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Chapter the First

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Chapter 1
The First Chapter

           OK, so before I get into the story, a word about me: I’m Luna Mooni, and I’m a permanent werewolf. What that means is I have a wolf form per-say, but I can’t turn into a human. Now you might think this would suck tremendously, but actually, it’s pretty awesome. I mean, I basically get into everywhere for free, plus whenever we go to Japanese restaurants, I get free chicken. (Gotta love that) I just have a few pet peeves; one on them is when people stereotype us. Most people think of werewolves as man-eating monsters that have a slight furry problem once a month. But actually we can transform anytime we want, night or day. People also think we walk on two legs, but a werewolf on wolf form is indistinguishable from a run-of-the-mill wolf. And, just to clarify, we are NOT big enough to maul a bear.
Now I live in this development in Oakland called Silver Fern Woods. It’s got a lot of stuck-up rich peeps living in it, but don’t worry, I take care of them on the weekends. But there ARE some werewolf families there; like Ms. Love, 4 houses down. Silver Fern Woods is basically a bunch of cul-de-sacs connected by a main road that splits at the end; one road leads to a private riding stable, and the other leads to an Italian bread bakery.
Now, there’s something I must explain to you before the actual story part begins. All magical creatures, werewolves, vampires, wizards, dragons, unicorns, (any magical creature really), we all hail from this place called GalleLuna. For lack of a better term, it’s a whole separate world from the mortal plane of existence. It was created millennia ago by a guy named Galle. He was tired of the way people stereotype werewolves and vampires and the like, so he created a whole world for them to go to. The place is named for him and his wife Luna. The entire place is surrounded by a forest called Black Leaf Forest. Now, since I can’t explain everything about GalleLuna, because it won’t fit into one paragraph, I think I’ll just explain things about it as I go.
Ok, enough about all that, now about my parents. They’re both werewolves, so technically I’m purebred. But the half of the family tree I’m on is nothing but werewolves, so I’m extra purebred. My mom is Werewolf Executive at the company that makes enchanted jewelry; like tiaras that turn you into the person of your choice. She’s also the kindergarten teacher at Dolphin Ridge Elementary School. My dad is the President of a board of a company that makes home security systems for werewolves, vampires, wizards, et cetera, et cetera. He’s also the band teacher at Oakland High School.                                  
And now enough about my life, and my relatives and quite possibly where I live (Seriously, I don’t want a creepy stalker stalking me); now for the actual story. It was my birthday. Now werewolves are funny when it comes to birthdays. We grow so fast during the first twelve months of our lives, we have birthdays once a month for our first year. I was born I January, and right now it’s August, so in wolf years I’m seven. After the first twelve months, we have birthdays once a year, just like everybody else. I was walking down the street, my straw-colored fur shining in the sun, nodding to the werewolves I knew. I passed Ms. Love, who tossed me a sparrow she caught last night and didn’t eat. Assuming no one was watching, I swallowed the thing whole, feathers, beak, feet, and all. (Werewolves have extremely strong stomach acid) Then I passed Mr. Elm’s house. He’s okay, but he could lighten up on his kids a little bit. That’s when I stopped for a pee. Nobody minds if I pee on their yard, but it’s when I poop there I get into hot water.
