“I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Cam…” Marah said, sensing her friend’s discontent from the passenger seat as she navigated the neighborhood.
“Yeah… it’s… it’s fine. We knew this was gonna happen anyways,” she replied, resting her cheek on the felt pad of her paw-gloved hand. Her werewolf costume was quite elaborate, complete with boots, gloves, a tail, a ruff of fur around the neck, and ears that covered her real ones. “Honestly, we got lucky. The weather forecast said it was gonna rain on Halloween night, but instead it’s just…” Her eyes peered up to the bleak sky. “… overcast.”
“I suppose… But hey, at least this’ll be the last time you need the costume!” she said, trying to cheer Cam up a little bit.
“Yeah, yeah… I really would’ve loved for my first change to be at a Halloween party, though. And it just happens to be a full moon and everything… it would’ve been too perfect! So close, and yet, the weather…”
Having exposited sufficiently, they drove the rest of the way to the party in silence. Before long, it’d be dark, and the full moon’s light would wash across… the tops of some clouds. Not a single werewolf in this area would get even a glimpse of it.
The party was fun, as always, and there were plenty of really neat costumes… “None nearly as cool as yours, though, Cam,” Marah would surely say, as she did every year. “Nothing can ever beat a handmade costume, especially when the hands that made it are yours.” Cam smiled. She loved her costume, and loved these parties, but now that she actually finally had the thing she’d dreamed of for so long, now that she was standing here unable to share that thing with the people around her, she just felt… distant. She needed some air.
Stepping outside, Cam was immediately glad to be wearing her lycanthropic getup. It was well past “brisk”, firmly in the realm of “chilly”. Her fur, fake as it was, kept her warm enough. For the thousandth time that day, her gaze turned skyward, catching only inky blackness. No stars, and certainly no moon. Or… maybe there was… the faintest glimmer… could it be…?
Suddenly, Cam’s eyes were assaulted by a dazzling light from above! Even as she squeezed them shut, she felt it on her skin, in her bones, in her soul. There must’ve been some break in the clouds, some miracle, the sheer fortune of it lighting her heart, pushing out from her body in every direction— It was really happening! She tensed up, doubled over in disbelief as new energies poured through her. Through and in and around and finally, finally out, as she howled into the night.
Her human shape became one of ache, and things began to strrrretch to release the tension. Her ears pushed past the fluffy triangles of fabric that covered them, releasing them from their service as they fell softly to the floor. Boots and gloves alike tore not just from the growth of claws, but from the growth of everything else they were trying to cover. The way the pads— her pads, her real paw pads— pushed against the fabric… Cam yelped and hopped forward as a new limb joined her other four, punching a hole through the seat of her pants and immediately putting the sack of stuffing she used to call a “tail” to shame. It was huge, and fluffy, and wagging furiously, and oh gods there was more of that fluff around her neck and down her legs and those legs were changing shape and—
“It worked!!” The unfamiliar voice (and smell? That’s new) startled Cam, and she looked around for its source. Looking up, she saw two things, or rather, saw one thing and noticeably didn’t see a certain second thing. The moon was absent. As soon as she realized it wasn’t there, her changes slowed down, but didn’t really quite stop… but she directed her attention to the more pressing matter of the thing she did see, which was a woman standing next to some kind of smallish device on the roof.
“It… hhhuh?” Cam’s words came from her largely untransformed mouth effortlessly, and sounded exactly the way her voice always did, and this pleased and confused her and generally threw even more emotions into her current experience. “What, uh… what? What worked? Who’re you?”
“To skip to phase 2 so easily… I knew it, I knew it had to be possible…!” She came down into view (how did she do that? It was like she held onto something invisible, and it lowered her down…) holding the device, which Cam could now see was, in fact, simply a spotlight. As for the woman, she appeared to be dressed as a mad scientist, with a white lab coat, short, white hair, and glasses with large, circular lenses. One of the partygoers, perhaps…? “Ah, yes, as for me, I’m an acquaintance of Marah’s. This is a big moment for you, I’d think, so I’ll be brief.”
She was certainly very odd, but something about her flavor of strangeness put Cam at ease. “Yeah, it is. How’d you do this?”
“That’s just it!” the woman exclaimed. “I didn’t do this, Cam. You did.” Cam tilted her head, then realized what she was doing and blushed. “Werewolves, you see, they don’t really need the full moon to change. They need to be allowed to change, and the myth about the moon provides that permission. But at phase 2, a werewolf gains the ability to allow themself to change. You simply believed you were able to transform… and so you could. You wanted it so badly for so long, and all it took to bring it out was a little fake moonlight…!”
Reeling herself back in, the woman gave Cam a surprisingly warm smile. “I’ll not keep you any longer for now, though. Go on in and show them your new self. They’re waiting for you…”
Cam nodded, thanked her, turned, and went back inside. A moment ago it’d been oddly quiet in there, but she could smell a certain kind of tension in the air…
And so, it didn’t even surprise her one bit when the party erupted into cheers.