I woke up with a pounding heart and an eerie feeling to greet the rising of a beautiful spring day.  Just because I felt like the end of my relative peace had come did not mean it actually had.  My unease simply meant it was a normal Thursday.

I got out of bed and put on my robe before making my way out to find breakfast.  I walked into the kitchen and discovered Serge by the feeling of the curse stabbing the back of my neck.  I was not surprised that he was there.  As I regained measures of my former independence, Karen stepped back to let me take it.  It was like a dance, she moved back, but if I faltered she returned to keep me on my feet.

In addition, we had plans to eat at Karen's for supper that evening.  I would see her then, unless I needed her sooner.

I looked towards Serge.  I still could not look at his face or properly say his name, but I was getting ever closer.  I could see that he was sitting on one of the bar stools in plaid pyjama pants and a blue t-shirt.  He was eating eggs and drinking coffee with one hand while flipping through some papers with the other.

"G-good morning, S-S-Se..."

"Good morning.  What are you having?" he asked me.

I had almost burned his house down trying to cook myself some eggs a few days prior.  I shivered as the curse cut into my blood at the memory.  Turns out good thralls don't accidentally set things on fire in their master's home.

I doubted he would leave me alone using the stove for a while.  "Cereal."  I would try again eventually, but today was not that day.

I set about the kitchen and got myself a bowl of cereal and a spoon.  I almost sat down in my regular spot as far from Serge as I could get, but then I decided to push it and sat one bar stool closer to him.  The back of my neck prickled and ran through me, but I simply focused on eating my breakfast.

"Do you want to go for a run after you're done?" he asked me.

I nodded, because my mouth was full.  I swallowed.  "Yeah."

I set to eating as quickly as I could with my shaking hands.

When I was finished, I rinsed my bowl in the sink and I followed Serge outside.

I walked away from him into the forest and transformed.  I met him back in the yard, both of us in our wolf forms.  Serge's fur was a mix of white and grey, lighter than my own brown coat.  Like his human form, I could not look at his wolf face, but I could see from the corner of my vision that his ears were forward.  His tail was high and his posture was as serious and severe as in his human form.

Except his tail wagged slightly as if he could not quite control it.  I grinned a wolfish grin and wagged my own in return.

There was movement in the forest near us and both Serge and I turned to look towards the noise.  Denizen trotted out and greeted Serge, tail wagging.  Then he turned towards me and licked my face happily in greeting.

Denizen was about the same size as I was and Serge's wolf form dwarfed us both.

Serge began walking towards the forest and I followed him.  Denizen darted around both of us, clearly thrilled that he had turned up just in time for a run.

Once we were well in the trees, Serge started running.  I knew he paced himself for my speed and I appreciated his thoughtfulness.  I dashed after him, lost in my own thoughts.

Serge and I had been running together for almost a couple of weeks.  It had taken me days to work up the nerve to suggest it, but he had given such a startlingly instantaneous agreement that I imagined he had probably been considering the idea himself, but had been reluctant to suggest such an idea to me.

I thought I was starting to understand why.  He was always so concerned about forcing me to do anything that he would rather suffer running the little track we had furrowed around his house than suggest such an obvious solution.

I could not complain.  The thoughtful little gestures and the care he took with my condition had long since swept away any lingering negativity I felt towards him.  In fact, I was starting to feel a bit of warmth whenever he passed through my mind, before it was consumed again by the shivers of the curse.

Perhaps, in spite of everything, we were becoming...  Well, I could not say friends because the curse would rear up and trample me in response to my forwardness, but I could manage to think we were some sort of non-hostile allies without piquing the curse's wrath too much.

Of course, I still wished he had not struck me with the curse, but I no longer thought dying might be worth the escape it would bring.  My life was still dark, but it felt more like the darkness before the dawn and there were still tiny spots of light from the stars to give me hope.

The curse began running through my fur and digging into my flesh, so I let go of my optimistic musings.  I had noticed that the curse was less nitpicky when I did not focus on the good, but rather mindlessly enjoyed those small things life offered in the world around me.

Small things, like the life waking and renewing in the forest all around us; birds were singing in the trees; small plants were beginning to peek through the thawing ground; the smell of earth and pine was in my nose and the wind rushed over me.

I felt almost free.

When we had first started running together, Serge had tried to let me lead, but I could not bring myself to do it.  The curse had shaken me so much, I could scarcely move, probably for daring to try to lead my master around in the same manner it tried to punish me when I disagreed with him.

So I gave up, for now.  I did not really mind.  Serge knew his way around the territory well and I found myself in a number of interesting places.  I could begin to appreciate the scenery again, in the same way that food had gradually begun to taste slightly more appealing than paper over time.

It was not so much that the magic chains of the curse had been removed, but more like in all my struggling I had gained enough strength to move while dragging them.

I felt ice circulate my blood for my errant thoughts, but even then it was not nearly so bad on a beautiful spring day.

* *  *   *   *   *   *  * *

We ran for about an hour before returning home.  I went inside and got ready for the day.

I had graduated from one box of pictures to two boxes.  I went through them as I did every day.  There were still unfamiliar faces, but there were also a number of faces I had learned.

Without much discomfort, I could look in the eyes of the photographs of Karen, of Jodi, and of Tabitha, the regular human Karen had brought by for a test run.

My guess had been correct that regular humans would be easier for me to take.  Upon our first meeting, I could glance at Tabitha's actual face, chocolate eyes which matched the colour of her hair, for a fraction of a second.  It was such a nice treat to be able to look at a member of my pack without my eyes burning up with cold fire.

Tabitha was an odd regular human.  Most of the leaders encouraged normal humans who wanted to leave to go south, at least to work, or to get more education.  They were safer away from the fighting, but some of them still stayed.  Even without wolf magic, this was their home, too.

Tabitha actually had gone away to college, but then when the fighting had increased, she had returned and wanted to join the defensive forces.

As a human female born to werewolf parents, she still stood no chance physically against a male werewolf fighter, so she had started perfecting her marksmanship.  She claimed she was the best shot in Serge's territory and who was I to argue?  She did not run out to battle with the werewolves, but she was one of the main people who maintained the inner defence of the town during attacks.

I had personally had little interest in learning to shoot.  When I had asked her why she had bothered, she had told me, "Firearms are the great equalizers of the weak and the strong.  They give humans the ability to fight on par with werewolves.  You all don't see it, because you can bust out your wild magic, but humanity's best natural weapon is our brains because that's what we use to design an advantage."

I had smiled at her words.  Like I had seen Serge's people do, my father also used weapons to protect the non-combatants in our territory.  The werewolf fighters did not use weapons because a large part of the guerilla strategy was to move quickly to the point of attack and retreat further into the territory we knew so well if necessary.  Weapons mostly slowed our forces down, but they were effective for arming a stationary force.

Tabitha had joined my movie nights with Jodi.  I managed to glance at the green eyes in Jodi's real pixie face for the briefest second without suffering too much.

I moved aside the pictures of Tabitha and Jodi.

Karen had slipped in another picture of Serge with the last set of photographs and it had gotten by me a few times before I figured out who he was.

He must have been about ten when the picture was taken.  While he had obviously grown and changed somewhat, his hazel eyes and sandy hair were largely the same.

The reason I did not know who he was instantly was because he seemed like a different person then.  He looked happy, like he was not being dragged down into the ground by the weight of everything upon him.

I wondered when Serge had changed.  Had he been more like that boy before he had cursed me?  Had it been the death of his parents?  Was it the strains of the war?

I wanted to know, but I did not dare ask.

* *  *   *   *   *   *  * *