Eventually my sobs lessened to whimpers, then to the occasional sniffle. I fought to keep my breathing steady and try not to let my thoughts wander down another path that would lead to a resurgence of sobs and tears. The measured pace of the hand that slowly circled my upper back helped to keep my mind occupied. It got easier to focus on the soothing contact as I settled back down, and it helped to keep me grounded.

The hand moving against my back fell still. “Feeling any better?” I recognized the voice as Delilah’s, though she spoke very softly while I was pressed so closely against her. 

I removed the pillow, now rather moist where my tears had soaked in, from my face. With what little voice I could muster I said, “A little bit at least… I’m sorry for being such a mess.”

Delilah took a deep breath that caused me to rise and fall with her chest. She continued in her caringly soft tone. “You have nothing to apologize for. There must be so many things plaguing your mind right now. You’ve done a very good job of pressing forward,” she breathed deeply again and sighed, “but with how much you have gone through, I’m not surprised that it got to be overwhelming.”

Letting out a sigh of my own, I voiced a question that was more to myself than to Delilah. “What’s going to happen with… everything.” 

The question hanging in the air caused Delilah to answer anyway. “I don’t know. I suspected that something like this was possible when we suggested that you lie to your friends. I can only hope that your friendship is strong enough to recover.” She paused, lingering on that note for a moment. “After that? A great deal will likely change in your life and we will do our best to help you. You will learn a great many things, some of which might be difficult to come to terms with. It is our responsibility to teach you and provide the support you need to grow to eventually support yourself.”

A grimace spread across my face that pointed downwards towards the floor. This sounds a lot like learning how to be an adult all over again. I thought I finally had myself set up for success in that regard, but now I have to reach supernatural adulthood? Somehow that felt… degrading. At least I felt more frustrated than sad about that. Another round of tears sounded way too draining right now.

I breathed deeply and moved to sit back upright. Sensing my desire to separate, Delilah obliged by releasing the arms that loosely held me. I was kinda sad to pull away, since it was really nice just being held like that. My friends were plenty huggy, but that didn’t quite measure up to the amount of extended physical comfort that I had gotten today. Delilah just now or Liz this morning, even though both of those had some difficult circumstances surrounding them, were still nice while they lasted. Being held felt really good, and I had forgotten that with how long it had been since the last time…

That thought had me diving down the path of my relationships from before I transitioned which… weren’t pretty. It felt nasty to think about them, especially with how I acted in those situations. The wrongness of the me in those memories caused an almost physical pain in my chest.

A hand on my shoulder interrupted my downward spiral. “Sam? Are you ready to go home?”

Home? Right. Liz was getting the car ready to drive me there. It was hard to believe that I could just… do that. Home felt so far away. Not just from the distance, but from how unreal life had been since last night. Maybe if I can make it to my bed and go to sleep, when I wake up again things won’t be so difficult. 

Having waited an uncomfortable amount of time before answering her question, I meekly responded, “Yeah, I think I am.” 

Delilah merely nodded and stood up. “I’ll get you some tissues to clean up a bit with. Wait just a moment.” Delilah quickly left the room and went up the stairs from the sound of her footsteps. 

I waited patiently for a very dreary minute or two, trying not to think about things. Instead I focused on the sound of a running vehicle just in front of the main entrance. Liz must have already gotten everything ready while I had been crying, since I didn’t see her luggage by the front door anymore.

Thankfully, Delilah didn’t take long to return with a small package in hand. She presented me with the travel-sized tissues, which I gratefully accepted after relinquishing the tear-stained pillow back to the couch. She waited patiently with her hands folded in front of her while I blew my nose and dabbed the wetness that remained in the corners of my eyes.

Once I had gotten myself back to some semblance of decency I stood up and asked, “Where can I throw these away?” Referring to the soiled tissues I held.

“There’s a wastebasket in the kitchen. I’ll show you.” Delilah slowly led the way into the kitchen where she pulled out a wastebasket that was built into one of the cabinets.

Thanking Delilah, I tossed the tissues I held into the awaiting bin and stepped over to the kitchen sink to wash up. My eyebrows scrunched up a bit when I realized I didn’t have any lotion to use after washing my hands. My skin got super dry if I didn’t use any. I turned back to Delilah after I dried off. “May I use some moisturizer?”

Delilah looked at me with an uncertain expression. “We don’t have any, it wouldn’t do any good for us. Is your skin too dry?” 

It wouldn’t do any good? What? Everyone had dry skin sometimes. For myself at least my hands always got really- 

Sensory information didn’t line up and I looked down at my hands. Which were perfectly well cared for, not even slightly dry or cracked like they usually would be after scrubbing them with soap. 

Taking a second to reboot I replied, “Um… I guess they aren’t. Weird.” 

