Howl Your Appellations

Dinner Party Follies

Reese Lanterman

Two Wolf Weres, a Hog Were, and semi-normal human emerges from the depths of the submerged train cars. They are greeted by the afternoon sunlight and a warm breeze through the glass-less window of the car that they’re occupying. Kaya the Hog Were, with two neat pigtails neatly placed around her shoulders and  the disproportionate size of her transformed arms end legs gently places Boen on the floor as if she was an injured butterfly, her eyes still shut  and hidden to the world. Kaya’s a bit disappointed of this but also expected it through experience; she transforms all her limbs back to normal human form in silence. As she does this, Boen pretends to rub her eyes with one hand holding Kaya’s shoulder and the other, rubbing her two eyes at the same time as if waiting for a signal.  “Here, Boen. Also you can open your eyes now, are your eyes that bad at adjusting to light?” Reese hands out Boen’s crutch to her and helps in directing her to the proper direction. Boen opens her eyes and she sees the hallway of the second to the last train car, her three friends, and the winding forest from the window. A white butterfly enters the window to greet them.

“It feels like I was in another world. This breeze feels so nice.” Boen lets the wind play with her hair and warm her face a bit. The three Weres also do the same, this scene is mundane to them but seeing their special outsider react this way made the scene feel brand new and hopeful. “So, only Cain’s room is left right?” Boen asks as the wind blows at her hair some more. “Technically yes, but there are also still other rooms.” Reese corrects, “As you can see here, from yet another huge glass-less window, this is our laundry room!” She beholds their laundry room with moderate pride, there is no laundry at the moment, only folded clothes that need to be taken by the owners back to their rooms. “Despite being Wolves all the time, we still wash the clothes we use just like regular humans. If you look over here, we have a schedule for laundry duty as well, although it’s not too important.” Cain explains.The room may seem small because of the two washing machines, one dryer, door-less lockers with the name of each member on it, a couple of clothes baskets and a small chair and table that connects to the wall. It reassembles a motel’s reception area, only instead of a display of keys, there’s a display of neatly folded clothes. Taped on to the bottom-most locker is the schedule.It has S.B., Nikki, Imus, and Mei as the most frequent names on it. Boen chooses to ignore that she’s noticed this and moved her gaze away.

“You guys have a nice little system going on.” Boen expresses. She looked down at her feet and noticed that the carpets are still present and continues on to the next car. “And these carpets are really neat, I like them a lot.”

Reese moves forward with her sight fixed on the hallway ahead, “Mei bought most of these, he’s really into carpets for some reason.” Boen stares at the continuous succession of carpets and feels a bit overwhelmed. “That’s a lot of carpets.”

“Yup. Now let’s go stare at Cains room.” Reese poses as the leader of the line again but instead of forming a line behind her, the three girl just continued on walking not aligned to anyone. “Please don’t touch anything in my room.” Cain verbally projects to everyone. The all nod, feeling the malicious aura coming from her words. Reese enthusiastically turned the knob of Cain’s door and as the door opened slowly, an avalanche of fabric fell unto her. “Aghhh! You did this on purpose!” Reese screams, “Why are these so heavy!?” Cain laughs uncontrollably while pointing at Reese’s sorry predicament, she struggles to escape the tangles of the fabric.

“Please help me.” she gives a dead expression as if the act of asking Cain for help physically hurts her. Boen approaches her first as Cain’s still busy laughing. “These are really good fabric, Cain!” Boen stresses as she untangles Reese from the different fabric that entangles her. “Thanks! These are like the fabric from the outside but cheaper and stronger.” she pulls out a fabric, “Stonger silk, prettier satin, tougher crepe…” she lists them one by one. “Wow.” boen thinks to herself.

“Anyways, just move out a few of these stuff and you can see my room.” her room is hidden under a lot of Tul, organdi, and multiple other fabric with colors ranging from tangerine to cream. She has a visible sewing machine and a sewing table, it’s like she has her own little sewing business with all the clothes that hung on the ceiling rack. “I sometimes sell some of my designs at the inner market too.” Cain endorses. “Wow, you must earn a lot then!” Boen assumes obliviously.

“We’re not really in it for the money, money is kind of useless at the inner market but I guess we do use money sometimes. We mostly trade services. We do favors and such but um, the inner market’s free.” Boen’s eyes widen at the thought of a semi-free market, “Now you really want to go there, don’t you?” Boen nods furiously. “We can plan on something like that, right Reese?” Reese, still a bit sour about being pranked pouts, “Oh, huh? Oh, uh yeah I think Imus will be fine with it.”

