Pastoral Tales
Prologue:
I never wanted to cry "Wolf". Never. All the villagers at the bottom of the hill have never made it to the farm in time when he appeared. When they finally scaled the mountain he would disappear as if he were the night himself. The unending fruitless searches of this "Wolf" led to their belief of me being a liar so they could save their own time.
He was real alright.
In this world, people who look after a specific type of animal are Tamers.
I am a Sheep Tamer. Out of all the animals we had in the town, I was unconsciously drawn towards sheep. There was something I enjoyed about their quietness, their soft bleats and their stubborn nature. Before Wolf came into my life, the villagers would pay endless visits at my hilltop farm with baskets of grass. "And one bundle of grass for you too, my young Tamer!" they would say jovially, ruffling my curly white hair. I felt grudgingly proud about the praises they gave me, but I wish the men visited less. The women, understandably, always fawned over my predecessor Ram and the older men… well, they would touch me for a heartbeat too long, which was extremely disturbing, because I was a boy!
"Hello?" I would gesticulate in front of Ram for the umpteenth time as he sat, exasperated, on the kitchen chair, "I'm a guy. That dude shouldn't do stuff like that to other guys. It's gross!"
Ram raised an eyebrow. "So it's ok if you were a chick…?"I blushed.
"Of course not, but…"
Ram lit a cigarette. "Noa, perverts are scattered everywhere on the earth like damn oats in a field, and as long as they don't do anything extreme to you then I won't kill them. The thing is," A slow smile curved his lips as I tried to figure out his farm analogy, "you're kinda at fault here too. Who told you to be all cute and slender-tender?" I had left the room so my face wouldn't overheat. But he was right, I thought, collapsing in my bed, abnormalities do seem to plague my life. It egged the geezers on more when I twisted my head as if I enjoyed it, when I was actually trying to avoid my small horns from grazing their rough hands.
Yes, my horns.
According to my predecessor Ram, there were some Tamers who, after extensive emotional and physical contact with their animal, gain certain attributes and characteristics similar to them. These Tamers became known as the Shifted, valued like prized goods for royalty due to their rarity, extensive experience and knowledge. Ram had monitored the sheep even longer than I, so when I grew horns instead of him, you could only imagine how baffled I was. Ram was the only one who knew of this and he never told a single soul. Sometimes I wonder why he even cares at all, but then I reassured myself by thinking that he probably just wanted an extra hand with his sheep.
And exactly on the Spring Equinox, sometime after my horns sprouted, he disappeared, vanished without a trace.
And that was when Wolf began to terrorize my life.