Martha.net

“Could you at least pretend to be embarrassed?” Rasine whispered, hiding behind a magazine at least six years out of date. She was still getting used to Yanni’s ability to ‘mask’ their conversations from the world around them.

“Mmm, why?” The fae was focused in on the brushwork of the woman carefully detailing his left hand in henna ink. His right hand was already covered in the drying dye, held carefully away from anything it might stain. The woman was whistling something Rasine couldn’t quite place, and no one else in the store seemed to think the six foot tall thickly-built man was at all out of place.

“Because most people would be!” Rasine couldn’t actually see him, but she could feel the brush dancing over her hand in phantom patterns and the flaky itch of the drying henna. Today was going to go down in the history books as the flat out winner for ‘Weirdest Day Ever’.

“I’m not ‘most people’, am I?”

“Well, no, technically, but– look, you want to be human, right?” Because that was the deal, she showed him how it was to be human and he showed her what it was like to not be… only she was starting to regret ever making the bargain.

“This is correct.”

“Then be embarrassed for godsake!” That was more of a hiss than a whisper, but her Yanni mood-o-meter didn’t change at all. It was like he was made of Care Bears or Teletubbies or something.

“I never said I wished to emulate your flaws.” Smug Care Bears.

Rasine: Polish, a rose

“Rather an-,” he searched frantically for a less insulting word than ‘uninspired’ and finally had to settle on “-unpleasant way to die, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes.” She paused, tapping the nail gun against her thigh thoughtfully, “But that’s rather the point, don’t you think?”

“I thought you were trying to get me to talk, not bleed to death.” Because, truthfully, he didn’t think that nailing someone to an inverted cross -not matter how appropriate the cliché- was at all an effective method of coercion. “You do realize I’ll most likely pass out when all the blood -well what’s left of it- rushes to my head?”

“Oh. Hmm,” she blinked, “Hadn’t thought of that actually.”

“More of a thematic thing then?” He was getting better at not flinching as she gestured at the cross with the nailgun. Some people just shouldn’t talk with their hands.

“You’re a vampire, I thought it was ironic.” Her attention was focused on the cross now, which was somewhat of a relief. “This sort of sucks though, I mean, you know how long it took me to find someone who’d make silver nails?”

“Those are for werewolves.”

“What?”

“Silver works on werewolves; crosses and garlic work on vampires. Plus, I’m not a vampire.”

“Technically.”

“Technically.”

Very little was left to be said, at least what could be said in mixed company, but she felt like she had to keep trying.

They’d been over the same ground a dozen times; Alastair remaining insufferingly noble and Priss becoming more and more despondent as his mule headed inclination towards self-sacrifice seemed insurmountable. if they’d been alone she could have leveraged his sister’s child against him, but Alastair had kept Bethy and Vernon trapped in the sitting room, like a cat corralling mice.

Priss’s temper finally snapped when Alastair tried to physically stop Vernon from leaving. Vernon was too much of a pushover to actually fight back, so Priss intervened on his behalf with the fireplace ash shovel.

That quickly disintegrated into an all-out brawl between the two, with Vernon and Bethy taking refuge behind Grandmother’s couch.

There were, perhaps, better ways to break the news to their cousins that Alastair had been bitten by the were-leopard on loan from the Indian National Zoo, but it was quite effective.

When the ash had settled, Alastair had retreated behind Great-grandfather’s stuffed chair, snarling to himself and threatening -via half-hearted swipes- to claw the furniture.

Priss took the opportunity to fill Vernon and Bethy in on the whole incident, Alastair’s sister’s daughter included, thus bringing an end to the whole charade.

Sadly, their cousins were not made of firmer stuff and had to be revived several times with smelling salts during Priss’s explanation.

“Everything dies, sooner or later, we just got it over with a bit earlier than most.”

“All well and good, but you still aren’t in the book.” The angel glared over the top if the page at the group. “And if you aren’t in the book, you aren’t in the book.”

“And that means..?”

“It means you don’t get in,” the Angel sniffed. “Next!”

“Now wait a minute–”

“I said ‘next’.”

“But what–”

“I said ‘next’.”

They glared at each other for a moment and then Tony grudgingly led his group away from the gate.

“So where do we go now?” Michelle drew misty circles in the cloud-like ground with the toe of her sneaker.

