Weresheep Girlfriend: Mary 2 (complete)

Female Main Character x Female Monster

Several years ago, Henry and Braun went off to war. Land disputes between the kingdoms had come to our lands, and our people decided it was not up for grabs. We defended our turf as well as possible, but Miror still ended up taking us as part of our property. My fiancé died in battle, and my brother, Henry, came back changed. War changes everybody, especially the soldiers, so we expected him to come home perhaps less of what he was.

I was mourning for Braun and suffered many sleepless nights, as did Henry, so we often stayed up together, talking in the dead of night. He told me about his nightmares, of a creature taking him and biting him repeatedly until he was riddled full of holes. I thought his dreams were about the guns of the Miror army. Then Henry showed me his wounds, once they were healed enough. They did look like bite marks, dozens of them. Henry told me that Miror had sent wild animals into their camp. But the animals were strangely shaped, large, and vicious. They had attacked many of the soldiers, killing some, wounding others. One had dragged off my Braun, who Henry had thought was dead.

I begged Henry not to tell me more, but I still began having nightmares of this monster attacking me and stalking me on the farm. It took time, but eventually Henry returned to life on the farm. About a year after, though, strange things started happening around our village. There were reports of a creature attacking people’s chickens, which were at first blamed on foxes. After that the attacks began to escalate as the creature started to hunt down geese, who are quite dangerous themselves, then goats, and sheep. The villagers built bigger and better barns to protect their animals at night. Some used straw fortified by mud or cement, others used strong sticks and lumber, and those who could afford it built stone structures to defend their livestock.

Eventually, the creature began taking pigs after destroying the stick and straw structures. Hunts for the creature began in earnest, with large sweeps going through the woods. At night, men would hide out with their weapons, hoping to catch a glimpse of something strange stalking around. One man allegedly exchanged words with the monster, and when he told it his livestock were safe in a structure, the creature told him: “I’ll just blow it down!”

For a few weeks, the hunt was all anyone could think about. Rewards were put up for the capture of this monster, and people began setting traps. Henry would guard our barn every night, going as far as sleeping out there, while our father stayed inside with mother and me. Then, one night, someone actually shot the creature. They were able to track it because of the trail of blood it left behind, which led right to our barn.

I was terrified. Henry was in the barn! What if that monster had him? Father kept me and Mother locked in the house while he joined the hunting party. Then the truth of the matter got out, and it ruined our lives forever.

Whatever had bitten Henry had made him a monster. He was able to run off that night, but everyone was still on high alert, even against the rest of the family. And now, apparently, something similar has done the same to Braun. Now Mary’s family is in danger of suffering like mine did. They’re not my favorite people, but even they deserve a fate better than that.

I’ve been thinking hard about what to do, and I still can’t find the key to Henry’s room. Mother hid it somewhere after she locked the room up. All I can do is go about my day as usual, and ponder my next move.

The sheep are grazing, wandering around between rocks at the base of the hills, happily playing between bites of grass. Demeter is standing beside me, and she lets out a long, heavy sigh. “What do you know about this?” I ask her.

Demeter tilts her head to the side. “About how to save your girlfriend?”

I grit my teeth and huff. “She is not my girlfriend. She is just a girl I know.”

“Sure, sure, sure.” She tilts her head again. “I may know something. But my powers aren’t quite what they used to be.”

I kneel beside her so I can look Demeter dead in the eye. “Mary’s life is at stake here! What’s it going to take for those supposed powers of yours to come back? You’re a sheep! Surely you know the way to stop this. Do you know the monster that caused all this? The evil sheep that bites people?”

“Calm down! Just because I’m a sheep deity, you think I know them all?” Demeter sniffs. “These things take time. Great power requires a lot of care and nurturing. You can’t just take it, or else you really become a monster.”

I frown. “Is that what happened to Henry and Braun?”

“They had power forced upon them.” Demeter looks out across the field. “I may not be able to save your girlfriend, but I may be able to protect her.”

“She’s not...” I huff and let it slide. “Fine, what is it?”

“There is something in the mountains. I need you to trust me if we are going to go there.”

I huff and rub my face between my hands. “What is it?”

“I can’t tell you. I have to show you.” She looks up at me. “Is it a relief or a burden knowing it isn’t your brother this time?”

I rub my eyes and lift my gaze, looking over my sheep and doing a quick count. “What do you know of it?”

“More than you think.”

I tighten my jaw and shake my head. “It isn’t something I like to think about. I try to ignore it and hope it goes away.”

Demeter stands and faces me directly. “That is why you cannot sleep and why you are having the nightmares that you do. You’re forcing down all these things that need to be faced”

“Once again, what do you know?” I snap at her. “If you’ve just woken up, how do you know? What could you possibly understand about what happened to my family?”

