27. A New Look

Previous Chapter

Saturday, September 5th
Waning Crescent Moon (Nineteen Nights to Full Moon)

Much to my displeasure, Lilith wasn’t joking about the training. I went ahead and told Randall that I would be focusing on my training all weekend by myself, so I knew he wouldn’t bother me.

During the daylight hours on Saturday, I did my laundry, finished my readings and homework, and cleaned up my room as well as the living room and kitchen. After that, I took a nap until nightfall.

Once the sun was down, my focus shifted to Lilith. She took me to the same pasture as before, and though it was dark out, both of us had good enough night vision to see everything we were doing.

Saturday night almost seemed like a repeat of everything Randall had told me before, with some more detail. “As a powerful Alpha werewolf, as well as my subordinate,” She said with a sly look on her face. “You may become the target of someone’s malicious intent. While you cannot mask your own unique scent, you can change your appearance, which can be very useful, especially from a distance.” She took a slim digital camera from her pocket and took a picture of my face, the flash temporarily blinding me.

“What was that for?” I rubbed my eyes, still grouchy from the subordinate comment.

“The hardest part of changing your appearance is changing back again to look exactly the same as normal. I took this for reference, so you can get everything right.” She went to her car and pulled out a stack of magazines, a flashlight for more light, and a mirror. “We’re going to pick some random faces from these for practice.”

“Uh, why couldn’t we do this at the dorm?” I asked, glancing around the pasture at the sleeping cows.

“Safety. I can’t guarantee one hundred percent for sure Tala won’t try anything, especially when we’re using her power. Plus, it’s quiet out here. Now,” She began flipping through a magazine, “We’re just working on the head at first. You could change your entire physical appearance if you wanted, but it’s quite unnecessary at the moment. The way we recognize each other the most is by our faces and voices, which you can change as well. We’ll work on the rest once you master the face.”

“Well, if it’s just the face, it shouldn’t be too hard. I change my whole body into a completely different creature every full moon.” I pulled a magazine out of the stack and looked through it. “Lilith, this one exclusively has male models.” I held it up.

“Ah, that one is for more advanced training,” She laughed when she saw the cover.

I just glared at her.

“You never know when you may need to become a man. First, you have to master the same sex, though, and it’s not as simple as you think. Changing from human to wolf every full moon is part of your condition. It’s instinct, and you don’t force that. This, on the other hand is just part of your power. It’s something that won’t happen unless you force it. The face is going to be the hardest, mostly because many parts make up a face’s appearance. The underlying bone structure, the thickness of the skin in places, different eye colors, eyelids, nose shapes, lips. Plus, there’s the hair. You won’t be able to choose any unnatural colors, but you can use natural colors to make some very unnatural patterns.”

I found a women’s magazine and flipped through it as she was talking. I was looking for someone who only looked slightly different from me to start out with. When I found a suitable picture, I followed Lilith’s instruction.

First, I had to tap into Tala’s power. When my skin began to itch, I knew I was doing it wrong. I looked into the mirror. Instead of changing my human form, Tala’s power was making me grow fur.

“Don’t think about your animal side, only concentrate on what you’re trying to do here. Remember that the power you are using is your werewolf power, and if your mind wanders, that power has a natural tendency to change you into a wolf. So concentrate.” Lilith was coaching me the whole way, as if she knew everything. I wondered how she and her old pet wolf had figured this stuff out in the first place. Or did she have this knowledge even before she met him?

“Concentrate,” She hissed at me as I began to grow claws.

“Sorry,” I mumbled as I forced them back to normal human fingernails. I focused on my reflection in the mirror and began to try to shape my face to match the one in the picture. It was like trying to shape modeling clay with your mind, but the clay had solid bits under it that had to be reformed and worked around. It was hard to make everything smooth and even at first, but I slowly got it. After one face, I chose another, then a few more. I changed my hair color, texture, and length. My eyes went from green to blue to brown. After I mastered faces, I learned how to make myself taller, make body parts larger and smaller, and change my complexion and skin color. We changed the pitch, tone, and timbre of my voice. Then, the hardest part. I had to change back to myself again. It was more difficult going back to my ordinary looks than actually making the change. I had to potential to be much prettier, more exotic, yet I had to go back to plain old everyday me.

Lilith finished the lesson with a lecture, “You don’t want to go to class looking different, but you can certainly use this skill around the other wolves. Only Alphas can do it, so it will show the others how well you can control your own power. Once you make a change, it holds indefinitely, even through a full moon, until you consciously make another change.”

“You know so much, but you aren’t even a werewolf,” I said. I was a little awestruck. The training I’d been dreading hadn’t been too bad, and I actually felt like I had accomplished something.

“You learn a lot from someone when you spend as much time with him as I did,” She replied, an almost sad look on her face, like she missed her old subordinate.

After a while, we went back to the dorm. I was exhausted, not by how late it was, but from doing so many changes. It’d sapped my energy completely. After I showered and changed into my pajamas, I fell right asleep and slept until late into the morning.

Next Chapter
-----

A/N: Sorry this came so late today. It's actually technically Tuesday now, but I was a little lazy on typing this up. Next chapter will be a little bit of a time jump, pushing them up to the night before the full moon. The character development is done for now and I want to move along the story a bit more. What do you guys think of Lilith at this point? Think she's good or bad? Just curious on the views of her.

Look for the next chapter Thursday depending on my schedule or Monday a week from now.