God of Marriage Saga: Chapter 7
Imported from SF2 with no description.
It was an unassuming brick strip-mall, on the front of things, and inside, it concealed an enormous, spacious room, full of tables and stands filled with comics.
I must have been seven or eight, I think. I don't remember when I saw her peaking out at me, for the first time, but that visit started a chain of purchases. I became quite fixated on Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog.
Was it particularly well written? Were the characters put together in coherent scenarios? I don't care. It... wasn't the best written stuff, probably, no.
Something about her and her pack spoke to me. Just enough. Just long enough to draw me from my simple childhood fixation with Sonic the Hedgehog games, into something slightly deeper.
Lupe whispered: "A love for your tribe."
It was something I'd completely grasped the wrong end of, and it tore me to bits. Here was this character that was trying to teach love of family and tribe and culture, with this character arc to re-assemble her pack. And I'd simply seen, in my childish mind, a pretty lady with wolven features, who adopted some humans.
Aerith interjected. "You'll have to forgive yourself for that."
I've... already addressed what grasping the thorns the wrong way, dealt. I started looking for an 'actual' pack of werewolves--all concerns for what a Mobian was, aside.
I'd discovered the myth of the She-Wolf. And it had consumed me.
... Yes, Lupe. You're so much more than a character, to me. But it's not something that these people need to understand, beyond that.
She whispered, with a look of concern: "Is that... so?"
... why was I protracting this, any further? For Aerith's story?
I'd already made myself look plenty crazy, just to dig back and admit a simple love, in front of people.
With a basket of flowers in one hand, and my hand, in the other, Aerith made a little bounce.
"It's time we finish this story with a happy ending, Avery."
I knew where we were headed. It was back to that lab, again.