“Nowhere, I guess.” He shrugged when Todd gave him a questioning look. “Well, we can’t go in, and I don’t see any other doors.” He gestured at the blank greyness of the landscape.

“So we’re stuck.”

“It all depends on your definition of stuck.” The group turned to face the newcomer, unconsciously shifting so that Tony stood between them and the angel. “I’ve got a bit of a bargain for you…”

There’s a trail through the low desert –where the scrub brushes still outnumber the cacti and there’s life under every shadow– but it never leads the same way twice. No one knows who made it, or how it stays made as it wanders between the sandstone cliffs, but there’s plenty of guesses and theories and legends about what waits at the far end of the path. It helps that no one’s ever come back, that way speculation has free rein on what might or might not live where the sidewalk ends.

Every so often someone heads out, with supplies and compasses and all the trappings of civilization bundled on dog sleds. Because horses don’t last a day in this desert, but the slim brown forms of the desert dogs, who trace their blood to coyotes and foxes more than shepherds or labs, are made for this. But no matter how well-stocked or well-funded, they never come back. The trail eats them all: man, dogs, sleds… or hides them just far enough out that no one has found them. Because there’s only so far folks are willing to go, before the trail catches that fatal spark of curiosity and before they can blink, they’re burning with wanting to know.

When he looks up from his book, there’s a shadow on the lake, cast from a cloudless sky. It takes him a moment to figure out if he should swim for shore or stay on the safety of the floating dock. In the end, the shadow decides for him, drifting between him and land.

There’s no passage to the sea, not here, so it should have meant he was safe– but safe is such a hollow word now. He tries to gauge how large it is, what species, but the wind has picked up and the waves distort the image. If it’s close to the surface, he’s safe, the smaller ones rarely take humans as prey. But if it’s deeper– he stays still, trying to shift the raft as little as possible.

The cell phone’s in the car, so are the emergency flares. All he can do is wait it out and hope something else catches it’s attention.

So, hmm, per the tags it looks like I never really did a lot of world building for EW, which is strange since it’s a fun little sandbox. Or at least it looks like it will be a fun sandbox– there may be inherent problems with the situation that aren’t readily apparent. Hmm. *ponders*

Anywho, the basic premise for this universe is that were-whatevers exist, are common knowledge, and are a more or less accepted part of society. It’s obvious from their behaviors they aren’t completely human, but because they have a very long history of peaceful interactions, most of humanity tends to overlook the non-human elements. Sort of like how folks treat wolves as dogs– up until the point here it’s made painful obvious that they aren’t.

Still, when a were goes bad the media has an unashamed field day over it, and there are areas of the world where being a were is still not a conductive to a long life. But it’s been this way for a very long time, and were’s have long since moved into more tolerant societies. As a result there is a bit of a self-segregation on the part of the were community, simply because they really don’t trust ‘plain’ humans all that much.

The basic question of ‘how do they work’ is going to be hand-waved, and an assumption that magic is involved is made by folks in the EW-verse. Per previously written snippits, latern hanging is in vogue for this bit of divine meddling.

This version of weredom is a genetic trait, not contagious, and is a recessive female-biased trait. The species of were is determined by the female, even in full/recessive crosses.

Were-mom + Were-dad = were-kid (both)
Were-mom + human-dad = were-recessive-kid (both)
Were-mom + were-recessive-dad = were-kid (both)

Were-dad + were-mom = were-kid (both)
Were-dad + human-mom = were-recessive-kid (female) & human-kid (male)
Were-dad + were-recessive-mom = were-kid (female) & were-recessive-kid (male)

Were-recessive-mom + were-recessive-dad = were-recessive-kid (female) & human-kid (male)
Were-recessive-mom + human-dad = human-kid (both)
Were-recessive-dad + human-mom = human-kid (both)

So after two generation of cross-breeding, the recessive is lost unless the line is tied back into the gene pool. Which would make for interesting family trees if the gene pool ever got thin. Hmm. But still, should allow for plenty of outside bloodlines to keep folks healthy overall.

Could make for interesting sociological problems as well, since you have three possibilities for a female were and only two for a male. (Plus three chances for female recessive and two for male recessive.) So the were groups would be much more willing to let a female were marry outside of the gene pool than an male, since you’d get two recessives instead of one. But on the flip side, a male recessive is better than a female because it has a chance for two full-blood offspring and a female recessive doesn’t.

