Love & Letters

A Full Moon Ch. 09

With Pop staying for two weeks, I knew that this was going to be one interesting time in my life. I didn't count on Dylan being out of the woods as far as spookiness went and I was really starting to wonder where Gene was. I did get a lot of information from Dylan and his research report. He had read the entire packet cover to cover several times and then handed me a summation. He handed me a book report the same size as the book!

"Um, little dude, this is about the same size."

"I know, but I also found more things on the net that you might want to know about. Like where Gene is hunting the Solaris and the legends surrounding them." I was impressed. Give him something he wanted to study and he would go to the ends of the earth...sounds a lot like I was. "Grandpa and Papa Travis are taking me out to the movies."

"Okay...wait. Papa Travis?" I asked.

"Yeah. He's like my other grandpa since you 'nd Pat are my parents. Can't call him Grandpa when your dad is around, now can I?"

The logic was sound. "Sure. Have you called him that yet?" Dylan nodded. "Too bad, I would have loved to have seen his face when you did the first time."

"It looked like this." Dylan's smile became as big as his ears and then he barked.

I couldn't help but laugh. "Was he in slobber mode?" That got a nod. "What am I going to do with you?" My son was amazing. I would never have been able to cope with all this in the short time.

"Give me a few bucks for popcorn?" I shrugged and reached for my wallet. "Kidding, I have my allowance." In another fifteen minutes the trio were gone to the movies and Pat came down dressed in a pair of boxer shorts.

I sat reading the paper and marveling over it. The first recorded Solaris actually predated Lupus and Lunais by close to two hundred years. They were the guardians of some long dead Queen who worshiped Bast, the Egyptian goddess. With some sort of magic that could not be codified she turned her trusted guards into the first Pantera Leo Solaris. She gave them the power to turn at will into large cats to protect her as Bast did Ra during the day. It was also said she had turned herself into a cat at night much as Bast did.

Dylan had gone into vivid detail on the history of Bast and her religion and how Solaris thrived until a worshiper of Wepwawet, the wolf god, sought to overthrow the monarchy by turning his soldiers into ravening wolves to hunt and kill the Solaris while they were vulnerable during the night. The usurper gained a foothold because his creatures were infectious and able to take on the Solaris as they slept. The queen and her most trusted fled over the Tigris and the Euphrates, through the Fertile Crescent and east, running from the spreading plague of the Lycanthropes so named by the Greek who seemed to be passed over for the most part. The queen was killed in what is now India but a few of her followers remained.

There were tons of reports and sightings all over the world throughout history, but they stopped in the late 1950's. Like Solaris were truly and utterly extinct. Dylan had added that an anonymous source had a conversation with one a few decades ago, but that was the last recorded incident with a Solaris. Many legends were out of Central and South America and led to the worship of jaguars in their cultures. Even the Inuit people have revered legends and how some could become one with the cats.

"Anything interesting?" Pat asked, jarring me from my reading.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Dylan has really done a thorough search and report. But all of the sightings stop in 1957 over in North Dakota. There had been so many, each one showing that the Solaris were all moving north and then nothing. Like they just...left." I was at a loss. "And Dylan's behavior and weirdness only marginally reflects what was recorded about Solaris puberty. They go throw a huge growth spurt right before their first change. Like a foot to two feet in a month."