Now I THOUGHT I was tinkling on the sidewalk, but apparently not. See, directly across from my cul-de-sac, is this guy who is a taxidermist’s best friend. He’s got a ton of what he likes to call 'trophies', but are actually in fact dogs and cats from around the neighborhood that decided to use his lawn as their toilet. He's one of the major reasons, well the only reason, my parents don't like living here. The guy hates me because I'm the only thing that's ever gone on his lawn and survived. When I saw the Persian cat Bones, who belongs to the Ellis kids 6 houses down, take one look at me, turn tail and run, I got confused. “I’m not that scary am I? I don’t eat anything bigger than an opossum!” I shouted down the street. I probably should've been more careful about talking in the middle of the street. I can talk to animals, but humans can still understand me if I open my mouth around them. I started to get steamed because a snotty Chihuahua named Bean had started a rumor that the reason I had six toes (Yes I have six toes, get over it) was because I fell into a nuclear power plant. I started planning to extract revenge in the form of a plan when I heard 2 gunshots. I figured it was just some random boy playing with his BB gun, (Cause there certainly a lot of them around here), but I quickly figured that wasn’t the case when I felt something sticky between my toes. I looked down and saw it was red, then I looked up and saw the wrought-iron fence of Mr. Trigger Happy guy, and then I realized he’d tried to add me to his collection. But he’d missed because my collar was enchanted to give the wearer a protective force field. But it was starting to acquire age and become ratty, so the protection was starting to waver. Which was practically the only reason the bullets had made contact at all. So what did I do? I starting yelping like my life depended on it. Which it actually didn’t, considering werewolves (Including myself) are immortal. But it worked. Ms. Emerald walked outside, saw me and loaded me in the back of her minivan and drove me to the vet’s office.  Normally I’d go to the regular doctor (Cause she’s a werewolf) but my cover for mortals is I’m the average American mutt, so she thought I was just a dog, which was why I was heading for the vet.                            
At the vet’s they did what they’re supposed to do when a dog with bullet wounds comes in: (Or at least this is what they did with me) examination, X-rays, and then surgery to remove the bullets. Back at home, I wasn’t feeling so well. One of the bullets had shattered my tibia, and the other wrecked havoc on the smaller bones of the foot. I wasn’t worried about the bones, they would fix themselves eventually; but I had an itch and I couldn’t scratch it, and it was starting to drive me bananas. The Animal Planet special on the deep ocean did help a little. It was really cool but bumming at the same time; mainly cause it was a bunch of animals I would never even get close enough to absorb their form. Behind me in the background somewhere, I could hear my mom frying something up, and it smelled WONDERFUL.  I didn’t pay much attention. Right then a bunch of jellyfish that’d just ingested a box of Christmas lights were starting to go cannibal. Then it switched to some squid attacking a school of fish. One of them caught one and just as he opened his beaky mouth, I heard someone behind me start singing the birthday song. I whipped around and saw my mom walking out of the kitchen, holding some sort of cake with a candle sticking out of the top. She set it down if front of me, I sniffed it, and I found it was made out meat and potatoes; one of my favorite combinations. Right next to bacon and more bacon. I ate the thing in a few swift bites, (Can anyone say: ‘Burnt tongue’?), looked up and saw my dad was trying to hide something behind his newspaper. I went over there and knocked it down with a mighty swipe of my magnificent tail. Sitting in his lap was a present wrapped in paw print paper. I snatched it off his lap and tore it apart, box and all. Inside it was a mancala game. The board was mahogany, and the pieces were tumbled bits of lapis lazuli. I threw my arms around his neck and licked his face. Not the smartest move on my part, as he desperately needed a good shave. My mom got a skinny white case off the bookshelf, got down on the floor and opened it. Inside was a red leather collar with a gold tag. It didn’t have anything engraved on it, but on the back was inlaid with blue sunstone. It was a black with silver spots, and bore a strong resemblance to the night sky. My mom took off my ratty old collar and put on the new one. I went over to the fireplace and looked at myself in the shiny metal. And I must say I looked stunning. I then proceeded to flop back down in front of the TV, where a whale carcass was getting picked over by a bunch of monstrous crabs and various other scavengers. When the commercial break came around, my mom piped up from the kitchen. “Luna, now that it’s a commercial, we should probably go upstairs and pack.” I lifted my head up. “For what?” I asked. My dad answered this time. “Don’t you remember? Your first year atDragonscale University. Which you leave for tomorrow, August the second.” A bell rung in the back of my head. “Oh, yeah, that.” Dragonscale University in one of the four schools in GalleLuna, my actual home.
