“Finally.” She half-groaned to herself. Five hours straight Danielle Schvett had been on the road for, and only now was she closing in on her first destination.
Having been forced to leave at half-seven that morning, she’d barely had time for breakfast before she had to hop on her ’bike and make the trek to where her truck was waiting, the merciful lack of traffic at least making it a shorter-than-normal 130 minutes, giving her a little extra time before she needed to start her runs.
In some ways she did have it easier than other werewolves, which she attributed in part to her performance in her job (consistently being in the top 10%), in part the job itself, and in part from an understanding employer that was willing to handle at least some of the legal paperwork for her. This thankfully meant that so long as she kept copies of the legal work needed to prove who she was, and why she was taking particular routes she could sidestep the worst of the restrictions placed on them in a panicked knee-jerk reaction following ‘the incident’. This meant for her, in spite of having her range of travel kept under a constant watchful eye, and her room for manoeuvre in the event of unforeseen problems that inevitably cropped up, she could at least continue in her current employment.
This first run was relatively simple insofar as long-distance haulage was concerned, a trailer of groceries and other items to be taken to a store warehouse. Once that task was done, she would have to take some fuel tankers to a few remote Gas Stations, and then to a couple of farms which had placed orders. For now though, she was carefully navigating the roads here to her first destination, which had to be done by no later than four-thirty.
An easy enough task as with fifty minutes to spare she was already there, and slowly backing the trailer, keeping a constant eye out for the workers’ hand signals to tell her which way to turn the wheel, and to make sure that she didn’t make the angle of the trailer too large and thus lose control of it.
This was all perfectly normal to Danielle, but it was as she was signing off the delivery that her attention was diverted. Normally she wouldn’t think much of one of them checking the contents of the delivery to make sure it was all good, but in this case there were two things that caught her eye.
One, the way she was checking it. Instead of using a primarily visual inspection, she seemed to be using her nose, smelling the contents to assess their freshness. The other was when she rose and Danielle caught a look at her face, one she’d seen plenty of times on the news, and most recently the night before.
Sally Yeller.
Before she’d properly thought her response through, Danielle was already right next to her, just in time for Sally to recognise her as…
“Excuse me? Do I, know you?”
“No, but you’re pretty well known.” Danielle replied quietly. “Quite the celebrity you know.”
“I, wouldn’t put it like that.” Sally confessed. “You are…?”
“Yes, and Danielle Schvett.” She answered and admitted.
“I...see…” Sally replied haltingly, not sure what to say next.
“Look. Some are not happy with what happened, that’s a fact that can’t be changed. but there are more who, like me, have either forgiven you, or at least know it wasn’t your fault.” Danielle reassured her.
“Thank you.” This was one of the first instances where she’d been properly forgiven by another werewolf, and certainly the first it was made face-to-face. “Do you, have some time left? There are a few things I’d like to talk to you about.”