The Moon Rises

Hello again, this is Summer. In the last couple of posts, we've talked about Gia's situation - getting bitten by a large animal (which she referred to as a "dog") and then getting very sick but not wanting to go to the doctor. A couple of our readers who commented suggested the possibility that Gia might have been bitten by a werewolf.

It all seemed to fit. It explained what bit her, why there haven't been other sightings of a large predatory animal (since werewolves are human most of the time,) why she got so sick, and why some of our resident vampires had an instinctive negative reaction to her after the bite. 

We talked about it among ourselves, and we decided that a werewolf was the most likely explanation. And yes, in our world there are situations where lycanthropy is the most likely explanation; we're never going to be normal, are we?

The problem is, how were we going to tell Gia? We know things like vampires and fairies are real, which makes it easy to believe werewolves are too... but presumably Gia didn't know about any of this. She probably thought, as most people do, that these are just stories.

So how were we going break the news?

We talked about it over the course of Thursday afternoon - out of Gia's earshot - and we didn't come to an agreement. Molly favoured a direct approach. ("Congratulations, you're a werewolf!") The rest of us thought that was potentially traumatizing, and/or might just make her laugh and not take anything we said seriously. Kiwi suggested that she and I turn into cats in front of her so she would see animal shapeshifters are real - but the verdict from the majority was that this was potentially even more traumatizing, and also might make Gia just think she was insane. Bree suggested we start vague and work up to lycanthropy, which seemed like the best plan... but no one could think of a good conversational direction that would lead us anywhere near that topic.

As far as we knew, there was no hurry. Gia is doing better and seems to be recovering, but doesn't have any intention of leaving yet. No one thought to check the calendar and see when the full moon would be.

Turns out, it was Thursday - as in, that very night.

Us girls were down in the basement of the Rose house, semi-watching television and discussing the werewolf situation, when were heard screams from upstairs. Before we had a chance to respond to the screaming, we heard a crash, followed by more screams and what sounded like furniture being overturned. We ran upstairs, and found a wolf-looking creature, except capable of standing upright, in the living room, crouching behind the now-broken couch. It was not entirely surprising, given our topic of conversation, to see that the werewolf had familiar hazel eyes. Of course, it was Gia.

We weren't sure what to do. With vampires, we were able to get a lot of our information in advance from Clare and Inna. We don't really know what to expect when it comes to werewolves. (Inna confirmed for us that they are real, but knows nothing much else about them.) I'm a feline shapeshifter, and so are Kiwi and Maia, but we're pretty different from werewolves; we were born this way, we were never bitten. Since we didn't have any kind of precedent to draw on, we didn't know what a werewolf would do. Would Gia still act like Gia? Or would she act like a wild animal?

The answer seemed to be somewhere in between. GiaWolf didn't seem to recognize us, but she also didn't seem inclined to harm us at first. She sniffed at us, and paused, as if she wasn't sure what to do.

"Gia?" Maia called. GiaWolf turned to look at her, like she recognized her voice... but then she looked at us girls again, as though she was considering going hunting. This seemed like a problematic situation.

Things got even more problematic when Clare and Tabitha started hissing and snarling at her. Marie-Grace and Cécile also looked upset, but they managed to keep it under control. Our newest vampires didn't seem to be able to handle being around their "natural enemy," though, and they were making their displeasure known. 

GiaWolf dropped down into a crouch, and prepared to charge at the vampires. It was, needless to say, a tense moment.

Maia broke the tension by saying "Gia!" again, but sharply this time, like a command. The instinct to obey the dominant member of the pack overrode the instinct to attack the vampires, and Gia relaxed her stance. It took awhile, but Maia finally managed to talk her down into the basement, into the room we'd fortified for Tabitha when she was a crazy freshly-turned vampire. Once the door shut, we occasionally heard the sound of breaking furniture, and Maia's voice talking to her, calming her down. 

Things quieted down near sunrise, and Maia and Gia (now in fully human form again) came back upstairs. Gia looked a little bruised from her furniture-breaking episodes, a little embarrassed, and a lot shocked, like she couldn't believe what had happened. 

We broke the news to her that werewolves are real - which Gia had already seen for herself. Then we told her about vampires... and she pretended to be surprised, but she wasn't on her game with her acting, and she wasn't really very convincing.

I didn't think about it at the time, but that's kind of weird, isn't it? That she pretended she didn't know about vampires? Why would she do that? Maybe she just figured vampires were plausible after the whole werewolf thing, and didn't already know about them... but why try to pretend it was big news if she'd already figured it out? It seemed like maybe she already knew. I just wonder how she would have...

At the moment, we have bigger problems than Gia being tight-lipped about certain things. Night has fallen again, Gia is currently in wolf form, and is down in our basement. We don't want to be mean by locking her up, but we also don't want her to get out and hurt anybody. We're not sure how long before and after the fullest moon she'll transform, so we don't know how many days to expect this.

It looks like the Greens and the Roses are going to need a crash course on werewolves... the sooner the better!

Love,

Summer