The Ways of the City People
Full Moon! She's already so round in the dark sky. So time for a werewolf story. This time a bit different, as this was my first attempt at a YA Fantasy short story, which I first wrote earlier today on the Daily Prompt app.
Imagine you are so young and naive that you believe you can change the world. But what you meet in return is people who don't really want change. Enjoy!
The Ways of the City People
I guess when you are sixteen you believe you
can change the world. When I look back now I realise how foolish I was for
believing that I, a young girl, could change the world for good.
I used to live in a village where I was fairly
protected from greed and evil. Those were things I only knew about from the
stories the elderly would tell us children, at night, around the fire before we
went to sleep.
‘Not too far away there is a place called city
where people are so greedy that they steal from each other and can even kill
each other,’ grandma would tell us, her voice cavernous, her eyes wide, staring
at each of us as if she wanted to see our souls. ‘No matter how much they have,
it’s never enough. They will always want more and will never feel content.’
In our village we always had enough and we
never envied what other people had. Especially because we shared a lot. If a
shepherd lost a ewe, we would give him some more food knowing that if we lacked
cheese or milk, this same shepherd would, in better days, give us some from his
sheep. We weren’t rich. But we weren’t poor either.
When I turned fifteen my life changed forever.
While collecting berries in the forest around our village, I heard a cute,
sweet sound. Whining. It was either fox or wolf pups. My curiosity helped me
find the den but I was welcomed by a fearful yet resolute mother wolf. Stupidly
I stretched my hand to try to pet the cubs but her jaws found her way to my
wrist and her teeth sank on my flesh. I immediately withdrew, scared and in
pain, grabbing my bleeding wrist with my other hand.
It was grandma herself who treated me. She was
profoundly disturbed.
‘The wolf of all animals. The wolf of all
animals,’ she kept saying, shaking her head while she wrapped my wrist with a
cloth bandage.
I didn’t take long to realise why she was
concerned. I suddenly was very sleepy during the day, but wide awake at night.
I could hear sounds in the far distance. I could see in the dark. When we got
together around the fire to hear stories, the kids would say my eyes were
glowing golden. The worst was that, if for some reason I got angry, I felt an
uncontrollable desire to bite who or what had made me angry.
It was in such a state of anger that I had the
insane idea of moving to the city. As a young girl with wolf powers I could
teach a lesson to all those people who always wanted more and more. To me, it
was ludicrous someone would kill just to have what others did.
Grandma shook her head again.
‘Silly child. You don’t know a thing about
city people,’ she would say. But she didn’t stop me. It was a belief in the
village that own experiences are the best. So I packed some clothes and food
and off I went, my chest bursting with pride. I’d be the one changing city. How
crazy, how insane! But by then I didn’t know.
I suppose my most stupid belief, which turned
out to be my biggest disappointment, was that the good people in the city
seemed not to want to have a kind of saviour. They feared me. Other girls and
boys at the school I enrolled at didn’t want to be around me. They said I was
weird and dangerous. I will never forget the day I helped a young, skinny boy
from his bullies.
‘You four eye, you four eye. Give us your
lunch,’ they kept saying while pushing him around and laughing.
The boy kept protecting his lunch box but he
stood no chance against four big guys. So I approached.
‘Stop right now,’ I demanded. But they just
laughed and shrugged their shoulders.
‘Get the heck outta here, freak,’ the biggest
one, the one I believed was the leader of that small but bothersome gang,
snapped at me.
I wasn’t going to have it. Before I could
understand what I was doing, I literally jumped on him. I don’t even know how I
did it, but it was as if my body suddenly had gained a will of its own, a power
of its own. I punched him and I scratched him until his face bled. He tried to
defend himself, to push me off, but it was as if I was a heavy rock on him. And
I kept punching and scratching, punching and scratching.
‘Stop it, you crazy girl. Stop it,’ I heard a
voice say, it came from far away or so I believed, such was my trance.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder and violently
pushed me from the bully. It was Mr Douglas, the school principal, a tall,
stout man.
‘What on Earth is wrong with you?’ he shouted
at me. He was so close he showered my face with droplets.
For the first time, I was aware of my
surroundings. Wherever and whoever I looked at was staring back at me in shock.
In disbelief. In fear. Students and teachers. Even the skinny boy I had helped.
I could see hatred in their eyes.
‘I was helping Johnny,’ I shouted back. ‘Those
boys were pushing him and trying to steal his lunch so I helped him, didn’t I,
Johnny? You saw it.’
But Johnny didn’t reply. He just bowed his
head in shame and remained mute. I couldn’t believe he would not help me as I
had helped him. I had never suffered such injustice in my life.
‘Her eyes...’ a tiny voice said from the
crowd. ‘Her eyes are glowing.’
I was expelled from school that same day. I
joined another but things weren’t much different. Now as an adult, I don’t
think life has changed that much. I decided to remain in the city but I often
see people voting for the same politicians who steal from them. They complain
and complain but not much changes. I see them trusting their money to
institutions where someone will take it and fly away to another country. These
scandals are so regular but people, despite initial moaning and indignation,
eventually just shrug it off.
‘What can we do?’ they ask. But it is a vague
question, they aren’t really looking for an answer.
I have managed to control myself and accept
that these are the ways of the city people. Grandma was right. Nothing was ever
enough. These politicians and bankers who steal already have so much. But
nobody does a thing. And if I ask questions I am just stared at as if I were a
lunatic.
That was my biggest lesson. City people don’t
really want change. For some reason, I think it is because they always need to
have reasons to complain.
___________
Enjoyed this story? Check some of my other Werewolf Stories, which
I post every Full Moon:
Officer Brooks' Creepy Blue Eyes
Midnight Shift at the Zoology Museum
Or some of my non-werewolf stories:
Fluffy, the Spiteful Cat
Behold the Brave New World
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