Delilah shrugged. “Nothing weird about it, really. A Were’s body can regrow a severed limb. Why not stay properly moisturized?” She paused. “Well, again, unless you shifted with intention to specifically have dry skin for some reason.”

“Oh…” That was about all I had to say on the matter. Apparently I would be able to regrow a severed limb and not have to worry about moisturizing. Both of those things in the same thought. That feels… extremely weird.

“That, among other things, Liz will be able to teach you more about later. For now, grab your purse and let’s head out to the car.” She started walking towards the front door. “Oh, and go ahead and put that package of tissues in your purse. Never know when you might need them!”

The way that Delilah will just bowl over a conversation and then act like it was no big deal will seemingly continue to put me on the back foot. I shook my head of my thoughts and went to fetch my purse from the table in the sitting room, putting the package of tissues in it while I walked to the front door to meet Delilah.

When I got there, Delilah opened the door for us to head outside. The first thing I saw was the modest white sedan that was running with a gentle hum in the wide cul-de-sac style driveway with a raised flower bed in the center. Liz leaned against the far side of the car, arms crossed and facing away.

“Liz! Are you ready to hit the road!” Delilah shouted to Liz, earning a sluggish response as Liz pushed herself off of the car and turned around.

She met eyes with her mother and gave a brief nod, though didn’t say anything back. She simply opened the driver-side door and sat down in the seat. 

Delilah started walking out to the car, so I followed along. There was a cool fall breeze blowing through the countryside, which caused me to shiver slightly as I hurried to catch up.

I got to the passenger door around the same time Delilah got to the other side. I stood there a bit awkwardly, not really wanting to get into someone else’s car without invitation. The situation might have implied it, but the nagging voice in the back of my mind held me back for the moment.

Meanwhile, Delilah leaned down slightly and addressed Liz. “Liz, my dear daughter, be safe okay? And make sure to take good care of Sam. She has a lot that you are going to need to teach her.” 

Liz mumbled a reply that I couldn’t quite make out, and Delilah forced her way into the door to wrestle a hug out of Liz. Liz didn’t seem to put up much of a fight, simply letting her mother squirm an arm behind her in a rather uncomfortable-looking side hug. Another few mumbled words vaguely registered in my mind, but I couldn’t make out any of them. Probably better that they could have a moment to talk in private-ish anyway.

Delilah extricated herself from her tangled hug and stood back upright. A short walk around the car put her next to me. “Sam?” Her eyes were a lot more sad than I think I had seen them before. 

I tilted my head questioningly and said, “Yes?”

Delilah folded her hands in front of her, tightly gripping one with the other. “I’ll spare you the long winded speech that my husband would have given you. I just want to let you know that we are very serious about offering you support.” She waited a moment before continuing. “We don’t just mean learning about what you are now. We also extend that to the rest of your life. If there is any advice we can offer, we will give it. If your career suffers from this, we will provide accommodations. We can’t work miracles or make people believe that nothing has changed, but we can at least help in any way that our resources allow.”

I was once again stumped with what to think when presented with such a sudden and weighty declaration. I decided to just start talking and see where it went. “Thank you. I’m sure that I’ll need help with at least learning stuff.” I gave a hesitant smile, glad that I formulated a response that worked well enough. 

Delilah nodded and smiled back slightly. “And we will do just that once we return.” She grew more serious again. “Until we get back, please listen to Liz. She may be young, but she knows plenty enough to keep the two of you from danger. And you can rely on her to teach you all the basics and answer some of the questions that might come up as you adjust to your new body and particular constitution.”

I figured that I would have to defer to Liz’s judgment when it came to safety. Delilah and Damian had been clear that there are things out there that could be dangerous to me. “I understand. I’ll pay attention if she tells me that there is something that I should or shouldn’t do.” 

The mood felt a little too heavy for my liking, and I definitely didn’t like them always getting sad and serious when it came to the responsibility they feel for me. I appreciated it for sure, but I really didn’t want that to be the focus of all of our interactions. 

In an effort to lighten the mood a bit, and hopefully show some goodwill, I cracked a cheeky grin that I reserved for puns and teasing and said, “If that was the short version, I would hate to know what the long version that Damian would have given me was.”

For a moment, Delilah didn’t react. Then she cracked. Delilah nearly keeled over from laughing so hard. Wrapping her hands around her stomach, she hunched over in a bout of laughs and giggles. She even had some cute giggly snorts along for the ride as well. 

Liz stood from the driver seat and looked back and forth between myself and her mother with some measure of confusion and/or concern. I noticed her look and met her eyes on one of the passes. I just shrugged wordlessly, and continued smiling. I was pretty sure my joke was going to be funny, but I don’t think it should have been that funny.

