#I feel like Flynn's mom is probably a shifter as well

[legolasghosty]

Okay but consider: Cat Café AU

I AM CONSIDERING SO VERY MUCH!!!

Anddd you never said no magic involved and I'm frigging sick and tired of the real world right now, so...

Julie is the proud owner of a small cat cafe in Los Feliz. Lots of great drinks, super sweet cats, plenty of comfy places to sit. To the outside viewer, it seems like a pretty standard setup, if surprisingly well funded. What is less common knowledge is that shapeshifters are also a thing and Dahlia's Sip and Purr also acts as a sort of safe house for many.

Reggie and Alex are the main two other front employees, with Flynn working there too on the business side of things. They take turns working the front counter and taking care of the cats, Julie hopping in with either job when she can. Everything on the menu has silly cat pun names, most of them courtesy of either Reggie or Carlos, Julie's little brother. (She regularly gets texts from him with no context, just a cat pun drink name. They've gotten more frequent since he moved out for college.)

About half the cats that come through the cafe are shelter cats, who are healthy and mostly adoptable but don't have proper homes. They have a board on the wall of which cats people can adopt. Julie has a great relationship with the folks at the nearby animal shelters, cause she takes great care of the kitties and often finds them good homes after a bit!

A couple of the cats are a bit older and have just been with the gang for long enough that they've gotten attached and Julie or Reggie and Alex (they live together) have officially adopted them. Julie lives in a studio over the shop, so she just kinda takes her babies up with her at the end of the day.

And then the last handful of cats... aren't full-time cats. Shapeshifters aren't super common, but they tend to find each other. Most of them have 3-5 forms, depending roughly on age. The first two forms (human and some animal) usually are based on genetics or whatever, and the shifter has no control over what the animal form is. But when they get a grip on their first nonhuman form and start learning a second one, a lot of folks will go for some kind of domestic animal. Both because they're generally small and easy to get away from bad people, but also cause no one is gonna ask weird questions about seeing a housecat in their backyard. At least not like they would if it was like a wolf or something. So most shifters have some kind of house pet form by the time they're teens/young adults.

Given both the high percentage of shifters who have a small cat form, plus the high population density of LA, plus the fact that being a shifter isn't always genetic and often comes out of nowhere... there's a fair amount of unhoused/exhausted cat shifters around Dahlia's. So when Julie and Flynn were daydreaming about running their own cafe in high school, Julie was like, "Okay but if we do the cat thing, we gotta have a way we can help out shifters somehow."

Julie learned about all this as a kid, cause her dad is a shifter (first form was a black bear, which caused some chaos... now his most commonly used ones are a big grey cat and a raven), and Carlos inherited those genes as well (first form was a badger, these days he spends his animal time mostly as an orange and white tomcat). So while Julie and her mom didn't actually change shape themselves, it's just kinda a part of life.

Alex and Reggie are both shifters and met Julie and Flynn in college. Julie sorta found out by accident when she came into their dorm room and saw zero human boys and two cats curled up together in a sunbeam. But now they're her employees/coworkers, having a good time working and also having a safe space to cat in. (Alex's first form was actually a cat, a jet black shorthair. Reggie's first was a hampster, but he much prefers being a dapper tux tomcat). They also know all the signals and stuff to let other shifters know that it's a safe space, which Julie really appreciates.

So yeah, some of the cats in the cafe are humans some of the time. These include :

Luke, who is also best friends with the main gang but absolutely hates customer service so he splits time between the cafe and writing music for a couple of indie bands in the area. Or sometimes both at the same time.

Willie, Alex's boyfriend (yes his first form was a raccoon) and another bestie of the gang. He teaches art classes for adults, but those are mostly in the evenings when people are off work, so he'll hang out as a cat and play with silly humans in the daytime (also skate around getting into trouble but that's fineee).

