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Maddie couldn’t sleep. An occurrence that was dangerously close to becoming a regular phenomenon, as she had not been able to either in the week leading up to the full moon. She had hoped it would come to an end on the night following it, but here she lay, starring at the celling of her and Tom’s bedroom, knowing that in less than three hours her alarm would go off.
Besides her Tom shifted. Like her he had not been able to sleep with the full moon looming, but now, after having helped Sonic through his second transformation, he had finally managed to. The duvet glided off his shoulder, revealing the scar that was now over a month old. Four parallel and ragged lines. Sonic had caused that.
Or not Sonic directly, but that wilder version of him driven by instincts that came forth with the transformation. A version their family now had to adapt to – create a new routine around that would help and accommodate Sonic as best as possible.
Even though Tom probably had a better understanding of what they as Sonic’s guardians would need to do after having spent the full moon with him, Maddie’s brain was running crazy with ideas. So crazy that she gave up on the idea of getting a single wink of sleep. She got out of bed. It would do her better to do her morning routine and maybe some yoga, rather than lying in bed and stare at the celling for one more moment. It wasn't going to give her any answers anyway.
To avoid waking up Tom she decided to head for the bathroom connected to the hallway rather than their bedroom. That meant passing by the stairs leading up to Sonic’s room. It was a dark pit, just as Sonic wanted it while his body recovered from the toll the transformation forth and back had on him.
Hopefully the recovery time would be shorter than after the first transformation, where it had taken close to a full week before he was strong enough to even get out of bed. She remembered those days both clearly and foggy. The image most clear to her from that period of time was the one of her finding him lying face down on the forest floor covered in twigs and with mud stuck to his quills and fur. Dark half mones of dirt under his nails from scratching at the ground when ginormous paws had turned back into small hands. Tom had had to carry him, and together they had had to bathe him. During the whole process he hadn’t stirred, and so they had afterwards spent the entire day in shifts by his bed waiting for him to come to it. Fearing he wouldn’t.
That waiting part was what she had a hard time remembering. She could only recall wishing he would wake up and that he would never have to go through this again.
With a heavy sigh she went on with her morning routine.
After doing some yoga morning had truly come, as the sky was plastered in soft pastel colours. With under an hour left to spend before she had to drive off to work, she sat down to read. It was a romantasy book some of her coworkers had been raving about and she wanted to see, what all the fuss was about and maybe join in on the fun. However, the book was anything but fun as one of the main characters inexplicably transformed into a horrifying monster and tried to hurt his friends. She slammed the book shut and stared daggers at it.
“He’s not like that.”
“Not like what?”
Maddie looked up, her eyes wide as she did not believe what she had heard and now saw. Sonic was standing in the archway into the living room, leaning up against it as if his legs would collapse under him if he didn’t. His fur was shaggy and eyelids heavy.
“Sonic! You’re already awake,” she said, hoping that her delight at seeing him up and about was more prominent than her shock and worry of him having heard her complaint directed at the book.
“More like too hungry to stay in bed,” he said with a tired grin.
“We have some leftover waffles from yesterday. Let me fetch you some.” On her way to the kitchen, she patted him on the head. “You go back to bed; I’ll bring the waffles to you.”
She felt her heart strain as she saw him leave not in a blur, but with a hand against the wall to steady himself. Her heart only continued to do so, when she entered his bedroom with the breakfast on a tray. She knew he was only exhausted, but he seemed so sick as he lay there in the dark. It was unfair that he had to go through this once a month. As if the kid hadn’t been through enough already.
All they could hope for was that the transformations would ease with time – that with each one it would hurt and exhaust him less.
“Here you go,” she said, as she placed the tray down.
“Thanks.”
That didn’t sound like his usual cheerful self. Maddie would have deemed it due to exhaustion, if not for the fact he had been about to enter the living room when he'd had. “Something on your mind?”
“It’s nothing,” he answered. “Just tired from last night. That’s all.” He took a bite of the waffle laying on top.
“You’re sure? If you are wondering about what I said in the living room, then it was not directed at you, but at a scene in the book I was reading.”
He didn’t say anything, as his mouth was filled with waffle, but Maddie sensed how he tensed up. He had definitely been wondering about it and been on the path of misinterpreting it.