GalleLuna has four schools in it. There’s a vampire only, werewolf only, a wizard only, and one that accepts everybody. They are Fang University, Howl Academy, Snobbington Prep, and Dragonscale University. Once you get accepted by one of them, you go there for sixteen years, instead of mortal schools, where it’s six in one, three in another, four in yet another, and four in college. These schools are like private schools, you get a dorm, and you live there for the school year, but you get the option to go home during breaks.
I plodded upstairs with my mom who pulled out my suitcase. Since I don’t have a human form, I never have to pack clothes whenever I go anywhere. Except occasionally I pack a dog coat if I’m going somewhere cold. She opened my suitcase and picked my dog bed out of the corner and stuffed it in. I dragged a blanket over and it got put in too. Next my crochet cat with the jingle bell went in. My mom made it when I was about a week old, and its belly has been sewed shut more times than I can count because when I was little I would try and dig the bell out. I still try every once in a while. Then she packed my shampoo, the books off my bookshelf I haven’t read yet, (Oh, how few of them there are), a length of rope with a knot on one end I like to chew on, some beef jerky,  my ebony mah jong set, my DVD player, all six Star Wars movies, and Clone Wars Season 2. My mom dragged my suitcase downstairs and I turned into a boa constrictor about halfway down the stairs. When I got downstairs I draped myself over the chandelier and swung back and forth until my dad told me to stop and why not go eat some of the mice in the basement. I got off the chandelier and turned back into myself. I went outside and rooted among the clover for clovers of the four-leaf variety. By the time it got dark, I didn’t find any, but I did find a tennis ball and forty seven cents in change. I went back inside and stuck the tennis ball in my suitcase. After dinner, I plopped myself down on the couch and wondered what kinds of people I would meet. I wondered and pondered until about 11, at which point I went to bed.
The next day, instead of everybody rushing around like a bunch of headless chickens, we took it easy. While my parents went and got ready, I scoured the house for scant amounts of money that I could add to my money jar. In total I found four dollars and twenty three cents. My parents came down and we set off. I laid down in the backseat and watched the scenery roll by. When we got to the train station (Shut up Potter-Heads) instead of parking in the regular parking, we drove down a gravel road that lead into the woods beside the station. After driving for about ten minutes, we approached another station. We parked, got my suitcase out of the trunk, and went up to the platform. If you thought a mortal train platform was crazy, multiply that by about ten and you have this train platform. People were everywhere; vampires, werewolves, wizards, everyone was pressed up against one another as one impenetrable mass. Somehow we made it to a car, and I said goodbye to my parents. I dragged my suitcase to an empty compartment, shut the door, and waited. The train started up and pretty soon we were traveling through thick forest.
After around twenty minutes, a vampire dragging a chest with something wrapped in cloth on top opened the door with her foot and came in. “Do you mind if I come in here?” she asked. “No, not at all. It was kinda lonely in here anyways.” I said. She came in and I got a good look at her. She had waist-length black hair with ginger streaks and purple, plastic, full-rim glasses. My first impression of her was she was a straight-A person. She pushed her trunk to the window, and part of the cloth-wrapped bundle unwrapped itself. I saw a bow made of black wood and matching arrows with silver feathers. “Nice bow and arrows. Where’d you get them?” I asked, gaping. “Made ‘em.” She said, getting them out. “You made them?” I asked, astonished. “Yeah. I made them out of a Black Leaf Forest willow tree. It took me about a month, but now it only takes around fifteen minutes. You should see me split a plant stalk at a hundred paces with this thing. Oh, I sound braggy don’t I?” “Oh no, you don’t. Well, yeah you do.” She gave me a look that said ‘Gee, thanks’, but it quickly vanished. “I’m Orchid Rousseau, either the third or the fourth, I can never remember.” I got off my seat and went and sat beside her. “Well, I am Luna Mooni, the first.” She looked like she was about to say something, but instead, took a key from around her neck, unlocked her trunk, and got out her iPod. “Wanna listen to Flogging Molly?” she asked. “Who?” I asked. “They’re this Irish group from LA. I’ve heard them classified as punk and Celtic punk, but I prefer to call them Irish rock. I’ve got the CD from them at the Greek Theatre.” She said, unwinding her earbuds from around the iPod. “Sure, I’m up for anything.” I said. She stuck one earbud in my ear and the other in her ear. She search through her music (Which was a lot less than I thought it would be) and started up on one called ‘Swagger’, which was mostly instrumental. We listened to Requiem