Night settled onto Moon Lake and many of its residents drifted off to slumber, tired from the stresses of the day or finally spent trying ease those stresses.
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Jenny lay closely to Harry and held him tight. Even in their human forms, she could feel his love for her and could hear his heart beating in his chest. She eventually fell asleep to hearing Harry's heart saying, "luv you" over and over again with each beat. It felt good and in a way and her eyes fluttered as she began to dream.
"Happy birthday, mommy!" Jenny heard as a pair of hands were pulled away from Jenny's eyes.
It revealed a rather large scene before her. Immediately two her front were two girls, who were named Samantha Twist Jenkins and Suzanne Jenkins. Samantha T had Harry's hair color while Suzanne had Jenny's. Two of them held out what looked like a sheet cake that had characters from the My Little Pony franchise saying "happy birthday." The cake had two candles in the shape of numbers on it that represented Jenny's age.
"We picked it out at the store ourselves, mommy," Samantha T declared.
"I can see that," Jenny said slowly, "I take it they were out of the ones that had a picture of your father in his fursona and a very nice smile?"
"Eww!" both girls chorused together.
Jenny then looked around to see all the other guests at the party. From left to right there was Huck and Betty, and Betty's middle looked very pregnant at the moment. Then there were Harry's parents looking down on their grandchildren and their choice of cake for their mother's birthday with some amusement. Then there was Peter and Karen and then William and Martha Anderson. They all smiled to Jenny and held presents in their hands. The last was a pair of weretigers, one of whom was another college professor and the other was his wife, but had made friends with Henry Sr. and Lisa Jenkins. Apparently because they all shared the same last name.
"Thank you, all of you," Jenny gave a small smile, "It's nice of you all to come and be so kind."
"We're all friends," Karen smiled.
"And family... of a kind," William said to her.
"And you're our mommy," Samantha T and Suzanne spoke.
Jenny only smiled, both in her dream and in real life. It was something light and fancy free that actually took her mind off of the troubles related to Dieter Wilhelm and her parents.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In their respective dreams, Julie Stovall and Eric Anderson both swayed slightly as their mutual bonds of love reached across the length of the street that that two families lived on. But their swaying wasn't anything bad. If anyone had walked in, they'd notice that both young teenagers were smiling.
In their dreams, both found themselves dancing at the Halloween Dance in their respective costumes. Julie was dressed up as a tropical mermaid while Eric was dressed as the ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau. Julie was in her stage two form while Eric remained in his human form, as it was the most comfortable on his feet. Some times he figured he could try stage one, but he figured to just let that be. He more enjoyed the gentle dancing they were doing.
"This the second dance we've gone to today," Eric commented as he and Julie danced to a song with tones that set a very Halloween tone.
"The first being the reception at the Harper/Jenkins wedding," Julie answered, "It'd be something best kept to ourselves..."
"Oh, I think we are getting better," Eric commented.
"That's only from your perspective," Julie answered, "we're a couple of wall flowers who got lucky to find each other..."
The two came together for a moment and looked into each other's eyes. Each twinkling bright blue with happiness, and then they kissed.
"Luck had nothing to do with it," Eric said to her as he held Julie to him.
They kissed again to the applause of everyone around them, including a young werecheetah being escorted by a male weregorilla.
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Nate rolled awake at about half past midnight and felt two things. One was that he needed to use the bathroom and that he felt a bit hungry. He sighed and got up. His first stop was the bathroom in the hallway. He walked past the door to his parents room and noticed that it was open a crack. He peaked in to see his parents both transformed and cuddled together under their covers. The discarded clothing on the floor gave the indication they ultimately had had a good night. From there he went by the door to Eric's room. The door was wide open and he noted a small smile on Eric's face.
"Probably dreaming about Julie," Nate thought.
He then did his business in the bathroom and flushed before heading downstairs. As he did so, he had some of the things that had been so troubling for everyone over the course of Wednesday. This agent that had tried to kill Harry Jenkins, put the wrong Jenkins in the hospital and put the entire school district on lock-down. Even if this agent didn't know about weres, it was quite clear that the overall pattern of action was a threat to Moon Lake as a whole. Shooting people and putting the whole town on edge, supposedly over a wedding? A part of his mind thought it MIGHT make for good drama in a story, but wasn't something that people shouldn't have to deal with in real life.
"There's got to be something we can do," Nate mumbled to himself as he looked into the refrigerator, pulled out a stick of string cheese and then slowly made his way back toward his bedroom, "From what dad says... I'm sure the Skulk is involved in helping the police on trying to deal with that guy... but if he's willing to shoot a guy who isn't even dating the supposed target and getting the middle school surely terrified and us losing our normal PE schedule?"
Nate reached the stairs and took a bite out of the cheese. He then turned to simply using his thoughts, so as not to wake up his parents or his brother.
"Would there be some way everyone could unite for a citizen's arrest on this guy?" Nate wondered silently to himself as he climbed the stairs and chewed on the cheese he'd selected to nibble on, "maybe Ben could ask his mom's or something..."