Chapter 2, Part 1: The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

Katrina slowly and grudgingly awoke to the incessantly squawking of the bird on her windowsill. She methodically emerged from her covers, shambled around Wearwolf as she approached the windowsill, and loomed over the bird with about as much burning intensity as one can muster after a couple hours sleep. The bird gradually and uncertainly quieted itself.

“Good morning, Alarmcock,” Katrina greeted with all the warmth and gentleness of a butcher knife. “Do you know what day this is?”

The Alarmcock cautiously pointed one wing straight down and the other off to the side.
“Not what time it is,” Katrina groggily corrected. “What day it is.”

Alarmcocks weren’t known for their intelligence. If they were, they wouldn’t go around waking people up at times they’d rather be sleeping at. Katrina’s was no different and had to do some thinking before it realized it didn’t keep track of current events.

“Bawk?” the Alarmcock carefully ventured.

“That’s right,” Katrina replied with cheerfulness of a rotisserie oven. “It’s the day after my sixteenth birthday. Do you know why this day is so special?”

Okay, the Alarmcock was pretty sure it knew this one.

“Bawk?” the Alarmcock guessed.

“Yep,” Katrina confirmed with a tone dripping with barbeque sauce. “It means I spent all of last night trudging through a pitch-black forest, avoiding wild beasts, fighting a hunter who tried to kill me and my animal counterpart, and generally getting all muddy and rained on, all so I could prove that I was finally an adult. And do you know how I’d like to celebrate overcoming all those trials?”

Katrina’s finger-licking grin made the Alarmcock uncertain about its need to know the answer to that question.

“B-bawk?” the Alarmcock stammered.

“Why, yes,” Katrina accepted. “I would like to SLEEP IN FOR ONCE! THANK YOU FOR ASKING!”

Katrina slammed the window shut and stomped back to bed. The Alarmcock let go of the breath it didn’t realize it was holding, just glad to go through that with only crushed toes.

“I would have eaten the bird, myself,” Wearwolf said, still curled up on the floor.

Katrina grumbled incoherently and flopped back onto her bed. From there, she proceeded to wrap the blankets around her like a cocoon from which she would hopefully emerge from later as a toasty and well-rested butterfly. She lazily rolled onto her side and immediately sat up as the pain from the wound on her shoulder jolted her out of her daze. Clutching her shoulder, she fingered the bandages through her nightgown. The injury wasn’t severe, but she was told it might leave a scar.

“Are you all right?” Wearwolf asked, responding to Katrina’s pain. He padded over to her bed, limping from bandaged wounds on his shoulder and hind leg, and stood with his front paws on the mattress.

“Nah, I’m fine,” Katrina replied. She lay back on the bed and sighed. “Well, I guess we’re adults now.”

“It would appear so,” Wearwolf confirmed.

“It’s funny,” Katrina said. She got up and walked over to her mirror. Wearwolf followed her. “I guess I kinda expected there’d be this magical transformation and I’d suddenly become more mature. But I don’t feel any older. I don’t look any older. I’m not more endowed, I’m not smarter, and I don’t feel like eating bran flakes.”

“Perhaps you have changed in ways that are not as immediately apparent,” Wearwolf offered. “Or perhaps you have yet to change.”

“I guess,” Katrina accepted. “But I still feel like I always have, except now I have responsibilities and stuff.”

“What sort of responsibilities?” Wearwolf inquired, tilting his head to one side.

“You know, adult stuff,” Katrina attempted to explain.

“I’m afraid I do not,” Wearwolf replied, tilting his head to the other side.

“I mean, you know, hard stuff,” Katrina went on. “The kinda things that have to be taken seriously. You know, the stuff you don’t trust children to because they’ll just mess it up or something.”

“You mean things like rearing young and hunting for food?” Wearwolf attempted to clarify.

“Uh, yeah, I guess that’s what it ultimately boils down to,” Katrina agreed. Her voice saddened as she added, “Maintaining food and shelter, preparing the next generation to do the same thing.”

“You sound disappointed,” Wearwolf noted. “Is this not what you wanted?”

Katrina looked down at Wearwolf and sighed. Then she walked over to her dresser and started rummaging through the drawers.

“Could you turn around please?” Katrina asked.

“What ever for?” Wearwolf asked.

“I’m going to change my clothes,” Katrina answered.

“Why does this require me to turn around?” Wearwolf asked.

“Because I’m going to be taking off my clothes,” Katrina explained. Sensing that Wearwolf had missed the point completely, she added, “And I don’t want you to watch me.”

