories, whether for profit or to pull attention away from important political issues, people became desensitized by the repetition and let their guards down, making themselves vulnerable to danger until an even more shocking incident happened.
Fundamentally, people didn't believe that they and their parents and siblings were unprepared.

Clipping one's nails short and leaving them bare is one of the hundreds of passive ways to conceal one's strength. Short, smooth nails that look like they can't even mark rubber clay conceal the aggression inherent in the owner of the fingernails.