Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2010-02-09 12:01 am
edenfalling) wrote2010-02-09 12:01 am
Entry tags:
[Fic] "Curiosity, Satisfied" -- original story, Ithaca Paranormal (AU continuity)
One way my Ithaca Paranormal universe didn't end up going. (Don't get me wrong -- I love 'hidden world' tropes like the one this story uses -- but worlds where the weirdness has always been out in the open have more interesting possibilities in the alternate history department.)
What would you do if you found out your best friend was a werewolf? (2,150 words)
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Curiosity, Satisfied
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Danny opened the glass door of the coffee shop and looked around, not sure what to expect. Tyrell had said a woman would meet him here to explain everything he hadn't had time to deal with at four in the goddamn morning, and had sworn she was impossible to miss, but in Danny's experience, 'impossible to miss' meant that he could stare right at the person or landmark in question for six hours straight and never figure out that this was what he was supposed to recognize.
He didn't think he could last another six hours without an explanation.
The coffee shop was one of those arty, neighborhood hang-outs where marijuana scented the air like stale perfume and everyone seemed to be wearing dreadlocks, gypsy skirts, and half a pound of facial piercings. The short, slim woman at the back corner table, on the other hand, stood out like a scream of conventionality in the chaos. Her black pants were neatly pressed, a green turtleneck and black blazer gave her a semi-professional aura, and the real leather briefcase with its gleaming steel latches seemed to warn off the other customers, despite the empty chair across from her. Even though her ginger-colored hair was nearly as bright as the regulars' dye jobs, Danny had the gut feeling she'd never dream of letting it escape its smooth French twist, at least not in public.
She was twisting a half-full coffee cup around and around between her hands.
Danny couldn't help checking the length of her nails as he pulled out the empty chair, but they didn't look any thicker or sharper than normal people's. They just looked well-manicured. Good -- he didn't want to get clawed to shreds.
"Hi, I'm Danny Carolanza," he said as he shrugged off his jacket and slung it over the back of his chair. "My friend Tyrell Baker sent me here to meet someone -- I am right to assume that's you? If I'm wrong, would you mind sharing your table while I wait, and maybe providing me the honor of your name?" Keep it light and maybe she wouldn't notice how nervous he was.
Or could she smell fear?
The woman's lips twitched, and she looked up with a rueful expression. "Tyrell said you were forward. He was right. Hello, Mr. Carolanza -- I'm Claire Flaherty."
Claire. A pretty name for a pretty woman -- even if she might be a man-eater, literally -- and it went with the hair. "So," Danny said, and then realized he had no idea how to start asking questions without shoving his foot in his mouth, or letting loose the hysteria he'd been pushing aside and shoving down since the world went tilt last night.
Claire sighed. "Is there any chance that we can write off last night as a vivid dream or a stress hallucination?"
"I went over to surprise my best friend with pizza and a movie and I watched him turn into a fucking giant wolf," Danny said, and then clenched his teeth until the twisting wrongness of Tyrell's in-between body slid back into the mental closet where he stored his nightmares. "And then he knocked me over, broke my cell phone, and locked me into his basement -- as a goddamn giant wolf -- and didn't explain a damn thing when he came back at four in the fucking morning and let me out."
He took a deep breath and lowered his voice again. "No, there's no chance I'm going to forget that or pretend it didn't happen. So explain things to me, please, because right now I need something to hold onto or I'm going to start screaming."
Claire tapped her fingers against her coffee cup, and then flipped her hand over, palm up, as if to show she was unarmed. Somehow, that failed to comfort Danny.
"I don't know where to start," she said. "This should be Tyrell's job, since he's your friend and it's his mistake we're dealing with, but I'm the regional coordinator this year and he took advantage of that to dump his problem on my shoulders." She shrugged. "So. To start with, your friend can turn into a wolf. There are other people with similar... quirks... and I fall into that group. Some of us can shift at will. Others shift whether or not we want to, either unpredictably or at set times. Some, like Tyrell, fall in between those extremes. I believe he has to shift at least once every month or two, and if he puts it off too long, he shifts against his will."
"Werewolves," Danny said after a brief silence. "You're telling me there's a secret society of werewolves in America. I don't believe it. I saw Tyrell, and I still don't believe it."