Boen beams so brightly it’s as if her soul gleamed under her skin. “Whoa, don’t get your hopes yet tho, we don’t really have that much free time.” Reese clarifies, “We’ve been taking it easy these past few weeks… ”

“Welp! That’s it for my room! It’s great isn’t it, Boen?” Cain closes the door to her room and pushes Boen to the direction of the next train car. “Oh. Wah, yeah I guess your room reminds me of mine! It feels more like a workshop rather than an actual room.” Cain laughs nervously not knowing if what Boen said was an insult or a compliment. The pack keeps their room clean for themselves but in actuality, they barely sleep in their rooms, keeping their room clean just makes them feel better about themselves.

Boen looks down at her feet like staring at a colorful river, the carpets Mei bought and accumulated is quite charming to look at in slow-motion, like a foreign film. “If the last room has Cain’s room, whose rooms are in the next car?” Boen asks counting the members in her head, “Could I have messed a few members?” She thinks to herself so hard that she could hear an echo, “Oh no! What if I missed a few members!”

“Theres’s nobody else.” Reese replies, “Because this is Mei’s studio-workshop room! And this we keep Grey’s other paintings too!” Boen’s eyes widen at the numerous wood, metal, and carpentry supplies among other things. “What does he make?”

“Oh there’s not much right now but he mostly makes sculptures, furniture and, pro--- ”Reese covers her mouth as swiftly as she could. Her two pack members give her looks of sneers, she bows at them apologetically. “Pro what?” Boen lifts one of her eye brows. “Mei, he, uh makes props for other Weres and some of it are embarrassing so he doesn’t like to admit it!” Cain interjects, “Oh~? What would a Were do to stage props?”

“Th-there’s a lot you don’t know about in our world, we’ll tell you next time.” Reese adds, Kaya keeps an unbiased expression, which signals Boen that they should probably move on to another topic. Grey’s bigger paintings are placed and stacked at the end of the room, it’s a shoddy, unorganized mess. “They painted so much!” Boen exclaims, unable to believe that a person is capable of making a mountain worth of art. “Yeah, but these are her unfinished paintings. They weren’t really good at filling big canvases I think. Most of these are only half-colored, which is a shame. Some of my favorites are here too.” Reese rummages through the paintings making sure that she doesn’t damage them. She picks two: “Which one do you like better? ‘Shattered Moon Tears?’” She lifts up a painting of a broken gem orbiting the moon as if forming a ring, making the moon a lonely pseudo-planet, “Or this one? ‘Tale End’? ” she shows a painting of a girl hugging another girl with various souls of humans and animals leaving her body. Both pieces are indeed great, even if left unfinished and forever incomplete; the paintings still managed to accomplish their purpose and it is to be art. With only half of the glorious moon painted and the forest of the sacred ladies only base-colored. Boen thinks about it for a while, “It is just me or are these two companion pieces?” she asks which in turn confuses the three, “ The moons in the paintings are the same, and the place the moon’s floating above seem like a really foggy forest…I think.”

“Oh! You may have a point! I knew these two were special.” Reese smiles at both the paintings, impossibly carrying each with one hand. “We have to find a place to hang these somewhere! But we’ll leave them here for now.” she places them back neatly. “Is it okay if I look at the other paintings?” Boen shyly asks which was met with no objections. The four of them rummaged through the mountain of paintings and shared their favorites. They spent a considerable amount of time exchanging opinions that S.B. caught them and joined in. They took another half hour blissfully talking about art and their tier lists.

“Oh shoot! We still have one last stop before we go back to the dining area!” Reese announces, wagging her tail and her pocket watch, “We spent too much time making tier lists!”. They all look at each other a bit embarrassed but with no regrets. “There’re more rooms?!” Boen yelps in an obviously tired tone. “We still have the top of the tower! You’ll love the view!” Cain insists. “Who’d like to carry this girl, this time?”

Reese raises her hands but S.B. already picked Boen up. He’s a bit “younger” than Boen but he’s also a tad taller than her too, the girls seem taller than him so his height wasn’t as noticeable. “Do a seem a like my age to  you now, Boen?” he asks in a cute voice. Boen blushes from embarrassment since she did treat S.B. as a bit younger than he actually is. “Are you sure you can carry me without using you semi-forming? This looks like a lot of stairs.” S.B. snickers. “I help Mei carry stuff ten times heavier than you, I can manage.” Boen is somehow reassured of this. Kaya takes her crutch and they all slowly ascend to the top of the watch tower.