for a Dying Song, Man with no Country, Drunken Lullabies, You won’t Make a Fool out of Me, Paddy’s Lament, Tobacco Island, Devil’s Dance Floor, The Lightning Storm, Salty Dog, and Seven Deadly Sins. At some point, Orchid got up and showed me her Irish dance. During one of the songs, I told her I was like twenty six percent Irish. “Nice. What else are you? I’m mostly Irish with a smidge of French and Greek thrown in there.” she asked. I thought about it a minute. “I’m largely Italian, with Irish, Scottish, Greek, German, and just a smidge of Romanian.” I said, examining a claw. Orchid had one eyebrow raised. “Your folks really, erm, traveled.” She said, not sure what else to say. “Yeah, tell me about it. They were globetrotters, the lot of them. Funny thing was, they really never left Europe.” The train brakes screeched and we stopped at another train station. “Is this ours?” I asked. “No, this is for Fang University vampires. Ours is the very last.” Right as she said that, a bunch of vampires in black and navy uniforms walked by the door. I ran over to the window to see if I could get a good look at the place. Imagine a ruined castle, but parts of it are still inhabitable. There you go. We stayed at the station a few more minutes, and then slowly started back up again.“So what now?” I asked. “Well, I’ve got a deck of cards and my laptop.” She said, digging through layers of clothes. I unzipped my suitcase, and dug through it. “Uh, I’ve got a tennis ball, some rope; oh, I’ve got a DVD player and some DVD’s.” she slid off the seat and into the floor. “What movies do you have?” she asked. “I’ve got all six Star Wars movies and season two of the Clone Wars.” I said, spreading the movies out on the floor like cards. “Would you like chronological order or order of release?” I asked. “What’s the difference?” Orchid asked. “Okay, first, I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. Well chronological order is them in order from one to six, and order of release is four, five, six, one, two, three. Just don’t ask me why. Chronological order would make more sense, but since four five and six were made between 1977 and 1986, the special effects go from CGI to special effects done the hard way when you go from episode three to four.” I said. She pondered this over for a minute. Just then something that sounded like a dying whale made itself known. My ears perked up and I cocked my head. “What was that?” I asked. “That, my dear friend, was my stomach. I haven’t eaten since last night’s dinner.” She said. “Oh really? You should hear mine when I’m hungry. You wanna go to the snack car?” I asked. She nodded and we left. We headed towards the back of the train. We got there and stood there looking for a place to sit.
The snack car is basically the caboose of the train, but instead of a regular caboose, it’s coffee shop with a restaurant in the back. There were big cushy couches and chairs scattered about and at the back was a counter where orders were placed and café tables were organized in neat rows. Almost every single seat was filled. Werewolves in dark ginger and silver uniforms were congregated in tight-knit groups. Wizards in black and gold uniforms were in even tighter groups, sneering at everyone who walked by. And wizards, werewolves, and vampires in regular clothes sat in very loose groups, completely ignoring the fact that they were all different. “Would you like a quick bite or an actual meal?” I asked.  She thought about it for a minute. “How about you go snag us a couch, I go get our books, and then we go get a plate of cookies or something?” she asked. “Yes.” I said. She nodded and left. I stood there and looked around and spotted an empty couch. I went over and stretched out on it, to mark it as mine. When Orchid got back, she gave me mine, and we got up and went over to the counter. A red-headed werewolf stood there in a green apron. “Yes, what would you like?” she asked. “Um, we’d like two dozen cookies. Some chocolate chip, some sugar, and some snickerdoodles, please." At that point I was wondering if Orchid was telepathic because those are all my favorite types of cookies. While Orchid waited on the cookies, I went over to our couch and opened my book. It was a How to Train Your Dragon book. I noticed she had a Kindle, and not one of the fancy ones, either. It was just a plain old standard Kindle. As soon as I found my bookmark I almost burst out laughing just about immediately. Toothless had just taken a poo on Hiccup’s dad’s pillow. Orchid came over with a plate of cookies. “Can you like read my mind, or something? Because those are all my favorite types of cookies.” I said. She set the plate on the couch cushion between us. Right when she did, there was a peal of thunder outside, and the pitter-patter of rain hitting a tin roof filled the air. “No, because those were the only types of cookies they had.” She said. She sat down on the couch and opened up her book. “Whatcha reading?” I asked. “Oh, one of the Secret Series books. The first one in fact: The Name of This Book is Secret.” I nodded and went back to my book. We sat there for a good twenty or thirty minutes. We ate almost all the cookies.
