New Moon: 'lone wolf

"The real problem, the reason why our kind is facing extinction, is because we are weak. Defenseless. Physically incapable of fighting back. But, my friends, hear me well: there is a way we can strike back! We can cause Them enough damage and havoc that They would leave us alone."

"Very funny, young lad. You know there's no way."

"Sire, this is no joke. It's lycanthropy!"

--Excerpt from the AAC (Annual Abalone Conferences), volume IX.

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The problem with acquiring lycanthropy (once the council managed to agree on it) was the size of your average werewolf, which would sooner swallow an abalone than turn it. This was assuming it noticed the thing at all. It took all of the abalones' networks, fostered over millennia, to orchestrate a chain of events to pass the disease down to smaller and smaller creatures, until a few managed to get infected via a sea urchin. Now they wait, biding their time deep in the ocean, growing their army of fanged gastropods (ironically, dubbed the 'lone wolves) and eagerly anticipating the day they emerge en masse and take revenge for their canned and sautéed kin.

An unexpected and unexplained quirk, though, is that the lycan abalone undergoes its transformation during the new moon, and not the full. Now and then a bold young 'lone ventures to the surface, and may be seen prowling the beach, sometimes accompanied by a were-broccoli or two, who share similar plights in Chinese restaurants and were found to make loyal companions.

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Got tired of working on serious painterly painting, so here's a silly doodle! Credit for inspiration chiefly goes to a friend who saw two New Moon advertisements back-to-back at a bus-stop and was appropriately tickled: one was, of course, about the Twilight movie, and the other was advertising abalone (if you don't get it, take a look over here [link]). This didn't compute until another friend posted a line from Shakira's She Wolf (darling this is no joke this is lycanthropy), and it suddenly made sense. Or not really, same thing. Um. Going back to the proper painting now!

1.5h, Photoshop. Or at least it would've been, had PS not crashed and killed half a good ink job!