Delilah recovered from her fit soon after and wiped some tears from her eyes as she stood up straight again. “I’m sorry, that was more amusing than you could possibly know.” She took a deep breath to regain her composure a bit more. “I wasn’t laughing at you though, I promise. It was just incredibly surprising for reasons that I don’t really think we should get into right now.”

Delilah finally seemed to have gotten her bearings back and looked between myself and Liz. “You two need to head out. It will already be quite late enough that you get home. There will be plenty to do before you will be able to sleep.” She opened the passenger door that I was standing near and motioned me in. “I do very much look forward to learning more about you Sam, but that will have to wait until later. It was nice to meet you, but I very much wish that it was under vastly different circumstances.”

I didn’t sit down in the car immediately, because when she opened it I was distracted by the distinctly ‘Liz’ scent that came from the interior of the car. Once I had a moment to process that and then her words, I stumbled out, “Oh, yeah. I think so too. I hope that we are able to get along with one another. Seems like we will be spending a good bit of time together, so it’d be best to be friendly and all.”

It came out a little awkward, but at least it got my point across I think. I looked back at the car and figured it was time to go and say bye for now. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later? I won’t see you or Damian for a while, right?”

She nodded in answer. “That would be correct. Just have Liz send your address to us and we will contact you when you can expect us to arrive.” Delilah glanced at Liz who stood awkwardly on the other side of the car as a playful smile tugged at Delilah’s lips. “I don’t think you two will have any trouble getting along while we are gone. Liz, take good care of our dear Sam. She will need a lot of your attention.”

She grinned wider at both of our blushes and complicated expressions. What Delilah had said was inherently true, and yet also carried a tone that I was not ready to address. She motioned once more at the car as she said, “Anyways, I won’t hold you up any longer. Sam, Liz, I hope you have a safe trip!” 

With that, Delilah retreated to the front porch and turned back to face us. I took that as a sign that I should probably get in the car, since I could also see Liz duck down into the driver’s seat. I carefully folded my skirt under myself as I sat and paid close attention to keeping my legs close together. 

Of course, sitting down in Liz's car only served to further invite that mysterious scent that seemed to come from the wolfish Were to surround me more thoroughly. It was almost uncomfortable how comfortable that scent made me feel. I let my weight press back into the car seat and loosened some muscles that I didn’t realize were tensed up with a slow exhale.

I let my vision wander to my left, where Liz was also seated. It almost startled me how close she was. I don’t know why, but she somehow felt a lot closer than I expected. Which didn’t really make sense. This was a pretty typical four door sedan. The driver and passenger seats were no closer than in practically any other vehicle. The same distance was present the whole way here in Jenny’s van with myself and Alex in the middle row.

I gulped as Liz and I met each others’ eyes. Thankfully, she had better sense than I did and found something to break the moment. “What’s uh, what’s your address?” 

We still hadn’t broken eye contact, so I was understandably distracted and couldn’t really process what she had actually said. I absently replied, “Huh?” 

Liz was the one who finally put an end to our latest staring predicament, kind of like most every other time this has happened. She turned to the console of the car and picked up her phone that was plugged into the dashboard. 

With the spell finally broken, I took the moment to realize what Liz had actually said a moment ago. Her phone was hooked into the car and the screen to the right of the steering wheel had a map app pulled up.

“I need to know where we are going. Can you please put your address in here?” Her words came out a little forced, like she was struggling to get her voice to cooperate. She also held her phone out towards me.

Fumbling all over myself, “I- Oh, uh, okay.” I took the offered device and tried really, really hard to not pay any mind to the brief touch of our fingers in the exchange. I quickly tapped out the address for my house and handed the phone back over to Liz, whose fingers brushed my palm with the action, and she then set the phone back in the little cubby she had picked it up from.

At this point, I really needed to just get used to how hot my cheeks were. They weren’t going to be cooling down any time soon. I tried to distract myself with the surroundings, which didn’t last long. It was a car. Not brand new or anything, clearly a few years old at least. It was new enough to have the built in screen to display maps and play music and stuff from your phone, but not so new that you could feel outdated just by looking at it. All in all, very modest and kept clean but nothing to write home about.

Unfortunately, that also meant I didn’t have any more distractions. Oh! Wait, I haven’t even buckled in or anything. I unslung the purse on my shoulder and set it on the floor mat next to my feet, closed the still-open door, and then buckled myself in. 

The series of actions had bought me solidly… like ten seconds of distraction. Which I now was in short supply of. A part of me deeply wanted to say something else to Liz, but I didn’t even know how to approach a conversation with her. Every interaction so far has been a broken jumble of words, staring, and blushing. I didn’t even know much about her besides her name. How the heck do people just like, approach people and talk to them?!

