How would sam react to tara wolfing out for the first time?
That werewolf form was adorable!
Most werewolves wouldn’t be that small when the first shift right?
Ffts a
By werewolf standards, Tara is absolutely tiny. She's regular wolf sized. Werewolves are about twice the size of regular wolves. For reference, an adult wolf is about 2 foot 6. The average werewolf is one that's 5 foot 2 (which is still taller than me 🥲). They massive. (That's floor-to-shoulder size, not if they were like standing up on hind legs size, which they can't do because they're not bipedal anymore. Right? They're not... right? 👀)
ANYWAY.
It's August 21st 2017, and Tara had come home from Amber's in a huff. Tara's been moody for days, argumentative and restless.
Sam's been agitated herself, the solar eclipse earlier in the day had left her wolf gnashing at the seams of her body, desperate to be free and run, confused. A problem that is uniquely hers, Sam had long since discovered; a secret she has no intention of ever getting loose. Sam's wolf feels far less constrained by the moon than it ought to be. There's been many times she's felt the ripple of transformation beneath her skin, waiting to burst free. She fears the day it happens, fears what it would mean. For her, for Tara.
She keeps it locked inside and leaves her sister be, wondering if she was ever this bad at that age. (Worse, her wolf declares. She feels a little judged.)
Sam's dicing vegetables for dinner when she hears it, a crash from upstairs. Her first thought is oh, Tara's trashing her room, that's real mature, and then she hears the whimper. It sounds pained, and Sam's up the stairs, with the knife still in hand, in an instant.
Tara's locked door - and she has no business locking her door, Sam idly thinks - is nothing but a minor irritation, the handle easily crushed beneath her fingers and the lock displaced by her fist. Slamming the door open, Sam's greeted by the sight of her sister hunched over on the floor, hair curtaining her face and an arm around her stomach, panting.
"Tara! Tara's, what's going on?" Sam blurts out, worried and stepping into the room.
The girl just groans in response. When she lifts her head, Sam finds herself dumbfounded, the knife slipping from her fingers and clattering to the floor.
Her sister's eyes are glowing, her iris' somewhere between yellow and orange, instead of the warm dark brown she loves.
Her wolf gains an understanding of the situation faster than she does, sending notions of excitement through her veins. Cub, CUB! it chants in her head. It doesn't seem at all concerned with the glaring issue right now, namely that this can't be happening.
"It's not a full moon," Sam mumbles, eyes now catching the claws where Tara's nails should be, the fangs peeking out through her grimacing mouth, the inhuman whines. She's filled with dread.
Her sister's arm collapses underneath her and she falls to the floor with a cry, body curling inwards from the pain.
Sam throws herself forward and onto her knees. One hand begins to stroke through her sister's hair in an attempt to soothe her, and with the other she wiggles her fingers in between one of Tara's clenched fists. She can smell the growing scent of iron from where Tara has dug her claws into her own fist, breaking the skin.
"Sam," Tara chokes out through clenched teeth. "It hurts."
Sam has always felt Tara's pain as if it were her own, tears on her sister's face like a hand around her throat, every sad expression a knife in the chest. She knows what to expect, just how much this is going to hurt her, how much it's going to break Sam's heart to sit there and watch and be able to do nothing to take it away. There's a reason wolves have evolved to turn so young, the process is agonising in the beginning. She never wanted this for her sister. The older Tara got, the more Sam wished she would never turn, if only so she would never have to experience this pain.
She pulls Tara up and into her lap, softly hushing at her distressed whimpers. She ignores the way Tara's claws dig into her arms, desperate for a purchase to keep her grounded through the pain.
The first crack of bone and the scream from her sister has herself whimpering, unable to continue comforting Tara. She just holds on to her tight and hopes for it to be over soon.
By the end of it, Sam's left with an armful of dark brown fur interspersed with auburn locks. Her sister can't be bigger than a dog, her wolf's cries of cub stand true after all. Her sister is just a pup. She wonders if this is a side-effect of turning late, if she'll grow, or if she's destined to stay this stunted size.
Our cub. Yes, she thinks, our little pup. Play?
Sam looks down at the amber eyes staring back up at her, and runs a hand across Tara's ear.