And an offshoot of that would be that recessives would be ‘encouraged’ to marry back into blood and that a male recessive would be in trouble if he didn’t pick a full-blood female (since that is his only change of full-blood offspring).

Add to this that females are the one’s that determine the species of the offspring and you have some interesting sociological prohibitions to play with. Hmmm… *ponders*

Cassian was the first were Matt had ever really met. Sure, he’d had classes with them in school, and there was one on his old soccer team, but he’d never really hung out with them– or they never hung out with him, he wasn’t really sure which. So it was still really strange to be sitting in a dorm room across from one. Of course it helped that Cassian had been homeschooled and was about as familiar with humans as Matt was with werewolves. The two sets of parents had finally left (and it was nice to see someone other than his mom acting overly parental), and they’d finally gotten around to the awkward silence portion of the evening.

“So, um, Matthais–”

“Just call me Matt,” he objected quickly, “I hate Matthais, seriously, my Mom named me after this mouse-thing from a book.”

“Your mom named you after a mouse?” Unlike most of Matt’s previous classmates, Cassian met the revelation with blank confusion rather than mocking.

“Really long story. So, uh, do you go by Cassian?”

“Mostly,” the werewolf shrugged. “I have an aunt who calls me Ian, but she’s the only one.” He looked puzzled. “Why does it matter?”

“I dunno, just, figuring out the ground rules I guess.” Matt leaned back against the wall, trying to shake off some of the nervousness. “You call me Matt, I won’t call you Ian, and maybe we won’t end up taping the room in half.”

Cassian look slid from slightly puzzled to completely clueless and Matt blinked. “You’ve never watched sitcoms?”

“Ah, nope” Cassian shook his head, “didn’t own a TV.”

“Well there we go then,” Matt grinned, “problem solved!”

“Wait, what?”

Matt was already headed for the door. “We have another two hours before the orientation dinner starts. So instead of sitting here trying not to offend each other, we’re going to co-opt the common room TV and I will show you the wonders of the boobtube.”

“I dunno,” Cassian glanced into the hallway where the normal chaos of the dorm was rumbling into gear now that the parents were gone. “There’s a lot of people out there.”

“All of whom will ignore you, I promise.”

Cassian just raised an eyebrow.

“Look, hate to break this to you, but you are lacking the one thing guaranteed to attract the attention of a freshman male dorm.” Matt paused meaningfully. “Boobs.”

Cassian laughed and rolled his eyes, but reluctantly followed Matt out the door.

Where he was promptly ignored (in a friendly manner) by the other freshmen, who were busy settling into the idea of No More Parents(tm) and on the celebratory parties thereof.

“So,” David eyed the assembled teenage caped crusaders with something akin to alarm, “I don’t suppose anyone outside of the fictitious Iron Man is concerned about PPE?”

“PP-what?”

“Personal Protective Equipment, you know, goggles, safety shoes, bullet proof armor.” They gave him an assortment of blank looks and he sighed. “The sort of stuff that lets you take a licking and keep on ticking, as opposed to ending up in my living room. Again.” He wasn’t going to think about how much replacing the couch was going to cost, he really wasn’t.

“But I’m already bullet-proof.”

“Yeah, but not arrow-proof, apparently.” And oh by the way did you notice none of the rest of Team Teenager shares that ability? No? Well golly-gee maybe that’s why you end up in my living room every other weekend. But he wasn’t going to say that out loud. Yet.

“But, um, that’s what you’re for.”

“No. Nyet. Nr.” He glared at the offending teenager. “My job is not to be out running from battle to battle healing random superpowered meatsheilds who were too lazy or too cool for Kevlar.”
Which, predictably, just pissed them off, and David took a moment to count to ten before trying to salvage the discussion. “Look, try thinking about it like this: Why do you need me?”

“Because we’re out there protecting the city from evil!”

“So I’m supposed to let innocent civilians die because you can’t plan ahead?”

“Well, um, no– wait, what?”

He sighed. “What do you think I do for a living?”

“Banker?”

“Accountant?”

“Retail?”

He gave the last girl a sharp look, but she’d apparently meant it as a joke. “I work at the hospital.”

“You’re a janitor?” The look of horror on their faces was just priceless.

He just about kicked them all out right then, but no, he was supposed to be imparting life lessons or some such crap. The Silver Wisp was going to owe him a dozen beers at this point. “No you idiot, I’m a Pediatrician.”