The GP Advent Calendar - Door 19

Finally, Ray pushes themselves to their feet again. The women - no, those who would transform - are already gathered to leave, so it's the perfect opportunity to begin putting their own plan in motion. It's certain to get them into a whole lot of trouble, but they don't really care. A few months from now, it's just going to be remembered as nothing but a part of their usual silly rebelliousness. They climb down from their hiding spot on the attic and return to their room where Tommy is already waiting, bouncing excitedly on their bed. Tommy is one of Ray's younger cousins of whichever degree. They aren't even quite sure how they are related, but they like the little guy. And they had known that he would definitely love their plan.
"Did you spread the word?", they ask in a conspiratorial voice that makes Tommy grin proudly at being part of something secret.

He nods. "And I painted a sign!"

"A sign?", Ray asks.

He nods again, even more excited this time. He takes out a folded piece of paper, unfolds it and shows it proudly to Ray. Among some crude drawings of trees and wolves, three words are written in bold, colorful letters.

TRANSFORMATIONS FOR

BOYS

Ray frowns and shakes their head. "It's really pretty," they say. "But it's not just for boys. It's for everyone. For little girls who don't transform yet as well. And... for people who aren't boys or girls."

"Like who?", Tommy asks.

"Like..." Ray hesitates. "Like me."

"Oh," Tommy says. He scratches his head for a moment. "Okay," he then says. He clearly doesn't understand. But that lack of understanding doesn't stop him from just accepting it, which makes Ray smile.

"You fix that sign, and I get myself ready," Ray tells him. They then take out their art supplies. Body paints, chalks, even some halloween hair dyes, of course easy to rinse out ones. They don't need to get in any more trouble than they already will by permanently dying some child's hair without their parent's consent.

As Tommy gets to work writing more words on the sign, Ray strips down to their tanktop and jeans and then begins painting on themselves, drawing fur on their arms and shoulders and finally painting an intricate wolf's face on their own face. It takes a bit longer than they expected, but they're very happy with the result. "How do I look?", they ask Tommy.

"Super scary!", he tells them excitedly. "Do me next!"

"Is the sign ready?", Ray asks. Tommy shows it to them again.

TRANSFORMATIONS FOR

BOYS

AND GIRLS

AND EVERYONE ELSE!

"Perfect!"

Ray begins painting a wolf's face on Tommy's face as soon as he's hung the poster on their bedroom door. As they're working on him, more kids show up, all ones that heard from Tommy about tonight's plans. Soon, Ray is surrounded by pretty much every kid in the family who hasn't hit puberty yet and even a small few of the boys who have and aren't too put off by the fact that wolves are perceived as girly.
It takes Ray much longer than they thought to paint everyone's face and they can't do as much detail as they wanted with all of them, but they all seem really happy with their wolf makeup anyway. They roar at each other, playfight and laugh. Once the last one of them is properly made up, Ray packs away their supplies, then walks up to the door.

The Matriarch is going to be so mad, they think, but they're too giddy to let that knowledge stop them.

"Ready?", they ask the pack of wolf children in front of them.

"Ready!", they all shout back.

Ray reaches for the door knob and slowly pulls it open. "Then let's go downstairs and give the adults the scare of a lifetime!", they shout.
A second later, a whole mob of roaring and howling children, led by the loudly laughing sixteen-year-old storms through the ancient, honorable mansion.

No matter what the Matriarch or the supernatural rules of transformation say, tonight, they're all wolves!