I think Helen has figured out what you are ... and you are not supposed to be real!
She wasn't real? What did that mean? Jessie was completely confused now. She seemed to be a were-bird whose superpower was the ability to find jewellery (ok, that was odd and not at all fearsome, damn it!) but surely there were shapeshifters like her, otherwise where did she come from?
She walked back upstairs into Liam's bedroom and put the necklace she'd just found back on the bed with the rest of the contents of her mother's jewellery box. She sat down on the end of the bed and looked at Jacob and Liam, who had followed her into the room. "Why am I not real?" she asked.
Liam sighed, "Since it's her idea, let me get Helen back on the phone so she can go through it with all of us together." He made the call. "Hi Helen, you are on speaker. We are all here. Jessie found the necklace I hid outside, just as you thought she would."
"This is marvelous!" Helen exclaimed. "Jessie, you are more special that you can possibly understand right now. We don't have all the answers for you yet, we'll get more info when you can completely shift into your Were form, but I can tell you some things now. I'm pretty sure you are a hybrid shapeshifter, which means you'll show a combination of at least two types when you change. You've got aspects of a bird that can be seen in your eyes, your arms, your hair. We haven't seen what the rest of you turns into, but I'm willing to bet it won't be a bird - it will be something else.
There has never been a credible report of a hybrid actually living - they are supposed to be mythical, not real. There are many different stories, different names, for hybrids. I'm going to call you a
gryphon
for now, because you definitely have some aspects of that type. In the traditional gryphon legend, one has a bird's front feet, head & wings and a lion's body but Liam says you smell canine, not feline, so I'm not convinced that you'll have a lion's body. Gryphons are supposed to protect priceless possessions - most stories describe them as fancy guards for the treasures of others - but some stories seem to indicate that they collect and guard their own hoard of precious things.
Nobody really knows what a gryphon can do, no one has ever met one. So Jessie, you are unique and unpredictable."
"How can I be a mix of different Were types? My father was human. Shouldn't a hybrid be a combination of his or her parents?" Jessie was trying to puzzle out how it worked.
Helen sighed, "Very different Were types don't mate or have children all that often, but if they do, the children become entirely the type of ONE of their parents. For example, a werewolf and a were-cougar might mate and have children, but each child would be either a wolf or a cougar, not a hybrid of both types. Hybrids are mythical, they are not supposed to actually happen ... and supernatural birds are very, very rare just so you know - almost mythical all on their own.
I'm guessing a lot here, but if only your mother was Were, then somehow she had to have been a gryphon too and you inherited everything you are from her. I have no idea how a real gryphon came into being but somewhere in your ancestry, it happened."
Jessie wasn't sure what to do with all this new information. "So what now? I don't seem to be able to consciously shift into
it
, whatever
it
is. And if I do, will I be able to walk or think or do anything? A bird's head, feet and wings plus something else, it sounds like a big mess!"
Helen laughed softly. "Remember honey, if your mother was a gryphon she seems to have gotten around ok, so you will too I expect. I'm wondering if part of your problem is that you are thinking of your other half as an
IT
, instead of welcoming
her
as the other half of
YOU
. Liam tells me you are expressing some feelings you are having as coming from her, which is good, she's closer to the surface than she used to be. The more you and she connect the better. Keep trying to talk to her, think to her. Keep trying to shift, but don't do that alone. You are right that when it finally does happen, you will need some time to get used to functioning in what will likely be an unusual body type."
After Helen hung up Liam finished taking photos of everything, Jessie put it all back in the fancy box, and they all went out to the garage where she was shown the hidden safe cemented into the floor under a bench. The jewellery box fit nicely into an empty area inside that safe. Jacob registered Jessie's fingerprints on the front panel and gave her the combination so she could access its contents as needed. The day finally wrapped up as any day does when a family member finds out they are a mythical creature with an inheritance worth many millions of dollars - everyone ate a dinner reheated in the microwave, drank a lot of wine, and went to their separate beds to lie awake for hours wondering just what the hell life would throw at them all next?
*******************
Two days later Jessie was working in the back yard moving wheelbarrow loads of soil and compost onto her vegetable beds after it had all been delivered in two truckloads and dumped in the driveway. Jacob and Liam had left for work together, leaving her by herself for the third day in a row. Jessie was very thankful for that little bit of freedom - it mattered a great deal to her. She had promised not to leave the property and they were trusting her to do as she said she would.
