[Kath]

In the sleepy town of Animalia life was easy and quiet. The villagers lived in harmony with the animals that surrounded them, and went about their daily lives with good-natured humour, and their nights without fear. Until, on a dark and stormy night, life for the villagers changed forever.

A flash of lightning illuminated a shape slinking through the trees. The movement was followed by hundreds of bright little eyes, the animals were watching. The shadow moved into a clearing lit by the moon, and it seemed to the watchers that it grew and changed shape, until the body of a man was clear through the foliage. As it straightened, the sound of footsteps could be heard amid the thunder, and moments later three more humans stepped into the clearing. This was clearly designed to be a meeting of some kind.

The four humans moved towards each other, the three heading towards the one, until they met in the middle. As they were speaking in Human, the creatures around them couldn’t understand a word, but they didn’t need to understand to know that a very heated debate was going on, and whatever it was about, the shapeshifter was losing.

The watchers observed as he, it, stepped away from the others, apparently conceding to them. The newcomers began to walk back across the clearing, but turned as an unearthly howl arose from behind them. They froze in horror at the sight that met their eyes, but barely had time to scream before the beast attacked. Leaping on each person in turn it bit them and moved onto the next, until all three were lying on the ground, bleeding from their wounds. Slowly, their attacker dragged them across the clearing, laying them down in a patch of moonlight shining through the heavy clouds above.

Under the watchful gaze of those amidst the trees, the maimed bodies began to change, with limbs lengthening and hair sprouting and teeth growing sharp until they barely resembled humans at all, but rather the ominous form of wolves. Cautiously they rose to their four paws, keeping a wary eye on and distance between each other, and the one that had turned them. Though they formed a circle as they rose there was an obvious leader, and it was that creature that began a strange almost musical growling, as though the wolves, werewolves, were speaking to each other.

The noise was low and strangely hypnotic, and the animals watching soon found themselves caught deep within a trance-like state. They listened in delight, but suddenly the growling changed and became angry. Waking, the creatures saw an arrow shoot from the very edge of the clearing and strike the leader right in the heart. It howled, an unearthly sound that sent shivers through the woods. It was a note of finality, a herald of death, and indeed death soon followed. Whatever had shot it had already disappeared through the woods and back towards the village, and as they stared into the clearing the sky began to clear, allowing more moonlight through the clouds to illuminate the scene below.

Lying in the middle of the space was a giant wolf, with features like that of a man gone wild, and clearly dead. The remaining three were clustered around it, and began their musical speech again. The animals did not need to know the tongue to understand, the wolves would exact revenge on the town they had once been truly a part of for killing one of their own. A shared howl went up to the sky, and the wolves leaped out of the clearing and after their enemy, followed by anything in the forest willing and able to move.