Fussy Wolf, Patient Vamp

Anya, (or ‘Nastya, if one used the proper Russian shortening of her name which she had long since given up on trying to get her friends to adopt) sighed as she shone the flashlight from her phone under the bed once again.

“Anastasia.” She said curtly, “I know you’re under there.” She thought she saw something scamper in the darkness, next to a pair of tennis shoes. “I’m not sure if I can do sonar, but I’m about to try learning. Because I am not luring you out with a treat.”

She waited patiently, at least she didn’t have to worry about coughing up a lung from dust inhalation.

After all, it wasn’t like she breathed anymore.

She glanced around in the dark. The tennis shoes were still there. Wait, at the end of the; oh, that was a baseball bat, not a tail. She still couldn’t see anything with the glare from the light. Ugh. Why was she doing it this way to begin with? They could both see in the dark. Perhaps it was simply her humanity, somewhere at the back of her mind one of those basic truisms lurked; “Do not, under any circumstances, be alone in a room with a wolf. And if you are alone in a room with a wolf, do not, under any circumstances, have that room be a dark one.”

“Anastasia O’ Malley.” She said curtly, “Please. This is getting ridiculous.”

She waited for a few seconds more, and was rewarded with the glint from a halfway open brown eye. Guess wolves blinked like everything else. With a speed unmatched by any mortal creature, her arm shot forward. She felt a brush of fur….

As it slipped just out of reach.

Okay. Perhaps that “any mortal creature” bit, was a bit of an exaggeration.

“Fine. If this is how you want it.” She grumbled, “Then this is how you’re going to get it. ALEXA! Her voice boomed, LIGHTS OFF IN THE BEDROOM!”

“Turning the lights off in: The Bedroom

She pulled her phone back and quickly thumbed the flashlight off, then slid it into the back of her jeans. She was not about to take an eye off of that wolf.

The lights dimmed, too slow, then fast as she was, and her vision went from adequate, to a crystalline portrait of every huge mote of dust, every lace of the tennis shoes, the lightness of the Nike symbol contrasted with the darkness of the box, and there; clear as day, at the back of the bed. A wolf. Her wolf. Eyes wide open, curled up in a ball, and pitifully staring at her. Muzzle tilted downward, paws tucked against her sides, and tail curled up around herself. A picture perfect example of “as pitiful a canine as possible”. As if to fill in the last strokes of the portrait, a whiny whimper escaped her girlfriend’s muzzle.

She sighed, steeling her resolve and watching those large eyes track her, wondering if her girlfriend could tell that she was too far under the bed for Anya to reach with normal human speeds; and given that her girlfriend’s human body was still resting on the bed above there was no way that she was going to risk possibly turning it over by grabbing for her at faster than human speeds.

“Look. I know you don’t like going to the dentist, but we all have to do things we don’t like sometimes.” She stated as firmly as she could, trying to summon that perfect tone of commandeering cadence she had heard her mother use on her all those years ago.

Evidently, she had either failed or it didn’t work on Ossarian Wolves, because Anastasia did not budge.

She stood there, half glaring, half sympathetically looking at her pitiful werewolf girlfriend, and finally decided that there was no way dentistry was as bad these days as it had been when she was a child.

“Fine, you stay under here. I’m going to go argue with Bolsheviks on Twitter.” She slid out from under the bed, only to here a concerned pattern of rapid whimpers, and her girlfriend’s human form awaken above her. “Wait! Wait! I take it back, I’ll go to the dentist. You said you’d stay off Twitter!”

She grinned, resting against the bed and extending a hand upwards to find her girlfriend’s warm embrace envelope her entire hand followed by a kiss on her cheek. She smiled and looked over at her pet’s flustered face, more normal brown eyes looking solemly downcast, and pained pout partially hidden by a mess of black hair. “Good choice, good girl.” She said, scritching her head and smiling as her girlfriend licked her cheek in return. “Now let’s go.”