We left the snack car and went back to our compartment. We arrived sort of damp but in good spirits. We finally settled on season two of the Clone Wars and I popped in disc two, which had the Geonosis arc on it. My personal favorite episode is Brain Invaders, and I have to say, Orchid liked every episode so much, she couldn’t pick a favorite. But we did agree on one thing: the political Senate-centric episodes kind of suck. We finished up the Geonosis arc, and the train screeched to a halt again. This time the wizards in black and gold uniforms went past the door. While they got off, I pulled out my Mah Jong set and set about teaching Orchid how to play. The train started back up again just as I was dealing her some tiles. Just as the game was about to start, she got out her laptop, pulled up iTunes, and started up her Flogging Molly playlist. I have to say, she got pretty good, but not good enough to best me. Eventually the thunder stopped and the rain tapered out. We played a few games, and then I put the tiles up. “Well, not what?” I asked. She thought about that. “Do you have any bird forms?” she asked.  “Yeah, loads of them. Why?” I asked. “Because, well, just trust me. So, a bird of prey would be good.” She said; a sly grin on her face. I turned in a white gyrfalcon, and she opened the window and turned into her bat form. Honestly, I was expecting more. Most of the time, a vampire’s bat-form is something along the lines of a fruit bat, or a leaf-nosed bat, but Orchid’s bat-form was a bumblebee bat. Yes, you read that right, a bumblebee bat. Those things average an inch in length and two grams in weight. Not to mention she was albino. (Just because a vampire’s bat-form is albino, doesn’t mean the actual vampire is) Me as a gyrfalcon, I could have swallowed her in flight and not even noticed. I stood there on her trunk, watching the tiny ball of fuzz with wings crawl along the floor and up the wall onto the window sill. She took a wing, pointed at me, herself, and then out the window in the direction of the sky. I got what she wanted us to do and dove out the window. I felt her hook onto my leg and as soon as we cleared the treetops I felt her let go. I spread out my wings and soared. Orchid came up beside me. And we turned around and flew opposite the direction of the train. We came upon Snobbington Prep and flew down to it. The place resembled a cabin you might find in the mountains; humongous tree trunk columns, hardwood floors, horizontal halved log siding, and the wall facing south was almost completely glass. We flew in an open window and landed on a sofa table with a silk runner and a vase of flowers by a wooden figure of a griffin. A maid walked by with a dish cloth slung over her shoulder. She did a double take when she saw us sitting there and started hitting at us. We flew back out the window, which was then slammed shut.