"We're not only wolves," Claire corrected him. "For example, I'm a were-tiger. In Tompkins County alone, I know of at least sixteen different shifter species, ranging from turkey to--"
Danny waved his hand, cutting her off. "Fine, great, whatever. But that doesn't explain anything. So there are people who turn into animals. How does that even happen? It goes against all the laws of science! And how do people not know about this? How do people miss giant animals running around acting as smart as humans? Hell, are you human?"
Claire looked human. But then, Tyrell had looked human too, until he'd hunched over and practically turned himself inside out... which Danny was not thinking about, unless he wanted to lose his lunch and his sanity. Bones and tendons shouldn't move like that.
Claire's hands tightened around her coffee. "You know what? Fuck you. I'm as human as you are. Yes, sometimes I turn into a tiger -- a 'fucking giant tiger,' I suppose you'd say -- but that doesn't make me any less of a person. I think of it as a genetic hiccup, since--"
"Some hiccup!"
"--a hiccup," she continued, "which apparently comes from my mother's side of the family, since there are peculiar stories about my great-grandmother. People said she was unnaturally graceful and could speak with cats and her eyes reflected lamplight like a cat's eyes, and all sorts of similar nonsense."
She jabbed a finger across the table toward Danny. "You know, once people get over the initial disbelief and anger, they always start thinking being a Were is glamorous, that the strength and grace and hunter's instincts must carry over into our human forms, that we live wild and free the way most people dream of."
Say what? That twisting wrongness -- a human body breaking and melting into another, horribly unnatural shape -- was supposed to be glamorous?
But Claire bulled onwards before Danny could protest. "It's bullshit. When I'm human, I'm human. And when I'm a tiger... well, you try making sense of things when you're in a body with the wrong center of gravity and no hands and a brain that nature never designed for actual conscious thought! And while you're at it, run wild and free in people's backyards. I dare you. I will laugh my head off when they call animal control and the police turn you into a living pincushion."
Danny blinked. "You... feel strongly about that, I take it."
Claire flushed and stared down at her coffee again. "Not usually. The issue doesn't arise very often -- most people don't believe in us, not in real life. But now and then one of us gets careless or unlucky and somebody trips over something they can't ignore or talk themselves out of believing -- Tyrell's shift, yesterday, for example -- and then... well, let me just say that two stalkers is three more than I ever needed to have in my life." She shrugged. "But I'm getting ahead of myself. You're still in the disbelief stage."
"I'm moving away from thinking I've gone crazy, if that's any help," Danny said.
"To be perfectly honest, it might be easier for us if you did go insane," Claire said dryly, her composure apparently recovered. "It would reduce your credibility if you ever tried to reveal our existence. On the other hand, we do try to be responsible citizens. Driving other people mad is hardly neighborly."
Danny laughed, surprising himself. But then, sitting in a warm, bright coffee shop across from a gorgeous woman made it hard to hold on to his anger and resentment. Tyrell, damn him, had probably been counting on that. Danny would have to punch him in the nose on general principles -- he was supposed to be the sneaky one in their friendship.
"I'm glad you seem to be coming to terms with the reality of the situation, Mr. Carolanza," Claire said. "You do realize that you can't tell anyone else. If people found out, we'd be condemned as abominations, most likely, or locked up for study, or any number of unpleasant fates. At the very least, we'd lose our jobs, our homes, and in many cases our families -- not to mention the countless perfectly ordinary people who would be falsely accused of shape-shifting."
"Well, yeah, if you dump it on people all at once, of course we'll react badly," Danny said. "What I don't understand is how people don't already know. How do you keep it secret? And call me Danny."
"As to the first, we're very careful, we make certain we have access to large tracts of private land, and we rely on the innate human tendency to rationalize away anything that doesn't fit into the consensus definition of reality. As to the second, I don't know you that well. Yet." Claire paused and glanced around the coffee shop. "I think, Mr. Carolanza, that we should continue this discussion somewhere a bit less public. There are a lot of details you need to know if you're going to help Tyrell keep his secret, and a practical demonstration might also be in order."
Danny took a second to interpret that. "You're going to turn into a fucking giant tiger, aren't you," he said flatly.
Claire shrugged, her face annoyingly hard to read. "Possibly. But mostly I have some diagrams to show you. Come and see?"
And how was a guy supposed to take that? Was that a 'Come upstairs and see my etchings,' or a 'Back off and act platonic while I show you gruesome pictures of people turning into circus freaks'? Danny eyed Claire suspiciously, and she smiled enigmatically as she sipped her coffee.
