In accordance with the strange customs of her people, she had been raised to believe in herself. Of course, in accordance with those same customs, her parents had long ago lost all faith. All of the histories of her people, and, before that, all the stories of the tribe, were histories of failure, stories of defeat, through which the only moral to be drawn could be that you will survive, despite everything. It is no wonder, then, that the word for belief in her native tongue was the same as the word for spite. In most contexts, it made no difference what she meant.