Title: Malign Moons
Fandom: Carmilla (webseries)
Rating: Teen & Up
Length: 335
Author's note: werewolf au
Content note: body horror
Summary: Danny has cause to know more of biological science than a Lit major otherwise might.

Dany has picked up a few things from the Science Society during her time at Silas. The lesson is when to make a hasty retreat, mostly; but there is a smattering of academic knowledge here and there that makes it through the vigilance to settle in the part of her brain usually reserved for trivia.

Humans, for example. Not anyone human in particular, but to be humanoid and biped assumes a certain arrangement of of physical features. Fused and elongated bone structure, opposable thumbs, connective tissue and shock absorption to allow long range travel at speed. Humans were built to be pursuit predators, after all.

This arrangement is not universal. (Obviously.) Different creatures use different configurations of different limbs … all find a place and use as one set of adaptions to certain environmental factions meets a new challenge. So far, so good. Elementary Darwinism. All natural and relatively safe. Until, that is, magic and attempts to outdo the normal way of doing things gets involved. And this is Silas ...

When doesn't it get involved?

Moonlight, it must be noted (after a grand total of three months spent trying to avoid it, which wasn’t a great sample size but was, unfortunately, definitive) was not a trigger of the change. The ache in her teeth began long before the moon rose at an hour and three quarters past noon. Rearrangement hurt – of course it did, things got used to being where they were day in and day out with only the smallest degree of movement – but the sound was by far the worst part. Cartilage had a terrible cringe inducing crunch, skin only had so much elasticity before it popped, and hair growing in excess of a fraction of a millimeter per day … the closest analogue Danny could think of (when she could think again at all) was needles moving in reverse of their usual direction.

The confusion of adjusting to herself afterwards is almost, but not quite, enough to displace the throbbing ache.