Most of the day passed surprisingly normally, with the addition of Ainslie needing to check the girls’ bags to make sure they had packed everything they would need for the evening and the next morning.
She packed the car early, loading the girls’ bags and Andy’s ukulele into the back just to get it all out of the way and to know she had it done.
It wasn’t until the early afternoon that they all piled into the car. Ainslie was glad she already had some experience with being in the car with all of them together, considering all three girls were wide awake and in rare form, and the drive promised to be a loud one.
Indeed, Paisley and Lily spent most of the drive shouting over each other in efforts to be heard, until neither of them could be properly understood and all Ainslie could tell was that Paisley was attempting to explain what the farm looked like and Lily was trying to tell a story about the last full moon.
It was a long drive. She was pretty sure Malik was laughing at her suffering.
*
The girls’ grandparents were not what Ainslie expected. Rose was a slender, willowy woman who wasn’t yet showing her age, at least not quite, with grey-speckled black hair pulled up on top of her head. She had dark skin and dark brown eyes, and she was unexpectedly tall.
Jackson was a sturdy, stocky man, tall and broad, with dark skin and dark brown hair slowly but steadily being taken over with grey, and eyes the color of pine needles in winter. Like his wife, he hadn’t quite begun to show his age.
Both of them were lively and welcoming, and they welcomed Ainslie into their home without a single problem. They hugged her warmly, hugged Malik warmly, and then promptly began ignoring both of them in favor of Andy, Paisley, and Lily, which was exactly the way it was supposed to be, as far as Ainslie was concerned.
They gushed excitedly over Andy’s ukulele and Lily’s sketchbook, and they prodded at Andy excitedly until she quietly agreed to play a song for them after dinner, before the sun finished setting.
Dinner that night could best be called comfort food. Warm and filling and intense when it came to the caloric load. Ainslie was going to assume that transforming and running around the woods (or the yard, in the case of Lily and Paisley) for most of the night was a bit of a strain on the body.
In any case, everyone ate at least two servings, and there was hardly a scrap of food left afterwards. The dishes were left on the table for the time being, and Rose and Jackson swept Andy away into the living room with her ukulele to listen to her play a song. Ainslie contemplated following them, but only for a moment before she decided to let Andy simply enjoy the time with her grandparents.
Instead, as Lily and Paisley went to raid their grandmother’s crafting room, Malik led Ainslie outside to give her a tour of the yard.
Just outside the front door, the road was barely even visible in the distance. A few goats meandered around in the front yard, chewing at the lawn. Most of the western yard was enclosed in a fence with a few horses grazing. Most of the eastern yard was equally enclosed in a fence, but with a handful of cows moseying around. Behind the house, not far off, there was a barn, stained dark brown and smaller than Ainslie had expected.
Farther off, the property was surrounded by trees on three sides. Ainslie couldn’t see another house no matter how much she squinted into the distance.
At a leisurely pace, Malik led Ainslie along the edge of the horse paddock. They strolled until one of the horses noticed them, lifting her head from the grass to look at them. Her ears pricked up and her tail lashed at the air behind her. Malik whistled once and drummed his fingers against the top rail of the fence in a rapid-fire staccato beat.
She was tall and leggy, her coat mostly white but spattered in rusty red-brown spots, with an equally rusty colored mane and tail and stockings on her legs.
Slowly, the mare approached the fence, eyes bright and ears upright in curiosity. Finally, once she reached the fence, she buried her nose in Malik’s hands. He rubbed the top of her head and scratched behind her ears, and he slid Ainslie an expectant glance.
“What—me?” Ainslie didn’t know why she said that. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else there he could have been looking at.
He snorted out a laugh and nodded. “Yeah, you. Come on. She’s harmless.”
Slowly, cautiously, Ainslie reached out. She stroked her hand down the mare’s nose, pausing in surprise when she realized just how much like velvet the fuzz there felt. Slowly, the mare sighed out a blustering sigh against Ainslie’s hands. With a quiet laugh, Ainslie ran a hand down the mare’s head from the middle of her forehead all the way down to her nose.
Eventually, the mare got bored once she determined that neither of them had anything to feed to her and she moseyed on her way.
“Congratulations,” Malik offered a moment later, his tone droll. “You just met Ruby.”
“She certainly seemed to know you,” Ainslie remarked. And she guessed that made sense. He was there pretty often, and she wasn’t sure how attached horses got to people. She couldn’t say she had any experience with them.
Malik huffed out a small, slightly melancholy laugh. “Yeah,” he sighed in agreement. “She used to be my wife’s.”
For a moment, everything in Ainslie’s head seemed to grind to a halt as she processed those words.
