Dawn helped the other wolves carry the food back to the pack. She was disconcerted by how much her packmates didn’t want to accept Amber. When Amber had offered to help carry the prey, Collette had growled at her, calling her all sorts of insults most would get in trouble for saying. She looked up, bounding across the luscious fields and noticed a fiery hawk, Amber, flying above them, shadowing their movements. 

Dawn had finally forgiven Amber, and she hoped Amber had forgiven her too, but she was still upset by how hostile her pack was being, not acting welcoming at all. Poor Amber had been forced to distance herself from them, as though she had some sort of deadly contagious disease. 

They dropped off the prey, Dawn and Amber flying home together afterward. They talked, and played, and just spent time together, trying to pretend the feud between them hadn’t happened, and they were more than willing to be friends, not just that the ancestral celestial spirits had commanded it.

In Dawn’s opinion, Amber was decent. Dawn had trust issues due to all the times she had been abandoned, and had people trying to assassinate her, and then being abandoned again. But even in spite of all of it, Dawn found herself trusting Amber, opening up to her about secrets she had only told to Luna, and some of her many troubles. Amber shared things as well, talking about how when she was frightened, she set things on fire, though Dawn had already suspected that. Amber told her about how her family was always pushing her to be the most popular, and forcing her to make friends with specific people, who were all posh, rich bullies.

Dawn shared more about her life story, and how she hadn’t been able to ever have anyone that close. She explained how she had always been alone, and had never been able to trust in people before. She confessed many things, secretly hoping Amber wouldn’t be like the rest, running off and leaving her all alone, all but Luna. They bonded, and Dawn felt a tiny spark of hope warming her belly. 

The night, with its amazing bonfire and roasted meat, passed by quickly. The stars were shining brightly, and the many assortments of raw meats and tasty barbecues were glimmering from both their crystallisation, and their brilliant sheen in the full moon’s light. 

When Dawn collapsed back into her bed, she made a mental note of what her to-do list would be for the next day. She was still really worried about whether Amber would be accepted into the school or not. She didn’t have anything to do, so to distract herself, she decided to go practice her archery and trail running.

Dawn awoke bright and early the next day, padding down to munch on a meal before heading out on her trek. She left a note for Amber by the kitchen table next to a freshly-caught hare, saying that Amber was free to head into town with a Phi named Luma. Dawn conveniently left out the part where a Phi was a babysitter. She knew how Amber loved shopping from their conversation the day before, and as Dawn was out for the day, she might as well let Amber shop a little.

She shifted into her wolf form, binding her clothes into a tiny parcel and holding it in her mouth as she bounded down the hill. “First up, the archery range,” she murmured softly to herself.

She dashed through the galaxy mountain-top tree range, down the tall hill towards the moonlit woods. She had set up a small archery range a long time ago, as she was the most nimble, allowing her to be able to access it. She dropped the parcel, dressed up again and grabbed her bow.

She inspected the bow, and found she had to change  the string and repair the wooden surface. Previously she had made it out of birch, but it was too soft it seemed, and broke too easily. This time, she decided to make a mix of the best types of wood in her opinion, crystallised hornbeam, moon-softened supple maple, silver alder, and moondew oak. With a wince and a sickening crack, she split the bow down the middle. She always hated doing it, but she had to fill in the holes in the middle of the core of the bow, from flexing it around too much.

She filled up the hollow core of the bow with a melted mixture of Mooncrystal with bits and chunks of the best woods, melding it to the fill out the shell of the bow completely. A blinding white light flashed across her vision, and she knew that her bow had been successfully repaired. She always loved mending it. 

She plucked a few strands of hair off of her head, and tested them. Strangely enough, her hair was somewhat elastic, and was made of strong fibres, so she used them for her bow. She braided the strands together, ensuring ultimate strength, and made sure she had taken the hairs from the correct part of her head, as she had left a part of her hair uncut, and braided it across her forehead as a sort of headband, which she also used as a sort of farm for fixing her bow.

She grabbed a few sticks from the forest, and a few sharp Mooncrystals, as well as a few feathers from the crystallised blue jay she had hunted earlier. She quickly assembled her arrows, and set a target for the tree a couple of miles away.

She ran back to the starting point, squinted at the tiny dot that seemed a thousand miles away, and let her arrow fly. A deep clang later, and a couple mile run later, she was staring at a target with an arrow, deeply buried in the dead centre of the tiny bullseye that couldn’t be more than the size of a penny.

“Huh…” She muttered to herself. “I guess I didn’t get worse with forgetting to practice for half a year.”

Suddenly she heard a crack, a startling snap of a twig cracking, and spun around. A gargantuan apple, originally juicy red except for the fact that it was encrusted in a thick layer of bluish-purple crystal, was sitting on a pile of leaves and sticks, and was somehow giving off a jaunty energy.

An idea formulated in her mind, and she tossed the plump red apple into the sky, and fired an arrow straight through the core of the apple, and into the bullseye. She ran over to the tree where she had set her target, and studied the apple.

“Huh…” She whispered to herself as she realised she was kind of hungry, and well, she could disinfect the apple…

“Oh my goodness!” She cried in delight. The apple was even more juicy than it appeared, and was tastier than a crystallised hare. The only thing that rivalled it on Dawn’s list of favourite foods would be crystallised bison, and crystal fawns.