Her eyes take on the glint of humanity again. “I know that you still love him, or else the this would not wound you so much. I also know Mary means more to you than ‘just some girl you know.’”

I scowl at her and turn away. “She is not my girlfriend.” I look out over the hills and grass, up to the rocky, jagged base of the mountains. I pull my knees up and rest my head on them. “Just tell me what I have to do so I can get all of this behind me?”

Demeter stands up and nudges me. “Can I show you something?”

I lift my head and glare at her. “Like what?”

She nods her head, then walks away. “Follow me. That’s all you have to do, Bo.”

The sheep begin to move, walking along a path that leads to the mountains. I stand up and scoff. “I don’t have time for this. Where are they going?” I follow after the sheep, with Demeter following along beside me. The path is old and littered with stones, and twists around rocks and under cliffs. Eventually the ground becomes lush and earthy, with thick patches of moist moss. The path finally ends in a sea of moss and mushrooms. At the back, under a beam of light, there is a small shack of a house. Along the side is a big fence containing three pigs that snort as they watch us.

I frown as the sheep spread out, sniffing the moss and nibbling at the mushrooms. “What is this?” Then I gasp in alarm as one of the sheep is engulfed in a cloud of spores, and abruptly grows to twice its normal size.

“Get out of here!” a voice shouts from the house. Someone comes out the door, shooing away a sheep from the porch. Then the man stops cold. “Bo?”

I stare in alarm. My body flashes between cold and hot. My heart races then slows to a dead stop. My stomach churns, causing my knees to go weak. Tears flood my eyes, and I almost scream, but instead, my voice comes out weak and chopped. “Henry?”

He steps off the porch with a strange look on his face. His body is shaggy and extremely thin, and his long muzzle has hints of white to it. Before he vanished, he had not become a wolf completely yet. He had been a jigsaw puzzle of human and wolf.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he breathes.

Demeter nudges her head against my legs, and I move forward. “Why are you?”

“Look at me,” he snarls. “I’m the big bad wolf.”

“Yeah, I see that!” I snap at him. “But how?”

“He has been chosen by a brother to mine,” Demeter replies. “Someone very much like me, but attuned to blood and mayhem.”

Henry’s lips curl as he looks at Demeter. “Why is that thing talking?”

“Henry,” I stand before Demeter and extend my arms. “How long have you been here? Why haven’t you come home?”

His eyes flick to mine again. “What good would it do? Dad would try to kill me. Mom would hate me. The whole town would want to see me hanging from my neck over a pyre. Think, Bo! Why would I ever want to go back there? To die?”

“Then why stay so close?” Demeter asks calmly.

Henry points to her and snaps his jaws. “Seriously, what the fuck is that?”

“I honestly don’t know, Henry!” I snap. “She just showed up one day. But she’s right! Why remain so close to home? Why not try to run north, or to the Tulgey Wood?”

He stiffens and turns when the pigs start squealing. “What would be the point? I just found myself here. The mushrooms calmed my nerves. They made the change less painful, less…” His hand hovers around his head before he drops it. “I couldn’t go anywhere looking like this, so I just remained here.”

Demeter lifts her chin. “Sometimes the tether to home is quite short.”

“I don’t like you! A talking black sheep - Dad was right! Black sheep and goats can’t be trusted.” Henry stomps over to his pigs, pulling a rope that allows slop to pour down from a hatch on the side of the house.

I chase after him, and my feet sink into the moss, so I have to trudge slowly. “This isn’t about Demeter, Henry. Braun came back, and he bit Mary!”

Henry turns and scowls at me. “What?”

I nearly fall over, but I grab the fence for balance. “Braun is back, and he’s some giant sheep monster.” I pull myself up as Henry just glares at me. “He bit Mary, and now she’s changing too. I need your help!”

“I thought…” His brows furrow, and he scoffs. “I don’t know what I can do. Obviously nothing worked to save me.”

I smack his arm, like I used to when I was pissed at him. “Braun is wild, but you’re not. What did you do to stop that?”

He motions around himself. “The mushrooms here. I came here after I was chased from home. There was nothing to eat, so I started to eat the mushrooms. They did something, leveled me out, but they made this change permanent.”

“Permanent?”

He nods. “That’s why I stayed in the barn most nights.” He turns to look down at his pigs. “I would shift at night, sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once. But I always changed back in the morning.”

“So maybe Braun does, too,” I murmur.

“Maybe,” he grumbles. “But I don’t know the long-term effects of this curse.”

I look around. “Which mushrooms did you eat?”

“Any and all? I needed food,” Henry says. “If you need them for Mary, take what you want. They grow back overnight.”

“Perhaps that’s the key, then,” Demeter murmurs thoughtfully.

Henry just glares at Demeter. “Perhaps. But why would you want to help Mary? I thought you hated her.”

