Feigning Innocence

When Albus Belua was young, he had been told stories of an exotic race of demihumans – werewolves. Of course he didn’t believe any of that nonsense, for he lived in a small hamlet on the far outskirts of the noisy city life. Perhaps the city folk had the leisure time to sit around daydreaming about such things, but most of his time was dedicated to helping his folks in their daily chores: farming, foraging, doing the laundry, etc.

And for many years he carried on in this way, leading a humble life with his closely-knit circle of friends and family. Sometimes a herald from the big city would come by with some obscure new law that the king had passed – one which had nothing to do with them whatsoever. Other times a travelling merchant would come through with some quaint wares for sale. Such was his extent of his knowledge of the outside world.

It was simple, repetitive, at times boring – but there was something satisfying about this way of living. That day came however, when he would have to make a choice. His parents had told him about it for many years, but it felt as if he could have spent that much more time thinking about what it was that he should really do. Try to make it big in the city and send money back home, or start a family by marrying one of the local girls. As far as he knew, all of his friends chose the latter.

He leaned towards the same as well, but there was something about the introduction of the element of choice which threw his peace completely off-kilter – what was city life really like? After all, he could only make this decision once in his life, and there were absolutely no do-overs. He certainly didn’t find anything lacking in the girls of his hamlet, as small as it was – but that was exactly the problem! Every morning upon waking up the first thing he would see was the distant, yet giant, silhouette of the city walls, plastered against the horizon. And who knew how many more types of folks – not just girls – he could meet there? There wasn’t any reference point for him to really make a decision off of: they only had the funds to send and put him up in the city, but not for him to visit it, come back, then return if he liked what he had experienced. It was a one-way trip.

There was another small issue… Just about every single girl there in the hamlet had one day suddenly turned into predators. The double standard was so obvious and apparent to him, but there wasn’t really anything he could do about it. Every family gave their sons plenty of time to make a decision, their daughters practically none. He was ripe for the picking, and activities which he had enjoyed so quietly and peacefully before turned into shameless opportunities for teasing. One would “accidentally” drop something to pick it up right before him, another would apologize for “accidentally” brushing against him in some intimate way. Some of the others didn’t even bother trying to be remotely discreet about their intentions: they would stare long after he had “caught” them, as if to dare him to do something about it. But he never did though; he knew he wasn’t ready to seriously commit to anything quite yet.

This led him to wanting some external influence or factor to make the choice for him, but even here he ran out of luck. His parents had much more patience and faith in their son than did the others, so they didn’t feel strongly one way or the other. He asked his father and mother, together and separately, on many different occasions, but their reply would always be more or less the same. “It’s up to you.”

Likewise, because his friends were in the exact same situation as he was, they all had some self-awareness that anything they said to him for advice wouldn’t really work. That and nobody had ever left the hamlet!

He wasn’t quite that old yet, but he knew that every passing day he was approaching that fork in the path that would determine the rest of his life. In between the constant teasing and thinking, he felt as if he were going to start getting white hairs already.

And so it was that he got into the habit of walking more – a lot more. That is, not circles around the hamlet, but far from it. At first it would be for a half hour, then an hour, that he would disappear then reappear suddenly in the village. When people started asking him where he had gone to, he just told them he went for a walk. But over time this habit grew, and it got to the point where he would leave not even just for a few hours but at times for the entire day. It was just about the only time he really felt free from this whole thing which now haunted his mind constantly – it reminded him of that serene feeling from his younger days. Naturally, his folks started to worry about him leaving for so long, and going out so far, but he came back every single time.

And even this escape had started to bother him when his mind suddenly decided to become a philosopher: “Why don’t those birds worry about this nonsense? Why me? Why couldn’t it have been someone else? Do birds even think about these things?” He got sick of this very quickly though and simply stopped thinking about it.

The walking had certainly helped – but as in what way, shape, or form he couldn’t quite put it, but he was sure that it did. He knew that he was still mired in these conditions that he one day would have to step up to and be responsible for, yet things seemed clearer every time he went for a walk. Nobody trying to seduce him, just surrounded by the calm of the wilderness around him.