Genuine fallacy
Elara
I sneezed, feeling that strange tingle run down my spine again. Surely something was wrong somewhere. Already, I had begun to give this world the benefit of the doubt. Why wouldn’t I? They had mages, they had sorcerers, and probably would have flying brooms if I looked hard enough.
It was basically my childhood fantasies come to life. I’d always wanted to live in a fantasy world with witches and wizards, although, while I was half expecting fairies, I met werewolves instead. But it wasn’t too bad, at least up until I learned that here, I could be killed and possibly eaten.
My shoulders stiffened, feeling goosebumps cover my skin. “Tell me you’re kidding.” I blinked in anticipation, gripping the edge of my seat.
“No,” she said, shaking her head softly, causing her luscious red hair to flow about her. She had pulled it into a ponytail, which now hung low—the perks of having heavy hair, I thought. It tended to sink rather low no matter how high it was tied.
“It is true,” she said. “If Selene decides to do the old ways, you will die in battle. Of course, it’s a given—you’re human. You wouldn’t last two minutes; in fact, one second, if we’re being very nice.”
I shuddered and shook my head. “You know, I already know that I’m not going to last a minute in a fight, but you really don’t have to make it obvious.”
She shook her head. “But I do. I don’t think you’ve quite worked some things into your mind yet, human.”
I rolled my eyes. “That what? This is my reality now? That this world is bloody and it’s cruel? Yeah, I almost died that time,” I said with a small nod and a cheerful smile. “But somehow this one shocks me—though maybe not quite as bad. I mean, I thought almost dying to a rogue attack was seen as normal… or was it rare?”
She shook her head. “It’s rare,” she said. “Rogues rarely ever enter this pack. It’s almost as though they were let in. My great-uncle will not tell me the truth, but I know he’s hiding something about this, so it must be within the knowledge of the council members. Then again, I think they find it easy enough to hide behind the sufficient distraction of the current meeting.” She rolled her eyes. “All worthless bravado, if you ask me. Back to your lesson.”
She clicked her tongue. I learned that furries were animals—not because I was trying to make a point to myself, but because they shared so many similarities with their animal counterparts on Earth.
“Do you have actual wolves here?”
“Of course we do,” she said. “Some people keep them as pets.”
I raised my eyebrows. It would make sense, I thought. After all, werewolves, when fully shifted into their wolves, were massive. They were at least twice as large as actual wolves; in fact, wolves would be dwarfed by them.
“I had one when I was a child,” she said flippantly.
“What happened to it?” I asked skeptically.
She sighed dramatically. “The poor creature only lived for barely forty years. It died,” she said. “I never had another since then. They’re quite solitary and independent creatures.”
I frowned. Of course, it saw me as part of the pack, but she really took care of herself once she was left alone. Still, it broke me just a little bit when she died, of course.
“What else?” I wanted to ask. “Did you keep lions as pets too?”
“Lions?” She smiled. “Of course,” she said. “I have a friend over in Moonwater that has one. Her brother has a tiger. He says they make lovely house kittens.”
My face scrunched even further, earning for the first time a laugh from her. I was hoping she’d say she was joking, but she didn’t.
“Move on,” she said. “Let’s move on.” She tapped the table twice.
I learned further that it was a curse. Some believed it was a curse; others believed it was a blessing by the goddess of their creation, who had blessed the wolf pelt upon the father and son who were called Sigmund and Sinfjötli. They said that in ancient times, according to Alejandra, the father and son would wear the pelts and go to war, and whilst they fought, the spirit of the wolf came upon them, imbued them with strength, and sometimes turned them into those beasts.
Alejandra went further to confuse me by saying it was also a curse. “It happens in two ways,” she said. “The curse came about by the foolish king who tried to give Zeus human flesh. Lycaon thought he could undermine the god, but I mean, you might as well say it didn’t end well for him. For those who descended from the king, they forcefully turned into beasts once every full moon under the curse of the moon goddess. To others who descended from the two, the father and son,” she smiled, “we are given the ability to shift at will. But then, not so much,” she added.
I squinted. “How can you tell the difference?”
She smiled. “You can’t,” she said. “Those who descended from the king live on the far side of the east continent of Lyra.”
I frowned. “Right.” Every continent had different names too. Of course, landmarks were essentially the same—looking like actual America, Africa, Asia, and so on—but what was Africa for them was named something else that had slipped my mind, and what was Asia for us was Lyra for them.
“But how can you tell?” I asked.
She shrugged. “They tend to be angry because they cannot control that shift. Of course, they can shift normally when they want to, but every full moon they have to shift, and occasionally they end up being feral, unable to control the impulses of the beast. Sad,” she said. “Quite sad,” she nodded.
“Of course, it’s easy enough to be expected after all,” she said with a flippant expression. “They didn’t get it as a gift. We did.” She smiled.
But I raised my hand in question. “If you people are sticking with one story and they’re sticking with another story, why are your gods different?”
She shook her head. “The gods are the same, young girl,” she said. “There is Freya and there is Thor, there is Zeus, there is Odin. We believe in the All-Father, we believe in Frigg, we believe in Freya, and we believe in Loki. We also believe in Zeus and Heracles ,and we even knew him. He lived also, long ago. We are quite aware of his island too. We know Poseidon, and we also know of Fenrir. The great wolf is practically our mention.”
She was mentioning as many of them as possible. “It doesn’t mean we’re crazy, I hope you know this. I’m quite aware that humans don’t believe only in one line of thinking, one way. Don’t you? I think that’s boring,” she said, bored.
“We understand that everything exists at the same time, and so we don’t bother trying to divide them as you do,” she continued.
Outside religion, although it was rather clear that for werewolves religion and normal life tended to merge together, they found disrespecting all things related to the moon to be a crime. Still, it amazed me how much similar they were after all, worlds fighting over things, howling at the moonlight.
“Oh, we don’t do that,” she said. “We’re not cursed. We don’t have to howl at the moon” She paused. “We howl when we feel like it.” She smiled.
She then went on to mention something about rituals. It was only recently that some people stopped making sacrifices. But we do have a ritual every now and then, the official ritual to welcome a new pup requires some blood.
My heart seized again. Oh dear, I thought. I might have a heart attack at this rate. But I felt like the more I learned about them, the more afraid I got. What if I did something wrong and didn’t know? Would they kill me for it? They did, after all, almost kill me for being human.