My mother used to tell me that I was special, not because I was a half-blooded werewolf but also because I'm a clairvoyant.
You see, my mother was a clairvoyant. After she died, my father raised me on his own. We were part of a travelling show, or as some people called it, a 'Circus'.
I remembered her as a beautiful petite woman with dark hair and emerald green eyes, they were so piercingly green its as if she could stare straight into one's soul. The colourful turbans constantly worn around her head weren't just part of her fortune-telling act but to hide the baldness after many courses of chemotherapy.
Unlike the other werewolves, my father didn't participate in any man-turned-to-beast-live transformations on stage, nor did he do mid-air acrobatics or jump through hoops of fire or sword-swallowing stunts.
He sold potions. Everything you could think of, from the Minor Ailment Potions to Anti-aging potions. But his best-seller was the Love Potion. Who knew if it worked or not at making people fall in love with you, but it was certainly delicious. It was a mixture of fermented dandelion and burdock roots. Picked lovingly by yours truly, so of course, it was extra special.
During the day, his tall, lanky body could be seen wearing a greyish lab coat and a large pair of goggles donned over his black thick-rimmed glasses as he mixed different coloured liquids from one jar into another. Sometimes there would be smoke, sometimes there'd be explosions, but luckily my father managed to come out relatively unscathed.
Besides, he never just walked, as soon as he moved, he'd always break into a sort of semi-jog. He was always very quiet and polite, when he did speak he had a slight stutter to signify his nervousness. As his hair grew, he looked more like a mad scientist than a werewolf.
Of course, he didn't choose to become a werewolf.
Nobody chooses to become one, I didn't choose to be one either, but I couldn't choose be born. It just chooses you.
When my father was still a final year student backpacking around Europe during summer, he was viciously attacked by the infamous American werewolf named Caleb, who'd left him for dead.
Caleb was one of the original werewolves, and well-known for his cruelty and mercilessness. Whilst others hunted for food, he hunted for sport. According to urban legends, he reached 12 feet tall under the Full Moon, his teeth were razor sharp and he moved faster than the speed of lightening. He could pull out a tree including its entire root single handedly and his hands were the size of two gigantic ploughs.
I'd asked my father if all the tales were all true and he merely said: "he was maybe around 10 feet, 11 at most, definitely not 12 feet." When I tried to press him on the details further, my father would put all his joking aside, look at me in the eye and tell me in all seriousness that every day he hoped to God that no one would ever have to encounter that beast.
My father had been a young promising chemist at Cambridge, and was tipped for many great things, but was forced to drop out to recover from his injuries. He went through bolts of depression and had many suicidal thoughts until he met my mother, who was visiting his hometown as part of a Circus.
At one initial glance, they knew they were destined to be soulmates, selected for each other by the Moon Goddess Selene.
According to my father's relatives, he had basically gone crazy, ran away from home to join the Circus and was never to be seen or heard of again.
My Grandma wasn't too pleased about having a young werewolf on board either. During his earlier years, my father was a bit of a loose cannon, his transformations during the Full Moon had been uncontrollable and as he thrashed around, often killed some of the circus animals.
But once returned to his normal human state, he was softly spoken, as gentle as a butterfly. It was as if a drunk had woken up the next morning with no recollection of what happened the night before.
It wasn't until they'd picked up their first casualty along the way that things started to change.
Colin was a young man who had been hillwalking with three friends in the Yorkshire Moors. One night, as they slept soundly in their tents, a werewolf attacked them, killing all but Colin, who only managed to escape by the skin of his teeth. My mother saw the injured Colin in one of her premonitions and they sought him out.
As time went on, thanks to my mother's clairvoyant skills, they saved more and more people along the way. My parents were almost like the Red Cross, travelling around the world offering Humanitarian Aid to anyone that needed help. And like normal wolves, it was much safer in packs instead of being alone, so after a lot of them had recovered, decided to join us.
When I turned 10 years old, I started to display the characteristics of a clairvoyant such as having clear vivid dreams and being able to isolate objects in my mind's eye, but without the much-needed guidance of my mother, my clairvoyant skills have been somewhat stagnated.
Now at age 16, I was probably not much further on than before, as so far I have only managed to foresee five events, one of which was a false alarm. 4 out of 5, according to my father wasn't bad, it was an 80% success rate, which in a lot of countries, qualified for an 'A'Grade, or at least a 'B'Grade, depending on how strict the markings were.
Quantity aside, the quality was equally disappointing too, because unbeknownst to most, out of those four success stories, one was an injured owl, one was a fox and the other two were rabbits. At this rate, I was nowhere near being able to save anything bigger than a sheep, let alone a human being.
"Hey Aria," a soft voice called out, "what are you up to?"
I looked up from my notebook and saw Selena stood in front of me, smiling broadly. Her super white teeth gleamed against the sunlight, and she had shiny long blonde hair. She had been an American student doing a gap year in Paris when she was bitten by a werewolf, my parents found her lying half-dead near the Champs-Élysées and brought her back to health. She has stayed with us since.
"Oh, nothing...just doodling," I said, rather nonchalantly.
"Doodling!" She repeated with enthusiasm, "wow, that's so cool!"
She had that American Southern belle wholesomeness about her that made her brighter than the sky and even more cheerful than a box of Cheerios. Uncle Colin was mad about her, he would've brought her the stars from the sky if she had asked him to.
I closed my notebook abruptly and got up onto my feet.
The surroundings suddenly started to swirl around me and I am blinded by flashes of light as if someone has hit the fast-forward button on a remote control. My heart was beating like a drum, I felt dizzy and nauseous like I'm about to throw up any minute.
"Aria, Aria! Are you ok?" Selena panicked, her hands gripped hold of my arm to steady me. "Can you hear me?"
I was having a vision.