Slowly, she reached out, her fingers curling around Malik’s. “I’m glad I got to meet her, then,” she replied, her grip tightening.
Malik’s shoulders eased with something like relief, and he squeezed her fingers in return.
They were still holding hands as they made their way back to the house. The sun was beginning to set; soon enough Malik, Paisley, Lily, and Rose would be transforming, and Ainslie was sure that Andy had ideas about what the two of them would be doing for the night.
She couldn’t deny that she was a little bit excited. Even if nothing happened, just the knowledge of what the night was made everything seem newer and more exciting.
*
Everything was a flurry in the house as Rose and Jackson tried to pick up everything that could feasibly cause problems if it was left on the floor, darting here and there and everywhere like a pair of hummingbirds.
“For Lily and Paisley,” Malik explained. “Mostly Paisley, if you couldn’t guess. Jack will take them out to a smaller fenced in area behind the barn, but it isn’t unheard of for one of them to escape and head back to the house, and no one wants anyone getting into any trouble.”
Ainslie nodded slowly, but there was no time to have an actual conversation on what was coming, as that was when Andy found them. “Come on,” she huffed, fingers closing around Ainslie’s wrist and tugging. “Everyone’s going to start heading outside and stripping soon,” she groused as Ainslie followed her. “No one wants to see that.”
Well, truth be told, Ainslie could think of one person who she wouldn’t mind seeing strip down, but she wasn’t going to say that in front of Malik’s daughter. It seemed a little inappropriate. And unprofessional.
(She ignored the part of her that tried to chime in that she hadn’t been particularly professional lately and that Malik didn’t seem to mind too much. She wasn’t going to get her own hopes up on a night when everyone was already busy.)
*
Andy gave Ainslie the briefest tour of the house, and by the time they were in the kitchen again, the night was well underway.
There was something surreal about watching a bear, knowing it had been Malik until just a moment ago (was Malik still, of course, and Ainslie knew that, but she could only phrase things so many ways before she started to confuse herself), saunter away from a pile of clothing and make his way in the direction of the woods.
Ainslie turned to look out the back window, and she caught a glimpse of Lily and Paisley racing each other towards the barn, Jackson jogging along in their wake. She wasn’t sure where Rose was until she saw an enormous wolf lope past one of the side windows, moving from the front yard towards the woods behind the barn.
Considering the sheer amount of wildlife on the run or soon to be on the run, it was promising to be an interesting night already.
Ainslie looked down at Andy expectantly. “So, what are we up to first?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.
Andy hummed a low, thoughtful note, before she asked, “What do you know about tracking animals?”
“Less than nothing,” Ainslie assured her. “I’ve never even had to look for a lost dog.”
Slowly, Andy grinned. “Then I know what we’re going to do tonight.”
*
It would likely surprise absolutely no one to know that Ainslie had never been much of an outdoorsman in the past. She had been content to stay inside and mind her own business and let nature stay outside and mind its own business. And in fairness, she had been aware that going with them on the full moon would likely require some amount of being outdoors.
Despite that, she had not expected to wind up following Andy through the woods, led along by her wrist, as Andy rambled on in a steady stream about what signs to look for to see if an animal had been through the area recently.
“It should all be pretty easy to spot,” she carried on, “considering both my dad and Grannie are enormous, so they’re pretty much incapable of total stealth.”
She fell abruptly silent after that, letting Ainslie’s wrist go so she could crouch and look at something. A snapped branch, from the looks of it. And despite Andy’s assurances that spotting the telltale signs of “a big critter went this way” would be as easy as pie, Ainslie didn’t notice it until Andy reached out and touched it.
She examined it for only a moment before she stood back up and glanced around, and then she pointed off to the left. “This way!” she declared, before she loped ahead, fully assured that Ainslie would keep following her.
She was right, of course. Dutifully, Ainslie took off after her.
They jogged through the woods for several more minutes, Andy maneuvering with the surety of a deer while Ainslie kept nearly tripping over everything in sight. Every so often Andy would slow and look at something—disturbed dirt, broken branches, indents, anything that looked as if something reasonably large had walked through the area—and make commentary on it to drag Ainslie’s attention to it, before she picked up the pace again and kept moving.
Soon enough, Andy ground to a halt so suddenly that Ainslie nearly walked right into her. Lifting a hand, Andy pointed ahead with one finger. Ainslie had to squint into the darkness, but after a moment, she spotted her.
A wolf, a dark sable with black on her back and steadily fading down to nearly white at her paws, was standing just a stone’s throw away from them. Ainslie swore she was the size of a horse, but she suspected that was just her own unfamiliarity with the situation making itself known.
