The Loopy Lycan of Xolotl
In Mexico around 900 CE, Xolotl was the awkward, less popular wolf-headed twin brother of the god Quetzalcoatl.
Xolotl was a wolf-headed shapeshifter. His job was bodyguard to the sun which means he had to escort the sun every night when it set, and protect it through the dangerous Underworld so that it could rise again the next morning.
To protect the sun, he had to shape-shift into the wolf star, Sirius, every day. It was very tiring but important work and sometimes after a hard day’s work, Xolotl got confused about his transformations back again. His feet would end up backwards or he would forget to put skin over his bones.
So one day when his brother Quetzalcoatl asked Xolotl to help him gather bones from the underworld to help make new humans, Xolotl agreed but he wasn’t very happy about it. He helped his brother gather the bones and bring them back to the surface. Then he watched very carefully as Quetzalcoatl assembled the bones and sprinkled his own blood on them to bring them to life.
Xolotl saw how these humans loved their creator Quetzalcoatl and would do anything for him and he felt a little bitter. So the next night as he travelled with the sun through the underworld, Xolotl gathered some bones for himself. The next morning he began to assemble them.
But as the sun rose higher in the sky and started to get away from him, Xolotl began to run out of time. When he dripped some blood from his wolf neck on the skeletons seven of them came to life.
At first Xolotl was ecstatic, but when the full moon rose, something strange began to happen. One by one the children of Xolotl transformed into werewolves. And just like Xolotl some of them would get confused, with backwards feet and forgotten fur.
Even stranger, these wolves could slip through their own shadows into the underworld, just like Xolotl did every day with the sun. When the other gods saw what happened they were angry with Xolotl, saying he created a race of monsters, but Xolotl denied everything and ordered his children to stay hidden.
Today there are hundreds if not thousands of descendants of Xolotl, who may have access to the firey star powers of Sirius in addition to the shadowy powers of the Underworld.
