Martha.net

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.

“It’s been three days, we should have heard something by now, right?” Matthais didn’t quite glare at Neely, who continued to ignore him.

“It’s entirely possible Cassian just doesn’t want to be found.” Maggie reached over the massive worktable to borrow the soldering iron from her husband. “Papa isn’t worried for the same reason I’m not worried, Cassian will come home when he wants.” She gave Matthais a measuring look. “He isn’t just another college student to wander off.”

But that was exactally what Cass had done, which was far enough out of charactor that Matt had finally tracked down his roommate’s relavtives. Finding Cassian’s aunt and uncle turned out to be as useful as Matt’s previous attempts with the campus police. The two of them were focused on the various broken gadgets that littered the shop table, seemingly oblivious to anything beyond the scent of burning metals.

Matt counted to ten before answering, even though he was well aware that both of the weres could probably tell he was angry regardless. Politeness was key to these things. “can you at least give me a hint of where to look?”

“No.”

“No you don’t know or no you don’t feel like helping me?” And Matt found himself on the ground outside of the toolshed before his brain had begun processing Maggie’s lunge. She pinned him to the ground for a moment, a blur of fangs a fur, then was gone as quickly. He waited until he heard the door to the shed latch, and then picked himself gingerly off the gravel driveway. Dammit.

“So this is a dream.”

Matthias was used to lucid dreams, so the fact that he found himself back in his old room in Donnshire wasn’t at all alarming. That Cassian was sitting on the edge of the bed glaring at him was something new, but who was he to argue with his subconscious? So he gave Cass a sleepy grunt and worked his face deeper into the pillow.

“Your dream.”

Matthias muttered something unrepeatable, and surfaced just enough to give Cass a one-eyeball look of doom. He’d been up much too late last night looking for the real Cass to play nice with figments of his obviously deranged imagination.

“Hmph.” Cass didn’t look at all convinced. After a moment of silence -and a few blissful seconds of dreaming that he was dreaming (and that was just too odd to think about)- Cass poked him again. “So why am I here?”

Matthias rolled over so he could deliver the full force of his WTF glare. Just like real life, it did nothing to dim dream-Cassian’s line of questioning.

“This is your dream, why am I here.”

“Because I’m crazy. Apparently.” And because he was worried, which apparently meant getting grumpy lectures from missing werewolves. He was going to have a good long talk with Maggie in the morning, this was getting ridiculous.

“Yes, yes, but why am I here.” Cass poked him again. “You should dream of me, not me literally.” Which made no sense at all, but Cass seemed rather upset about the whole business and Matthias really wanted to sleep.

So he pounced on dream-Cass and bundled him under the blankets, which (being dream blankets) were warm and comforting and the bed was much nicer that it had ever been in real life. Other than a startled ‘eep!’ Cass was amazingly relaxed about being turned into a wereburrito.

“There, now sleep.” Matthias yawned and reclaimed his own half of the bed. “I have to look for you tomorrow, you know.”

“Right, as opposed to looking for me now.” Cass muttered, but it was a sleepy mutter so Matt ignored him. “Fine, fine,” Cass gave up and snuggled in beside him, a comforting mass of body heat and the whiff of cinnamon fur. “Just next time, dream us a bigger bed.”

And that was that.