"Mom called this morning," Wanda says, blowing on her hot coffee.
"How is she?" Gemma puts down their weekly shopping bag of farmer's market vegetables, and reaches for her own drink.
"Demanded I bring you with me for Christmas this year," Wanda says, and Gemma knocks her chair over sideways, flailing through a four day early, stress-triggered wolf shift.
Then she finds herself wolf-shaped and uncomfortably trapped inside a pair of sweatpants and a shirt, and really panics, slamming into the table legs and sending both coffees flying as she writhes around on the floor, kicking and wailing, until Wanda has to bodily pin her down with her entire weight to wrestle what's left of the shirt off over her head.
Then she knocks Wanda over trying to climb onto her lap, shaking, and scrambles back several steps, ears flattened and tail between her legs, at the noise of startled pain Wanda makes when she bumps her head on the floor.
"I'm okay," Wanda says, but it's just so much noise. "Gemma. I'm okay." She sits up, grimacing, hand to the back of her head; voice wobbling, the tone hitting deep where the words can't right now. "Goddamn it, you like my mom — " Wanda adds, and the wolf knows bad girl when she hears it.
Gemma bolts.
"Goddamn it," Wanda says, sitting on the floor of their regular-weekly-café-they-might-never-dare-show-their-faces-in-again in a puddle of coffee with everyone staring at her, and bursts into tears.
She has another cry a bit later, after she's accosted half a dozen people in the street, asking about a big dog? and been yelled at to keep her animal under control! — sitting on the ground again, back against the car. Gemma is underneath it, somehow, and Wanda's dreadfully scared that she's got herself stuck.
Wanda desperately wishes there was somebody she could call for advice, and also feels like a fucking heel, because it's supposed to be her. She's supposed to know what to do; she's supposed to take care of Gemma.
Gemma turns out not to be stuck, when she creeps over far enough to push a wet nose into Wanda's hand from underneath the car and give it a tentative lick.
Sometimes, early shifts are transient; a few hours, or overnight. Some people have unstable early shifts, flickering back and forth between shapes before settling into the wolf.
Gemma, having shifted, stays wolf-shaped right through to the usual end of her cycle, totalling an entire week, and Wanda cries borderline hysterically into her chest for over an hour when she finally shifts back.
"I told my mom you're scared to be stuck there with people you don't know because you're a werewolf," she says finally, head resting on Gemma's shoulder. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have without asking you, I spent the week freaking out and it slipped out. And she said okay and asked if it was okay to have some questions, so I told her to ask away and she said no, she was gonna ask her rabbi questions—"
"Wait, hold on," Gemma says fuzzily. "I've just been — not this shape. For a really long time. Her rabbi? Your mom who keeps asking you to take me for Christmas is Jewish?"
"Yeah, look. Baby. That's not — the relevant part, okay? We're not going, because I lost my temper and yelled at her that if she had any questions they should be for me, because they're about us, and she yelled that she just had some questions for the rabbi, and I yelled that unless she's burning to ask whether werewolf pussy is kosher she's just being an asshole, and hung up."
"Well," Gemma says eventually, and tightens her arms around Wanda's waist. "...Thank god we're not going, I guess?"
"I have like six aunts harassing me on Facebook," Wanda mutters.
