A Werewolf's Sacrifice

Episode 1

“Odelle! Varick!”

We giggled as we ran away from my mother in the marketplace, imagining her to be one of the hated werewolves hot on our heels. I was never one for shopping, much less for food, so Varick and I were doing our best to make a boring trip into something dangerous and exhilarating.

We knew she wasn’t really running after us- she was merely meandering along her usual path to each of the vendors like always and we were all too cleverly sticking to the usual route.

I ducked behind a few crates here and there and sometimes Varick would pull me behind a drape to avoid detection. To her credit, my mother would casually look over once in a while and say, “You should hide better than that if you want to escape the big bad wolf!” or sometimes she would even make a grab for me and I would squeal and try my best to dodge her, usually resulting in Varick and I smacking into each other in our haste, becoming a tangle of scrawny limbs.

It was days like this when the sun was high in the sky and I was having a blast with my best friend and mother that I knew I was loved.

“I’m going to become a great warrior one day, Odelle.” Varick suddenly looked at me with his very serious tawny brown eyes as we were hiding behind a crate of apples. His doe-colored hair was falling on his forehead and sticking with sweat and he was panting a little, out of breath.

“Not with the skills I’m seeing before my eyes today!” I tauntingly laughed at him. “If you really wanted to be a warrior you would’ve started training years ago. As it is, they won’t take you now at fourteen!” I lightly shoved his shoulder as I kissed his cheek.

He bolted up straight as if someone had shocked him, pulling me up with him urgently and almost toppling the crate. He clasped my hands and looked into my eyes with a calm that made me uneasy. I blushed in embarrassment at my inappropriate peck and our now inappropriate and very public handholding.

“I won’t be returning to the schoolhouse on Monday. I actually signed up to begin training , which my father would have done for me years ago if he had still been alive. It’s time to leave behind childish things and my past and become someone important. Someone worth writing about in the sagas.”

Varick had always been ages ahead of me in maturity. When he was a small child, he had seen something horrible. I looked back to my mother, overlaying what I imagined he had seen the day his parents were attacked by a rabid pack of wolves. I shivered in horror and a light dusting of tears sprung to my eyes.

“You mean me when you say those things you plan to leave.” I felt stung. I wrenched my hands from his grasp. “I guess this is goodbye then. I can’t believe you didn’t even say anything to me before deciding this!” I hissed at him angrily.

I couldn’t stay mad long though, and almost as soon as the words left my lips, I regretted them. Hurt showed on his face in the slight flush that colored his cheeks.  

“I guess it is. I don’t have to live my life with your permission, Odelle.” He said shortly. “May our paths cross again.” He turned and left briskly, not even bothering to let my mother know he was leaving and didn’t need her to look after him anymore.

I wavered on the brink of grabbing his arm to stop him or calling him back to me for too long. Before I knew it, he was out of my sight and my dearest friend was gone.