Torn Between Destinies

I didn’t know the name of the village when I got there. Just that it was small, and it smelled like wet soil and chimney smoke. The streets were mostly gravel and packed dirt, broken up by old wooden fences and sagging porches. It looked like it had been forgotten by time.

I kept my hood up.

Humans weren’t like wolves. They didn’t just sense an outsider—they stared. Judged. Whispered. The stares followed me like shadows as I walked past their windows and rusty mailboxes. Some even pulled their kids closer. I wasn’t sure what they saw in me. Maybe just a girl who looked too tired, too alert. Maybe something more.

Mason had told me to go east. That’s where the gossip ran louder. The village markets. The church. The old bar by the highway that opened too early and closed too late. I was hoping for a name. A face. Anything.

I didn’t get lucky at first.

At the little market with wooden bins of bruised apples and old jars of pickles, the cashier just blinked at me. "You lost, sweetheart?"

"No. Just passing through."

She nodded, uninterested, and handed me back my change without another word.

At the church, I sat in the back for half an hour during a small service. No one looked like my mother. No one smelled like her either. My wolf nose—what was left of it—could barely pick up a thing beyond the musty wooden pews and waxy candles.

By the time I wandered into the bar, I felt like a ghost of myself. But I needed to ask. I had to.

The bartender was wiping down the counter with a rag that looked older than the chairs.