She quickly munched the entire apple through, and left the seeds next to her bow storage, so she would have a snack every time she visited. She decided she had had enough practice, and ran off into the woods. She was lucky enough to have enough power control that she could shift to multiple different forms of half-human-half-wolf. Her chosen form was a sort of centaur, but instead of a horse on her bottom half, it was a wolf’s body. She raised her bow, feeling a little uncomfortable as she had six limbs she had to keep under control, and sprinted off.

Dawn had tackled many creatures over the short amount of time she had been hunting for, but as there was already a lot of prey on the pile, she only decided to kill a single crystallised fawn, and a crystallised moose. She had taken down the fawn by accident, when she had gripped the mother deer gently, but then accidentally lost her balance and fell on the poor thing. She had apologised profusely to the mother deer, and she could still feel the guilt hovering at the edge of her mind, trying to creep in.

She had caught the moose on purpose, before she had tackled the mother deer. She had actually helped the poor deer dig a hole and bury the calf, but she sadly hadn’t been able to stop herself drooling from the scent. She had tracked the moose for an hour, and carefully positioned her bow so it would be a tricky shot, but of course, she wanted to challenge herself, so she had let her arrow fly, and it hit the moose one centimetre off of her spot on the windpipe, instead of the right jugular. It had been more painful than if she had hit her intended spot for the moose, but it was still a quick death.

She dragged the moose back to the town square, and dropped it off at the prey pile, even though the guards casted her a strange look at her wild hair, as it was usually tucked into two neat plaits.

She  went running off into the forest again, and shifted into a full wolf form. She bounded through the forests until she realised the sun was setting, and ran back to her house, just getting changed and cleaning up when the doorbell rang. She peered through her peephole, and saw Amber with Luma, waiting outside the door. She opened it up and let them in, her hair down as she hadn’t braided it yet.

Amber came in, her arms barely visible under the strings of many shopping bags, which were like clothes, so tightly woven barely any bare skin was showing. Dawn wondered if she had given Amber too much sapphire, as the moon dimension had literal thousands of skyscraper-loads of the stuff. It wasn’t valuable to the wolves, but she had learned that the best way to convert between the currency of bones and human money was using a bone to purchase ten whole 30-litre backpacks of sapphires. She had given one of these backpacks to Amber, half-filled with two-centimetre diameter sapphires, to trade in at the Jewel shop for some shopping bosh.

Amber had apparently shopped 16 outfits for herself, and, exclaimed after showing them off, “I’ve got something for you too!”

Dawn choked up, bile rising in her throat as she remembered the last time someone had dressed her up. That person was, and would forever be, the person who attempted to drown her. But when she saw the priceless look on Amber’s face, and reminded herself she would try her best to keep her anxiety under control. 

Amber had picked a long sleeveless gown, silky bluish-purple and silver, with little flowers embroidered down the side. This was when she realised it was already Sunday night, the night after the barbecue, where everybody would for once eat some noodles as well as their normal meats, in the village town hall. It was sort of a weekly gathering where the werewolves wore their best outfits. 

Of course, her shimmering blue slim gown was rather plain looking compared to the layered pink ball gown Amber had picked when she had heard every Sunday was a sort of white tie gathering. She had worn the highest heels she owned, and Dawn had been stuck rifling through her shelves of shoes for a pair of periwinkle blue shoes to match.

When they showed up to the gathering, they weren’t surprised as there were many wolves, either full wolves wearing neat little collars and such, but also full humans dressed like members of the royal court. There were only two people who were actually in half-wolf, half-human form, which was regarded as the werewolves’ most powerful form. Those two people, of course, were herself and Lily, the two currently commanding the pack. Of course, most wolves would eventually be able to learn to do it with special training, but Dawn was not technically old enough to be considered, as a yearling, for teaching others. 

Dawn had three different half forms, almost as many as the great Lupa, one similar to a centaur, the classic human with tail and ears, as well as a sort of scary form, a human covered from head to toe with fur, looking like a wolf, but fully upright and with hulking muscles and bulging eyes. She had gone with the classic mode, also perfectly tailoring a small hole in her dress to be big enough for her tail to be outside of her dress. 

She strode into the city hall, watching as people twirled around, also eating the small bits of pork and moose and bull and beef. There were a few plates of small bowls of soup, containing meat strips and a few noodles. She loved eating these delicacies, and would always leave a few soft bones for some other wolves. She met up with Luna, and they both showed Amber around the hall.

The night went by fast, and at midnight, Amber dragged Dawn over, and asked her, “Are you sure we’ll have enough sleep? I’m very nervous about tomorrow, y’know, it’s umm… the day where I’ll get my results back…”

What Dawn wanted most in that instant was to be able to slap herself in the forehead for forgetting about tomorrow. They quickly bid the pack goodbye, and ran home. Dawn got Amber settled into bed, and she ran to her bedroom too.

She lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. She wanted to sleep, wanted to remember the wonderful night she had with her pack, but the daunting thought of if Amber was to fail lingered at the back of her mind, rousing her each time her consciousness retreated to her little cove, letting her sleep. 

She was so worried about the danger of Amber failing, and she wondered how she was so attached to a girl whom she had only met a few days ago. Wow, had it only been a few days? With this comforting thought, and lots of practice of forcing her nightmares away from her little cove for her consciousness, she drifted off Into one of the most peaceful, even though it would be considered very restless to others, blissful night of sleep she had had in a while.