Bobby, who happened in one day in their first couple weeks of business and lowkey never left. He's a security guard officially for a museum or something nearby, but he mostly works the night shift, and well... the sunbeams are nicer at Julie's cafe than his tiny apartment. So he hangs out a lot and has gotten adopted into the gang. He and Alex are great nap buddies and customers like cooing over their lil yin and yang cuddle pile.

Coming along with Bobby, we have his twin sister Carrie, who is not a shifter but was kind of freaking out about her brother disappearing so much (she knew about the shifter thing) and ended up following him to the cafe about six months after he started going. Cue drama and chaos, but eventually things settled and it all got straightened out. Flynn and Carrie are dating now, so she's around a decent bit.

She also introduced Kayla, one of her dancers who was also a shifter, to the cafe. Kayla had gone for a dog form when she was younger, but started working on a cat after hanging at the cafe a bit cause it's just so cozy.

And well... the shifter community may be quiet, but it's got its rich people too. After finding out about the whole thing, Willie's adopted dad started subtly pushing business Julie's way, along with sponsorship deals and stuff. And well, when Caleb absolutely cannot get ahold of his kid, he usually knows where to go. Even if he's not actually there, Julie or Alex have usually seen him recently and can pass along a message. (Caleb is absolutely a shifter btw.)

And well frick this got WAY too long, I'm sorry!!! I shall shush now and leave you in peace!

[panicatthediaz]

Tar on a mound of snow

Sequel to day 1, Runaway, aka more werewolf Munsons. Or what's left of them :') Written for @eddiemonth, because I said I would so I will, don't mind me. It's Day 07 - Wayne + Warm (for once, I got another part of the prompt included. Small victories.)

Warnings: The death of Eddie's mom caused changes Eddie's overwhelmed by. Talk of parent death. (But this is mostly... comfort? An attempt at comfort? I dunno, it still feels pretty sad.)

Wordcount: 1859

Things had changed far too quickly. A group of hunters had invaded their pack home, and Eddie had to see his mom die — or, technically, get shot, but he wasn't stupid.

He was already a shifter and knew what silver did to their kind, and Eddie had no doubt that that bullet had been silver; things wouldn't have been this chaotic in the aftermath if it hadn't.

“You ready, kid?” Wayne asked, appearing at the door of his room in the pack house. His uncle had a saddened expression, his mouth pulling into a frown as he stood there, patiently waiting for Eddie to take one last look around.

It felt like his entire life had been packed away and put into the back of a moving truck, no trace of him remaining to ever tell anyone that a ten year old boy had lived here. The walls were bare and repainted, back to the white they had been when Eddie was first allowed to decorate his own room.

Eddie shrugged in response to his uncle's question; he wasn't ready, they were going to be in a car for hours, moving two states over, because his dad had sent them away.

Al Munson had explained it many times at this point, but all Eddie got from it was that he'd lost his mom and his dad was leaving.

At least, he was pretty sure Wayne had tried convincing his dad not to go anywhere.

“Come on, then,” Wayne urged him, not unkindly; the room probably looked depressing for everyone that was still around. With a warm hand on his shoulder and the other ruffling his hair, he led Eddie back to the room they were going to share on this last night before they left Tennessee altogether. “We gotta wake early tomorrow.”

—

Hawkins was… weird. There was something about the town that unsettled Wayne as well, so his uncle got in touch with a couple of local witches, to try and figure out what was so different about the town they moved into.

One of them lived in the trailer park, in the trailer closest to the woods; they were pretty much next door. Granny Ecker insisted on feeding them both, but at least Eddie made his first friend in town, Granny’s granddaughter Ronnie.

(Eddie didn't get to meet the Buckleys for a few years, but Wayne had said they were the ones to go to if he ever needed anything for silver wounds, so Eddie had made sure to know where he could find Melissa Buckley.)

—

Hawkins had a considerable amount of nature surrounding its borders, and Eddie assumed that had been why Wayne chose this tiny little town as their destination.

No one else from the pack had followed, though, so the runs he sometimes spent among cousins, and uncles, and aunts, and even his grandparents? It would become a run of two. Not a pack, not even close, but it was enough to settle the part of the young wolf that demanded family.

