Weekend Writing Warriors: Odd Duck (Merrok)

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Tom has arrived at the packleader’s house from last week,and meets someone new.

This person was supposed to be a housekeeping stock-character whose sole, original, three-line purpose was to guide Tom to and from the cells in the basement.

To my surprise, and possibly to Tom’s, she isn’t.

But she did let me put her in the same dress.

The female who opened the door was an inch or two taller than me, with thick dark hair held back in a clip that couldn’t be silver and a navy blue dress that was just shy of a uniform. Her eyes were long and slanted a little—a Hokkaidō in the wolfpile somewhere, maybe—and her nose was big enough to make her face interesting instead of delicate. Her mouth was wide and full and unsmiling.

From the way her gray eyes sharpened as they observed me observing her, I didn’t dare inventory anything lower.

“Thomas Mahon,” she said, as if checking me off a list. “I’m Merrok. This way, please.”

If Susan was Rhombeck’s work spouse, than Ms. Merrok was her counterpart in the pack.

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Hokkaidō wolves were known as Ezo wolves in Japan, before they became extinct in the late 1800s; they were descended from Siberian wolves, which I might use instead, for familiarity’s sake.

Naturally (pun intended), Merrok wouldn’t be descended from the wolves themselves, but the way I have Homo Mutabilis figured, the individuals resemble both the animal and the humans from the place their ancestors evolved. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the end product.

So both of Merrok’s forms will show her Asian ancestry the same way Jackie resembles both a Panthera tigris jacksoni and also a Malaysian woman (though not at the same time).  Joly is a Transvaal werelion immigrant from Polokwane. And Hooper is a big white bruiser of European descent any way you look at him.

Tom, if you’re wondering, looks like a Muscovy drake and a bit like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, if Mr. Gordon-Levitt’s family had hailed from Central America.

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