"It's translating as a creature from Earth folklore known for the ability to change between human and wolf forms. Usually during a full moon."

"Huh- I'm new moon, personally, and we can change whenever, but, yeah.  Not folklore.  Hi."

"Hi!" Thomas interjects. "So is the entire family werewolves? Or do you have a vampire or a Frankenstein's monster somewhere?"

"We don't have Frankenstein's monsters, I'm not sure what those even are.  No vampires unless an offplanet cousin married one really suddenly and I haven't heard yet."  She opens one of the tins and drops small pieces of jerky into two mugs.  "Runs in families but not everyone gets chosen- we've only got six including me right now.  Seriously, d'you want some?"  She indicates the mugs and the unopened tin.

"Oh, right. She was offering algae or glowrat. I forgot to translate that."

They accept. Fernando speaks. "What does it mean to be a werewolf?"

Peg scoops green powder into the remaining mugs; it has a vaguely sweet flavor not quite masking a grassy aftertaste, like green tea and asparagus had a baby that drew all the worst cards in the genetic shuffle.

"So basically, we're half flesh and half spirit-" her grandmother interjects something, "-sorry Gran, both flesh and spirit, which means we're responsible for keeping the physical world and the spirit world in balance."

"Spiritual world?"

"Ye-es?  Do you not- I was gonna ask how you handle it without werewolves but you can't access yours at all?  Can anyone speak to them?"

"We don't have anything like that, no. Magic can artificially create some entities, but they are the result of powers but it doesn't sounds like what you are talking about."

"Weird.  How does- ugh- d'you know when Aunt Lida is getting back, I'm not even sure what questions to ask...?"  Her grandmother shakes her head.  "Right, sorry, I don't mean to keep not believing you, I just- don't know how to figure out the difference between 'being a human who doesn't know the spirit world exists' and 'literally not having one' and, uh, the first one kinda feels more likely."

"As far we know, each world either has no magic or comes with a different kind of magic, so..." he shrugs. "Anyway, what is up with the spirit world and why does it need balance?"

"We've got four, maybe five, plus whatever aliens might be up to, but... okay.  You're getting the short version, and I've never done the short version for someone who wasn't, like, seven, so stop me if I start explaining something obvious. 

"This story is true.  In the time before time, when the world was whole, Mother Luna, whose light held back the entities of the Abyss, looked down on the world and saw Father Wolf, greatest of the earthbound spirits.  They fell in love, and in time, uncountable as all time was then, brought their children into existence.  These were the Firstborn, and they inherited Father Luna's quicksilver change and Mother Wolf's powerful form.  Before that time, Father Wolf alone prevented other spirits from preying too heavily on mortals, who were then barely more than the cleverest animals among many, but her children joined in the hunt and became the first pack.

"Gradually, though, Father Wolf began to weaken.  She could no longer patrol all the quiet places of the world, and powerful spirits began terrorizing and controlling entire tribes of mortals, while the Plague King and the Spinner Hag fractured themselves into shards unnumbered, far too many for him to catch at once.  The Firstborn knew then that it fell to them to bring the world back into harmony, and if they were to have the power to do that, Mother Wolf had to die.  It is no easy task, to kill even a small spirit, and even weakened Father Wolf was still the greatest among them.  But every spirit has a bane, and Mother Wolf's was the teeth of his children, and so the five Firstborn in concert brought her down.

"And it worked, though not as they expected:  in the dying, Father Wolf raised such a howl that it tore the world in two.  No longer could spirits wander freely among mortals; no longer could mortals seek out spirits.  Only the Firstborn and their children could navigate the Gauntlet between the worlds, and Mother Luna in his grief and rage turned her faces from us.  Now it falls to us to guard the border, to keep spirits from spilling into the world of flesh and to keep mortals from starving the spirit world, and to stop the shards of the Hosts rejoining themselves, and so it will fall to our children after us."

The triplets nods as they hear this creation myth. "You kept switching the genders of the Parents Luna and Wolf."

"Oh yeah- spirits don't have gender, not the way people do, so you're supposed to switch it around if you're speaking a language that has gendered honorifics- First Tongue doesn't.  If that's hard to get used to nobody's gonna mind if you stick with Mother Luna and Father Wolf, long as you don't do it when you're supposed to be formal."

"Okay... is the spirit balancing duty something that might benefit from sorcery help? What exactly do you do about it?"

"Uh.  In the logistics sense, maybe, but to do more than general support you ought to be part of the pack, and that's not a commitment I'm gonna ask you to make before you know exactly what you're getting into."  Her grandmother adds something, and Peg nods and translates:  "Or let you make, honestly, if you tried to join on a whim we'd be irresponsible to take you."

"I mean, we do take this kind of offer seriously, but I think you overestimate how definite is our commitment when we propose to help."

"Diplomatic as always, anyway. Do you like spirit monsters or something?"

"Yeah, okay, I just- before I explain the hunt I need to make sure you have the context, it's- not something to ride along on.  So this is the main way to maintain it:  each pack lays claim to a territory and keeps watch for things that threaten the balance- spirits that have made it into the mortal world and started possessing people, say, or the Hosts, which are- fragments of spirits, eat their way into people and try to strengthen or weaken the Gauntlet- or things that harm your territory more generally.  Say I find signs of a threat, I bring word to Gran, Gran calls the Sacred Hunt, we track it down and either kill it or make it stop doing what it's doing some other way."

"Cool. Then what can you do? Like, are you telephatic in wolf form or something?" His brothers roll their eyes.

"Nah, Aunt Lida is but I never picked that up.  --he asked if I was telepathic in wolf form," she translates.  "I'm a scout, mainly tracking and stealth and distance running."

"Stealth as in magical stealth? Are you all wolves? Or are there other kinds of were-animals?"

"Partly magical stealth, partly I'm just very good at being sneaky.  And yep, just wolves, no other were-anything."

"What are the other benefits of being a werewolf?"