I fold my arms and frown. “I don’t want her to suffer. I’m bitter, but I’m not cruel, Henry.”

Henry goes and sits down on a log before his house. “Well, I told you all I could. Take the mushrooms, take your sheep - talking or not - and go on home.”

“Can I come back?” I ask him.

Henry rubs the back of his neck. “It’s best you don’t, Bo. Go back to thinking I’m dead. Go home. Your sheep should return to normal by morning. If not, blue is small, red is big.”

I look down and nod. “If it means anything, Henry, I’m glad to see you.”

He grunts in reply, not giving me anything more than that. Demeter nudges my hand, urging me to go. My sheep are roaming around, changing sizes depending on what mushrooms they eat. I whistle and they come to me, some bigger or smaller than they were before. I leave the mossy valley and lead the sheep back home.

Once returned, I get back to preparing Demeter’s wool for yarn as she watches me. “You’re angry with me,” she says.

“I’m not angry, I’m just thinking,” I mumble. My hands work faster and faster on the wool. “My brother is alive, that’s good. That’s fine.”

Demeter approaches and stands beside me. “What do you want, Bo?”

“What do you mean?”

Demeter rests at my feet. “Out of life. What is it you’d like? You were going to marry once before. Is that something you still wish for?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does.”

The comb gets stuck in the wool, and rips from my hands. It falls to the ground and Demeter sniffs at it. I sigh heavily as I stoop to pick it up. “I don’t know,” I grumble. “I’ve never known. Even when I was engaged to Braun, I didn’t know.” The faster and harder I comb the wool, the more it begins to shine like gold. “My whole life is ripped to shreds!”

“Then spin it back together,” Demeter says gently.

I rub the tears from my eyes. “My life isn’t fibers of wool.”

Demeter lays her head against the side of my leg. “Perhaps it is. When was the last time you felt sure of something? Or that life was going in a direction you felt you could live with?”

I sniffle and rub my eyes. “I’m not sure. I just remember as a kid I would have been happy with anything as long as I had Mary as my friend.”

Demeter lifts her eyes to me. “Is that when it went off the rails?”

“Maybe,” I murmur thoughtfully.

Demeter yawns, and her mouth splits open into that horrifying maw. “Mary is your girlfriend for a reason, Bo.”

“Stop saying that! Mary is just someone who exists in my life.” I scoff, gathering up the wool. Now that it has finally been carded, I have to start the roving process. I like this part, as I can focus solely on it and nothing else around me. Once that’s over, I will start spinning, and make bolts of yarn to sell. Hopefully this will sell well because of the deep black color.

I must have fallen asleep, as I wake up with my head on the table. I've messed up some of the roving strips, but I’m too tired to focus. I look up to see Demeter standing on her hind legs again, looking down at me. I rub my eyes and sigh heavily.

“I never fall asleep like this,” I murmur. “Are you putting some sort of spell on me?”

“It is not a spell. Your brother was a wild thought in your mind, roaming around and causing those nightmares. Now that you know where he is, he is no longer in your mind.” She stretches out her arm and points a finger to the center of my forehead. “Your sleep is yours now. Although I am surprised you don’t dream about your…”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” I growl sleepily. I gently push her hand away. “You said it was your brother that did that to Henry.”

“Yes,” she breathes. She folds her hands together and turns her head away. “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. He once created an army of wolves to do his bidding. I thought he would have slumbered too, after the Chess Court persecutions, but apparently, he does not sleep long.”

I look up at her sorrowfully. “Is there a way to change Henry back? Braun, too?”

Demeter bows her head. “I’m sorry, Bo, but the effects of my brother’s curse have no cure. Your brother will be a wolf till the day he dies.”

I sigh heavily. “Can you do the same? If you bite me, will I turn into a sheep?”

Demeter chuckles. “Is that something you want?”

I glare up at her, brow pinched. “Did you bite Braun?”

“Not me, but perhaps one of my children.” Demeter says thoughtfully. “It is possible it is descended from me. But I have not been close enough to someone to bite them until you.”

I stare slack-jawed up at her.

“Oh, don’t go blaming me,” she huffs, putting her hands on her hips. “The Miror army sending in these creatures seems to be the one to blame.”

I stand up and point sharply at her. “If it is your fault, then maybe you have a way of curing Mary and Braun!”

Demeter rolls her eyes. “I told you, there isn’t. And it isn’t entirely my fault. I didn’t go around biting people unless they deserved it.”

“Well, apparently, those who deserved it didn’t quite follow your strict moral code!” I plop back down in the chair. “Some fairy godmother you turned out to be.”

There’s a knock at the barn door, and Demeter shifts back into a black sheep. I stand up. “I’ll be inside in a second, Dad.”

“No, it’s me,” Mary’s strained voice cries. “Please, let me in!”