"On my way back from one of our meetings, I happened to pass by a funeral. I felt compelled to keep walking, and to ponder the situation. She, the deceased, was a beautiful young lady, ideal for my species.
A mated pair of werewolves, or shifters as we are called, are a rare sight in our part of the country. So, I had to stop and look, and hope my instincts were wrong and that she was just a dying werewolf suffering from the early stages of our illness.
I hoped she would be a good example, a perfect vision of our people, bearing her weakness and her violent disposition with dignity and a love that only our species can give. I rejoiced that she decided to pass away in the arms of her mate, another rarity among us, who stayed with her...
Let me tell you a story, I thought while walking with heavy steps.
I could remember them as if it were yesterday; the first two werewolves. How they met, how he loved her and how she changed in front of his eyes for the first time. A smile passed through my face when I remembered the sensation of flying I'd had when I ran, the smell of the trees, and the wind.
The wind! That was it. The wind. I got the scent. I can still remember how I ran to her, how I warned her. How I showed her what I was. I could still recall the horror in her face.
That was the day we started to realize that creatures similar to us existed. We named them werewolves, although they are much more common than we ourselves are, like wild animals.
As we learned to cope with our condition, we searched for how to help them. We would visit their encampments, and try to talk to them. We were young werewolves, still learning to communicate, lets say. Yet they knew what they wanted, and they had been desperate to find it.
The link between us began when we realized that they had other things in common with us. They wanted love, acceptance and a family to protect. Amazing. So, we taught them that. In time, they started to get used to us.
They accepted us, although they never understood what we actually wanted of them. They considered us animals, and treated us accordingly. We did everything we could to make them happier, giving them what they yearned for. And then the fighting began.
We were young. With such a thing happening, we were shaken by it. We were fiercely proud of what we were. Yet, something was still missing. We didn't have a home. We didn't have a place for our people to belong in. We had a homeland, but most of us didn't even know what that was.
We were living as animals, but that wasn't enough. We had a great and necessary cause, but we didn't have enough warriors to achieve it. Although they were intelligent and we could communicate with them, they were still missing something important.
Yet, no matter how much we tried, we couldn't be accepted by the other species. There were many reasons, but essentially, it was because we were a threat to them. The other species feared us.
We didn't see it as a good thing, but, who could blame them? Those who had been the first to act around us, they called themselves protectors. That's how they felt compelled to, even though they were werewolves too. They defended the forests and the wild life. We were the throwbacks. They were more advanced. They had the power, and we the weakness.
They had the laws, and we the criminals. They had the superior superpowers, and we didn't have anyone to protect them. So, we always had to fight to be recognized. Yet, fighting was not what we wanted to do, we wanted to live, to love, and to be accepted.
Now, there was this beautiful young lady who was bitten by a werewolf, and didn't even know who they were. Her parents, when the news got through, were stricter than usual. They had a television set and a computer.
Our kind were never very well integrated into human society. We were feared, often cursed. We were discriminated against, misunderstood even by our own kind.
When the rest of us heard about her condition, we tried to reach her, to help her and learn about the disease we had. We tried to help her, but she wouldn't let us near her.
Many of us were shocked, because it was so rare for us to encounter someone that was immune to the werewolf disease. That happened every few centuries, and with very few cases ever recorded.
Why? The answer varies from one person to another. Some say that it's the way to compensate for the added strength and power we receive upon our transformation. Some of the worlds greatest minds have tried to figure out the possibilities to the strange phenomenon, yet there is no evidence to support their findings.
When it came time to communicate with the shifters and learn more, our species went out in great numbers to show her what we were. Some people even thought we should merge with them and try to help them. Yet, there were countless stories that had spread about our kind. She was one of them. The story passed on, and new stories were made up. It got harder to reach her, because she was afraid.
We had numbers, but we were unequipped to protect them. We couldn't even protect ourselves. Many of us were killed in fights, or by the disease itself.
It may sound like the perfect opportunity for them to act. They were just waiting for their chance. The disease is a curse that makes our kind almost indestructible.
After a few days, the ones who are turned into werewolves become as strong as any of the other species. They are also fast, strong, resilient and tireless. They cannot be killed. Well, not easily. It takes a lot of strength and power to break their skin, and it takes a lot more to kill them. We were the easiest to kill of all.
The one thing that could kill us is silver. Silver weapons, silver bullets, even silver coins. All of them would kill a werewolf with a single strike. We can only be killed by silver.
Something about how silver affects our blood. It causes a reaction that eventually kills us. Maybe, that's what the stories were about. Maybe, some werewolves were killed by silver in the past, and now their names were just remembered. I couldn't know for sure. It's been a few centuries, but I could only guess.