Slowly, the wolf’s ears turned to angle towards them, and Rose craned her head to look over her shoulder at them. She huffed out a breath and shook her head, brown eyes rolling, before she turned away again and took off into the trees.
“She always thinks it’s sort of funny that I’m better at tracking than any of the others. I mean, Dad taught me how, but even he isn’t that great at it,” Andy explained.
She sounded so matter-of-fact as she said it, as if it wasn’t a big deal. As if it was just one more thing that didn’t matter. Ainslie couldn’t help but to wonder when Andy would finally start taking proper credit for the things she learned how to do.
But it was not the best time to bring that up, she suspected. It was a decent night so far. There was no reason to make everything too serious right out of the gate.
It wasn’t a night for that sort of talk. Instead, Ainslie simply followed Andy as she picked a direction and started to walk.
They tracked a fox to a creek and then to its den, and they tracked a raccoon to a tree, where it stared down at them from the branches, its eyes glowing in the light of Ainslie’s cell phone as she looked up at it. They tracked a herd of deer and watched from a distance as they meandered through the branches and tree trunks, at least until a buck took notice of them and fled at high speeds, the rest of the herd following at his heels.
And every so often, just to prove that she could do it as many times as she wanted, they tracked down Rose or Malik, though they kept their distance, getting just close enough to get a brief acknowledgment before they picked a direction to start walking in again.
While it was true that Ainslie had volunteered to go and she knew she would be glad of it no matter what, she hadn’t actually expected to have a good time. And yet, that was exactly what happened.
The woods—even relatively domestic woods backing a family farm—were beautiful and mysterious when one had the right guide, and Ainslie could see herself coming along in the future without any hassle.
In a strange way, it felt as if she was a part of the family.
*
“You sound like you’re ready to crash,” Ainslie remarked as Andy yawned for the fourth time in about six minutes.
Andy grumbled under her breath, but it didn’t sound like a denial, and it was only a few minutes later before she turned and began heading back in the direction of the house with Ainslie in tow.
It was nearing two in the morning by the time they made it back to the house, and Andy dithered and dallied and procrastinated changing her clothes and getting to bed, until it was nearly 2:30. But finally, she was asleep.
Ainslie turned off the bedroom light and headed back down to the ground floor. Considering the hour and the fact that she had largely been there for Andy’s benefit, she knew no one would blame her if she simply went to bed, but she decided against it. She was tired, true—she had been awake for around twenty hours at that point on reasonably little sleep—but at the same time, she didn’t want to sleep.
Instead, she wandered back out of the house and headed towards the barn. The lights were on, and though most of the horses and cows inside were asleep, a few of them still shuffled back and forth in their stalls, aware that something was going on behind the barn. They glanced towards Ainslie as she passed, but by and large, they ignored her, attention instead focused on the almost gremlin-like noises coming from outside.
There was a floodlight attached to the back of the barn, bathing the small paddock there in light, so it was easy to see Jackson sitting on the top rail of the fence. Within the paddock, Lily and Paisley chased each other in circles, occasionally bowling each other straight over like they were trying to wrestle to the death. Both of them were making high-pitched noises that did, indeed, sound like a pair of gremlins having a disagreement with each other.
Ainslie climbed up to sit on the rail beside Jackson, her feet resting on the lowest rail and her forearms folded over her knees so she needed to lean forward over her thighs.
“Andy’s in bed,” she reported after a moment, as Lily nearly crashed into her legs, bounced off a fence post, and crashed into Paisley at approximately Mach seven.
Jackson nodded with a smile, but Andy had already managed to intuit that he didn’t speak much.
Instead, they sat in companionable silence as the girls wrestled and romped and crashed into each other like a pair of small, furry asteroids.
*
Lily and Paisley both came to a halt as the nearby woods began to rustle, leaves shaking as something got closer. Jackson seemed unperturbed by the noise, so Ainslie was similarly calm. A moment later, Rose emerged from the tree line. She trotted around the fence to the far side of it, where both Ainslie and Jack were sitting, and she rested her chin easily on the top railing.
No one said anything. Ainslie supposed it was unnecessary. It wasn’t as if Rose could carry on a conversation just then, and it was plain to see that the girls were fine.
It was a peaceful moment, as strange as that was to think while a wolf the size of a lioness stood quietly beside her.
*
When both Lily and Paisley fell asleep in a hairy heap in the middle of their little paddock, Rose finally turned away and began to make her way back into the woods. Ainslie hopped down from her perch a moment later and headed towards the woods. Before Rose could vanish, Ainslie called, “Do you know what direction Malik wandered off in?”
