The morning turned out to be more silent and solemn than Maeve could have imagined. Roddy and Billy had gone to school and Mr. Page had already left for work, leaving only Mrs. Page in the house. Maeve had hesitated going downstairs to at least give her a courteous 'Good morning'. She managed in the end. Whatever her circumstances, she couldn't continue to be rude, was what she told herself.
Unsurprisingly, Mrs. Page showered her with all the love in the world, offering her breakfast and telling her to relax. She didn't bring up yesterday's incident; and of course, she didn't.
Maeve had gracefully accepted all of her goodwill and even offered to help with the vacuuming, but Mrs Page politely declined – while wrestling the vacuum cleaner away from her. She insisted that Maeve take it easy until she had to go to work.
"I know how demanding that job can be. I once worked at Outing-Innit Burger, you know," she had said with a bright smile.
And Maeve had relented.
She spent half of the morning in thought. Of course, her thoughts were muddled by her flaring senses. Her sight was too good and her supernatural hearing was a curse. She heard anything and everything. Even the eldritch spiders Bridget often told her about – the true rulers of the household – announced their diminutive adventures to Maeve's ears. She could have sworn she heard them weaving their webs in the ceiling and behind the closets.
Her heightened sense of smell was easily the most treacherous. It was the main reason she had overcome her hesitation to stay upstairs in the first place. Mrs. Page knew her way around the kitchen, after all. Her pancakes made Millie's taste like rubbery foam drizzled with engine oil.
It wasn't all as daunting as it could have been for Maeve, however. Her soul remained at ease, especially when she thought about the teal wolf she had seen in her dream. The image of it in her head somehow filled her with great hope. It had cleared away the dark thoughts she had harbouring, piling in her vault of stress.
Maeve found herself drawing it in a notebook while lying on the bed. She wasn't much of an artist, but if she couldn't capture such a vivid image stuck in her head with pencil and paper, she would have cursed her fingers.
'It really must have the Howling. Aaron said I was late in adopting the features of a wolf, right? Having freak senses must be one of the many signs of what I am,' she thought before scrunching up her face. 'But does everyone see a wolf though? Fuck, I wish I had answers right now.'
And it was more than just answers concerning the wolf she wanted.
Maeve thought back to what Aaron had told her about the witches and how they forbade wolves and vampires from living in Glendale. Again, she wondered how it was that she had been able to skirt this restriction, living under Millie and Gerald's roof.
Additionally, whatever the relationship between her parents and the Mitchelles was, the timeline of her birth and age, along with the Mitchelles' life in Glendale seemed to suggest that her parents had been in Glendale for a time, which was suspicious.
Gerald and Millie were born and raised here, and most of their relatives lived in Glendale as well. They weren't exactly the travel types either, which pointed towards the fact that they had met Maeve's parents here.
'What does it mean then? Either Aaron missed a few important details or…' A sliver of a smile crept up on Maeve's face before she could stop it.
Perhaps her parents were special after all.
Soon, she had showered and dressed for work. She took her little notebook with her.
Mrs. Page gave her a kiss on the cheek on her way out, and the day seemed to become brighter than ever. Her routine light jogs to any place she could travel by foot made it even better.
Maeve had severely underestimated how powerful her senses had become. When she was indoors, she subconsciously limited them because of the walls of the house, but outside, everything rushed to her ears at once. Fortunately, it wasn't too hard to stifle the extra noise, Maeve found. It was like toggling a setting in a video game off – easy as pie.
Frank's Fried Friends was as lively as ever, Maeve found when she arrived. The smell of fried food would have made her gag if not for her ability to stifle her nose's super sensitivity.
"You seem… happy," Chris said when she bounced up to the cash register. He performed the iconic adjustment of his glasses, almost as though scarcely believing it was Maeve.
"I can't always be grumpy. Get used to it," she said. Chris gave her a smile before he resumed taking orders.
It was a slow day.
Maeve passed most of it wondering about the Vales Gathering. She didn't feel as constipated when she thought about it, somehow. It almost seemed as though she had only heard about it a week ago when it was just yesterday.
Perhaps because she was getting more curious about wolves and the Howling, she started to –ever so slightly – anticipate meeting others of her kind as an Aspiring Luna.
As she worked the register, a certain unusual smell caught Maeve's nose. It was rather powerful, as though wafting from a bottle of whiskey, but when it established itself, it smelled like vinegar mixed in with moist dirt. A hidden pulse of deodorant swam somewhere through the odour, faint and frail.
Maeve immediately looked up and searched for the source.
She wasn't quite an expert in precisely identifying smells and their origins, but this one felt special.
To her surprise, her eyes met those of a young lady, slightly plump, with ivory skin and long orange hair made into a side ponytail. She had a wild, black tattoo on her neck, made vibrant because of her skin colour, and two piercings below her bottom lip which was plastered in dark lipstick.
The lady's downturned eyes shimmered gold for a brief moment, and then she cut to the front of the line with a big smile, ignoring the complaints of the other customers.
Maeve was lost for words. It was all but clear what was going on, but she couldn't voice it. She only stood dazed when the young lady grabbed her hands from the opposite end of the counter and with a low-pitched voice said:
"I thought I smelled ya!"