Fur

01 | A Latte With Lattie

If the Devil were real, I would have sold my soul to him. If signing a dotted line meant he would have taken me away, even if it were to Hell, I would have gone.

A way out. That's all I had wanted.

In the beginning I had wanted to be like them—my family, my friends, and everyone who had ever come near me because they were all the same. They were all werewolves.

When I never turned out to be like them, I stopped yearning to be what I'm not and began desiring to know what I am. When no one had the answer, when everyone began asking more questions the older I grew—why hasn't she shifted? where are her canines? why are her fingernails so rounded? has she grown any fur... like anywhere?—I gave up on hoping for an answer and wished they would do the same.

I wanted our differences ignored. I wanted to be a family no matter the genetic mystery.

I didn't get those things.

So in the end, I only wanted out.

It wasn't the Devil who helped me away when I was sixteen, nor was Hell the place I absconded to. In fact, I ended up somewhere quite the opposite.

I took money from the family vault. I bounced from cheap apartment to cheap apartment, working odd jobs while I awaited approval for the proper paperwork. Since I had been born into a werewolf pack, it was their job to educate me and not any American state's, therefore no authority cared when I neglected to attend any school. Rather than school, I focused on saving money until my applications were approved and my flight was booked.

After nearly six months, an airplane carried me over the Atlantic and landed me in Germany. I found my way to a rural little place named Heisenbühl, where a lovely, quaint two story home had been put up for rent by the owner's sister and grand-niece after her death.

Esmerelda, the sister, and Lattie, the grand-niece and Esmerelda's granddaughter, became the family mine couldn't be.

Now, I'm glad I didn't meet the Devil or run away to Hell. Because if I had, I wouldn't have met saints instead or stumbled to a place quite like Heaven.

~~~

Sunday
October 1st

"What do you think of this coffee?" Lattie asks, swirling it around with a stirring straw in the same manner and wearing the same expression as one would when poking the unknown organ of a dissected frog. "I don't like it."

"Mine was okay," I answer.

"Really?" Her posture straightens and she reaches across our booth's table to grab my half-drank coffee. After taking a sip, she smacks her pink lips softly for a moment before shaking her head dismissively. "No," she finalizes her decision, "Not good."

She hands it back with her bottom lip's signature marked on the white cup in delicate, lilac pink. I set the coffee aside without much interest and return to the article lit up on my phone.

"The latte I would call 'okay.' Nothing to sing carols about, though. The cappuccino was a step below that, and everything else... I think is going to make me sick later."

With the pure, unadulterated amount of coffee-derived caffeine Lattie takes in on a daily basis, for any cup of it to make her sick is a reasonable cause for a level three hazard, at least.

"That bad?" I ask, only half paying attention.

Lattie and her grandmother own the highest quality cafe in all of Heisenbühl and its surrounding provinces—and the two like to keep it that way. If word gets out about any new cafe opening or a change being made to the recipes of an old one, Lattie and I have our butts in their seats faster than the family physician can scold Lattie for her caffeine intake.