Rose peered back at her, blinked slowly, and then pointed her nose off to the left before she swished her tail and broke into a sprint into the woods.
Andy’s informal lessons on tracking had to have paid off at least a little bit, as it only took a half hour before Ainslie found Malik’s bulky shape in the woods, recognizable purely because of how much larger he was than any other black bear that might be wandering around in the area. He turned to look at her curiously as she approached.
Ainslie plopped down on a fallen log nearby, leaning forward so her elbows rested on her knees and her chin was propped up in both hands. “Andy’s in bed. Lily and Paisley are passed out in their paddock; Jackson’s still watching them. Rose is off in her own direction.” She waved a hand vaguely in the direction she came from. “Pretty calm night so far.”
Malik made a low, rumbling noise at her, and she took it as acknowledgment, for lack of any ability to actually understand what he was attempting to convey just then.
After that, the night took a turn for the sedate. It had already been a long night, so she supposed Malik had already burned most of his energy off, but he seemed content to mosey at a meandering pace as Ainslie trailed after him. He would pause every so often, giving her time to look around if they came to an area that looked particularly striking. It occurred to her that he was showing her around again, just as he had been earlier that day.
The thought was actually sort of endearing.
She enjoyed it more than she expected to. It was a quiet night, occasionally broken by the sounds of a large creature running past in the distance—presumably Rose, though Ainslie supposed it could have been deer or anything else living in the woods. She wasn’t overly concerned about it; if it was friendly or an herbivore it was no threat, and if it didn’t mean well, then it wouldn’t risk getting anywhere near Malik when a meal could be attained elsewhere at far less of a cost.
*
It was surprisingly uneventful when the sun began to rise, the dim light across the horizon only barely reaching them in the trees, the woods changing from grey to a hazy silver. Gradually, the world brightened as the sun rose higher, and soon enough Ainslie followed Malik as he turned towards the house once again.
She wasn’t even sure why she expected it to be eventful. While it was true enough that the full moon forced a transformation, it wouldn’t really make sense for the rising of the sun afterwards to force them to change back without warning.
She supposed she had a lot to learn still. She was open to learning as much as she could, though.
It didn’t take long before they made it back to the front yard, and after that, all that was left to do was to wait for the sun to finish rising.
She was still outside when Malik changed back, and for a few seconds she was staring right at him. Right at every naked inch of him. It took a few seconds longer than it should have for her to drag her gaze back to his face.
With a slow, impish smile, Malik arched one eyebrow. Ainslie felt her face rapidly begin to heat, and with a groan she turned and fled back into the house. At least in there, she had far fewer methods of embarrassing herself.
Malik didn’t mention it once he came inside, but he gave her a sly, knowing look, and Ainslie’s face heated up all over again.
Distracting herself by making sure the girls were all ready to go was a welcome reprieve after that, and Malik let her flee in silence, evidently taking pity on her.
Something had definitely changed. She couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but she was pretty sure it was for the better, though.
*
Getting ready to leave was a simple affair. The girls barely unpacked any of their things, so loading the car up again was easy.
Once all three of them were asleep in the back seat, Malik caught Ainslie’s attention, ushering her over. There was a strange look on his face as she approached.
“I just wanted to thank you,” he offered quietly, smiling crookedly. “It just… it means a lot, what you did for Andy.”
“It wasn’t a problem,” she assured him. She had been happy to do it. The fact of the matter remained that she adored the girls.
As she was turning to head back to the passenger side of the car, Malik reached out and caught her wrist. Ainslie paused for a split second before she turned to face him again, and she froze like a deer caught in a set of headlights as Malik cupped the side of her jaw with one hand and kissed her.
She froze for only a second though, before she melted against him, one hand reaching up to curl around his and her other hand clenching in the front of his shirt.
The kiss was not particularly long and nor was it particularly deep, but it wasn’t anything that Ainslie would call chaste. When they parted, Malik was giving her a peculiar look, caught somewhere between relieved and playful.
They didn’t talk about it. They could do that later, after they were back at the house. After they were both awake and functional enough to have a proper conversation about it. After they both had some time to think about what it was that they wanted.
Ainslie slept for most of the car ride. It meant that she was awake enough to function until it was time to go to bed properly, rather than completely screwing up her sleeping schedule.
*
When Ainslie got to her room back at Malik’s house, Christopher wasn’t there. She sighed slowly, disappointed, but she supposed he was spending the night with Andy, considering she had been gone for the entire previous night.
She closed her door behind herself, changed into her pajamas, and opened the door up again once she was changed. Just in case anyone needed her, she preferred to keep the door open.
