“It is the desire to preserve life which fuels the light inside you. And to make no mistake, it is light. Preservation is an extension of creation, or, at the very least, an enemy of destruction. The creatures of grimm were made by the god of darkness, but your light comes from his brother.”
but
“First, they were given the power to destroy, to clear the wilderness away. Then they were given creativity, to imagine what, and who, could replace the wilderness. […] But balance was not two forces locked in never-ending battle.”
everything maria believes about silver eyes is predicated on her view of destruction as the existential enemy of life, and creation in opposition to that. the grimm and the silver-eyed warrior are figured here as natural equivalents, dark and light, destructive and creative, adversaries. two forces locked in never-ending battle. oil and water.
salem combines them into one. the hound is a silver-eyed grimm. a contradiction. a person, however tortured. he can smell and hear and talk and regenerate after injury—all things that ordinary grimm cannot do. and of course salem herself is “a being of infinite life with a desire for pure destruction,” not sundered by two opposites but knit together into… herself, created anew. changed.
it’s just interesting that they keep underlining this. this fundamental—like team light, team creation, see this as an existential war between light and dark, creation and destruction. did the god of darkness see it that way? does salem? is she not inescapably aware of being both? she makes a grimm with silver eyes. where the heroes see division salem sees potential in the intersection. two points on opposite sides of one circle. she frames the conflict in terms of… hope, and doubt, truth and lies, freedom. in her telling silver eyes are more akin to magic than grimm. she sees a ruined world that could be paradise without the gods. ozma just sees a ruin in need of redemption. i think salem’s understanding of what creation and destruction are and how they interact is probably going to be important.
