Choices shouldn't be so hard
Who: Morgan Where: The grocery store When: Evening
Morgan had become something of a master of the local grocery store. He’d been there plenty of times in his life, but it wasn’t until he chose to strike it out on his own that he started to hone a craft. It, much like the culinary abilities that he now prided himself on, was not without trial and error. He remembered what it was like to basically be aimless. To look at something that he knew was something he wanted, but having no idea how to get it from where it was in the store to what it would ultimately be on the plate. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it wasn’t. It was just a few years prior. He’d made quite the progress during that time. Now he knew where to go to get what he wanted. When he knew what he was going to make, he could find it with ease.
In spite of this grocery store bloodhound ability, Morgan found himself regressing just a little bit. He’d already been in the store for a decent amount of time, and yet there still wasn’t all that much inside of the basket. There was a reason for that: he was trying to decide what to get for people who he’d never cooked for before. Even when he had members of his family over, he could rely on his 26 years of experience to sort of telegraph the meal that members of his family would like. It wasn’t always perfect, but he had a pretty good track record. Kiley and, he presumed by proxy her brother Corwin, were blank slates to him.
Morgan tried to grab things that were pretty basic. But then he found himself doubting the choices that he made. What if they didn’t like bacon? Seemingly impossible, since bacon was basically God’s gift to carnivores, but there were those few people who didn’t like it. And then there were the Canadians that though it was bacon when it was ham. He never got that. And eggs and cheese for omelets. Stuff for pancakes… or maybe waffles… or maybe French toast. He could toss it all in and just sort of fly blind, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to do trial and error with Kiley. He wanted to make sure that when she woke up from what he strongly believed was a special kind of nightmare for the redhead, she woke up to something that would give her a little bit of comfort.
Being a born lycanthrope, Morgan had dealt with the complications that it brought in his life on a daily basis. Although there were still areas that remained a sore point for the young wolf, he was relatively complacent with his life. He also knew what was different for bitten lycanthropes, like Kiley and her brother. The only difference that may have appeared on paper may have dealt with the moon, but living it… it must have been something so utterly crushing. Morgan would never truly know, and though a small part of him would always regret it, he was extremely content with it being so.
It was sort of the elephant in the room. Morgan was going to be face to face with something that shared a body with Kiley, but was an entirely different creature altogether. He’d seen her as a wolf without losing who she was inside. Come the next night, Morgan was going to come face to face with the beast inside. She’d never remember it, and he was glad for that, but he would. It added an extra bit of weight to Morgan’s mindset, and, in spite of his lycanthropic strength, it was probably some extra heft that he simply didn’t want to have burden his shoulders, but he was powerless to stop it.
To those that knew him well, they knew that Morgan was often not the kind of person who planned things. He was an impulsive person. Usually, if there was a plan to enact, it was plotted out by someone else. In his mind, Morgan had actually done some thinking. He’d do the grocery shopping the day before because he didn’t have enough time to do it the night of. The scheduling at work was such that he could get off before the moon was full, but it was cutting it a little close. Morgan would only have enough time to go home, change his clothes, grab all of the necessary cooking stuff (food and equipment, since he didn’t feel right cooking for someone and using their cooking ware), and head over to the house. Morgan was following the plan that he had concocted, but there was a hitch in the situation that he had not foreseen. Hence the empty basket.
Morgan knew that he didn’t need to be there. Kiley and Corwin were responsible about their status as bitten werewolves. They made sure that they were in an area on the night of the full moon where they could not harm anyone else. Turn anyone else. It was seen as a horrible action, to take away someone’s humanity and force them to deal with something being inside of them that they could never rid themselves of and never truly control. He’d heard stories about people who even willingly wanted to be turned. Morgan didn’t understand that kind of mindset, wondering if anyone who would subject themselves to such voluntary torment, had sanity on their side. A few, he’d been told, didn’t. Regardless, Morgan was almost entirely sure that he could avoid seeing the Ricks siblings in their moment of sheer vulnerability and not worry about what would happen if he wasn’t there. Despite his reservations, Morgan felt that he owed it to them to watch over them. To offer them the assurance that they didn’t do anything. They could believe him. He would be truthful.
Absentmindedly, he found himself grabbing something. It took him a second to register what it was. Spinach? Really? Popeye may have popularized it, but meat was the way to go… wasn’t it?
What time did the store close? It was entirely possible that he would need all that time.