“Why not?” Wearwolf asked. “Are you attempting to hide some sort of disfiguration from me?”

“No, it’s just rude,” Katrina replied.

“It is rude to view the bare flesh of others?” Wearwolf inquired.

“Yeah,” Katrina answered. “Well, not all of it. The extremities are okay, but some of the torso is off-limits.”

“Such as?” asked Wearwolf.

“Well, uh,” Katrina stammered, blushing. “I can’t really say…”

“Why not?” Wearwolf inquired.

“Er, well…” Katrina started, blushing slightly. “Just turn around, won’t you?”

“Okay, fine,” Wearwolf conceded as he turned away.

“Thank you,” Katrina sighed. She proceeded to pull clothes from the dresser. Meanwhile Wearwolf padded over to the edge of Katrina’s loft and looked down through the bars of the banister at the room below. The cottage was divided into three main rooms: Katrina’s room, her parents’ bedroom, and a combination kitchen, dining, and living room. Like most other houses in the village, the two bedrooms were stacked on top of each other, allowing people in the upper bedroom to look down into the larger main room. There was, of course, the bathroom, situated along the same dividing wall as the bedroom and bore a sign on the door reading “Toilet,” as was the style of the time.

“Do all children sleep in lofts like this?” Wearwolf asked.

“Yeah,” Katrina answered. “I think it has to do with protecting us from predators or something.”

“If you were at ground level, you could flee from predators much easier,” Wearwolf pointed out.

“But from here I could push down the ladder and it wouldn’t be able to climb up,” Katrina informed.

“Unless it climbed up while you were asleep,” Wearwolf said.

“I probably wouldn’t be able to run while I was asleep, either, would I?” Katrina challenged.

“No, I suppose you would not,” Wearwolf conceded.

“What about you, Wearwolf?” Katrina asked. “Do you have friends or family in the woods?”

“My friends were my family,” Wearwolf replied. “And my family were my friends.”

“Are you worried about them?” Katrina inquired further. “With that hunter on the loose and all?”

“Worried?” Wearwolf questioned, craning his neck back towards Katrina. He got a nightgown thrown over his face for his efforts. He turned back around, saying, “I have no reason to be concerned about them.”

“They can take care of themselves, huh?” Katrina clarified.

Wearwolf was silent for a moment. Katrina noticed his tail lying limply on the floor.

“That would be a sufficient approximation, yes,” Wearwolf said.

Katrina picked the nightgown off Wearwolf and dropped it and her used unmentionables into the hamper on the lower floor. The hamper proceeded to scuttle off to assist with the laundry. Katrina led Wearwolf to a nearby ladder and began to climb down wearing a pair of blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt. She never liked to put a lot of effort into how she looked, so she rarely wore make up and usually tied her jet-black hair back in a simple ponytail. Likewise, her body wasn’t very well defined and was shaped more like a ruler than an hourglass, not that you could tell beneath that sweatshirt.

“Where are we going?” Wearwolf asked, perched on the edge as Katrina descended. “I thought we were to be resting.”

“Yeah, but I’m not in the mood to lie around anymore,” Katrina answered. “Besides, I’m getting hungry.”

Katrina’s father, a stout, middle-aged man with a thick, black moustache and noticeable baldness, met the pair at the bottom of the ladder. Aside from his usual work clothes, he wore a slightly unsurprised look of concern. The beaver with the serrated tail by his feet shared the expression.

“Good morning, daddy,” Katrina greeted cheerfully as Wearwolf hopped down from the loft. He landed hard on his paws, causing him to wince and whimper slightly.

“Good morning, Katrina,” her father replied. He knelt down and scratched Wearwolf behind the ear, saying, “And good morning to you too, Wearwolf.”

Wearwolf jerked his head away from Katrina’s father’s hand and growled slightly.

“If you don’t want him touching you like that, you should just tell him,” Katrina told her animal partner.

“Oh, I wouldn’t’ve been able to understand him, anyway,” her father said. “The Rite of Initiation allowed you to form an empathic link with Wearwolf. Only you can understand exactly what he’s saying.”

“You mean like how you and Cleaver can talk for hours on end and I only understand half of it?” Katrina analogized, thinking of her father’s semi-aquatic rodent companion.

“Exactly!” her father confirmed.

“Or how you can talk to your father for hours on end and he won’t hear anything,” Katrina’s mother jokingly added as she entered from the kitchen and placed a tray full of pancakes on the table.

“What was that, dearest?” Katrina’s father asked jovially.

“Never mind dear,” Katrina’s mother replied, rolling her eyes.

