My father walks into my house behind me grumbling about the soreness of the sutured spots on his arms and legs. Doug sticks his head in and says, “I had better head home of my mother might turn me into a rug for being near this.” I wave at him and say, “better remember to tell your mate as well; you would not want her finding out from your mother.” I see him shudder and then nod his head in agreement, and he disappears out the door.

My father shakes his head and he looks for a glass in one of my cabinets and then looks about searching for something. I get the idea and point to a small cabinet near my television/computer monitor. The gives me a thank you look and walks over and pulls out a bottle of bourbon and pours half of a water glass full of the amber colored liquid. “I can’t believe that fool wolf went and attempted to come here, I don’t even care what his reason was.” My father shakes his head after the statement, I nod my head. “he wanted to tell me how upset he was that those humans accosted us,” my father shakes his head again. “That fool is going to start trouble, I should warn Simon that he may go rouge once he is released.” I nod my head and walk back to the freezer to dig out a roast for our dinner, my father looks through the cabinet the bourbon came from. “You have a lot in here, do you drink it much?” I shake my head, “just a glass every couple evenings if I am working late. I also have an extensive wine cabinet, can you pull a year 1982 red out for dinner? It’s in the cabinet on the wall behind you,” he turns and finds the cabinet and exclaims in surprise upon seeing how much was in the chilled cabinet.

My father walks over to the counter top, “how much are you putting into that?” I smile at him and after unwrapping the roast and placing it in the roasting pan and pour half the bottle over it. “About that much, it adds a nice flavor to it; considering from frozen this’ll take about four hours to slow roast. We’ll add a couple of onions and some nice fresh herbs from the garden and it’ll come out wonderful.” My father smiles, “and here you have let the whole garbage situation from earlier go.” I nod my head, “I see no point in dwelling on that idiot. He will get what is coming to him and he will learn to live with what ever that means.” My father nods at me, and looks over his wounds, “so why a roast tonight? You know we don’t eat as much food as a werewolf does.”

That is accurate, most shifters as a general rule do not eat the tons of food a werewolf does. Even more so if we are in our other form we for a period of time we just eat in it. The only time we might eat a bit more is when we are healing, as our bodies then increase our metabolism to ensure we heal quickly. I give my father an amused look, “so you aren’t starving later from all that healing you’re doing.” My father then grins while scratching the back of his head, “yeah. I didn’t think of that, what are we having with it?” He looks excited as I grab my gathering basket and wave for him to follow, “fresh roasted vegetables with potatoes as well.” He looks interested and follows me out of the house.

I take him to the vegetable gardens and he stops in wonder, there are ten; ten foot rows of plants. With the width of each row being about five foot wide, and on the center of each walking path between was a single row of mixed flowers. Half of those flowers are edible and half are there for a reason whether to attract bees of stop unwelcome bugs.

I walk up to a very healthy looking potato plant that reaches my knees, and squat down next to it. “These are in the ‘new’ potato stage, but I plant enough that we can have some every now and again.” I will however dig up about a quarter of this group of plants in another month to turn into dried hash browns for use during the winter, while leaving the remainder to grow into full sized bakers. I still had a few left from last fall, but I wanted to make sure he had plenty of food with his healing. Shifter wounds would infect even another shifter, so ensuring that the wounds healed well was very important.

After shaking the excess dirt off of the ten or so new potatoes I place them into my gathering basket and move onto a row of mixed root crops. These are carrots, turnips, and parsnips; they go great in a mixed roasted vegetable dish. Add in a couple of onions as well as a few cloves of fresh garlic and a mix of the herbs used on the roast and it pairs very nicely with roast.

“How often do you have to weed this garden Nancy?” I look up at my father who is still staring at the size of it. “Not as often as you think, while the soil around here tends to be very rocky I made a point to have each of these beds dug ten foot down. There I places some cleaned stone for proper drainage, then the dead branches from clearing this location then a mixture of chicken and rabbit manure and a couple different soil types with some straw interspersed. Then I topped the beds with a layer of wood chips from the last time the tree cutters came through to work around the power lines. I now top each bed in the late fall with a layer of manure and straw, then I place more straw on the ground around each plant to prevent weeds. It can be very time consuming, but I enjoy it.” He nods his head attempting to add up the time to work the space over, his phone beeps and he looks at it. “That’s Simon, he’s back at his office; I’m going to call him and lodge my formal complaint. He is now going to be swamped with a mountain of paperwork due to that foolish wolf.”

I grab a couple of young hot peppers off their plant as I finish my trip around my garden, a little bit of hot peppers can go a long way if done properly. Then they merely enhance flavor, I get a whiff of a scent and I grin as I walk inside my house. “You escaped your mother Doug?” I say to the raccoon who is setting the cutting table up for me, I had created a type of a butcher’s block that you can change the top piece on depending on what you were working on. He grins at me, “yes once I told her everything that happened including you preventing me from jumping into the fight.” I give him a look, “that was for your own good Doug; you have no idea how good of fighters they are.” He hangs his head a moment, “I know; it was foolish. My mother was very impressed that you kept me safe. Oh Brenda is coming by in a week’s time and wants to have dinner with you, would that be alright Nancy?” He gives me a dreamy look, I chuckle. “Of course, though isn’t she afraid of me?”

Doug frowns at me as he takes my basket and starts washing off the potatoes, “no Nancy. I have tried to tell you for years that most shifters do not fear you.” I raise my eyebrow, and he sees that and continues. “Your mother was afraid of you because of the family who raised her made her believe that sabers are vile dangerous things. As for humans, most humans are afraid of shifters in general; you might be surprised as to which humans know exactly what you are and have no issues with it Nancy.” I take the potatoes as he finishes and start cutting them up. He looks at me a moment before speaking again, “wolf shifters fear you because you can best them. They believe they are all powerful, they have no clue how dangerous you could be,” I shake my head. Then Doug looks past me to my father who just steps in, “maybe you need to hear some tales about Scartooth from the shifter community Nancy.” He gives my father a look as he says this, my father grunts. “I am not surprised you haven’t heard much positive about her Nancy, but surly Simon has told you something?”

I shake my head as I start cutting up the root veggies, “mom told him he was never allowed to. Now that she is dead I don’t think it has occurred to him to tell me now.” He puts a hand on my should and hands me a glass of wine, “well then daughter that is something we can remedy over dinner.”