When I was old enough, abuela would tell me terrible stories of their transition to Septu; of how day after day they had faced fear-inspired persecution from their fellow man for crimes they had not committed and for which they could not hope to atone; of how her best friend from the laboratory had been captured, raped, tortured, lynched, and burned by a mob of 'Pure-Bloods', as they so unimaginatively called themselves. The only times that had been reasonably safe for her and the others to venture outside for food had been around midday, when the police were out in droves, or at night, when no one was supposed to be out at all.
But my grandmother was a strong woman, and the wolf in her only amplified that strength. She'd been the one that had begun rallying our kind secretly for protection, and she'd been the one to organize the first safe houses. It had been she that had held her family together, and later, after my mother had conceived us, she'd held us together as well.
Something strange had happened as the rejects had come together and bonded. The children they produced were more balanced genetically then their parents had been, becoming closer to their animal counterparts in almost every attribute. It is possible that reproduction was a facet of the blending process that the scientists in charge of the experiments had either forgotten or neglected to take into account. Either way, though it served to solidify our kind's independence as species, it also drove us further away from our human brothers, and the second generation had their own trials of persecution to face.
My mother, for whatever reason, did not share abuela's strength. She couldn't cope with the constant derision, and the notion of inferiority, of sub-humanity, that the rest of society screams relentlessly at us became firmly rooted in her mind. She couldn't manage to become completely independent of Grandmother's roof or protection.
I never knew my father. I doubt I ever will. He was one of us, or so my mother claims, but he was a stray, here one night and gone the next. My mother says that he loved her, but both my brother and I know better.
His abandonment drove my mother deeper into the depression that society had prepared her for. She almost killed us at birth, but abuela mercifully intervened and somehow found in her daughter the resolve to become our mother, and so I owed my grandmother my life before I was yet a day old.