Seemingly satisfied that I was buckled in and being unaware of my inner turmoil, Liz put the car in gear and started to slowly ease ourselves forward. I looked over to Delilah as we moved, and saw her waving. I gave a hesitant wave back to her and tried to put on some kind of smile.

Soon, Delilah was out of sight as we looped around the circle that made up the end of the drive in front of the house. Though, now that Delilah wasn’t there to my right my vision was taken up by the rest of the estate. 

I had taken a moment to admire the outside of the estate from the window in the sitting room, and briefly saw a glimpse from out the huge windows in the master bedroom, but seeing it as we slowly drove by was entirely different. The flowers, shrubs, trees, and all manner of other natural decorations were artfully placed on either side of the driveway and some a few dozen feet beyond. All kinds of colors blended together in little groupings that somehow drew together the entire piece as a whole.

The area really was beautiful, and I couldn’t help the exclamation that escaped me. “Wow, it’s all so pretty.”

“Yeah, it is. Dad really puts a lot of work into it.” Liz’s calm and almost-level voice coming from beside me shocked me.

I turned my head to look back at her. That was the first time I had ever heard Liz say something that actually sounded like casual speech. The words were still echoing inside my head as I noticed the resonating calm that had settled in my chest. Both of us being in a small, enclosed space together had made the scent that was uniquely ‘Liz’ much more potent than it had been since I woke up in her bed. 

Liz still had her eyes on the road, but a blush heated her cheeks as we pulled up to a big, fancy-looking gate made of wrought iron. She pulled to a stop and pressed a button on a gadget fastened to her sun visor. 

The button caused the gate to slowly ease open. While we were waiting for the mechanism to fully open the gate, Liz spoke up. “I’m going to have to stop for gas before we hit the highway. I only have about a quarter tank left.”

Though she seemed a bit tense, her voice was still a lot calmer like it had been a moment ago. Not like the snippets of who knows what that she had said earlier today. I really liked the way her voice sounded when she spoke like that. It struck some kind of chord in me, and I could feel my chest getting a little fluttery. I suppose I was also glad that we could exchange any words at all without them being about the complicated situation from last night. 

Or, wait, I don’t think it counts as an exchange until I actually say something back to her. How long have I been staring at the side of her face since she said that? Oh damn. “Okay, sounds good. Thankfully we can just take the interstate the whole way there once we are able to hop onto it. Runs right through my town. Should be a pretty smooth ride. Haha…” Ahhhhh, why am I so awkward? 

“Alright.” Liz did not regard my blushing spill of words with much more than a nod. 

I turned my head forward and looked vaguely at the road that we had pulled onto after leaving the driveway and shutting the iron gate behind us. If it weren’t for the unusual comfort that her scent brought, I would probably be freaking out quite a lot more than I was. I still wasn’t sure if I should be concerned about that particular feature of this whole supernatural event. I figured by this point someone would have said something about that. Either Liz herself or one of her parents, it didn’t make much of a difference I don’t think.

When Liz was all wolfed out and not in control, that wolf did make a big deal about sniffing me. My guess is that whatever I smell off of Liz, she also has some version of it coming off of me. I mean, the both of us are way calmer than we should have been based on our previous interactions. And I know for a fact that I would be riddled with anxiety in a similar situation, and have been numerous times before. 

In a car with someone who is basically a stranger? I should be absolutely freaking out. And actually, the same was true this morning. I woke up in a strange bed after being attacked by a frickin’ werewolf, and after a moment of panic I slipped back to settling in. That couldn’t have all been normal of me to do.

I lightly shook my head to myself. There was a lot that I had to figure out, and all the answers I would be getting for the next few weeks would likely come from the source of a lot of the mystery that was currently driving us to my house. 

At least it’s a bit easier to think when Liz is around. My mind is wandering, but it isn’t spiraling. I could probably make use of that to work through some things. Or use this opportunity to start asking questions? I should really make a list of everything I need to sort out.

I glanced back over at Liz for just a second and resisted the urge for my eyes to linger on her profile. Well, I suppose I have about the next four hours or so to start asking or figuring. What the heck am I supposed to start with?

MegaSuperKami

We are so close. They are actually using words with one another! And next chapter should be it! The 'Talk.'

I was really thinking that this one would have more of it, but with the way the pacing worked out it had to be delayed. Good news though? They have all next chapter to talk as much as they want!

I'm way too eager to move forward. I really want to get to the fluffy parts I have planned, but have to get through the build up first. Just like real life, how lame.

How do you think next chapter will pan out? Will their inevitable talk go favorably? Will they confront any of the more important issues that linger between each other and themselves, or will they bumble around with other topics first? I think it'll turn out okay.

Thank you once again for reading! Sorry for the bumbly footnote this time. I'm too focused on next chapter to have much to say about this one, even though there are some important moments. Look forward to the next one! It's gonna be something!