Wayne wasn't unaffected either. Wolves and werewolves, they were all social creatures. They lived with families, by blood and by choice, they led loud and happy lives, provided they could stick to their own and let their wolves loose for a bit.

But they'd lost that when the Beaumont-Flynn pack disbanded and everyone scattered. Eddie sometimes wondered what happened to the big house they all lived in on the edge of the Appalachian mountains, but most of the time, he tried not to think about everything they left behind.

Sometimes, trying to ignore it all worked. Other times, not so much. People would ask him about his parents, and Eddie would freeze, leaving Wayne to answer their questions and deal with the resulting awkwardness. It was a small town, though, and it didn't take long until no one else needed to ask them about Lauren and Alan Munson.

—

Eddie knew this would have counted as abnormal behavior for him. He didn’t really sulk or stomp around, no matter what his uncle said, but it was like every little thing was pressing in all around him. Too loud, too bright, with scents too strong. His skin felt too tight on his body, but somehow he felt stretched thin at the same time.

He was overwhelmed.

Eddie hadn't noticed September passing by, hadn't felt the need to shift, not with all he and Wayne'd had to do before they could move. But, well, he was feeling it now, after school on October 26. The day of the full moon, and three days before his birthday. The Harvest Moon passed by unnoticed, and his body was letting him know just how much skipping a full moon sucked.

And with that itch had come the realization that a month had already passed since their old house was attacked mid September.

He spotted Wayne's truck on the school parking lot almost as soon as he walked out, waving at Ronnie as she moved to the bike rack; she'd have gotten a ride with him and Wayne, but she had some club or another before going home.

"You okay, kid?" Wayne asked, frowning at the way Eddie was frowning at everything. "Something happen today?"

Eddie shook his head. "Jus' loud," he mumbled, throwing his head back against the cushion and closing his eyes. "Full moon."

Wayne hummed. He probably felt just as shitty as Eddie did, but he'd managed to call off work today, getting everything sorted for tonight. Eddie distantly wondered what went into "getting everything sorted out", since he usually just had to show up. Food, maybe, but Wayne had never been much of a cook, so he probably got their blankets out. Or whatever they managed to bring from the old house.

He ended up dozing on their way back to the trailer, and Wayne gently shook him by the shoulder to rouse him. The routine of it all helped a little; get home, have a snack, change out of school clothes, homework — or the portion of it the two could figure out and was more urgent tonight — help his uncle set up their bags for being outside until late at night.

But the electric whirring was still buzzing in the back of his head, seeming louder now that night was falling, and even Wayne's breathing was getting on his nerves today. Eddie hated it.

"At least you ain't a vampire," Wayne joked. "They get to hear people's heartbeats all the time."

That, Eddie thought, would drive him crazy really fast.

—

The run had been a short one. They didn't know Hawkins enough to really let go yet, to really run all they could, so they kept to the area they were sure surrounded the trailer park. Branching out and adventuring could come later, once the town didn't feel so unsettling and different to them.

On their way to the trailer, Eddie looked back into those woods, cataloging the ways it differed from the one back home; the plains in place of the old mountains, the animals... Hawkins wasn't that much smaller than his old town, but being the new kid sucked anyway.

It wasn't home. Not yet, and Eddie wasn't sure it would ever feel like home, but it was where he would be for the foreseeable future. He had Wayne, and he loved his uncle, but the joy of running with a full pack was incomparable, and two wolves didn't make a pack. But that was where they were, and they could only have each other, and the only thing Eddie could do was map these woods to the best of his ability. He could learn trails, how to keep away from people.

So he turned back around, ignoring his uncle’s calls as he circled the trailer park and its section of woods once more. It would take a long time to actually memorize how far the woods stretched, where the woods thinned to make way to roads and to the houses in the fancier part of town.

