Who: Jenny & Dahlia. Where: Smalltown in the PACIFIC NORTHWEST (so totally not written with Crows Landing in mind). When: During the autumn season, a couple of moons ago. They are highschool seniors (17/18). What: AU: When the Wolves Howl, based around the lycanthrophy standards/rules of the Ginger Snaps films. Two clueless best friends (with benefits) stumble upon an unexpected and unwanted curse.. and it begins to affect both of them, while only truly afflicting one of them. Warnings: TBA, but presumably it will go quite high! Violence and sexual content both liable to be present.
"That's the third one," Jenny said to Dahlia sullenly, looking at her friend first, before looking back at the ruin of a cage in front of them. Her dad had cleaned up most of.. the mess, but there was no way to get the blood out of the little enclosure entirely, even with the hose. There was no fixing the side that whatever ate her dog had clawed through, ripping through black chainlink fence like it was paper. Whatever it had been, it had wanted in, and it had gotten in, and it wasn't the first time it happened.
Whatever had killed this dog had also killed two of their dogs a week before, and one of their neighbours dogs about a week before that, going through fences both time. Her dad had said that the dogs would be safe, that nothing would break into the cages twice, that the first attack was simply a fluke. Really, he insisted that it was part of nature.
Bigger things always ate little things, in the circle of life. They didn't care if the little things they ate were family pets or not.
While the Parry family house was never a particularly large piece of property to begin with, the area that they kept their dogs penned up in out back was almost as big as the house itself. Her dad had built most of it, with some help from friends over the years, and it attached to their garage and still took up almost half of their backyard in the process. The fences were high, the area generally secure. With the pens, cages, and dog houses all built on, it was big enough to house half a dozen dogs comfortably. There were only two of them left now, and Ella had been keeping both of them inside with the family ever since they'd found the half-eaten terrier in his kennel this morning.
Her parents had been raising service dogs in the backyard for years now. They'd been retired since adopting the twins, and raising dogs was passion they discovered late in their lives, after Jenny had gotten her own first seizure alert dog as a small child. They raised mostly medium and small dogs, all sweet and obedient pups with the proper gentle temperament for the work. Small neighbourhood dogs were, apparently, just the perfect snack size for whatever was roaming their streets after dark these days. Her dad suggested mountain lion, but her mom said there weren't any mountain lions in the area, so perhaps it was a wolf or big coyote, and Jen didn't know who to believe. They both seemed to be grasping at straws, as far as explanations went. Her sister, when she hadn't been crying about the whole mess, had offhandedly suggested that it was bigfoot.
Jenny didn't know what it really was, terrorizing the town pet population, but she wanted it to go away already. Back into the woods, or wherever it had come from. It had already ruined her Saturday so far, which she had planned to spend laying in her bottom bunk until at least noon, studying or perhaps reading.
Instead, she had been flitting between helping her dad with the mess outside, and assuring her twin that nothing was going to get inside to get the other two dogs that they had left. Outdoor cages obviously weren't safe, but their house was safe, and it wasn't like the dog-eating beast could turn doorknobs or something. It was just a real bummer, the loss of the two dogs (both of which had been close to fully trained; almost ready for a new family), and that they'd have to be so extra cautious now. Her mom would be worried every time they took one of the dogs for a walk or something, she just knew it.
Her mom had already insisted that if she needed to go anywhere that night, that she ought to call Dahlia and have her drive her there. Which Jenny had agreed to do, but only because she'd already had plans to spend the night with Dahlia, long before they'd woken up to any carnage in the backyard. There wasn't much to do in their small town, even on a Saturday evening. They could either go to the mall in the next town, maybe go to the movies, play pool, or drive around aimlessly. They could have gone swimming, if Jenny didn't hate it, and the season were right. If it weren't the middle of autumn, with that distinct crispness in the air.
Driving around would be their most likely escape, since they'd been planning to drive to the Old Branch road tonight, which they often did on some nights when both of their boyfriends were otherwise occupied. Usually it was Dahlia's boyfriend with playing football, and her own with who knew what. It had been a long time since Jenny had cared enough to ask Charlie what he spent his time doing, mostly because she wasn't sure she wanted to know. Dating a boy and fixing him, apparently, only worked if he was willing to be fixed.. and Charlie was decidedly set upon staying just the way he was. She was only lucky that he hadn't gotten her pregnant yet, though there had been enough scares.
Old Branch road was a stretch of mostly deserted two-lane highway that bordered the exit from town, which had an area to pull-off into; the local 'lovers lane' of the day. Well, in her mom and dad's day at least. Before people began doing their parking and necking out by the local quarry instead. Charlie preferred to go parking at the quarry, for example, but she and Dahlia always preferred to spend time together to the quiet, calmness of the Branch road. How desserted it was helped, really. There would have mostly likely been no fogged up windows except for their own on the road that night.
But with Jenny's head in the place that it was, she wasn't feeling much like sneaking off or making out tonight, and she knew that Dahlia would understand. Or hoped that she would. If anything, Jenny wanted them to just drive somewhere, anywhere, to talk and the blonde couldn't imagine herself getting into much trouble doing that. But Paula did worry. She might not have been her mother by blood, but she was her mother, and Jenny could read her like a book and did hate to disappoint her. She would play along as much as neccessary, and do as she was asked. Especially with her parents already upset about the dogs. She'd be careful. If it made her mom feel that much better when she had Dahlia with her, then Jenny could oblige that much to her.
She always felt better with Dahlia with her, too.
Sighing heavily, Jenny only turned away from the ruined dog cage once she couldn't look at it anymore. It would be dark very shortly, and she didn't even know why she'd brought Dahlia out into the backyard to see it all before they left, other than the fact that she wanted to know what the brunette thought about the whole situation. Dahlia's imagination never seemed to run quite as rampant as Jenny's did, and Jenny often trusted her friend's opinion more readily just because of that. Jenny was the more level-headed of the two, but not the most grounded. Dahlia had no qualms on telling Jenny when she was being silly. More than anything, the blonde wanted to hear that it was okay and that she and her mother were probably overreacting over the death of a couple of dogs, which had probably indeed just been the unfortunate victims of some hungry wild animal.
She just didn't know any wild animals that could tear through a fence like that, seemingly using it's jaws to do so.
"Ready to go?" Jenny asked the other girl after a moment, glancing at the brunette beside her briefly, before she decided that she could risk a sudden embrace, given the circumstance. She seized Dahlia in a fierce hug, face buried against the brunette's collarbone, trying to ignore the distinct scent of boyfriend on her friend's clothes. Biting back the feeling of jealousy in her stomach, his after-shave or cologne or something from him assaulting Jenny's nose even as she kept her face pressed against Dahlia's shoulder, trying to pretend it wasn't there. If her mother or father saw them being all close and personal in the backyard, Jenny was sure that they would write it off as her just being upset and her friend comforting her.. which was true, at least partially, but there was always more to it than that. She wanted her girlfriend to comfort her tonight too, except they never called each other that, because Dahlia said it wasn't exactly what they were.
Jenny herself had been fairly certain for some time that it was exactly what they were, even if Dahlia didn't want to call it that, but that was a battle for another time. Tonight, she was just bummed about the dogs. "Don't ever get pets, you'll just get attached," she warned the other girl with a weak sigh. "Why couldn't we raise rabbits, or like, something that stays safe inside?"