We took to the sky, flying over trees and in the clouds. Eventually we ducked beneath the clouds because a lightning dragon was flying around, and it wasn’t in the best of moods. We skimmed the treetops, ducking under them, and popping back up again like dolphins in the surf. We somehow unsynchronized with each other, and Orchid was diving under before I was. She came up directly under my right wing, so I pulled it in and rolled to my left. We evened out and flew over a huge lake edged by cliffs on two sides. Pegasi lounged around on the cliff tops and flew dangerously close to the cliff sides. Wyverns in magnificent colors swarmed around a gaping hole in one of the cliffs like brilliant jeweled flies. Dragon colonies were lounging around, except for the newly hatched whose baby dragon energy exceeded their parent’s. Unicorns grazed on an open grassland beside pegasi and we spotted the occasional pegacorn, a cross between a unicorn and Pegasus, as it has both a horn and wings. We soared on and came to a city. Skyscrapers dedicated to different companies were scattered among the other buildings. I knew two of them belonged to my parents, but which ones I wasn’t sure. Orchid was in front of me and motioned down towards the ground. She dived and we landed on the top of a store.  “What are we doing here?” I asked. “This place belongs to my sister, and I’m supposed to get something from her. Something I couldn’t fit into my trunk.” She said. I wondered what this mystery item was, but she never got around to telling me. She flew down to the ground, turned back into herself, and went inside. She came back out with another cloth wrapped bundle and several smaller ones. I could tell from her expression she wanted me to carry it, so I turned into a Pegasus. She climbed up on my back and I took off. Orchid checked her watched and told me we had just enough time to make it back to the train before it left the Howl Academy station. I took a running leap and took off. We flew over forest and I caught sight of the train releasing werewolves on dark ginger and silver uniforms. I might also add that they were spreading out from the train in a classic net maneuver, where they spread out like a fishing net to catch as much as possible. “Remember which car was ours?” I asked. “Yeah, the one with forest green paint splatters on the roof.” She said. I saw it and circled around a few times. I landed on the side with our window, and Orchid dove in headfirst. I turned back into myself and followed her. Just as my back feet cleared the sill, the train jerked back to life. We were discussing everything we saw, when we noticed two werewolves sitting behind us. You could tell by looking at them, they were identical twins, but one of them had cut his hair short, and the other one had kept his hair shaggy. “Um excuse me, but who are you two?” Orchid asked, reaching for one of the cloth bundles she’d gotten from her sister. I never gotten a good look at them, and now I saw that one was long and thin, and there were several others, two were about seven inches long, and there was one that was a weird shape. She suddenly yanked something out of the long, thin one and I saw it was a sword in a sheath. She pulled the sword free of the sheath, and held it level with the two boys’ throats. “Woah, take it easy. Do you greet everyone this way?” the one with shaggy hair said. “No, she actually came to me the first time we met.” I said. “I’ll say it again, who are you two?” she asked her voice cold as ice. The one with short hair spoke up “Um, I’m Duke, and this is my brother Darwin.” Orchid stared at them for a good twenty seconds, then stuck the sword back in the sheath. “You probably don’t even know how to use that.” Darwin said. That pushed a sensitive button with her. She got in her chest and got out a round stick, a good inch think. She thrust it into Darwin’s hand and told him to hold it out. she got the sword back out  and swung it back and forth so fast it was hard to keep track of it. She stuck it back in the sheath and the wood stick seemed unaffected. I could see Darwin was about to say something, when Orchid stomped her foot on the ground, and the stick cleanly fell apart into seven pieces. That shut Darwin up. “Now don’t make use the rest of my arsenal.” She said, pulling out her bow. He shook his head and sat down.
As it turned out, Duke and Darwin were in our compartment because they had gotten to the station too late, and couldn’t find a compartment. So they had hung out in the snack car. But it closes after Howl Academy students are dropped off, so they got evicted. And they took over the first empty compartment they could find, which happened to be ours. Orchid never did seem to quite trust Duke and Darwin, but she wouldn’t tell me why. She never did turn her back to them. When the train finally pulled into our station, she glared at them until they left. Orchid put her bow, arrows, sword, and the other things into her chest. We deposited our luggage at the luggage cart and raced each other to see who could get to the school first. We argued about it until we came to a pair of mahogany doors. We hesitated, not knowing what would await us on the other side. Orchid looked over at me. “Well, what are we waiting on?” she asked. I shook my head and she pushed the doors open.
This is chapter the first from my first novel, Chaos and Crisis. More chapters are soon to follow if I ever get around to finishing them.
© 2012 - 2024 GalleLunian
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