It wasn’t particularly late, but everyone seemed ready to turn in early. The night before had been a long one, and Ainslie was under the impression that full moons in general were long nights. She would be amazed if they weren’t.
So she was surprised when Paisley turned out to still be awake, wandering the upper hallway with a toy dog clutched in her hands. Nervous energy left over from the night before, Ainslie supposed.
She was folding her blanket down and getting ready to lay down when Paisley poked her head into the room, and her expression scrunched up in confusion as she asked, “Why was Maria in here?”
Ainslie blinked at her slowly and sat down on the edge of the bed. “What are you talking about?” she asked after a moment, her brows furrowing together slightly in confusion. No one had been in the house. There would have been no reason for Maria to have even been on the property, let alone in Ainslie’s room.
Paisley shrugged, bewildered but otherwise unconcerned. “I dunno, it just smells like she was in here,” she replied.
That was… distinctly not good, Ainslie decided quietly to herself. But she kept that observation to herself, so as to avoid upsetting Paisley. Instead, she got to her feet and offered Paisley her hand.
“Come on,” she sighed. “It’s about time to get you into bed.”
“I’m not tired,” Paisley huffed petulantly, planting her free hand on her hip. The gesture lacked a certain amount of gravitas, considering she still had a plush dog dangling from that hand by one of its back legs.
“You can pretend to be,” Ainslie informed her wryly. “Before you know it, you’ll be fast asleep.”
Paisley grumbled to herself as Ainslie led her back to her room and kept on grumbling as Ainslie tucked her in. But surprising absolutely no one, she was fast asleep by the time Ainslie flicked off the lights and stepped out into the hallway.
Ainslie closed the door quietly and leaned back against the door, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose between two fingers before she dragged her hand down her face. She only stood there for a moment before she pushed herself away from the door and headed towards the stairs and down to the den, knowing exactly where Malik would be.
She tapped her knuckles against the door, but when she didn’t get an answer, she simply pushed it open and stepped inside anyway. She paused in the doorway and huffed out a breath of laughter when she found Malik asleep on his desk.
She strode across the room and shook his shoulder. “Malik.” She gave his shoulder another, more vigorous shake. “Malik, this isn’t a great place for sleeping and I need to talk to you.”
Malik groaned and slowly sat up, dragging a hand over his face. “What’s wrong?” he mumbled, blinking sluggishly and leaning his chin on one hand. He repeated, slightly more clearly as he looked up at her face, “What’s wrong?”
“According to Paisley,” Ainslie began slowly, “Maria was in my room.” She left it at that, letting the rest of the implications sink in as Malik blinked up at her slowly.
Seeming considerably more awake after that, Malik mused, “She had no reason to even be here at all.”
“That’s sort of what I thought,” Ainslie replied. “And even if she forgot something here, I don’t know why she would be in my room, or even anywhere upstairs.”
Malik’s expression went thoughtful for a few moments, and then he shook his head slowly. “I can’t think of what she might have been up to,” he informed her. One shoulder lifted in a small shrug as he added, “Sorry.”
Ainslie shook her head minutely. “It’s not your fault. Just—” She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ve just gotten the impression that she doesn’t really like me, and this is the first time since I started working where I’ve been out of the house for the entire night.”
She had been worried about admitting it, but Malik didn’t look upset or annoyed. He looked as if he was at least putting some real thought into the idea.
Putting some real thought into it, though, was not actually going to fix the problem.
“Could you give me her address?” Ainslie asked slowly, interrupting his train of thought. “Whatever her problem with me is, I’d like to get a chance to hash it out before it turns serious.”
“Alright,” Malik sighed, running a hand over his hair. “I’ll give it to you tomorrow, and I’ll help you make sure she didn’t take anything or leave anything in your room.”
Ainslie offered him a small smile in return. “Thanks, Malik. I’ll see you in the morning.” She turned towards the door again, but just before she stepped out, she looked over her shoulder at him. “You should head to bed, too,” she pointed out, before she turned back around and left.
They still needed to talk about that kiss, but they could do that tomorrow, after they had both had a chance to get a real, full night’s sleep. When they could both think through a full sentence, and when the surprise of someone invading Ainslie’s room was a little less immediate.
It seemed like a good plan.
Slowly, she headed back up the stairs and to her room, and she got as comfortable as she could in her bed. Christopher still wasn’t there, which was a bit of a disappointment.
When she heard a door close downstairs and footsteps coming up the stairs, she tried not to feel a little thrum of victory, before she decided that feeling it was pretty harmless in the long run.
She didn’t sleep well that night. She couldn’t say that she was surprised by that.