Excerpt: The Were

“Not everyone turns you know.” Smith said, “Not everyone was intended to change. The Landers never intended for us all to become, you know.” His thin fingers waved out the window, down the path back to the Were’s little houses, before beginning to tear up the pile of lettuce leaf in front of him.
Jane lifted her lips in the merest of smiles, “not everyone was born to my bloodline” she said.
“Even so, the majority of us were intended to remain unchanged, though we carry the genes, and they allow us a certain fierceness and determination, they do not manifest into full wereism at puberty.” He began to chop up crispy tubers, tossing them into the lettuce, “why am I telling you this, you know this already.”
“Because I’m not changing! Because I’m not changing and I’m of the deep blood. My line is supposed to be dependable, we are the last defense and I am supposed to change.” Jane’s eyes were wide, “I HAVE to change!”
“Don’t panic. You’ll change. Give me your platter” He said, using the distraction to allow Jane to calm down. “If you are so concerned, let’s go to the medic and get you an evaluation, a little check up if you will. There are things they can look at in your blood. Things that even your own mother, wise as she is, cannot evaluate on her own.”
Jane rolled her eyes in dismay, “Do you never learn? You are so unchanged, as if my mother would ever let me be evaluated. Look,” she said, with her fingernail, Jane traced a line on Smith’s tabletop and meeting Smith’s eyes she waved a finger over one side of the imaginary line. “Here is you,” she tapped a nail on the other side, “and here the Were are. The Were don’t need testing or evaluations or, oh anything the people of the herd need.”
Smith heard her disparaging tone, so reminiscent of her mother. Grabbing a broom, he swept two or three small pillars’ out the door. “These things are terrible this year,” he said, giving himself a moment to consider her actions. “Jane, if this is so, then times have changed far more than our predecessors ever intended. Predators were to be the exception, the pinnacle of the manipulation, created as the ultimate defense, but even they were intended to remain ‘human’” Smith dropped a crisp salad in front of Jane, directly over her invisible line. “Eat now, worry later. The Council has called session this afternoon and I for one would like to worry about that for the moment. Perhaps it will take your mind off the Changing.”