The movement makes her sister jump, and she falls from Sam's lap with a yelp. Sam watches Tara struggle to get back on her feet, unused to this form and unable to control herself.
The rush of affection overwhelms her, and Sam finds her skin slipping before she can stop it.
As a wolf, Sam towers over her sister, but Tara isn't scared. She's surrounded by home and pack and safe. Her tail begins to wag from her place on the floor. Then she's enclosed, trapped beneath Sam's paws as she laps at her face. Tara whines, but her tail never stops wagging.
What if Christina was actually a werewolf and tara just didnt get the gene? Or because of her size she is unable to wolf out/shift?
One night on the full moon christina comes to their house and she grabs tara and obviously tara cant fend off a huge werewolf so she starts getting carried by the scruff and shes trying to take tara home after abandoning her because she couldn’t wolf out. Sam comes and tries to stop christina and they fight and tara is so small compared to them that she ends getting hurt in the process. Sam is able to scare Christina away and when she looks down she sees her little sisters body in her barely conscious state….
(This doesn’t go with my ask but imagine if tara is eventually able to shift into her wolf form but because of her size shes looks just like a small wolf pup 🥺)
Listen, listen... late-bloomer Tara. I already have a plan for fangs for the support - yeah you fuckers never offered anything better so the name has stuck now, way to let me down guys 😞 - but this is SO GOOD that actually now I'm making a split timeline ALREADY. It probably differed enough that I could give it a whole other name but I'm just gonna split it A and B.
-
Tara has always been a poor excuse for a wolf.
Most wolves transform by the time they're 5. Sam was 3. At 8 years old, Tara hasn't shown a single sign of transforming. No claws, nor fangs, not a single extra hair on her body. Her nails are blunt and her teeth are dull, her eyesight is ordinary and her hearing is poor. I mean, she has asthma for Selene's sake. What sort of wolf has asthma? None. Except Tara.
Tara's not a wolf at all, she knows, no matter how much Sam tries to convince her otherwise. With every full moon that passes, her mother gets angrier, her father gets more distant. The other kids won't play with her anymore, because only pack can play with pack, and if you're not a wolf, you're not pack.
They drill it into them over and over in their lessons. Only wolves are pack, no humans allowed. Humans are threats. Tara asks her father once what happens if a cub never transforms, and he laughs and tells her that all wolves transform by the light of the moon eventually, there are none that don't. He tells her not to worry, and that her own mother had been a late bloomer herself. She had been 7! That was a year ago. He looks at her suspiciously now, like she's done something wrong, like she wouldn't give anything to be normal.
There's another full moon tonight, Tara doesn't even bother joining her family downstairs. She doesn't want to see Sam's sad pitying eyes, or her parent's angry glares as they're reminded their daughter is a freak of nature.
She's drawing a picture for Sam - Sam always brings her something back from the moon-runs, and she wants to have something to give to Sam for a change - when she hears the growling from behind her.
It's her father.
Tara's never been scared of her father before, but something about the way he's looking at her makes her slip off her desk chair and back away.
"Dad," she calls out. "Why aren't you outside?"
The wolf takes another step forward, Tara takes another step back. In a flash the wolf leaps at her, and Tara drops to the floor, rolling onto her side. Her father's jaw snaps at her twice before attaching itself to her shoulder.
It hurts like nothing she's ever experienced before. Her chest begins to tighten as she begs him to let go, tears beginning to fall.
He takes no notice, dragging her from the room. He's so tall her feet hardly brush against the floor. It's all she can do to walk in tandem to reduce the pain.
He drags her through the house, out into the garden and through the gate at the back of the fence, left open for the full moon. He takes her deep into the woods behind their home and throws her to the ground in a moonlit clearing. He lunges and she scrambles further away, into the centre.
At the other side she can see her mother and sister. Sam tries to move forward but her mother nudges her back with a growl. Sam lets out a confused whine.
While she's distracted, her father leaps forward and clamps his jaw around her leg. Tara thinks she hears a crunch, but she can't hear much over the sound of her own scream. The next thing she knows, a paw is swooping down at her face, and she barely manages to raise her arms to protect it. She feels hot breath against her neck, and then it's gone.