"You know what?" he said. "It's not were-things in general that are glamorous. It's just you. But don't think I'm going to join your stalkers, Ms. Flaherty, because the glamour's nothing but a pretty paint-job on the crazy."
This time, Claire blinked. Then, slowly, her smile widened. "Mr. Carolanza, you are definitely the most interesting person I've met in the past year. I'm beginning to think Tyrell had ulterior motives for making me your guide into our world."
"Oh, you think? I figured that out ten minutes ago," Danny grumbled. "Bastard deserves a punch in the nose for that, beyond the beating I owe him for scaring me half to death last night."
Claire laughed, and it belatedly occurred to Danny that he was implicitly threatening one of her fellow were-people, as well as planning to assault, well, a fucking giant wolf. Still. Tyrell deserved some grief. "Hey," Danny said as Claire finished the dregs of her coffee, "do you want to help me get revenge on him? I could use a tiger to pin him down."
Claire set down her empty cup and stood, gathering her briefcase in one hand. "I never plan the second date until the first is finished, Mr. Carolanza. I presume you arrived by car?" At Danny's nod, she opened the briefcase and withdrew a printout of a street map. "These are directions to the Tompkins County safe house. I'll meet you at the gate, and we'll continue our discussion inside. Don't dawdle."
As Danny glanced down at the map, Claire snapped her briefcase shut and headed for the door, slipping gracefully between the crowded tables and milling customers. The late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows limned her with gold and set her ginger hair on fire. Danny watched her for a moment, wondering how such a tiny woman could turn into even a regularly-sized tiger, let alone one as massive as Tyrell's wolf form had been.
Then his mind supplied an image of how she might look halfway through the transition, and he shuddered. Yeah, this was not going to be easy. And he was still going to kill Tyrell.
But hard or not -- and how weird was it to think this, less than twenty-four hours after he'd been convinced the world had ended and he was about to die? -- it was going to be one hell of a ride.
Danny stuffed the map into his pocket and followed Claire out the door.
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End of Story
---------------------------------------------
In other news, my parents will be visiting me Friday and Saturday. We'll have my slightly belated birthday dinner on Friday night, and then on Saturday we will... do something. Probably visit Bellwether Hard Cider, for one thing. I am at something of a loss for other activities, though. Maybe there are things going on up at Cornell? Well, I will investigate my options on Wednesday or Thursday.
What would you do if you found out your best friend was a werewolf? (2,150 words)
---------------------------------------------
Curiosity, Satisfied
---------------------------------------------
Danny opened the glass door of the coffee shop and looked around, not sure what to expect. Tyrell had said a woman would meet him here to explain everything he hadn't had time to deal with at four in the goddamn morning, and had sworn she was impossible to miss, but in Danny's experience, 'impossible to miss' meant that he could stare right at the person or landmark in question for six hours straight and never figure out that this was what he was supposed to recognize.
He didn't think he could last another six hours without an explanation.
The coffee shop was one of those arty, neighborhood hang-outs where marijuana scented the air like stale perfume and everyone seemed to be wearing dreadlocks, gypsy skirts, and half a pound of facial piercings. The short, slim woman at the back corner table, on the other hand, stood out like a scream of conventionality in the chaos. Her black pants were neatly pressed, a green turtleneck and black blazer gave her a semi-professional aura, and the real leather briefcase with its gleaming steel latches seemed to warn off the other customers, despite the empty chair across from her. Even though her ginger-colored hair was nearly as bright as the regulars' dye jobs, Danny had the gut feeling she'd never dream of letting it escape its smooth French twist, at least not in public.
She was twisting a half-full coffee cup around and around between her hands.
Danny couldn't help checking the length of her nails as he pulled out the empty chair, but they didn't look any thicker or sharper than normal people's. They just looked well-manicured. Good -- he didn't want to get clawed to shreds.
"Hi, I'm Danny Carolanza," he said as he shrugged off his jacket and slung it over the back of his chair. "My friend Tyrell Baker sent me here to meet someone -- I am right to assume that's you? If I'm wrong, would you mind sharing your table while I wait, and maybe providing me the honor of your name?" Keep it light and maybe she wouldn't notice how nervous he was.
Or could she smell fear?
The woman's lips twitched, and she looked up with a rueful expression. "Tyrell said you were forward. He was right. Hello, Mr. Carolanza -- I'm Claire Flaherty."
