Prologue

The incident happened twenty nine vorns ago. That's two thousand, four hundred and seven earth years ago. The incident changed my life. Mostly for the worst. Then Hunter came along and made things a bit better but it was very weird for a bit. But he's been really good about this whole thing. Took me a while to realise how good, but I was…distracted by various other things at that time.

I guess this all started when I moved schools. You wouldn't think going from England to Wales would be that big a shift. They're next door. Both part of the United Kingdom. But it is different. Different language (even if no one speaks it much any more). Different accent. Different attitude. And I didn't fit.

Things were bad until I got to high school. Up until then, I had no friends. At all. I had one in high school, but she left me for her boyfriend (who dumped her shortly afterwards, by the way). Then I went back to being a loner. I didn't mind it by then. I'd got used to it and thought nothing would ever come of it.

If only I knew…

You see, there was a group of three people who used to pick on me. Two boys and a girl. The boys were thugs, barely capable of stringing a sentence together. She was the complete opposite. Scrawny, weedy, but clever. Frighteningly clever. She and I were always equal in brainpower, but what made her scary was her determination to do all that she could to ruin my existence.

And one day, she did.

I didn't want to write this down at first, but Hunter made me. Now I'm glad he did. I didn't realise how much I'd forgotten. He says I need to remember. He wants me (oddly) to 'cling on' to my humanity, even though I lost it on that fateful day. Maybe he thinks it's attractive.

But I never could resist him.

I'll try to put down as much as possible, but I can't promise anything. My memory, advanced as it is now, is a bit hazy when it comes to the human side of things. I can remember the important bits, and Hunter has said he'll help where he can but the first part of this might be a bit disorganised. And Hunter's insisting that I write the Welsh accents phonetically to 'retain cultural integrity' apparently. So this means ear becomes 'yer' and heard becomes 'heared' etc. this seems strange to me, but unfortunately Prowl somehow got wind of it and ordered me to. He said something about preserving cultural integrity as well.

So I should get on with this. I've got a feeling it'll bring back memories I would rather have kept buried. Memories I did keep buried. This'll probably be messy and painful. But at least it sort of has a happy ending. I know that at least.