On the other hand, he knew he could learn scents, wouldn't have trouble memorizing those, or the shape of the trees they would run among for most of the time. He would be able to tell when something was wrong this time.

Eddie didn't know how long he took on this second lap of their corner of the woods, but Wayne was waiting for him just where they had separated. His uncle stood out against the trees, his coat of fur a lot lighter than his dad's — a mix of gray and white, aged when compared to his dad only beginning to gray last month.

Wayne made a questioning noise, poking at Eddie with his nose to ensure he was okay, unhurt, only stopping with the whine Eddie let out at his fussing. His uncle watched him carefully for a moment, time Eddie spent with his eyes closed, breathing fast because of more than just another lap of a run.

Eddie felt himself being lifted off of the ground and hugged. Wayne was warm, shielding him against the cold breeze as he ran a hand up and down his fur to try and calm his breathing down, but there was more in Eddie's mind than his breathing.

Wayne started walking, though Eddie wasn't sure where to. His uncle didn't demand Eddie shift back to human nor did he shift back himself, so he was comfortable simply resting against him and trying to mimic his much calmer breathing.

His uncle's meaningless grumbles, low in his throat, were the same Wayne would hum and sing while human; soothing. It was familiar. And Eddie thought they needed familiar right now, in some small town two states over from home.

He wanted to go back but he knew he couldn't. Even if they were to return, who would be there?

The whine escaped unbidden from Eddie's throat, one he knew he'd used to call for this mom however many moons ago it was that he'd fallen down a ravine.

He hadn't been hurt then, not really; scrapes healed overnight, for the most part.

But it did hurt now, with yet another realization that she was gone, dead, that his dad hadn't come with them, that he and his uncle were two strangers in a small town that seemed closely knit in everything.

Eddie only realized he'd been put down on the ground when Wayne, back on all fours, circled him before lying down, effectively blocking him in and forcing him to lie on top of his body.

It was like a drop of tar on top of a mound of snow, the way Eddie's own fur contrasted against Wayne's.

Time passed, uncounted, before Eddie eventually shifted back and started crying. For his mom, his dad. For Uncle Wayne. For changes he didn't know how to handle. For knowing that, most likely, he wouldn't see anyone from home in a long time, if ever again; when werewolves scattered, they spread far.

But Wayne was wrapping himself around him, keeping him warn. They had each other.

For now, that had to do.

[the-writers-bookshelf]

Just sharing my oc Iiestr and some of the building I've done! He's my favourite of because he was originally a cat person, then a cat shape shifter, then a person, then a cat, and now he is a shapeshifter (panther) with different names every time I polished him up: Finn, Flynn, Flyn, Jean, and finally Iiestr. He comes from Deliengea, a fantasy world.

Also, my writing blog is here for more info @nothingbutchilledwriting

Iiestr wanted nothing more than to be just like his mother: Proud, hard-headed and stubborn. She was the most amazing warrior, holding her head high against anyone and anything, and admired her skill, expertise and determination. He wanted to be revered, respected, as a figure of strength, endurance, and everything else his mother stood for. She played by her own rules, listened to nobody but herself, and tolerated no bullshit.

He has, in some aspects, lived up to his mother’s name; being the stubborn, relentless, and proud mf he is. However, most of her teachings were lost on him and, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach the same calibre of his mother’s technique and precision.

(Having come from a low income, poor and struggling background, Iiestr didn’t have much to look forward to. He only had his mom and her teachings but he wouldn’t have it any other way.)

Many of his early teenage years consisted of scavenging, pick pocketing and surviving on crumbs that it left no time or room to practise what she taught him. It didn’t help either that the military beat what little knowledge he had left out of him.

Iiestr doesn't quite have a goal. He just wants peace and quiet. Nobody to bother or pester him during his alone time (read all the time), and no noise, questions or emotions or people he has to be considerate of.

He exists in the present and has very little planning for the future and takes it day by day.