Claire. A pretty name for a pretty woman -- even if she might be a man-eater, literally -- and it went with the hair. "So," Danny said, and then realized he had no idea how to start asking questions without shoving his foot in his mouth, or letting loose the hysteria he'd been pushing aside and shoving down since the world went tilt last night.
Claire sighed. "Is there any chance that we can write off last night as a vivid dream or a stress hallucination?"
"I went over to surprise my best friend with pizza and a movie and I watched him turn into a fucking giant wolf," Danny said, and then clenched his teeth until the twisting wrongness of Tyrell's in-between body slid back into the mental closet where he stored his nightmares. "And then he knocked me over, broke my cell phone, and locked me into his basement -- as a goddamn giant wolf -- and didn't explain a damn thing when he came back at four in the fucking morning and let me out."
He took a deep breath and lowered his voice again. "No, there's no chance I'm going to forget that or pretend it didn't happen. So explain things to me, please, because right now I need something to hold onto or I'm going to start screaming."
Claire tapped her fingers against her coffee cup, and then flipped her hand over, palm up, as if to show she was unarmed. Somehow, that failed to comfort Danny.
"I don't know where to start," she said. "This should be Tyrell's job, since he's your friend and it's his mistake we're dealing with, but I'm the regional coordinator this year and he took advantage of that to dump his problem on my shoulders." She shrugged. "So. To start with, your friend can turn into a wolf. There are other people with similar... quirks... and I fall into that group. Some of us can shift at will. Others shift whether or not we want to, either unpredictably or at set times. Some, like Tyrell, fall in between those extremes. I believe he has to shift at least once every month or two, and if he puts it off too long, he shifts against his will."
"Werewolves," Danny said after a brief silence. "You're telling me there's a secret society of werewolves in America. I don't believe it. I saw Tyrell, and I still don't believe it."
"We're not only wolves," Claire corrected him. "For example, I'm a were-tiger. In Tompkins County alone, I know of at least sixteen different shifter species, ranging from turkey to--"
Danny waved his hand, cutting her off. "Fine, great, whatever. But that doesn't explain anything. So there are people who turn into animals. How does that even happen? It goes against all the laws of science! And how do people not know about this? How do people miss giant animals running around acting as smart as humans? Hell, are you human?"
Claire looked human. But then, Tyrell had looked human too, until he'd hunched over and practically turned himself inside out... which Danny was not thinking about, unless he wanted to lose his lunch and his sanity. Bones and tendons shouldn't move like that.
Claire's hands tightened around her coffee. "You know what? Fuck you. I'm as human as you are. Yes, sometimes I turn into a tiger -- a 'fucking giant tiger,' I suppose you'd say -- but that doesn't make me any less of a person. I think of it as a genetic hiccup, since--"
"Some hiccup!"
"--a hiccup," she continued, "which apparently comes from my mother's side of the family, since there are peculiar stories about my great-grandmother. People said she was unnaturally graceful and could speak with cats and her eyes reflected lamplight like a cat's eyes, and all sorts of similar nonsense."
She jabbed a finger across the table toward Danny. "You know, once people get over the initial disbelief and anger, they always start thinking being a Were is glamorous, that the strength and grace and hunter's instincts must carry over into our human forms, that we live wild and free the way most people dream of."
Say what? That twisting wrongness -- a human body breaking and melting into another, horribly unnatural shape -- was supposed to be glamorous?
But Claire bulled onwards before Danny could protest. "It's bullshit. When I'm human, I'm human. And when I'm a tiger... well, you try making sense of things when you're in a body with the wrong center of gravity and no hands and a brain that nature never designed for actual conscious thought! And while you're at it, run wild and free in people's backyards. I dare you. I will laugh my head off when they call animal control and the police turn you into a living pincushion."
Danny blinked. "You... feel strongly about that, I take it."
Claire flushed and stared down at her coffee again. "Not usually. The issue doesn't arise very often -- most people don't believe in us, not in real life. But now and then one of us gets careless or unlucky and somebody trips over something they can't ignore or talk themselves out of believing -- Tyrell's shift, yesterday, for example -- and then... well, let me just say that two stalkers is three more than I ever needed to have in my life." She shrugged. "But I'm getting ahead of myself. You're still in the disbelief stage."
"I'm moving away from thinking I've gone crazy, if that's any help," Danny said.