Tara struggles to breathe through the pain. Her hands become slippery with blood as she curls up. It drips into her eyes as she tries to peer through her blurry vision to figure out what's going on. She wonders if they left her here to die.
As she breathes deep, her hearing comes back to her, and she learns she's not alone after all. She can hear growling and barking, a yelp. There's the sound of fighting in the distance.
Tara wants to move, to get up, but the pain is too great. All she can do is lie there crying, curled up and shivering in the cold.
Eventually, the noises stop with a howl, and a nose brushes against her neck. She can't help the whimper that escapes her. The wolf responds with a whine of their own, tongue darting out to lick at her shoulder wound.
They nudge at her arms, rolling her onto her back, and when Tara peeks through her hands it's her sister's familiar amber eyes above her.
Her tears begin to fall faster, a sob escaping her lips as she reaches up to grab at Sam's neck. The wolf laps at her tears, nuzzling against her. The warmth of Sam's body on hers keeps the chill night air at bay, and she finally begins to feel safe. It leaves her exhausted.
Sam pulls her up by her teeshirt, fangs tearing through the material, and pulls her to the side. Tara finds she can't stand on her injured leg, the pain of trying unbearable. The wolf crouches down with a bark, tail wagging so Tara understands what she's telling her to do. Tara climbs onto Sam's back and wraps her arms around her neck. They used to do this all the time, until last year when her parents said Sam had to spend the moons with the pack now, that she couldn't spend all her time babysitting Tara.
I assume it will be kind of painful and sam would definitely be there
Fun fact, the first shift is always excruciatingly painful! That's why by nature their first shifts are so young, so that they don't remember it! With every shift it gets less and less painful. By the time they've shifted a dozen times, it doesn't hurt at all.
For born wolves.
For turned wolves... well.
In path 1, Sam inherits her wolfness from her father, and Tara is a human. Tara gets turned by another wolf in this path as late teen/young adult (exact ages currently undecided).
In path 2a, Sam inherits her wolfness from her mother, and Tara is just a late bloomer. She turns at 15.
In path 2b, Sam inherits her wolfness from her mother, but Tara does not. She'll never be a wolf here. But she certainly doesn't remain human 👀
Whenever Tara turns, you know Sam is there to comfort her as best she can and be there for her, helpless as she watches her sister suffer.
(I know this is a little complicated, but if you wanna send in questions and stuff please specify fangs 1 or fangs 2a or fangs 2b, or [other au] werewolf timeline) (that's not aimed at you asker, I just mean going forward for people, I'm the one making this complicated with all these timelines).
I can see tara and werewolf sam fighting over her chew toy since tara likes to chew stuff too
ASDFGHJKL
Tara has her own clean rubber chew toy (with a bit of rope tied around one end so wolf!Sam can pick it up without putting it her mouth), so she can join Sam when she's wolfed out.
In the wolf!Tara timelines, Sam just has to accept it's Tara's chew toy now. She pretends to be annoyed, but she'll wrap herself around her growling little sister munching on the toy and nip at her ears and grooming her as she plays.
So will Tara forever stay in that small wolf form or will she eventually gets bigger but still smaller than standards when she gets older??
Ffts path 2a
In 2a, she's not actually as small as the wolf in this post is supposed to be. Sam thinks she's tiny, but that's just because 1) she is smaller than she should be, more akin to a regular wolf size than a werewolf, and 2) Sam is big for a werewolf. Tara in this path will probably not be growing any bigger. She's small by werewolf standards, but she would still be quite big by a human's standards.
After Tara turns, does she talk to her wolf like Sam does? Or is that strictly a Sam thing?
Sam being able to talk to her wolf is definitely a special thing that she has that other werewolves don't. In path 2c, yes, Tara will also be able to communicate with her wolf. I'm undecided about paths 1 and 2a.
Heyo. I am sorry that depression is getting the best of you.
I don't know if this helps in any way, but I wanted to try to cheer you up even if for a moment.
I commissioned the great @stheplo0p to draw the scene when Tara is "wolfing out" for the first time for you. It's been living rent free in my head since I read it. Your writing is always phenomenal (and a joy to read).
Please know that you are a light for so many people and bring immense joy to this fandom. If you ever need someone to talk to, I'm always willing to listen.