“So, Katrina, been out beating down hunters, have we?” Katrina’s father inquired as he and Katrina sat down to breakfast. Her mother returned to the kitchen to retrieve food for their animals.

“I wouldn’t really call it a beat down,” Katrina admitted. “He probably would’ve gotten the upper hand eventually. I’m not going to have to try again to do it properly, am I?”

“Does your wolf mind eating out of bowl, honey?” Katrina’s mother called from the kitchen area.

“Do you?” Katrina asked Wearwolf.

“I prefer my meat fresh, preferably live enough for me to kill,” Wearwolf answered. “Although, in my condition even carrion will do.”

Katrina thought about that response for a moment, and then called to her mother, “I think it’s fine as long as it’s not dry food.”

“I hardly think its necessary for a do-over,” Katrina’s father answered his daughter’s previous question. “Since time immemorial, there has never been such a thing as a ‘typical’ Rite of Initiation. Far more dangerous things have interrupted a Rite. Your uncle Steve was nearly crushed by a meteor.”

“I thought that was your cousin Cooter,” Katrina’s mother said as she returned with a bowl of meat chunks for Wearwolf and some fish for Cleaver. A cat, recently roused by the smell of fish, scampered out of the bedroom and, upon seeing Wearwolf, bolted for cover in the kitchen area. Mother followed the feline to feed her.

“No, no, Cooter was abducted by aliens,” father corrected. “They probed him and put a chip in his head, remember?”

“They’re both full of it if you ask me,” mother said as she returned to the table and sat down. “Didn’t they also take one of his kidneys?”

“That was Alejandro in New Tijuana,” father answered. “Funniest thing. Just like old Tijuana back on Earth, or so I hear.”

“I hear that Mrs. Chardonnay got caught in a storm while at sea and washed up on an uncharted island during her Rite,” mother added.

“Anyway, the point is no two people experience exactly the same Rite,” father continued. “Well, given that they weren’t on the same Rite, of course.”

“So how do I know if I’ve done it right?” Katrina asked. “What if I wasn’t supposed to get Wearwolf?”

“You got and bonded with an animal,” mother replied. “That’s all that needs to happen. Otherwise…”

The room became deathly silent. People don’t really talk about what happens when someone returns without an animal. Most either come back with one or they don’t come back at all. Or at least they might as well.

“Is there something wrong with Wearwolf?” father asked.

“No, its just not what I was expecting,” Katrina answered.

“That’s par for the course, really,” father said. “I never expected to be a lumberjack, but here I am.”

“I think it suits her, really,” mother said thoughtfully. “She is very loyal to her friends.”

“And she is a take-charge kind of girl,” father added. “An alpha female, so to speak.”

“Got along real well with boys,” mother continued.

“Burying bones in the yard,” father reminisced. “Howling at the moon…”

“Dad!” Katrina admonished.

“You know your father’s only kidding, Katrina,” mother said.

“Yes, it was only that one time,” father said.

“Yeah, so let’s never speak of it again,” Katrina said sternly. Changing the subject, she wondered aloud, “Since Wearwolf is a rare Armor-type, do you think that means I have a rare destiny?”

“It could mean a lot of things,” father replied. “Maybe it just shows an advantage to your protective nature. You could work in medicine, or child care, or…”

“I could be a Chimera Knight?” Katrina asked hopefully.

Father sighed reproachfully.

“Katrina, I know you’ve always wanted to be a Chimera Knight,” he said, “But you’re our only child. I want you to be happy, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Being a guardian is dangerous business and I don’t want to see you getting hurt. I know I can’t really tell you what to do anymore, but please look into other fields, sweetie. We love you too much to let you put yourself in danger like that.”

“Mom?” Katrina asked with a pleading look on her face.

“What you learn from the Rite is like fortune-telling,” mother said. “At it’s most accurate, it can only tell you things you know or vague generalities. Only you can decide what it really means, even if it’s only what you want to hear. All I can say is follow your heart and don’t be too surprised if it gets broken along the way.”

“Okay,” Katrina conceded with some disappointment. She had already decided that an Armor-type – a creature capable of transforming into living armor – was better than just a Weapon or Shield-type. Either of those two alone would’ve suggested a warrior’s path, unlike, say, the more prevalent Tool-types, which over-lapped with the Weapon-types in terms of general function but didn’t necessarily lend themselves to combat too well. She felt the rare Armor-type, especially one capable of both defense and offense, not only defined but also justified her dreams. No one could really argue with it, but her parents put up a decent fight nonetheless. After breakfast, she decided to find a second opinion.