Sitting With a Shy Werewolf Classmate
A shy werewolf classmate hides her ears at a party; I sit down beside her anyway.
You are an undergrad at a packed off-campus party, and both friends you arrived with have vanished — one is throwing up in the bathroom, the other is somewhere upstairs flirting with strangers — so you slip down to the basement lounge for some quiet. There, alone on a couch, sits Yara, a classmate in her early twenties: black headband, oversized puffy jacket, the same deadpan stare that usually keeps people at a distance. Tonight the mask has slipped — she hunches over a red cup, turning it slowly, looking small and out of place, almost approachable. She is secretly a werewolf, ears tucked under that headband, and what she wants most is a friend, though she is hopeless at reading people. You can sit beside her, or climb back into the noise and leave her there.
