Companion piece to another story a little while back, What've You Been Up To.

Both have been for The Thursday Prompt which you should check out and read sometime!

Taking a break to touch base with your family and knowing they're relying on you, but feeling like it's impossible. Do you fit anymore?

Being "loit" is something that means something to me due to a private joke. You might pick up on it from context. It's also deeply buried in another story.

Generational Missions

The sounds and smells of the night were all around. There was a breeze once in a while, cool from the north. It carried signs of the woods, the road at the boundary, and the land rented to men for cultivation of corn and beans. And eventually, it brought the scent of a deer.

Miranda watched from a hiding place higher up on the hill. Her brothers ran and trotted after the deer, harassing and threatening it along the trails. When the time was right she charged down towards the buck, trying to move as quickly as she could while being silent to surprise it.

He heard her before she got too close. Adjusting his course, he bounded away from both her and her siblings, which was one of the choices the werewolves had anticipated that he would make. From the beginning, anything he would do would trigger a contingency.

His long leaping strides led him directly into the waiting ambush of her father and her uncle, who seized the flank and the left leg of the buck and held on. Her brothers quickly arrived and joined in the final grisly tasks of the hunt; Miranda howled.

Even though the phase of the moon made it easy for her to retain her current shape, she allowed herself to drift loitward, with her hands and fingers reformed and the ability to stand, and look up at the sky while still being able to enjoy the smells of her family, the hunt, their land, and the night.

Other members of the family arrived, hearing the news that it was all over but the ripping and tearing: cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews. They had covered different trails that their quarry could have chosen, all part of the work of the pack.

The youngsters shouldered their way into the circle around their prey, tearing into the flesh of the deer. Miranda had no appetite for that part of the hunt. She had always felt happiest just being with the family, running with them. She heard voices speaking and finished her change. The night suddenly felt cold.

Her father and her uncle had also shifted all the way, shedding their fur, and were pulling on robes that her grandmother (and their mother) had brought. Her truck was parked several hundred feet away on a gravel road. “Saw him cutting down the hill and figured it was just about all over. You should come back soon, there’s some trouble. Bill is talking with officers at the house, trying to stall them. I think they know you’ve all been out.”

Miranda’s uncle Brad spat. “We pay our fees,” he said. “We follow their rules. We’re on our land, we shouldn’t even need to pussyfoot around with those stinking bastards.”

“Calm down,” Miranda’s dad said. They were in the same litter but couldn’t have been more different. “Just calm down. We can handle it. Let’s go, ma. Drive us back to the guest house, we can change into better clothes and go help dad.”

Miranda trailed behind them after picking up one of the robes. “Miranda, my darling,” said her grandmother. “You take after your father so much, you know that? James and Brad can help their dad with the officers. If you want to come back with us, why don’t you help me get the freezer ready? Those greedy little pups won’t finish everything, there are sure to be leftovers. You can drive my truck back to help them load it up after you’re done helping me.” She ran her hand across Miranda’s shoulder and pinched the back of her neck playfully. “I used to carry you right there, remember?”

It was an easy memory to bring to the surface. Miranda remembered being seized in gentle jaws and carried slowly by the nape of her neck, and it made her smile. “I do, grandma. Sometimes I miss that. I like my job and the cities have a lot to offer but I think I’d go crazy if I had to live there more than a few weeks at a time. I never learned that trick from mom.”

Her grandmother’s body language changed at the mention of Miranda’s mother. Stiffer, with a bit of top teeth showing. “Yes. Well, let’s hurry before those two just take my truck without us.”

There wasn’t much of a chance to speak in the truck over her father and uncle, the topic swaying back and forth between rebelling and resisting, and just playing it safe and biding their time. “I know Miranda is on to something,” her father said. “Just wait. She’s got the trail that great uncle Raider was searching.”

The scene at the house played out as well as it could have. There was a lot of angry talk and tense brinksmanship. Miranda stayed in her robe and helped her grandmother for a while, and then went through the house to find her grandfather, Bill Kensh. He had retreated after his sons had arrived to take up the fight. “Did you help your granny, Miranda?” He was in a recliner, smoking a pipe, and had shifted enough to regrow his tail and have fur all over his hands.

Miranda mirrored that state, letting the robe slip off. “Yes. I’m going to take the truck back to the site later. It was a big buck. Six points, for sure. I saw them against the moon.” She curled up on the floor and shifted further, curling up and burying her nose and most of her face under her tail.

“And how goes our little project?”

She was quiet for a while, enjoying being almost all wolf. He knew she was taking her time luxuriating in this and was patient.

She uncurled, unfurred and sat cross-legged. “I’m sure that virus existed. I’m not sure how we can find it now, or how we can get it. Joe Raider was part of a team that treated it; he was born human but was turned as he was a young adult. I know some names of some of the humans he was working with and I’m following up some leads there but it’s a long shot.”

He rested his hand on her head gently. “I sometimes feel that our family has begun to drift too far away from humans,” he said. “I was the first generation to be born as what we are; we hid from them. Then the Vampire Society messed up everything by going public and dragged everybody out into the open with them.”

“Almost everybody,” Miranda thought to herself. But she didn’t interrupt.

“Some things got better, but humans have to stink up every good idea and the longer they have to stink it up, the more unbelievable they get. I sometimes feel we’ve drifted too far, but not after tonight. Those bastards were talking about hauling us in for unpaid fees, unauthorized harvesting, and a new one: unauthorized breeding. Unauthorized breeding!” He snarled. “It would have been fine by me if your daddy and uncle took care of every last one of them, and we smoked and jerked them along with that buck you young folk took tonight. But that’s the old way of doing things.”

“And I’m the new way.” Miranda stood and put back on the robe; she tucked her hands together in the opposite sleeves, as if she were wearing a straitjacket. “Howling in the dark for our answer to silver bullets; a magic bullet that kills them but doesn’t hurt us.”

She gripped her arms tightly, feeling cold and tired.

“I’ll be going back to the city tomorrow,” she said as she turned to go. “The hunt goes on. I have to start working at another museum, to see if they have anything useful for us. There are just so many records to go through, so many false trails to follow. I just need a good splash of scent to get me started in the right direction.” But she knew that no wolf ever caught anything by just sitting still and waiting.