Differences Aside, ✔

Chapter One

I wished the world had ended the day the werewolves came.

Years ago, before me, before my brothers, before my family even came into existence, the werewolves came.

Terrifying creatures, beasts that fed off the moonlight, wild animals that praised a Goddess that didn't even exist. Of course, that had been years ago, in a time that had been lost to history. My teachers had told me that the wolves came to make life better for us, that they came to give us opportunities that only they had experienced. I read that the world before the wolves was harsh, there was no peace, that the government itself was collapsing, that the wolves saved us.

I had been told that a lot, though I usually couldn't see how it was different from life now. At least, life for humans, life for me.

The wolves hadn't made the world better. They had made it worse. I was petrified of them, their snarling teeth and supernatural abilities would send shivers of fear down my spine as a young child. But the scariest thing about them was that they didn't feel. They tore my mother and father apart until they were shreds of blood-coated skin and bones right in front of me, I only would have been seven or eight. Once the wolf was done, he barely spared a glance at me, the child who was still screaming and then ran off to goddess knows where.

My brothers and I lived in a small hut just outside of the mines. At sixteen, all humans were assigned a job by the leading wolf in our area. Usually, jobs ran through the family, so when my older brothers Elijah and Isaiah had turned sixteen, it was no surprise that they had been sent to work in the mines, just as my father had once done. And, just like my mother, I was sent to one of the factories where I spent my workdays sewing together garments that would be sent out to the rural packs. We didn't earn much, the boys were paid in money, bringing home usually fifteen dollars each fortnight. I was paid in cloths, the would give us material that couldn't be turned into clothes, the amount of material based on how many garments we had made that week.

It was hard I suppose, living that way. But it was all I had ever known, all anyone had ever known.

Our lives weren't as bad as others, I would constantly remind myself. I had met a girl once, she worked at the station directly next to mine in the factory. She lived in a house near the school, she was supporting her elderly grandmother and her younger brother, neither being able to work. I had offered her some of my rations one week, a guard had noticed her taking it from me.

I never did see her again.

My shifts finished usually around four in the afternoon, but my brothers wouldn't be back until at least seven. The mines were gruelling, they would leave the house at four to start their five o'clock shift. People died in those mines, and every day was spent me praying that both of my brothers would return that night, not just one.

Our house was broken down, the windows had been boarded shut by large, thick wooden planks. Most of our doors were hanging off their hinges and soot and coal dust lined the floorboards, the black stains permanently etched into the wood.

But others had it worse. 

Humans that lived far out in the rural packs wouldn't even have the luxuries of a house, or so I had heard. Most were forced to sleep in campsites or the basements or sheds of the higher wolves in their pack.

We lived in the main city, Gyabo. Most of our city names were in 'Nitoag' the language of the Moon Goddess. When the wolves had first come, they changed the humans living to match theirs. You were either from the North or the South. The North stretched over many countries, taking over every city and place north of the equator, the South taking everything south of the equator. The northern wolves, according to the books, had always spoken English, only using Nitoag when they were having religious ceremonies. Nowadays, they only really spoke it when communicating with the Moon Goddess. But the South, they had never been like that. We were taught that those wolves only spoke Nitoag, and when they took over the southern continents, the humans quickly adapted the language as well.