The night still held the smells of discord. I sniffed the winds and exhaled angrily. The town had finally done it. They’d me out. I’d feared it would happen one day. I’d never been one of the town’s people, and not a day of my life had they allowed me to forget it.
The mayor, no longer willing to be put off, and angered by my continued refusal to join him in his bed, had proclaimed me a Mutant Witchling, and then the stones had come flying, but the pain of them had been no more hurtful than the hate I’d seen in the faces around me. I should have been used to hate. Hadn’t I known it all my life? For twenty years the town had fostered me, yet I’d never known a friend.