The brothers had been putting on a good show of behaving themselves around her - no overt aggression towards each other - but she'd realized pretty quickly that the competition had just moved to a more sneaky level. They were each taking every opportunity to rub up against her, marking her with their scent. She wouldn't have been surprised if there was some kind of counting game going on with that. Liam was teaching her about jewels and jewellery, looking at the photos of her mother's collection one at a time - Jacob hovered, bringing her tea and then refills and making comments the whole time. They'd framed in the vegetable beds for her ... there had definitely been something going on between them then to see who could do the most the fastest. Jacob had finished his two first and had apparently "won" some time to sit on the couch talking with her after dinner while Liam did the dishes. Generally though, she didn't seem to be "allowed" to be alone with only one of them. Did they really think she wouldn't notice what was going on? Jessie figured she'd tolerate their behaviour for a little while, since it meant they left her by herself during the day.
Something ... no, correct that ... someONE inside Jessie was awake, still mostly observing rather than participating. A few more thoughts and feelings were now bubbling up that Jessie knew were not her own. When discussing her mother's jewellery she had felt a brief intense desire to pile it all back on a bed and roll around on it (?!); she'd watched one of the feral cats move through the garden yesterday and wondered what it would taste like (ug!); earthworms were suddenly fascinating and smelled nice (double ug!) In the quiet of the night the connection was stronger and was seriously affecting Jessie's sleep, filling it with erotic dreams. Her other half was a very horny gryphon! In last night's dream Jessie had been wearing nothing but the diamond and ruby necklace ... and more than one set of hands had been caressing her. She had cum, hard, and woke up wondering if her cries had been real or not. When she saw Liam smirking at her as they left for work in the morning, she knew she'd been a noisy neighbour - damn
her
.
Jessie had been carefully pacing her work, moving a half-dozen loads at a time before taking a break. It was a very nice late afternoon and she lay in the grass looking up at the sky resting her back for a few minutes. She'd been silently talking to her other half all day. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to feel something, anything, talking back. Nope, nothing ... sigh ... she just let the sun warm her skin and gradually drifted close to sleep.
Jessie awoke with a start, something warning her of danger. Her heart beating fast, she sat up and looked around wondering what was wrong. Her eyes met the gaze of a coyote standing under one of the large trees on her side of the back fence, only about 15 feet from her. It was one of the wild ones from the pack in the golf course, a male. There was another one, a female, sitting on the other side of the fence. They were hungry - how she knew that, she didn't know. She was about to stand up and make noise to scare them away when the male growled. The simply-human Jessie would have reacted to that by yelling and throwing whatever came to hand at him to drive him away. But she was someone else now, and that some
one
else decided this was the time to come all the way out.
Jessie's first complete shift was a very weird and uncomfortable experience. It was like every bone in her body was suddenly pulled apart, crushed up, pushed into a big ball, bounced around a few times, and then stretched out in every direction all at once. It hurt, intensely, but that only lasted for a second. Her eyesight went blank briefly and came back with an acuity that was amazing, very different from what her human eyes saw. Her hearing and sense of smell were much more powerful. Unfortunately her sense of balance was thrown completely off and she pitched forward, doing a face plant into the new soil of one her garden beds. She flopped around, flailing her legs (yup, she was four legged), trying to stand up and managed to get her tail (oh goody) twisted painfully under her (ouch!) She rolled onto her back to free her tail, then lay on her side panting. She tried to say "holy shit" but it just came out as a long high pitched whine.
Luckily her shift and subsequent thrashing about spooked the wild coyotes and they ran off. She'd have to wait for another encounter to prove she was a formidable entity and not a pathetic dolt.
Jessie rested, letting her heartbeat and breathing calm down, trying to decide what to do next. She felt very exposed in the yard, even though the vegetation screened her from neighbouring eyes. She tried to shift back, thinking about being human again, but it didn't work. She didn't know exactly what she looked like but she wouldn't be able to blend in as a normal animal - her front legs were still bird's legs, she could see that. Jacob and Liam were not due back for several hours yet, her best idea was to get up on the enclosed back porch and stay there until they came home. The doggie door was locked or she could have gone into the house that way - something to remember in the future.
