“No, no,” I yell as I press buttons on my keyboard. I was the last member of the team still alive and the enemy team was ganging up on me. “Shit shit shit shit.” the screen zooms out as it shows the character I was using falls to the ground with ragdoll physics. The screen fades to black with the words LOSER takes up the screen. “Damn it this fucking sucks.” I ruffled up my own hair and groaned. I have never lost a match that fast before. I must have been playing against a top tier player or something.

I feel something sharp poker me in the shoulder. I turn around to see an anthropomorphic wolf with gray fur standing behind me.

“Gah,” I shot out of my chair and ran into the wall.

The wolf held out his hands out palms down around his waist and moved them up and down.

“Sorry. Sorry.” I took some breaths, “I’m just not used to seeing you like that.” 

it's only been a month since Alen came out as a werewolf. Like, a real werewolf. The kind I usually only see in movies or books. It was certainly a shock, and kind of hot really. Ever since then, Alen has been in his wolf form more often to get me used to it but my brain just has trouble processing that he is not a threat or something because I keep getting startled if I don't see him transform in front of my eyes.

Once my heart was under control I asked, “so do you need something?”

Alen extended his index fingers on each hand and made a backwards circle motion with his hands before moving one of them to point at his wrist.

“Oh its time for my lesions now?”

Alen shook his head. He moved his hands in front of me with his index fingers extended. He flexes the fingers a couple times while moving down his body.

“Oh our weekly tests?”

Alen nodes.

As Alen told me, once werewolves shift to a certain point, they lose the ability to speak human words since their mouths and throats were not built for that kind of thing. Werewolves get by it by communicating with their bodies and the brain just auto translates full conversations. This method doesn’t work with talking with humans since their brains can’t pick up the subtle movements a werewolf will make, so they get around it by using sign language. As Alen puts it,  most werewolves pick up on sign language as ducks do for water, which is a big reason most are happy to teach it to other newer members of their packs.

While it started with a few phrases here and there, Alen really stepped it up with the lessons after he came out as a werewolf. Alen feels comfortable being an anthro wolf and since he doesn’t like to keep changing back and forth to just communicate and relax, he started teaching me more advanced stuff so that he can relax and communicate at the same time. 

We moved to the dining room where the table was filled with index cards with all the words that Alen has been teaching me this week. “So how are we doing the test this time, spelling or words?”

Alen stuck his hands out like he was holding a small ball while his upper hand was doing a circle motion.

“So it is a mix of both words and spelling, terrific.”

Alen just gave me a bad on my shoulder as we both took our seat at opposite ends of the table. Alen held up one finger a signal that we are about to begin. Alen cups his right hand into his left then reverses the positions.

This was an easy one to remember, I didn’t even need to look at the cards for a hint, “hamburger.”

Alen nods and moves onto the next word. He made a U with his fingers and brought it close to his mouth, like he was about to eat whatever he was holding.

I looked down at the cards. On them were words of the signs he showed me this week. My brain was looking for something to trigger it. “Um give me a minute.” I keep scanning the cards waiting for something to just click, “orange?”

Alen shook his head and repeated the motion.

I try to think back to when he first showed me the motion. Sometimes he would just teach me the sign language at the spur of the moment so I don’t really catch them all the time.

Alen tapped on my shoulder to get my attention. When I looked, he was holding his arm across his chest. He touched his wrist with the finger of his other hand before brining them to his mouth.

“Dinner? We had it for dinner?”

He nods.

“Okay so we had it for dinner.” lets see for dinner this week we had hamburgers, steaks, chicken, pizza. It clicked for me then, “is the word pizza?”

Alen gives me a thumbs up.

“Hey Alen, there is something I want to ask you.”

He points to me then to himself.

“Why do you keep doing the tests while you look like that? You can easily do it while looking human.” I then realized what i said, “wait there is nothing wrong with your werewolf form, I am just curious why that form for tests.”

Alen makes an X with his hands then makes horns with his right hand and brushes it against his forearm.

“Prevents...something?”

Alen flips over an index card and writes down a word. Cheat.

“Prevents cheating?”

He nods before circling his mouth with his fingers.

“Your mouth? Oh that's right, you mouth the words when you sign.”

He simply nods.

“And you don’t mouth the words as a werewolf?”

Alen flips over another index card and continues to write.It's not as flexible as a human mouth, so I can't mouth the words.

“I see. Since you can’t mouth the words, you can’t just give me the answer.”

Alen nods as he brings his thumbs together and moves them forward.

“Continue?”

He simply nods and continues to sign for me.