“You know, once you are back on your feet, we are going to talk about what to do from now on. As a family.” She stroked his head between the ears. “After that we only have to worry about this once a month. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“I guess it does…”
The answer didn’t make her heart strain less, only more. She wanted to cheer him up, to take his pain away, but she didn’t have any time left. “I have to go to work now. Tom’s home if you need anything. Bye Sonic.” Had Maddie glanced back, she would’ve seen him lay down the utensils to look at his hands, curling his fingers as if razor sharp claws would come forth at any moment, but she was in too much of a hurry to notice.
***
It was early evening when Maddie returned home, and the lack of sleep was catching up to her. Right now, she either needed a big cup of coffee or one hell of a power nap before she did anything else. She was so focused on this that she almost missed the fact that Tom’s truck was gone. He must have been called in for an emergency at some point while she was at work.
As soon as she entered, Ozzy greeted her. Her hands were deep in his fur, when she noticed the tv remote on the coffee table wobbling, settling down the way it only would after a certain hedgehog had placed it there when leaving in a hurry.
Immediately Maddie knew she had almost caught Sonic red handed, as it was unusual for the hedgehog not to stay and greet her just like the golden retriever. Already she had an idea of what he had been watching.
"Hey Sonic, I am home,” she said, as she entered his room.
He was laying with his back turned to her. Slowly he turned around and rubbed his eyes while simultaneously yawning. “Can’t a hedgehog get some shut eye here.”
“If he was actually asleep, he would. I saw the remote.”
In unusual fashion Sonic didn’t have an instant comeback. He only gaped at her, as if she had told him something horrible.
Due to that she continued with a mild tone of voice. “Sonic, Tom and I know you want to use your powers for good, but you shouldn’t be watching the news, when what you need is to relax rather than worry about what’s happening outside of Green Hills. You’re in no state to be a hero right now.”
“Oh…” Sonic seemed to gain functionality again as he finally blinked. “Yeah… You totally got me there. It’s just so boring to stay in bed all day!”
“I get that, but rest will do you good, and who knows, maybe you’ll be able to run around already by tomorrow. You do seem to be recovering faster than last time.”
“Guess my body is just getting more used to it already.” Unconsciously he was rubbing at his wrist, right where the white fur sprouted during transformation.
This Maddie didn’t notice, as she told him that she wanted to take a nap, so if he needed anything she would like to know it now, otherwise it would have to wait till afterwards. He wasn’t missing anything, and so Maddie went to bed.
While she slept Sonic rushed down to the living room to make sure that what he had been watching on the tv wouldn’t be the first thing to show up when either Maddie or Tom turned it on.
***
“We need to talk,” Maddie said as she placed down the vegetable lasagne on the dinner table.
It was now three days after the transformation and Sonic had finally done a full recovery – two days and a half shorter than the previous time, something they all took as a small victory – and so it was time to discuss what they needed to do to accommodate this change in their lives. Maddie had seen the opportunity to do just that during this dinner, as both she and Tom were home.
"Seems as good a time as any," Tom said, looking to Sonic with a reassuring smile, which faltered at the sight of the kid’s lowered ears. "Or maybe not. Should we wait till later?"
"No, no it's not..." Sonic sighed. "Let’s just get to it.”
“Okay,” Maddie said and pulled out a slip of paper, on which she had written down the topics she thought they needed to discuss. “I have already been thinking about things we could do to accommodate all of this.” She then pulled forth some other stuff she had bought on her way home from work, which had been laying on the chair next to the one she sat on. “I got us a calendar that shows the moon phases, so we can keep track of them. Then I also got you a heated blanket for when your muscles get sore.” She lay the blanket next to Sonic, who looked upon it with a mix of gratitude and grim remembrance of what certain situation it would be useful in.
“I also thought about getting you a dog bed or something soft to lay on in the burrow, or maybe here in the house-“
“I’m not going inside the house when I am like that,” Sonic interrupted sharply. “Who knows what I will end up doing in here again if I lose control. And a dog bed, really?”
“Replacing that window was expensive,” Tom mumbled. “And the floor boards. But hey, you gained control pretty fast last time, so I don’t see why you can’t stay in the house to relax if you want to, once you’ve gotten a hang of it – just as long as you don’t ruin the cushions with your claws.” Tom tried to humour him by holding up his hands as if they were tipped with claws, but they seemed to have the opposite effect as Sonic’s eyes began to take on a blue glow.
“You guys don’t get it! Next time it won’t just be a window, but one of you guys or Ozzy. I did hurt you already, and I almost did again.”
“Hey, bud, that won’t happen. You won’t hurt any of us, and I have already forgiven you for what happened that first time.” Tom comforted him with a hug. “You may not have complete control as of now, but you’ll get there. I believe you will.”
