Know thy enemy.

Yet, Calista’s family didn’t really see humans as being “the enemy” anymore.  While they had no doubt that if humans knew the truth of what they were, they would become enemies, they didn’t think humans needed to be enemies.  The only thing that kept the two species from living in harmony was mutual fear.

The lycans who remained with the pack objected to half their number leaving.  Some felt their diminished numbers would leave them vulnerable, others objected to the reduced availability of mates, and some simply felt it violated tradition or was an affront to the lycans’ way of life to live the way humans did.

There was one lycan who wanted to live in the human town that the pack especially objected to leaving: Calista’s grandmother.  She was the pack’s healer.  She hadn’t initially been intending to leave with the lycans who wanted to live in town.  But she overheard some of the remaining lycans talking about killing any lycans who abandoned the pack.  She didn’t agree with that, as it was a young lycan’s right to disperse to join a new pack or start their own, and she felt that any lycan that wanted to leave the pack should be allowed to.

So she decided to leave the pack and live in town.  As part of that, she brokered a deal with the pack patriarch.  If he wanted the pack to continue having access to a healer, he would let her and the others live peacefully in the town.  The pack lycans would not attack, kill, harass or compromise the identity of any lycans living in town.  If they upheld that, she would continue treating all lycans who came to her for aid, and she would pass her knowledge on to the future generations.

It was because of that deal that Calista’s family and the other lycans living among humans had been able to live in peace for so long.

Now, Calista was learning from her soldier brother how to fight properly, because the agreement was falling apart.  Ever since their mother died, things had been falling apart.  Neither Calista, nor either of her elder sisters, had been in any position, or had enough training, to take over her duties as herbalist and healer when she died.  Calista had been only ten, and Ulva, her eldest sister, was only thirteen.  Their mother had been twenty, and already mated to their father, before she took over for their grandmother.  Their grandmother had also been twenty, with a mate, when she took over.  That was the traditional age for a healer to take up her mantle.

Since lycans were often in animalistic, instinct-driven states when sick or wounded, it was generally considered rather unsafe for a young, unmated female to perform in the role.

Calista had done her best to study her mother’s and grandmother’s books and notes and finish her education on her own.  Unfortunately, there was no chance the pack lycans would keep the peace for a decade without medical care.  Though it was true that lycans were tough and healed most wounds quickly on their own, and only a handful of illnesses, all generally serious, affected lycans at all, there were enough lycans in the region for Calista to currently treat at least one or two a week.  The pack had given the Hemming family time to grieve, and at first were understanding that it was unreasonable to expect such young children to perform the duties of a herbalist or healer.

As time wore on, relations between the two factions of lycans worsened.  There began to be clashes when the town lycans went into the woods to hunt, run, or sing to the full moon.  Those privileges were protected by the agreement, but the pack had begun to feel the agreement was not being upheld.  Five years after her mother’s death, Calista was forced to step into the role.  She was still so young, and naive, and nowhere near ready to find a mate.  For the first few years, Calista’s siblings tried to stick around whenever she was tending to a sick or injured lycan, especially if they were male.  Eventually, things settled into a tentative peace, and Calista found her stride with her duties.  Calista’s father took Bardoul under his tutelage, grooming him to take over the shipping business some day.  Ulva began looking for a mate.  Harou joined the military.  Orfilia continued to chaperone Calista, but she was only a year older than Calista was, and had a lot less fight in her.  Still, there hadn’t been any problems for a few years.  There were occasional clashes between the pack and the townies, but they rarely resulted in injuries.

Two years ago was when things began to deteriorate for Calista.  That was when she turned eighteen, and that age came with the strong expectation that she find a mate.  But, as she had just reiterated to Harou on the walk to the woods, she just didn’t have time to look for a mate.  The idea of accepting the advances of any of the males who came to her for treatment was pretty unappealing.  She felt it wasn’t very safe or appropriate to encourage that kind of interaction while she was on duty, on top of not finding any of the males she’d met particularly appealing or interesting.

Unfortunately, the reverse was very much not true.  A fair number of men, both human and lycan, complimented her beauty on a regular basis.  The humans found her silver hair and hazel eyes that shifted from blue to green to be very striking.  She had a cute, round face with a delicately pointed chin and delicate shell ears.  The softness of her curves hid the well-toned muscle she’d developed from many hours of laborious house and garden work on top of regular runs in her wolf form.  She certainly didn’t look like the average human woman.  Luckily, there were other lycan women in town with silver hair, so her coloration wasn’t unusual enough to make the humans suspicious of her.  She wasn’t certain that the lycan men found her appealing for much of a reason beyond her job.  Oh, they surely considered her pretty enough, but the degree to which they pursued her compared to her sisters, who were also plenty pretty, seemed to Calista to have a lot to do with her role as healer.

When the siblings reached the secluded wooded spot for practice, they shed their clothes and folded them, placing them neatly in a hollow tree they’d cleaned out years ago for exactly that purpose.  It was a common practice for lycans to have caches of clothes hidden in strategic spots in the forest.

Calista shifted first.  Bones cracked, muscles stretched, tendons popped, and fur sprouted as her features rearranged themselves.  The process had been painful when she first learned to shift as a child.  But not anymore.  It felt strange, but there was no pain.  When the transformation was complete, a large gray and white wolf with hazel eyes stood where a pretty young woman once stood.

Harou started shifting shortly after Calista, but shifted a bit faster and finished at about the same time as her.  He stood about a head taller than her as a wolf, and his brown and red fur was a bit coarser.  Both lycans were larger in this form than the average wolf.  Most humans probably wouldn’t notice unless they saw a lycan standing next to a regular wolf, or a dog of that size.  Humans had a poor sense of scale with other animals, for the most part.  It was still risky to be seen by humans in wolf form though, as humans tended to start hunting and setting out traps for wolves when they saw them, out of fear for children and livestock.

Calista walked over to him and bumped her head against the white spot on his chest, tail wagging.

«Ok, enough hugs,» Harou said, nudging her head away with his nose.  «Start circling the clearing as if you were just passing by.»

«Stingy,» Calista teased with an exaggerated pout.  She turned her back to her brother to do as he’d instructed.

As soon as her back was turned, he struck!  He landed on her back, forcing her to the ground.  Calista yelped and twisted onto her back and kicked her hind feet into Harou’s soft belly.

«You forgot to never turn your back on an enemy!» Harou growled as he retreated a bit to avoid her kicks.

Calista didn’t reply as she flipped back onto her feet and took on a defensive stance.  When Harou didn’t move, she charged him.  He countered, knocking her down with his front paws.  She bit his foot and yanked, trying to throw him off-balance.

They continued to spar for a while.  Calista did her best to just knock Harou down, but he thwarted her every time.  It wasn’t surprising, considering his training and experience.  But it was frustrating for Calista while in wolf form.  Fortunately, Harou wasn’t fighting to make her submit, so the frustration was mostly directed inward, at her own inability to exert her dominance.  When she sparred with Harou was the only time she harbored any regrets for being born as a townie.