A/N
I strongly apologise for the delay but I am currently starting out on a brand new story employing new techniques which required some extensive research.
But more importantly I am back and I hope you like this particular human to wolf story don't like don't read
Please tell me what you think
Catherine was not your average run of the mill lady of Gettysburg.
Sure she may have looked fine on the outside with her firm features and slightly spirited nature.
You can tell that from those beautiful blue eyes that shown with a sense of brightness and great intelligence but also of great determination.
She was every bit of a perfect lady feminine but not weak as most that took the time to know the quiet girl would describe her.
The same people who said that would also say that she would enjoy the classics in great musical works and especially literature works like "war and peace".
For hours on end she would sit on a comfortable place like the tiny local library absolutely buried up to her nose in it.
She holding the thick volume up to her head such that all you could see were the brows on her head and her legs almost poking out from underneath the book.
So deeply engrossed that the only signs of life one could spot was the occasional shuffling of feet and the slight twitching of the brow when she came across and interesting word.
She was always like that interested in books especially at a young age which brings the question of how was she different from the rest. She was completely and absolutely deaf.
Her life was a relatively peaceful one.
Her father died about two months before she was born killed during a logging accident. Her mother Abigail raised her up as a widow and never remarried.
Their life was a fairly comfortable one her mother worked tirelessly in the family ranch. As such she grew up well but her mother, Abigail would notice that she was silent she never spoke a word no matter how much she would pressurise her to do so either with candy or anything else.
Catherine would seem perplexed and seemed to make the current mouth shapes but no sound came out of her.
Needless to say it was a tragic blow to her mother when she discovered her child was stone deaf it was about five when she discovered it.
It was when she was in the barn playing with her toys when a farm hand left a still smouldering match in the barn after catching a light after a hard day's work.
The lighted match caught onto some loose straw and soon the whole barn was filled with fire and choking flames.
Her mother had been cooking and when she caught sight of the danger and rushed over with all the speed of a frantic mother when she could not find little Katherine at home.
She hollered she wailed at the barn doors where smoke and fire crept out brushing past her were the farm hands herding the livestock to safety. She was close to despair and demanded the farmhands to tell her where her daughter was but none knew.
She yelled and hollered pushing through the flaming barn doors with a mighty thrust as though the strength of ten men had suddenly descended upon her frail frame.
In spite of all the dangers that surrounded her she yelled and hollered.
She ignored the danger of the burning rafters the panicked livestock that were still inside stamping and snorting banging against their stalls in their natural fear of fire.
The farm hands tried to reason with her but she pushed them away with all the furry of a wild animal their futile attempts causing her instead to run deeper into danger.
Still deeper she ran till the acrid smoke burned her throat and fire scorched a part of her rough work overalls until a burning rafter came down.
Pumped to the brim with adrenalin she turned around the burning rafter narrowly missing her crashing into the ground with a shower of smoke and ash. She shielded her eyes from the spray of hot embers that burned her exposed hands.
In spinning around she saw the safety and the security of the barn door in front of her wide open.
She blanked it out from the part of mind that was still concerned about personal safety.
There lay yet another door where the farm tools and other equipment were kept and which was converted into her own play room. However, there was one major obstacle in the way it was blocked by yet another set of burning rafters.
No matter how much she braved the fire she could would get no reply and eventually it was only when she got badly burnt braving the rafters did she find Katherine scared in a corner.
She managed to save her child in spite of what she had endured.
That was the fateful day when she discovered her child was well and truly deaf.
Katherine eventually learnt to speak but it came out garbled and was very hard to understand.
It was a real shame really as her voice if one overlooked the slur in her speech it was rather pleasant to listen to a trait from her father her mother had said. She learnt to tell if someone was approaching by sensing vibrations when someone was approaching her by the vibrations on the ground.
She was also quite intelligent and was able to make up for the deficit in class.
However, one thing she didn't get quite right was how to deal with people it was hard for a small town like Gettysburg to deal with its only deaf resident.
Her fellow classmates at Gettysburg high school would insult her with names like "Catherine the deaf" or "Slow Catherine" much to her dismay. She supposed that it was one of the penalties that came with being deaf.
That was until she disappeared into the woods and simply never came back. People didn't notice at first of course as she often came and went without a sound. However, in that absence she has a story to tell of love and pain. This is her story…