Work Text:
Shelby doesn't write Oakhurst's story after leaving to travel with Drift and Scott. She can't write about it without remembering how Avid left notes in her notebook saying how he liked what she'd written so far, how he'd never leave her a message in her manuscript again. Every time she picks up a pencil to continue from where she left off, her hand would shake and tears would fall onto the page and any sentences she tried to write would turn out illegible.
So she writes other stories. She learns all she can about other kinds of supernatural creatures, picks their brains, and writes stories based on them. She writes about Bigfoot. She writes about Faeries. She writes about shapeshifters and merfolk and chimeras and griffins until her notebook is filled with characters, scenes, ideas, and story arcs. She writes and she doesn't stop writing.
Her first book she manages to write to completion is about werewolves. A novel with characters inspired by Pearl and her family. It features werewolf pack dynamics and transformations during the full moon and the spread of lycanthropy.
Her main character is a woman named Shilo who became a werewolf hunter after learning her father was killed by them. Who worked for a werewolf hunting organization called Wolfsbane for three years. A woman whose life turns upside down when her childhood friend gets bitten and comes to her for help.
Her friend, Luca. The only tie she has to her old life. The only person who cares about who Shilo is and not what she could do. Shilo's best friend Luca, terrified out of his mind that she's going to kill him on the spot for what he could become, yet still coming to her for help because he trusts her and he doesn't know what to do.
Wolfsbane policy is to kill and burn anyone infected with Lycanthropy. Shilo breaks policy that day, for a friend she knows is running out of time.
Shelby writes the story of Shilo desperately trying to prevent Luca's transformation whilst also trying to hide him from Wolfsbane. She weaves in the slow reveal that Shilo's father was trying to create a cure and had been meeting with a werewolf to work on it, but that after his death the organization had shut down all research efforts.
Shelby writes and writes and writes like she's possessed, describing Luca's inevitable discovery, forcing him and Shilo to flee their hometown to escape Wolfsbane. She has Shilo encounter the werewolf pack that was working with her father, who only spare her life because they recognize Luca as one of their own.
Shilo learns that werewolves are only feral during the full moon, and that the rest of the conflict has been in self defense or to protect the Pack. That her father had been working with a werewolf named Omella to see if this moon wildness could be tamed. That Shilo's father came to believe that if Omella was able to recognize and trust him during her transformation, she would be able to settle during a full moon.
Shelby cries as she writes Omella's confession that Shilo's father was right, she did recognize and trust him when she transformed, but she'd failed to trust herself, and in her fear of hurting him she'd lashed out and doomed him, because when he went back to Wolfsbane to report his findings he was discovered to be infected and was killed that same day.
Shelby resolves the story with Luca finally transforming during a full moon, and Shilo, shaking as she puts her weapon to the side, calls Luca's name. And Luca settles from the moon transformation, recognizing her, and curling up next to her as his ears twitch, keeping watch, protecting. Shelby ended the story there.
It was the first in a series, Shelby had always planned it to be. They got in contact with Sausage to publish it under the title Wolf’s Bane, already working on book two, Wolf's Boon. And just like that, Shelby was a published author.
Their friends all read it. Sausage praising the drama of it all. Pearl giving her compliments for her portrayal of werewolves. Cleo calling it sickeningly cheesy but well-written. Even Abolish gave them an “it was cool.”
Scott teased her for how blatantly she'd based Shilo after herself, aside from the characteristics she'd added to make the character more heroic.
He'd later added, in a rare moment of genuineness, that those changes didn't need to be made for her to be his hero. That she had saved him from a life of apathy and had convinced both the townsfolk and himself that he was capable of being good. They made sure to hug him tightly after that confession.
It was Drift's response that affected Shelby the most, however. The two had met up for a multi-night sleepover, where Drift would read Wolf's Bane until she had finished it, and Shelby would work on their draft for book two in her company. Drift would very often speak up to share with Shelby her thoughts, her theories, her favorite lines. It was wonderful, and Shelby couldn't imagine being happier.
But then Drift paused, and turned towards Shelby.
“Luca…” Drift started, in a contemplating tone.
“Yeah?” Shelby prompted.
“He reminds me of Avid.” Drift says, smiling but with tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.
Shelby froze at the name. Their mind suddenly putting Avid and Luca side by side, finding all their similarities. She begins to cry as she looks back at her notes for the next book, reading them over and realizing just what she's written.
“Woah, what's wrong?” Drift asks, gently placing a hand on their shoulder.
They shake their head. “Nothing I just… I didn't know it, but-” They think of Luca trusting Shilo with his sickness, Shilo's desperate attempts to save him, the pair trying to hide this from Shilo's organization because they know they'd kill him, their escape together.
Shelby picks up her copy of the book she'd written and published, hugging it close to get chest. Voice broken, she whispers, “I wrote a world where I was able to save him.”
“Oh,” Drift breathes. When she holds her arms open for a hug, Shelby buries herself in them as she grieves.
She writes many more books after that, and she finds Avid in every single one. A boy who sees things others can't, who's seen as crazy until he meets a ghost hunter. A capable but paranoid monster hunter trying to save the main character from the monsters that target her, introducing her to the supernatural world. A young mage that becomes mad with power, gleeful at the destruction he can cause yet remains loyal to his dear friend. A teen boy who always says the worst thing at the worst moment, but means well and wants to help.
When Shelby becomes obsessed with Greek mythology, reading all these legends about heroes and monsters, consuming all the stories like a fire consuming fuel, she pauses at the story of Cassandra. Cursed to know the damnation of her Homeland yet never be believed. Called mad and crazy for trying to warn people.
Shelby sits with the story for a week. Pondering it, zoning out in the middle of conversations considering it, turning it over in their head and chewing on their emotions about it. Scott had asked them what was on their mind multiple times over the week, but they kept giving him non-answers. She was still trying to figure it out herself.
It's in the middle of breakfast, as she's staring into her cereal, that it clicks.
She leaps up from her chair, startling Scott as she dashes to her study. She shouts back at him that inspiration has struck and slams the door behind her, throwing herself into her chair and opening her notebook to a new blank page.
She picks up her pen and writes Cassandra at the top of the page. Then beneath that she writes Avandra??? in parentheses.
And this time, she writes Avid's story because she means to.