There were four days left until the next full moon. The cookie bars were gone, but Paisley was happy to volunteer to help make more. Ainslie instead opted to make a tray of muffins. It was a decent way to pass the time in the afternoon, and it meant she had another option for breakfast the next morning, assuming the entire tray didn’t get devoured in a single go.
It didn’t take much time, though. The baking was long done by the time Malik got home that evening, and Ainslie was nearly finished helping the girls with their homework.
She knew Malik was watching from the kitchen doorway as they sat at the table. She wasn’t sure what was so fascinating about watching, but when she snuck a glance at his face, he looked impossibly fond, though he glanced away as soon as he noticed that she was looking at him.
Slowly, he pushed himself away from the doorway and left, only to come back a few moments later.
“Anything exciting happen today?” he asked as he came back into the room and the girls finally noticed him. Paisley launched herself out of her seat at him, as if she wanted to climb him like a jungle gym. Malik caught her without any issue, remarking casually as he did, “It smells like someone baked.”
Of course, he noticed that quickly. Ainslie really couldn’t even be surprised.
She found herself smiling without even being fully aware of when it started.
*
There were three days until the next full moon, and the day was unexpectedly exciting.
A storm rolled in, in the early afternoon. It was quick and loud and seemed as if it wanted to shake the house apart, and after a particularly close bolt of lightning that lit all the windows in magnesium white and unleashed a nearly simultaneous snarl of thunder that shook the walls, Lily squealed in surprise and transformed.
It took Ainslie ten minutes to help get her disentangled from her clothing, and some of it was ruined. Lily spent much of the rest of the afternoon sulking in embarrassment in her bedroom. But it got Ainslie thinking.
“Why do they go to public school?” she asked that evening, sitting in a chair in the den and drinking a cup of coffee. “I mean, I saw Lily transform earlier because a storm startled her.”
Malik sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I could homeschool them,” he admitted, “but there isn’t really anyone around their age out here, so they wouldn’t be able to socialize nearly as well. Besides, it’s good practice. An average school day is pretty unlikely to actually push Lily over the edge, even if it might fray her nerves.”
“Even if there’s another thunderstorm?” Ainslie asked dryly. It seemed a little farfetched that there would just never be a thunderstorm during school hours, and she had been taking care of the girls for long enough that she couldn’t help but to worry, even if it maybe wasn’t her place to.
If Malik thought she was crossing some invisible boundary, though, he made no mention of it. It felt like maybe he was just glad that he wasn’t the only one who cared about his girls, even if Ainslie knew that wasn’t the case to begin with. They had family. The girls had friends.
Ainslie didn’t question the feeling.
“She actually has much better control when she’s out of the house,” Malik answered, his tone wry. “Something about the idea of being discovered gives her a remarkable second wind.”
Ainslie snorted out a laugh. “Wily,” she replied, reaching over to pat his shoulder.
“I need to have a few tricks up my sleeve,” he returned blithely, raising his palms as he shrugged. It made the gesture seem innocent, as if to silently say ”oh well.” It was strangely endearing. She didn’t question that feeling, either. It was something she was getting surprisingly good at, putting her feelings in a box to examine them later (or, potentially, never; that was a nice fallback plan).
“You mean other than turning into a bear,” Ainslie stated blandly. “I’m pretty sure that counts as a trick.”
Malik scoffed in feigned outrage. “That’s not a parenting trick,” he protested. “It’s just a life trick. Those are two completely different things.”
“Mmhmmm,” Ainslie hummed in melodramatic agreement. “Right. Whatever you say.”
He pouted after her as she left the room, but she could hear him laughing once she was back in the hallway and slowly closing the door behind herself.
*
There were two days until the next full moon. Andy seemed anxious. Not in any sort of loud, outrageous sort of way, but in a quiet, slightly dread-filled way. As if something awful was building on the horizon and she knew she had to confront it.
She had been staring at her homework for the last twenty minutes and her pencil hadn’t touched the page. Ainslie knew it wasn’t because of the actual work. Andy would go on, at length, about how easy her classwork was, so Ainslie found it hard to believe that she was stumped by any of it.
Andy nearly jumped out of her skin when Ainslie sat down next to her and wondered mildly, “Are you bringing your ukulele or your guitar to your grandparents’?”
Andy blinked at her slowly, a look of utter bafflement on her face before she finally asked, “Why?”
Ainslie’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t you think they’d like to hear you play? I mean, everyone left in the middle of the afternoon last time, so I figure they got there with plenty of time before the moon rose. It’s not like it’s going to be all critters all the time. And I kind of get the impression they haven’t actually heard you play.”
Andy glanced away quickly, confirming Ainslie’s guess. She was silent for a moment, before she slowly conceded, her words a mumble, “I guess I can bring my ukulele.”
With a broad smile, Ainslie nodded in satisfaction and left her to do her homework.
She didn’t know how to get Andy to stop worrying in the lead-up to the full moon, but she figured she could at least prod things along to make her feel more appreciated once the day arrived.
*
There was just one day until the next full moon. One night, rather. Tomorrow afternoon they would pile into the car and head to the girls’ grandparents’ farm, where there would be plenty of space and plenty of cover. Ainslie couldn’t help but to feel a bit excited.
Or a lot excited, honestly.
She stared up at the ceiling of her room, absentmindedly running a hand along Christopher’s back over and over. She knew she should have been sleeping—it was going to be a long day and an even longer night tomorrow—but it wasn’t working out very well. Every so often she shifted position, seeing if she could get sleep to come easier if she was in this position or that position.
Unsurprisingly, her fidgeting wasn’t helping, and she gave up on it when Christopher dug his claws into her chest in impatient outrage, aghast at the fact that the person he had chosen to use as a bed wasn’t sitting still.
Ainslie contemplated getting up to wander around the house, but she didn’t want to wake anyone else up. In the end, she just closed her eyes and stayed still.
Eventually, sleep finally fell over her, light and fitful though it was. She dreamed of a great many things, colorful and loud and in her face, and though they woke her up on more than one occasion, she couldn’t actually recall what any of the dreams were about. They weren’t bad, though, and they didn’t leave her feeling shaken or threatened, so she supposed that was the most important part.
She woke up for the day when Christopher’s tail nearly smothered her, and she spent a solid ten minutes sneezing out cat fur. He slept innocently on her pillow, curled up into a deceptively harmless ball, adorable and impossible to be annoyed at.