The day for Tad and Amy was fairly quiet. They met at the bus stop while Amy was minding her brothers. Tad noted that both of them were absentmindedly scratching at some points.
"Things may be getting close," Tad said to them with a smile.
"Yeah," Jay answered with a smile, looking up to his older sister and her boyfriend, "and with all the help... our dreams haven't been too bad."
Tad glanced for a moment to Amy who only shrugged. Vivid dreams and nightmares commonly also heralded the impending first transformation in naturally born weres, usually a sign of their animal instincts beginning to emerge and conflicting with their human psyche. It didn't mean that weres would "lose" their humanity but that the additional things they gained weren't human and their minds were trying to sort everything out. Once the first transformation was completed, a naturally born were was in full control and could consciously restrain their inner animal with little real effort. Tad had volunteered to help Amy and her family with Jay and Leon's first transformation and sharing what his father and mother had done with him to help him with his first transformation, but he really didn't think anything he'd done would affect Jay or Leon's dreams.
"Your dreams?" Tad asked after a moment.
"Yeah, we were all running in the woods," Leon spoke, "Me and Jay... you and Amy... our mom and dad... your mom..."
"My mom may help me with regard to talking you two through your first transformation... but as a werecat... she probably won't be too interested in running in the woods," Tad pointed out.
"It's what we saw," Jay answered, "We were running. ALL of us, and we were having so much fun."
Tad patted both of their backs as the bus began to pull up that morning, "Again... I wouldn't think my mom would want to join in with regard to running in the woods, but if you think the advice we've given you is helping... I'm glad it's helping."
Jay and Leon both smiled at that.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The school day for Tad and Amy was ultimately fairly quiet. While some of the fears and concerns related to Lionel Ulysses' death and capture were still there, things had quieted down enough on that front for the moment that many of the initial fears on it were really dying down. In fact, while Tad figured weres would need a good ambassador in the future when either A) weres were exposed by accident or B) Moon Lake felt it safe to reveal the truth, he wasn't really focused on that. A part of him was still heavily concerned with why someone like Dymixious Drake, who really wasn't to be trusted with truly protecting the "were secret" was hiding out in Moon Lake. However, the were-komodo-dragon hadn't come onto school grounds and wasn't the thing that Tad ultimately overheard in the school's gossip mill.
When Tad went to lunch he managed overhear some of that sort of thing in the line to get his food.
"I heard she wailed on that raccoon!" one girl in front of him.
"Good," sad her friend with some anger, "my boyfriend and I went to her shop last week... she spent nearly the whole time hitting on MY boyfriend! As if that woman can't get her own tail... she has to go after someone else's!"
Tad blinked but ignored that for a brief moment. He was new to Moon Lake and there were a fair number of things that he was still adapting to and learning about, and while this did leave him curious, it was like many of the conversations about the Jenkins/Harper wedding... it was something that he really didn't know enough on to claim any authority. He went through the lunch line and eventually found Amy seated in an open booth. He was quick to sit down and join her. There were a couple others there, too. Two male, two female and all of them werewolves.
"Hey," he spoke to her to announce his presence.
Amy smiled and one of the other senior males scooted over a bit to give Tad room to sit down. Tad knew them all from some of his other classes and he settled into the seat opposite Amy.
"Hey, yourself," Amy smiled back at him.
"Been a quiet day, so far," Tad commented.
"And a good thing too," one the other two male seniors at the booth, named Jimmy, said, "between some guy with a gun running by the middle school yesterday morning and the fight... yesterday had to be intense... Too intense for my liking."
"Fight?" Tad asked glancing to Amy and then to Jimmy. He figured that Jimmy was referring to this fight that a teacher got into that he'd been hearing about, but his run-in with Dymixious was enough to make him stop and think for a moment.
"Yeah... Ms. McCoy teaches history, though unless you haven't taken history... they're courses for Sophomores and Juniors," Jimmy answered, "we take government for our social studies course..."
"I've had my history courses," Tad answered.
Jimmy and the others nodded.
"So... you probably won't have any classes with her," said the girl sitting next to Amy, "but she's generally been a pretty good teacher. Tough but fair..."
"Sounds like the military schools I've attended," Tad commented.
"I'd thought they were all tough... getting up at dawn and doing calisthenics," said the third girl who was on the far left side of the booth.
"Well an actual military school, maybe," Tad admitted, "I was referring to the public schools that many military bases have so that dependents of military personnel don't loose access to education. They aren't too different from the standard public school..."
The others shrugged and eventually Jimmy picked up on the explanation.
"Anyway, one of my pack mates is a sophomore and heard from a friend on what happened," Jimmy spoke, "apparently this new family has moved into Moon Lake... a lone man and his daughter. They moved in next to Ms. McCoy and near another woman... a wereraccoon named Decrux. The two get along about as well as stereotypical cats and dogs and they got into a scrap. The father tried to stop the fight and got clawed by accident. The fight was about him... but because he got scratched..."
"Sounds like that's the cause of the rumors going on today," Tad commented after taking a bite of his lunch.
"Maybe," the girl seated to Amy's immediate left commented, "but I probably wouldn't believe a lot of them. People will gossip about anything... including all the stuff that went on with Seattle. Everyone gets jumpy over things. Sometimes... I'd wish the secret came out just so that everyone wasn't living so permanently on edge over these things."
Tad nodded. Weres had lived in secret and on some level had good reason to. But there were times when Tad figured it might be easier just to let it go. Find a good "ambassador" and let it all out, though at present, with Lionel Ulysses actions and Dymixious playing the role of vigilante, Tad figured this exact moment might not be the best time. At least Thursday had been a quiet day for him.