Now Available on PRE-ORDER: Bid the Moon Goodbye
What's it About?
Bid the Moon Goodbye is a science-fiction short story that explores the early days of Lunar
One from the perspective of a werewolf family, whose true nature is discovered.
You can find links to where it is available on this Books2Read page: https://books2read.com/u/m2J7gk, and subscribers to my ReamStories page at the Perimeter Surveillance level and higher can begin reading it straight away.
How Does It Start?
Hagel ran his toy truck back and forth along the floor. He made no sound, but his small brow was furrowed in concentration, and his knuckles showed white through a bristling layer of downy fur. Jervis watched him, frowning and wondering what to do. The cub was upset, but he couldn’t stay half-changed forever.
“He’s conflicted,” the school nurse said. “One minute he’s fine, spelling and counting and playing with the blocks like any other child, but the next he’s… Well, he’s like this.”
“Can you leave us alone, for a moment?” Jervis asked.
“Well, his mother hasn’t arrived yet.”
And she will have as big a piece of you as I will, Jervis thought, If you keep me from my cub.
He said nothing. He would not beg, or plead, or threaten. Hagel was his cub, and he loved him dearly, but the humans still had trouble coping with werewolves. Jervis had been hoping to keep his, Keelie’s and Hagel’s heritage a secret, and quietly book them passage to Morrow’s World before trouble could find them.
Unfortunately, Hagel hadn’t been able to cope, and they hadn’t known, until it was too late.
“She’ll be here, soon,” the nurse said, reading his mood with unnerving clarity, “So I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
She left, closing the door behind her, with a reassuring smile, and Jervis breathed a soft sigh of relief.
“Hagel,” he said, letting the wolf shape his words, as he partially shifted form.
“Daddy!” the little boy shouted, and hurled himself across the room into Jervis’s arms, wrapping his arms around Jervis’s neck, and burying his face in the fur Jervis had allowed to sprout from his chest.
Jervis wrapped his arms around the child and hugged him close. He was still hugging him, when Nurse Mackenzie entered with Keelie.
His wife took one look at the two of them, and turned to the nurse.
“If you could leave us, for a moment, please,” she said, and crouched down beside her two men.
“Look at the pair of you,” she murmured, and wrapped them in her arms. “Giving away our secrets, like there’s no tomorrow.”
Hagel lifted his head.
“Secrets, mummy?”
“Yes, sweetheart, secrets. Don’t you know the humans find it hard to cope with the lupine?”
“Lupine?”
“Us, Hagel. We’re lupine.”
“Not human?” Hagel said, his large blue eyes filling with tears.
Jervis felt his heart tear with sadness.
This, he thought. This is what they’d been trying to spare their son. When he was older, he’d be better able to understand, but not at six. Life was so hard when you were six.
“No,” Keelie said, and let the tiniest piece of her wolf show.
The sight of it made Hagel laugh.
“Mummy’s wolf is peeking at me,” he giggled, and Keelie laughed in return.
“And that is all the humans should ever see,” she told him. “Even daddy knows that.”
Taking the hint, Jervis changed back to human, and then let his wolf creep into his eyes. The sight made Hagel laugh even harder, and he covered his eyes with his hands.
“Boo!” he shouted, suddenly pulling his hands away and pushing his face close to Jervis’s.
Jervis laughed, too, then let Hagel watch him put the laughter away.
“Hmmm,” he said, tilting his head this way and that, as though inspecting his son very closely. “I see a problem.”
Where Do You Find It?
You can find this short story in A Collection of Shifters, the fourteenth volume of the C.M.'s Collections series, or as a stand-alone short story on this Books2Read page: https://books2read.com/u/m2J7gk.
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