home, alone with me."
"Boys too?" I asked.
Kim nodded. "All of them. The girls, at least, can get out of school by saying it's a period thing. The boys just have to call in sick. So far, we haven't had a problem, and the older kids have been looking out for the younger."
"Now it's your turn," Ashley said. "Ok, ladies. We have two hours of sunlight left, and I'm guessing Gabby has a cake waiting at home?"
"Not until Friday," I admitted. "Someone spent last week turning into a wolf instead of buying her dress and doing other responsible things."
"We'll help however you need," Heather promised. "Olivia? Can you and Gabby start a fire? I have a feeling Elena will be shifting back to human a bit to catch her bearings. Julia? There's a blanket in the back seat of my car. That way she won't get a chill."
"Thank you," I mouthed at her.
Heather just smiled. "We're all happy to help you. Now, clothes off!" And she pulled off her own shirt to prove it wouldn't be just me getting naked.
Not that it really helped, though. Stripping in public was just weird. Anyone driving by would see all of our naked backsides. Flabby bellies and saggy boobs would no longer have anything to hide behind. Oddly, none of the women cared, so I tried my hardest to copy them. It made me realize just how long I'd been ashamed of myself, and how stupid that really was.
I couldn't change these things, so why bother hating them? I knew that the women I compared myself to were all photoshopped until they no longer looked like themselves. And yet, I'd fallen into the same trap that I tried to keep Gabby from succumbing to. I berated myself for my age, my flaws, and anything else that wouldn't be appreciated by a man. Not by me, not by my friends, but by some generic male idea of my value to him.
So I tossed my shirt on the chair, then pushed my sweats down, and in one motion removed them with my shoes. Next was my sports bra and panties. I only tucked those into my pants so they wouldn't get blown away and lost. And then I turned toward the trees and tried to make the wolf appear.
Nothing.
So I stopped pushing for it and simply reached. In my head, it felt like forward and down, as if I was mentally stretching to walk on my hands and feet, but I didn't want my ass poking up in the air. Thankfully, that was the trick. My vision blurred, fading out for a second, and then it came back with a long nose hanging right in front of it and four short legs holding me up.
My tail started wagging when I realized that I'd done it! That made Gabby laugh, proving that she was watching - and not shifting. A glance proved that she hadn't stripped either. Beside her, Olivia was still dressed, but Julia was bouncing around Kim, proving she'd shifted on her own.
"Ok," Gabby said. "Tonight only, I get to be your wolf mentor, Mom. So, step one? You get to learn how to walk. Bark if you understand?"
I barked.
My daughter grinned. "Good. So, take as long as you need, but you have to walk all the way over to that tree stump, go around it on the far side, and then back. Then you can shift back and rest for a moment, ok?"
I barked again, and then tried. Thankfully, Lane had given me a chance to try this yesterday, but it still wasn't easy. I moved my right front paw first, and then had to step forward with my left hind leg. Next was the left front, followed by the opposite hind, and that was just one pace. I had at least a hundred more to go!
The problem wasn't picking which leg to move. It was how they operated. My shoulders were at a whole new angle. Then there was the fact that my "feet" were really my fingertips. When I tried to crawl like this as a human, I used my elbows more than my wrists. As a wolf, all of my joints were in the wrong place. My actual knees weren't where I expected them to be on the hind legs. Instead, those were my ankles. My knees were up closer to my body, and everything felt so strange!
But doing it made it easier. Step by step, I headed toward the stump.