He just really needs his space and doesn't enjoy any many people in his personal bubble or even 10ft away from him. He doesn't trust people and would rather keep his distance than test boundaries or limits, so he can come off as cold or standoffish to people who are new to him. His comfort and safety always come first, no matter the situation, and he'll ensure that himself first hand if need be.

However, other than this, there is another thing that Iiestr would probably want the most is to have Murtair back. They ended with a nasty fight and he hasn't seen Murtair for months now. Missing the company of his partner and his shenanigans (despite Murtair pissing him off half the time just for shits and giggles), Iiestr regrets walking away even though he was completely justified to do so. He's still very hurt but wants to amend the relationship before it's too late, except he doesn't know how and his pride prevents him from making amends. So he just sits and waits, hoping that Murtair would come to him first so that he didn't have to take that first step.

He can be a sarcastic ass and really cold but to be honest, he just doesn't know how to express himself all that well, often too tired to talk, and doesn't trust strangers. His interactions with the group are probably the my favourite aspect of his character because he can go from the protective big brother with the twins to being an absolute douche to Elodea because he thinks it's fun to wind her up.

His voice is kinda low, not really deep kinda average, and he has a light scottish accent. He doesn't sing but he does enjoying humming. If he tried singing he could be decent but he doesn't enjoy it. Can't whistle to save his life.

Pasive agressive and incredibly violent. Iiestr doesn't like people and he isn't the best with interactions so he has made a few enemies. When he gets into a fight, he fights dirty and anything goes. He won't actively pursue an enemy but if he does happen to find one, Iiestr is one them before they can blink.

He's cold and vulgar and doesn't really give a shit. Intimidating as hell, merciless and an asshole when he wants to ward people off.

When it comes to fear, he squashes it down and forces himself through it. He sees it as weakness and refuses to let himself give in to fear, or even feel it for a moment. He ignores it, sweeps it under the rug, but once he gets overwhelmed, he's running in the opposite direction.

People think he is anti social but he can be really open and conversational with particular people. So most of the time he is by himself (by choice) and avoids crowded areas. His social battery drains real quick, not that he has much to begin with, and he needs time after to recharge.

Iiestr's biggest turning point was when he lost his mother. She was his biggest supporter, his source of love and affection. Constantly teaching him new skills like archery and sewing.

But when she suddenly disappeared at age 10, he felt like he lost a piece of himself along with her. Crying out in the middle of the night for months on end for somebody that would never come.

Since then, things just started spiraling down hill faster than Iiestr could cope with.

He was practically alone after this, since nobody knew where his father was either. And he didn't have any known relatives. So for two and a half years, he lived by himself, pick pocketing, stealing and doing whatever he could to get money.

This lead to him getting thrown into prison multiple times, getting roughed up by random strangers who had a strange vendetta against kids, and accidentally getting involved with dangerous groups and practises.

Those two and half years, of dealing with the loss of his mother and the constant fight to survive, had left him cold, emotionless, distrusting of people and with a shit tonne of trauma. He was no longer the happy, go lucky boy he was before. The shy kid that would hide underneath his mother's dress, playing with the rabbits in the garden while his mother watched. That boy was gone.

He picked up bad habits such as slouching from his mother cause she always seemed to hunch over. But as soon as she noticed, she actively put effort into standing straight so that Iiestr wouldn't grow up with crap posture (he still slouched though).

His mother taught him how to play a wind instrument, similar to a flute. He wasn't very good at it but she didn't seem to mind. In fact, his mother would ask to hear him play, especially in the the mornings, while she gardens.

She also taught him useful skills such as seeing, how to mend clothes, stitching and such. Teaching him archery aswell because he saw her do it once and he was so fascinated that he demanded she teach him.

With the archery, she taught him never to use animals for target practise or to kill without reason. If he was going to kill, he had to pray for the animal before killing it and he had to use the entire body and leave nothing to waste.

THIS IS SO COOL and so emotionally wrenching and just wonderful!!! You will ALWAYS hook me into reading any fiction with a cat-related character :) :) :)

Followed your writing blog for more updates!! ♥