"To be perfectly honest, it might be easier for us if you did go insane," Claire said dryly, her composure apparently recovered. "It would reduce your credibility if you ever tried to reveal our existence. On the other hand, we do try to be responsible citizens. Driving other people mad is hardly neighborly."
Danny laughed, surprising himself. But then, sitting in a warm, bright coffee shop across from a gorgeous woman made it hard to hold on to his anger and resentment. Tyrell, damn him, had probably been counting on that. Danny would have to punch him in the nose on general principles -- he was supposed to be the sneaky one in their friendship.
"I'm glad you seem to be coming to terms with the reality of the situation, Mr. Carolanza," Claire said. "You do realize that you can't tell anyone else. If people found out, we'd be condemned as abominations, most likely, or locked up for study, or any number of unpleasant fates. At the very least, we'd lose our jobs, our homes, and in many cases our families -- not to mention the countless perfectly ordinary people who would be falsely accused of shape-shifting."
"Well, yeah, if you dump it on people all at once, of course we'll react badly," Danny said. "What I don't understand is how people don't already know. How do you keep it secret? And call me Danny."
"As to the first, we're very careful, we make certain we have access to large tracts of private land, and we rely on the innate human tendency to rationalize away anything that doesn't fit into the consensus definition of reality. As to the second, I don't know you that well. Yet." Claire paused and glanced around the coffee shop. "I think, Mr. Carolanza, that we should continue this discussion somewhere a bit less public. There are a lot of details you need to know if you're going to help Tyrell keep his secret, and a practical demonstration might also be in order."
Danny took a second to interpret that. "You're going to turn into a fucking giant tiger, aren't you," he said flatly.
Claire shrugged, her face annoyingly hard to read. "Possibly. But mostly I have some diagrams to show you. Come and see?"
And how was a guy supposed to take that? Was that a 'Come upstairs and see my etchings,' or a 'Back off and act platonic while I show you gruesome pictures of people turning into circus freaks'? Danny eyed Claire suspiciously, and she smiled enigmatically as she sipped her coffee.
"You know what?" he said. "It's not were-things in general that are glamorous. It's just you. But don't think I'm going to join your stalkers, Ms. Flaherty, because the glamour's nothing but a pretty paint-job on the crazy."
This time, Claire blinked. Then, slowly, her smile widened. "Mr. Carolanza, you are definitely the most interesting person I've met in the past year. I'm beginning to think Tyrell had ulterior motives for making me your guide into our world."
"Oh, you think? I figured that out ten minutes ago," Danny grumbled. "Bastard deserves a punch in the nose for that, beyond the beating I owe him for scaring me half to death last night."
Claire laughed, and it belatedly occurred to Danny that he was implicitly threatening one of her fellow were-people, as well as planning to assault, well, a fucking giant wolf. Still. Tyrell deserved some grief. "Hey," Danny said as Claire finished the dregs of her coffee, "do you want to help me get revenge on him? I could use a tiger to pin him down."
Claire set down her empty cup and stood, gathering her briefcase in one hand. "I never plan the second date until the first is finished, Mr. Carolanza. I presume you arrived by car?" At Danny's nod, she opened the briefcase and withdrew a printout of a street map. "These are directions to the Tompkins County safe house. I'll meet you at the gate, and we'll continue our discussion inside. Don't dawdle."
As Danny glanced down at the map, Claire snapped her briefcase shut and headed for the door, slipping gracefully between the crowded tables and milling customers. The late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows limned her with gold and set her ginger hair on fire. Danny watched her for a moment, wondering how such a tiny woman could turn into even a regularly-sized tiger, let alone one as massive as Tyrell's wolf form had been.
Then his mind supplied an image of how she might look halfway through the transition, and he shuddered. Yeah, this was not going to be easy. And he was still going to kill Tyrell.
But hard or not -- and how weird was it to think this, less than twenty-four hours after he'd been convinced the world had ended and he was about to die? -- it was going to be one hell of a ride.
Danny stuffed the map into his pocket and followed Claire out the door.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
---------------------------------------------
In other news, my parents will be visiting me Friday and Saturday. We'll have my slightly belated birthday dinner on Friday night, and then on Saturday we will... do something. Probably visit Bellwether Hard Cider, for one thing. I am at something of a loss for other activities, though. Maybe there are things going on up at Cornell? Well, I will investigate my options on Wednesday or Thursday.