Prelude

"If you let us breed randomly for two generations, the Pekinese and Great Dane will disappear. Five or six more generations free of human meddling will result in all of us dogs looking pretty much alike: mid-sized feral scavengers with uprights ears and coat lengths to suit the climate. Take away our scavenging opportunities and most of us will die; those who don't will revert to something very close to wolf-type (it's been there all along). Then your former best friend will become your newest nightmare. It should shock you to realize that after thousands of companionable, domestic generations - generations that have seen the blossoming of so many human-imposed dog-shapes - my mind is still my own and my bloodlines are essentially those of the wolf. I can go home again. Eventually.

I was once one sort of animal and ended up as quite another. Much the same sort of thing happened to you, whether you want to admit it or not. (Think 'ape'.)

I will do whatever I need to do to survive. If that means I must make friends with my sworn enemy, I will do it. I have done it. You are living proof.

And that's how we came together. You didn't tame me, you know. You didn't "domesticate" me. No, it was I who watched you, tracked you, followed you, and evaluated your potential as a provider - and perhaps something more. I saw how you struck fire from rock and made heat from wood. I saw how careless you were with the food you left around your campsite.

I must tell you, however, the smell of you sickened some of my brethren who slunk away, preferring the cold and dark and freedom to a fat life with you. I made a different bargain, one never made before or since in the history of the world - a bargain between two species. I gave myself heart and soul into your hands - a fearful risk. Even now, I wonder how I had the courage to do it. It has left me, in some sense, a very lonely creature. I stand between two worlds - yours and theirs. If I were to meet a wolf now, he would kill me. Or I would kill him. We are no longer at home together.

Nor am I completely at home with you - not yet. Even after thousands upon thousands of years, I can still feel the wolf stir uneasily within me. It is I, not you, who am the true werewolf, that compelling but unsatisfied creature who shifts shape and psyche and who is, simultaneously, all too human and all too much a wolf.

I inhabit a twilight land, a place of fluid boundaries. I long for the wild yet yearn for the fireside. So do you, my friend. And that's ultimately what draws us together in spite of ourselves - the passion for liberty and the longing for home."

* * *

From Diane Morgan's 'Train the wolf in your dog'. Sentimental, perhaps, and I don't know if it's all 'true', but enjoyable mind-food. It reminded me of the dragons in Earthsea - those who chose the earth and those who chose the sky.