The blue light began to dissipate from Sonic’s eyes.
Meanwhile Maddie was crossing out the topic on her paper, as Sonic clearly didn’t trust himself to be inside the house, or even near it yet. She also wrote: no dog bed. “Okay, let’s switch topic then, and save the one about you being in the house for when you are a … you know for a later date. So, the backpack, does it help to have that with you and all the stuff in it for the morning after?”
“The bag is nice,” Sonic said. “It’s nice to have water once I am a hedgehog again, and I don’t know why, but putting my gloves and shoes in the backpack calms me.”
“Maybe it’s because you don’t have to worry about them getting damaged or torn up?” Tom suggested.
“Yeah, that’s probably it.”
“It’s there something missing, something else we should pack the it with?”
“Now that we have it, it would be nice to replace the blanket with the heated one, if they both can’t fit.”
“Maybe some granola bars, too. You did complain a lot about being hungry after you changed back,” Tom added.
Maddie wrote it all down. “Good, so the backpack is something we are doing right, and if we find out there is something missing, then we can always add it later. Now, is the burrow the right place to… change? Or is there somewhere else you would rather like?”
“No, definitely not,” Sonic quickly answered. “The burrow is the best place.”
Maddie simply ticked off the topic. It was nice that they had gotten both the backpack and burrow right from as soon as they had known, what to prepare for. “The next thing we need to talk about is how Tom and I are going to be there with you on the full moons. It’s going to be Tom again, since I have a night shift-”
“No!” Sonic almost shouted. “None of you are going to be there! I’ll handle the transformations on my own.”
Silence settled, as neither Tom nor Maddie had expected a reaction akin to the ones he had had after the first full moon, especially not after the success Tom and Sonic had experienced just a few nights ago.
They shared a look, clearly both wondering how best to proceed as neither wanted their kid to go through such immense pain all on his own.
Tom was the one to take the word. "Are you sure about that, Sonic? I think it would be good for you to have either me or Maddie with you. It definitely seemed like me being there helped you gain control."
Sonic pulled up his shoulders. "Which I only did after almost hurting you. Again. It’s only a matter of time before I do something horrible.”
“You are not going to do something horrible. Besides, I would very much like to be there for you – Maddie, too. You don’t have to go through this all alone.”
Uncertainty flashed across Sonic’s face, but quickly the hedgehog folded his face into a determined frown. “No, it's best if I do this alone and you stay inside the house. That’s that!”
Yet again silence settled over the dinner table, as both adults were perplexed by Sonic’s reaction. Why was he more reluctant to let them help him now than he had been after the first full moon? Last time he had at least given in to let Tom come with him some of the way, once he had realised how much it meant for Tom to be there and help in any shape or form, but now it seemed he was too stubborn to even let Tom near the burrow when the transformation was about to take place.
Or was it something else than stubbornness? Maddie wondered, as she couldn’t help but find it very odd, especially since she remembered how hopeful he and Tom had been when they’d returned in the morning for waffles. How they'd almost been all celebratory over the fact Sonic had gained control over himself. What had changed in the short amount of time since then?
All she could tell was that the change had made Sonic way more fearful of the instinctual part of him that took over with the transformation, so much so that he didn’t even want them outside of the house during the full moon. But Maddie could not let him go through that pain alone. Just the thought of what she had witnessed on the living room floor transpiring in the burrow with no one there to support him made her stomach twist.
"What if," she began, "we took my tranquilizer gun with us? Would that make you feel more reassured and less afraid of something bad happening?"
Sonic seemed surprised by the offer, but then relived, and it was at that moment Maddie became certain that something was going on inside his head that had him at war with himself over what he wanted, and what he feared.
"I... I would very much like that."
"Then that's what we'll do," she said and wrote it down on the paper. The next topic on her list was about how to help Sonic with his temper, hunger and restless nights in the week leading up to the transformation. A talk where many points were brought up, but where Maddie still couldn't help herself from wondering, why Sonic seemed to be pushing her and Tom away, when he in actuality wanted them by his side. A thought that continued to plague her throughout the whole ordeal until the very end, where it was decided Tom would go with Sonic again to the burrow, but this time with her tranquilizer gun in case of an emergency.
After dinner it was late, and Maddie needed to take her mind of things. On the coffee table in the living room lay the romantasy book. She was about to grab it, but right next to it lay the remote. All hope of taking her mind of things vanished then and there, as she at the sight of the remote was reminded of the day she came home and found it wobbling. Reminded of how Sonic had reacted, when she told him that she had almost caught him in watching the news, when he was in no state to be a hero.