Reese and Cain arrived first, opening the latch door for the others to enter. When Boen and S.B. make it to the top, Boen is embraced by the cold winds of the forest tops. The sun, getting ready to set gently, the light oranges and blues touch the top of the shorter trees and a whole territory of pure forest can be seen. This reminds Boen of her little cabin, her precious cat, Beanie and the city. She cries for a bit while the others allow her to feel such feelings. After a good cry, Boen lets down her hair to combat the cold and finally notices that Beige is there with them. He hugs her and she feels slightly at home.

Beige gestures at her, it appears that he didn’t bring his pen and notepad with him. He notices that Boen doesn’t understand and addresses the others, “Oh right. We forgot she can’t hear you.” Reese scratches her head, “He asks, like, did you like the tour? Did they give you any trouble.” Boen nods at Reese and then to Beige and says, “This has been the most unique experience! I’m happy I got the opportunity to meet you all, Oh!” Boen searches for Beige’s bracelet out of the few that’s left, “I made bracelets for everyone! Here’s yours!” Beige jumps up and accepts the bracelet wholeheartedly. They all playfully banter until it was dinner time.

It’s finally dinner time and Nikki and Miller has cooked up a feast. Mouth-watery delicacies familiar and unfamiliar filled the table, “How did they cook these in such a short time?” Boen thinks oblivious of the preparations they made. Everyone is seated neatly, it seems that they have a set seating plan except for Boen who has to sit at the end of the table, facing Imus. At her sides are Reese and Miller, Reese leans towards her and admits, “We don’t have a seating plan we just sit where it’s available haha! But no one really likes to sit at the ends so….” Boen understands why they were so eager to make her sit at one end of the table now.

“Well, uh…” Imus, tired and somewhat intoxicated-looking, calls everyone’s attention, “So..thansks Nikki and Miller for the dinner! And congratulations, Boen for your successful recovery! Let’s f*****g eat!” At Imus signal, everyone on the table reacted like they’ve been starved of food for weeks, all of them, except for Miller. He takes a few pieces from the roasted duck, chicken , and beef and places them on Boen’s plate. He also gave him soup, wine, and skewered vegetables amid the feeding frenzy. He gives him a wink and they both ate in full happiness. Boen cried with each bite while everyone gobbled up everything like they were at the last full dinner table on the planet. There was no moment of calm, this was the first time in a long that the pack’s eaten together.

The dinner table’s a bit of a mess and everyone’s already thinking about who’s supposed to clean all the splashes and stains on the floor and table. Boen still has food on her plate and had a bit of strong clear wine which made her a bit tipsy. “Soooo…you good?” Reese asks, a bit tipsy herself but that has nothing to do with her question. “wait, wait wait, I just need to eat all this up and then we can talk.” She eats and eats until she noticed that she doesn’t have much left to eat because she’d finished about 99.09% of it. “This really hit the spot. Food is great.” Boen spouts. They all talk hardy about the food, the tour, and how the past few weeks have been.

“I can’t believe the time flew by this fast.”

“Boen’s face was red for most of the tour.”

“We were worried the food wouldn’t be enough.”

“Thank Luna, soothing the forest’s temper.”

Statements and conversations intermingle and mix while alleviating the mood of the group. A cool night, paired with the laughs of the people you adore  is one of the world’s peak experiences. When the celebration finally calmed down, Boen goes up to Mei and gives him his bracelet, which reminds Mei that they forgot something. Just as he was about to run to his room he saw Imus emerging from the door carrying the box.

“Imus!” Boen yells in a heightened state of tipsiness, she walks to him as fast as she could, looking rather stupid and silly, like a new born deer with just three legs, “I made everyone a bracelet! This one’s yours.” She gives him a white crocheted bracelet with his name on it. He smiles and accepts it, “It’s great. We have a gift for you too. Let’s have you sit down for a bit.” He leads her to his chair where everyone can see her. Everyone settles down and waits for Boen to receive her present, “From Pack October, To Boen Opeor, our guest and Alpha’s lover.”

Boen has not yet processed what has been said as she’s to preoccupied with keeping her balance and opening the large box, “Thank you! So much everyone! For everything, I’m repay you all someday!” she removes the lace securing the box and opens it, inside is a prosthetic leg.