Blind with range, Raymond Eawest leaped over the cemetery wall to track down the taunter. In the confusion, tiny Joe, intensely adventurous for his age, broke from his mother's grasp and escaped in the dark to wander further down the road, soon finding the cemetery gate.
Peering through the black bars was an older boy. He looked almost as old as Joe's babysitter's brother. The boy frowned and shouted, "We've been teasing a little boy! I think we should stop now."
Joe gaped further and started sucking his thumb and behind the youth there soon appeared a very shaggy man. He almost looked like a werewolf, but more sad than scary. He soon looked even sadder as he, too frowned.
Joe let out a small gasp as a robed figure leapt from the shadows at the... werewolf?... crashing him to the ground. "Christiaan!" the man—growing ever furrier!—shouted. "I swear it wasn't me! I'm not your enemy!"
But before this stranger could reply, yet another figure entered the fray. It was Daddy, Raymond Eawest. Still too furious to think, his thoughts short-circuited and he was more concerned with causing harm than the fact that one of these men struggling on the ground had not been his tormenter. And Raymond Eawest knew many ways to cause harm.
Jens, meanwhile, after his centuries of dealing with other people, knew many ways to size a man up, and even in the gloom, he quickly intuited much of the character of his unlikely savior Raymond Eawest. He also knew much about making the impression he needed. All he didn't know how to solve was the enormous inconvenience of lycanthropy and its occasional transitions, like the one he was undergoing right at this moment.
Standing up more falteringly than he needed to, moving subtly a bit further into the darkness, brushing off his thankfully-formal attire, he said "Thank you, good sir," in a practiced voice that was both stately and contrite.