He had been watching something else, hadn’t he? But what?
She turned on the tv. It was on the news channel. If not for this awaken suspicion, she would have left it then and there, but instead she went on to check the search history on the various apps they had installed on the tv.
As soon as she saw that the word werewolf had been searched, she knew what Sonic had been doing.
She tried to search it herself, wanting to check what videos had been presented to him. Most were horrifying transformation sequences, others were of werewolves attacking loved ones or getting attacked themselves, some even killed or got killed, and the rest were essays about the werewolf myth. All videos that painted werewolves as monsters.
Painted Sonic as one.
She pressed down hard on the button to turn it off.
***
“Tom, are you asleep?” Maddie asked that night, as they lay in bed.
It was dark outside, but the waning moon shone in with a brightness strong enough for Maddie to see Tom’s back clearly.
He turned, so he lay facing her. “No, I can’t stop thinking about Sonic. The way he freaked out when I said that I wanted to be with him in the burrow again…” He shook his head. “It’s like he doesn’t want us anywhere else than here in the house during full moons, but it went so well last time! I just don’t understand why the sudden change.”
“I think I do.” She then began to tell him about, what she had found on the tv, and how Sonic had reacted, when she confronted him in the belief that he had been watching the news.
“That does explain a lot. I guess he must have been searching for answers about himself, but instead ended up getting told repeatedly that he had become some sort of monster,” Tom pondered out loud, coming to the exact same conclusion as Maddie. “He isn’t though. I told him as much when he got concerned about the scar again. He only hurt me because I scared him while he was in pain, and in the burrow he only snarled at me because I did an unexpected movement with my hand. Such behavoir is all… instinctual. Am I right about that, miss veterinarian?”
“That you are,” she answered, “and we need to help him realize that.” This Maddie was more than ready to do when morning came, as she had the day off, and hopefully that one day was all she needed to make Sonic unlearn what he had from those videos.
“Sonic, do you have time for a talk?” she asked.
He was lying in his bean bag reading some of the newest comics Tom had gotten him. Up until her question he had seemed to be relaxing, but now he tensed up as he probably had an inkling of what she wanted to talk about. “Yeah, sure."
Maddie sat down on his bed. “So, I found out, what you’ve been watching on the tv, and it was not the news.”
He was very concentrated about placing down the comic he had been reading on top of the stack of his full collection. Not for a single moment did he let his eyes stray to Maddie.
“You don’t have to figure all of this out on your own. Tom and I will gladly help you with learning about yourself and what you turn into.”
“I just didn’t want to bother you with it,” he answered, still not looking at her.
Maddie raised an eyebrow at that. “Why would helping you bother us?”
“Because you said that we only need to worry about it once a month, so I assumed you didn’t want to think about it besides when you need to.”
Maddie was taken aback by that. She did remember saying that to him, but she had only meant the transformation. Now though, hearing her own words back, she realised that there was more to this than just that. There was the whole question of why it happened, and what it meant for Sonic and who he was. Questions that didn’t lurk only once a month, but constantly.
“I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression with that. Of course, this isn’t just a change that happens once a month for you. It’s more permanent than that, and it’s not just affecting you, but me and Tom as well.”
He winced at the last part.
“But that’s not your fault. None of it is.”
“I know, and I try to keep telling myself that, but it doesn’t change the fact that I turn into this … this werehog that could hurt you guys.”
“Werehog?”
His checks took on a red tone. “Y-yeah. I figured giving it a name made it easier to talk about, so I combined hedgehog and werewolf. I thought about werehedgehog and hedgewolf as well, but those don’t roll of the tongue as nicely.”
“I guess it does make it easier. The werehog.” She was smiling as she said it, not because it was a funny name or anything, but because she finally caught a glimpse of the energetic kid she knew and loved when he explained his reasoning behind the name. It had been far too long since she had last seen him. She suppressed the smile though, as she needed to be serious about this conversation. “Sonic, I don’t think the werehog is some sort of evil monster that wants to hurt anyone – that it’s like the werewolves you watched videos about. Those are based on the myths we have here on Earth, where werewolves are nothing more than myths. Who’s to say you are like that, when you are from another world?”
“Say that to Tom. I hurt him. That proves more than enough that I am dangerous.” He was looking at his hand with an angry glare, as he said it.
Maddie reached out for his hand and lowered it. “You are not though. When you are the werehog, you are not some bloodthirsty monster. You’re more like an ordinary wolf. Something that is driven by instinct. You wouldn’t call a wolf a monster, would you?”
