The Overnaturlig Curse

"To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street. Conformity would be the only virtue, and every man who refused to conform would have to pay the penalty."
- President Wilson on entering World War I

Heinrich Schäfer had already unbuttoned his overalls and was beginning to undo the first button of his shirt as he approached Elizabeth. She had fantasized about what lay beneath his clothing since they were twelve, but her mind was too occupied to savor the moment. Okay, so maybe she did gasp slightly beneath her breath as the hair on his abs defined by hours of plowing the fields were freed from the confines of his shirt.

An image of her hand on his chest flashed across her mind, but she stamped it down and forced herself to look into his eyes-- brown as the fertile fields his hands slipped into every day. "Happy first change," she greeted him. He paused and stared right back at her. Stupid. She felt so stupid. She chastised herself as she quickly dropped her eyes to the ground. Never look a werewolf in the eyes, she reminded herself. In her desperate attempt to preserve the humility Heinrich already lost when he was turned, she had challenged his dominance.

She heard him sigh, and when she lifted her head she saw his eyes were blazing a trail from her head to her feet. "I'm sorry, Miss Heksedatter. I forgot that I'm not the only one adjusting to my new status," he said, sounding sincere yet more distant than he had just a week before. Hearing him call her "Miss Heksedatter" should have hurt her. All of their lives, they had been best friends on a first name basis. A month ago he had left school and started weeding the fields, joining the town's werewolf pack on the farm. Ever since then, they only saw each other sparingly during church functions or town gatherings and he had started calling her "Miss Heksedatter."

Perhaps it was the practically immortal werewolves in his pack that were instilling this old fashion etiquette. Perhaps he was trying to distance himself now that Einar Danielsen was in the picture. Perhaps this shift signified the death of a time when they were familiar with each other, a time when they were friends. Still, in her heart of hearts, she thought, Perhaps he's calling me "Miss Heksedatter" because he's imagining himself being called "Mr. Heksedatter." She was a witch, and witch's husbands were expected to take their wives' last names. Some part of her knew that was a false hope. Still, she couldn't help but cling onto that fragile thought as if the wind could pick it out her head and carry it away along with the dandelion seeds flying by her.

His fingers were still on the button midway down his shirt, but they had stopped moving, frozen as if time stopped just around his hand. He still was looking at her intensely. She had hurt Heinrich, she knew, when he started seeing her around town with Einar. In a town as small as Overnaturlig (1,019 sentients and counting), people knew who was destined to marry whom by the time they were twelve. Heinrich was her betrothed not by any verbal promise, but more by default-- he was the only boy around her age that she wasn't related to and that she could stand to be in the same room as. In Overnaturlig, that was the basis for most marriages: age proximity, distance apart on the convoluted Overnaturlig family tree, and, if they were lucky, ability to tolerate each other.

She had thought Heinrich and her had more than that. They were best friends. They had always been best friends. She had thought they would always be best friends. She wasn't sure what drove the wedge between them now. Was it Heinrich becoming a werewolf? Was it Einar's becoming her friend? Or was it her own becoming? She knew of other witches that became cold and cruel the older and more powerful they became, subconsciously and consciously seeking to soak up the power that witches gained from pain. Perhaps that's why she let herself become close to Einar, Heinrich's pain. Who am I kidding? she thought. Einar was more than a friend at this point. Heinrich was right to be distant towards her.