an Everlasting Pursuit

prologue

My Monday morning started how it always did. Every day the neighbourhood cockerel woke me. A stereotypical country way to wake up, but it saved me from being late every morning. I enjoyed sleeping as much as the next person, and waking up at six was always difficult.

Springtime was coming, and with that came so much to do around the village to prepare for the Spring Market and festival. My village was small, a population of around one-hundred and ninety-six. It was for good reason too; the smaller our numbers, the fewer supplies we needed and the less suspicion. And what do you mean, suspicion, Ailia? Well, I'll tell you.

One hundred and twenty years ago, on a wonderful sunny day in April, the supernatural creatures from our nightmares made themselves known. They were savages, destroyed human villages with no mercy, killing innocent people with no intention. The human population was down by three hundred thousand in a matter of six hours.

The humans retaliated, of course. Being a stubborn race, we fought back for those we had lost. We had armies, weapons and medicines galore, but what we didn't realise was how well the enemy caught up.

There were many creatures out there, lurking in the shadows. The ones that made themselves known were like demons from children's books. First the pale, sickly, red-eyed things we called Fangs. They only hunted at night, raiding homes as we slept. They found bodies drained of blood, their necks broken, or sometimes, never found at all. Luckily, there hadn't been a Fang sighting around here in five years, but they said the creatures to be immortal, only able to die through killing their heart.

Next there were the witches. They seemed like ordinary people to an untrained eye, but I had been told the way to tell a witch was by their pupils; which became slitted when provoked. They were selfish creatures; not choosing a side in the Great War. Witches were prideful, if not boisterous. They were always keen to trap an unfortunate soul into one of their spells or tricks.

Otherwise, there were Fae, things I always believed were like witches. They could enter your mind, destroy your soul, and kill you without touching you. They were beautiful creatures, going by the sketches and photographs we had with our limited supplies. Along with the Fae's that we hardly heard about were ghouls; horrid, flesh-eating monsters that lurked in the dark.

Of course, most of these were folklore, having not seen any personally, and only rarely were they recorded in history. The main enemy of all were the shifters.

Man, who could turn into beast; they were immortal destroyers. With a thirst for human destruction, they could shift to a furred beast at will. Razor sharp fangs and claws, deep furry hides that towered over an ordinary hound. Anyone who came across a were-shifter did not live or return to tell the tale; they were brutally murdered or vanished without a trace.

My father was one of them. Just ten years ago, he and his friends ventured down-stream and got a little too carried away. He was stubborn, resenting the hold of privacy our village forced upon us. My mother had told me he left that morning to go swimming since it was summer, only to have none of them return home. Six of them left that day, and they found only four bodies.

My mother hadn't been the same since. I was nine years old, just a child, and by the age of twelve, I soon learned how much I relied on her. She primed and prepared me for adulthood for those three years and as soon as my twelfth birthday hit; she turned sour. It left me on my own, whilst my mother shrouded herself in her room.

I had taken on so much responsibility at such a young age, one of those being my sister. Arabella was four years younger than me, naïve enough to not know any different. I started the morning by feeding, clothing, and preparing her for school. Once she was at school, I went to work. Most adults in the village had taken pity on me, and it wasn't long before I scored a job in the café in the plaza. I had been excited to tell my mother, but she hadn't been impressed. I never understood why until her mouth spat words of pain.