“I guess not … But a wolf doesn’t have the strength to throw boulders either.”
“You are right about that, but from what Tom and I are aware of, you haven’t used that strength to hurt anything or anyone. Actually, as far as we know, the only thing you have done while in that form is to sleep and roam around in the forest. To me that doesn’t seem like something a monster would do, but rather like something a particular blue hero I know would.”
As her words lingered, his eyes became soft with hope, yet that fear kept on lingering. “I just don’t want to…”
Maddie knew that he in that moment didn’t just mean accidentally hurting someone. “I wish you didn’t have to go through this either. But we are here for you, Sonic. Always.”
In a blink he disappeared from the bean bag to having his arms around her. She hugged him back, and she felt all the pent-up tension slowly leave his body as well as her own.
They stayed like that, until Sonic broke the hug. “I am still worried though,” he admitted. “There is still so much we don’t know. Like, what if I bite someone, will they then become like me, like they do in the movies?”
“I don’t think so. Nothing happened to Tom after you scratched him,” Maddie reassured him. “The spreading of the curse – or what we should call it – through a wound or bite is something that is probably only true to the myths. Again, it doesn’t have to be the case for you since you are from another world. I mean, last I checked, you didn’t burn yourself on any silver.”
“I hope that’s the case. I really don’t want anyone else to have to go through this and for me to be the cause of it.” His face darkened.
“Hopefully that is a question then we will never have to worry about finding the answer to, and if you do end up biting someone, then I can already guarantee that it will be in self-defence. Just like the dogs at the clinic, and most of them don’t go for a bite at first, but instead snap out as a warning. I think the werehog is more like that, just a big wolfish dog.”
“When you put it like that it doesn’t sound so terrible,” Sonic said and scratched his check sheepishly, “but I think it is best if we go by this carefully. It is still all new to us, and maybe … maybe the werehog is a monster that just hasn’t had the chance to act yet. It has only been out twice.”
That was not the resolution Maddie had hoped Sonic would come to, and it stung. She had truly thought she had managed to make him stop thinking of himself as a monster, but it seemed it would take some time before he got there. But maybe it was for the better that he got there on his own, rather than by her and Tom pressuring him into believing it before he was ready to accept this new part of himself. “Then let’s stick to the plan with the tranquilizer gun until you are more certain of yourself.”
Once again, she saw the same relief that had washed over his face when she had first brought up the idea of the tranquilizer gun. “Good,” he said with gravity, but then he crocked a smile. “Tom probably won’t even need it though. He said that it could be fun if we go fishing on the full moon. I’m probably going to fall asleep out of boredom before we catch anything. If we catch anything.”
“Well, that sounds like a good idea,” Maddie said, feeling a smile grow upon her own lips. The fact Sonic was joking about the coming full moon was something she took as a good sign for the future. “I can’t help but wonder though, what would happen if the werehog fell in the water. Do you think it can swim? Or that your fear of the water would carry on over?”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” They shared a grin, as they both imagend just that situation playing out, but then Sonic’s mood suddenly turned sombre. He sat down on the bed next to her.
She sensed that a question was on its way, and so she waited patiently for Sonic to be ready to ask it.
“Maddie, do you think Longclaw knew about the werehog? That it would happen to me?”
Maddie tried to put herself in Longclaw’s stead. What would she have done as Sonics’s mother figure, had she known her kid would go through painful transformations someday. “Maybe she did, but didn’t want to tell you before it was necessary, so you didn’t grow up worrying about it. But then, you said she didn’t know anything about your parents, so maybe the werehog was unknown to her as well.”
Sonic pulled his knees up, so he could rest his head upon them. “I just can’t help but wonder sometimes, if she knew more than she let on and the werehog was one of those things. Guess I’ll never know now.”
“Would you have liked her to tell you?”
He was silent as he thought it over. “Not at the age when I lost her, but before that first transformation I would really have liked to have known.”
“I get that.” And she truly did. That night had been awful for all of them, but had they been prepared, then maybe it would have been less traumatic than it ended up being. “I am just glad you had us and weren’t alone when it began.”
He leaned up against her. “Me too.”
She wrapped her arm around him, and it was in that moment it stood clear to Maddie, that even though a hairy change had occurred and would continue to do so once a month, their little unusual family was at its core still the very same it had always been, and as long as it stayed strong, they would be able to overcome any obstacle, including this one. And they would do so together.