Red Meadow.

[johalt]

John looked up as the intercom sounded and sighed with relief. maybe Mondays aren't so bad after all... This would give him much more time to sort things out with Jewl... Not to mention catch up on lunch! Dren! I can't screw up now, not this close to the moon, and certainly not now that she's here! The full moon was only a couple of days away; John had found that, if he ingested large amounts of food -- though not much larger than he normally ate, though for most people that would have been a very significant amount -- especially proteins, he could sort of "cheat" the transformation: the excess food and drink provided him with lots of nutrients, and lessed the affect of his instincts; secondly it gave him sufficient energy to enter into a sort of "stasis hibernation", which conviniently usually lasted the full three days, if he did it right, of the full moon; he simply wrapped himself up in something that he could only describe as being a cuccoon, then he simply entered the "mind abyss", and in three day's time he woke up and shed the shell, which biodegraded within a few hours. But if he didn't keep to his diet and continued to prep his body, then he was as good as dead -- or more accurately everybody around him would be.

He looked down at the girl in his arms, "Say, you wanna go get some lunch?"
He looked over at Stephen. "If you're hungry, Raziel, you might as well come along too."