By midnight, they’re lying on a grassy bank beside what is probably the last
pond in all of North America not polluted by toxic wastes. The half-devoured 
carcass of a deer lies nearby. The night is cool and quiet and filled with the 
cloying sweetness of summer, a sweetness Tikki ponders and imagines she might 
even come to enjoy. Her time in Philly has dampened her fascination with humans 
and their cities. She’s glad just to have gotten out alive. She’s been spending
too much time with humans, too little time in the wild. She isn’t sure who she
is anymore. Ruthless killer? In human terms, she supposes, that’s all she’s ever
been. She wonders if she was meant to be more. Better. A thing she’ll have to
think about, a thing to figure out.