Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning [05/24].

[white_oleander]

Well. It was bound to happen eventually.

At some point in the night, or maybe it was early in the morning, she had no idea when these things actually happened, but the ingredients Astrid had gotten last night to make breakfast with this morning had all, somehow, been either transformed or replaced with nothing but boxes of Pop Tarts.

On the bright side, there was absolutely no lack in variety to the Pop Tarts, as it seemed every single flavor was present and accounted for, including the discontinued ones and some that clearly never made it to the market...at least not in this dimension.

Astrid might have been shocked by there being so many absurd varieties if it weren't for the fact that she actually worked in a grocery store and was already well aware of the excess of unnecessary flavor choices in certain brands.

(Looking at you, Oreo).

But...at least this made her job pretty easy today, and the clean-up would be a breeze, and there were even toaster strudels for anyone who wanted to feel a bit fancier about the whole thing, too.

[[ pop tart breakfast is open! ]]

Comments

[desertwolfcub]

Sometimes! Look, she was still learning how to socialize when you couldn’t just sniff someone.

“Yeah.” Malia nodded. And realized she could maybe say more. “My mom and sister died in a car wreck eight years ago. They thought I did, too, but then the sheriff learned about weres and realized I might not have been dragged off by coyotes after all.”

[white_oleander]

See? Now that had some substance to it. That filled in at least a few holes for Astrid, and her expression faltered into something of sympathy now that this was not just a sister's doll she'd gone after, but a dead sister's doll.

"I'm sorry," she offered. "About your mom and sister. And that they thought you did it."

How would she have handled it if anyone thought she'd killed Claire?

In a way, she supposed Ron sort of did. But if she was culpable, he was even more so, which was probably why he never said anything except that once.

"But it sounds like it all got cleared up, at least."

[desertwolfcub]

“Oh, I did do it,” Malia said, totally matter of fact. “Not on purpose. It was the first time I turned. Weres go kind of nuts the first time, and none of us knew what was happening.” A touch of bitterness entered her voice. “I spent the next eight years as a coyote so I didn’t have to think about it. Then Scott brought me back.”

She sniffed a brown sugar pop tart consideringly, then shrugged and tore it open.

[white_oleander]

"Oh."

And that managed to make the picture even clearer, like someone had just opened the blinds into a shadowy room where, even thought she couldn't understand the exact shape of everything in it, she could at least see that the shapes were there, and Astrid took a moment to observe them a little closer with everything this new context was giving her, along with the inevitable hesitation to accept that Malia had said were, as in were-wolves, and not where, as in place, only apparently, they weren't just wolves where she was from.

Assuming she had followed that all properly.

But she thought she had.

"What caused it?" she asked. "The first time you turned. It sounds like none of you expected it."

[desertwolfcub]

“The moon,” Malia said, around a mouthful of pop tart. So it sounded a little like “th’moof”. She swallowed and made a face, setting the pop tart down. “That tastes like sugared tree bark.”

She dusted off her fingers and went to peer in the fridge.

“I was adopted,” she said. “So I guess one of my biological parents must have been a werecoyote too.”

[white_oleander]

"Too bad they failed to mention that in your case file, apparently," murmured Astrid, who did not have a very high opinion of the foster system in general, and, taking the opporunity to veer to a different topic now that it was venturing that way, added, "You'll probably have to go to a different common room if you're looking for anything else. Like I said, it's just a thing this place does sometimes, but I haven't checked if it's just this common room or all of them today. Usually, breakfast is way better, I promise."

Still not as good as it once was, but she was trying, at least.

[desertwolfcub]

Malia shrugged. “I can pick something up on my way to class later. A chipmunk or something.”

She was kidding. Not that you could tell.

“I’m Malia.”

[white_oleander]

"Just maybe not the squirrels," Astrid suggested. "They tend to take things like that pretty personally."

Sure, she was (mostly) kidding, too, but also the girl just said she was a werecoyote, Astrid had no reason to doubt or judge her. Even if now she wondered if the squirrels would take offense to her saying they might get offended, which, really, only proved her point, didn't it?

"Astrid," she offered back. "I think you might be in my philosophy class?"

[desertwolfcub]

Malia nodded. “Maybe. They kinda run together if the don’t involve bumper cars.”

[white_oleander]

Which was exactly what bumper cars should do.

(Astrid thought she was funny, anyway).

"Which one has bumper cars?"

[desertwolfcub]

“Anger management.”