Lycanthropes, werewolves in particular, lived alongside humankind for a long time; not peacefully, never peacefully, but near each other.
Some say that Wolves were human magicians; some say they were cursed; some say that we are different beings altogether. What I believe, I will not say; but if you’ve studied us, you know that no-one today can create a werewolf. Only we can do so, through a process which involves, but is not as simple as, that famed ‘bite’ which is said to transform homo sapiens into us.
I do mean that it has been a very long time. We knew your kind when it had almost no technology. (I’d say “we knew you when you were primitive”—but ‘primitive’ a complicated little word, no?)
We watched you and Dogs, and we watched you with our brother Wolves, the ones who couldn’t change. (It has been a philosophical suggestion for thousands of years that they’re lucky. For myself, I don’t care. What I am is what I am, and that’s what I will work with.)
We watched you domesticate the Dog; we watched the Wolf go his own way. Dogs came sniffing after food; wolves mostly ran.
We watched—some of us with a certain horror—as Dogs grew to love you, and to follow you, and become yours.
And while some of the comforts of that life are not without appeal, we made a simple decision: We would not be yours.
What better way to show that you did not own us than to hunt you down, sometimes, and kill you, sometimes?
You could not even control us; not entirely. You were not always as numerous or well-armed as today, and we could likely, back then, wipe out one of your settlements faster than you might take on one of our lairs. Not that such things were our preference; they were just considerations.
We did this for a long time. It’s part of why you fear us; you remember. And that is good.
Of course, part of why you fear us is that we are stronger, more difficult to kill, and not one bit less intelligent.
That makes some difference, as well.
But much of it is the same as with our brother wolves: you often hate what you cannot own.
We are not…perfect, ourselves. We’re not without jealousy at how you proliferate, at some of your magic, at some of the things you create. We do not tend to think in such elaborate ways; our intelligence is focused in other directions.
But I’ll tell you this: You seldom hear of us killing you now.
Many people think it is because you are stronger, that there are more of you, that your weapons are better. But we ourselves are not wholly unchanged; we are, shall I say, larger, as a species, than we once were. I will not specify in what manner.
The reason why we stopped is simple. We began to kill humans to show that we were not dogs.
And we stopped killing humans to show that we are not humans.
We’re not better. Refraining from killing doesn’t make you better, necessarily. Killing is often requisite, and it’s sometimes fun, if I might be candid.
But blood is addictive. We need a little of it to live. But if we had too much, too often, we would never want to stop.
We watched it happen to you.
Bear in mind: We don’t really know whether it took you first for some reason inherent in your nature or ways, or if we were simply fortunate.
All we know is, we saw what you were doing, and we said,
“Whatever that is, we want to be something else.”
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
