Diana’s Story

I guess a lot of you are wondering what happened after Dad came back through the mirror. (I call Nick Dad even if he’s not my father. Believe me, I know, there is a difference.) And I guess my brother and I should put together a little follow up to the story of our strange family and kids growing up in a very confused and confusing world.

It’s kind of funny. Daddy Nick was the only person who knew that I realized the things happening In the Dark Zone. That place through the mirror that Daddy Nick went to. And we both had a kind of shared memory of what happened there. And what we could never explain to anyone we knew.

SciFi writers talk about “Adjacent Universes”. And some Theoretical physics think that there is some credence to that (like String theory and a host of other Really high order math concepts that I have no grasp of). To me, it was just an issue of I was There, in the other place, with Derstroyer wanting to make me his bride, and then the next, I was here, at home, and everything was different.

And Daddy Nick had killed him. Which saved me and brought me home. To a new and totally different world. On this side of the mirror.

I’ve never tried to explain this to anyone else. Not even my brother. (He’s a pest sometimes, but he really does grasp the things that are alike and unalike with us. He was still in the cradle when all this came down, But I think he probably would get it better than anyone else not involved.)

I guess my father felt he was left out a little. Daddy Nick and I had a weird connection and sometimes we are closer in some ways then my father and I are. But there is a special bond there with my father as well. I have to tell you, though, it is a Pain having two fathers, a loving hexene beast for a mother and a whole raft of aunts and uncles around all the time. And while mom was straight arrow growing up, Juliet and Rosalee (both acting as aunts) sure were not. I think anything I can think up that would get me in trouble (smoking, drinking, spell casting, male and female animal attraction and sexual awakening) those two have been through on both the human and the Wessen world. The old “Been there, done that, and I have the experience of it” syndrome in stereo. And I can’t get a single thing past either of those two. Even mom was amazed at some of the things that Rosalie and Juliet dreamed up to watch out for. Talk about tight managed childhood.

But I admit I needed a few boundaries from them. I found out early that I could casually do things (like make my brother fly) without any real exertion, even when the barrier came back. He used to love it. (He didn’t like it much when I gave him a Wedgie when we went to elementary school. But he got back with glue in my underwear.) Add to that a lot of other things that my mom and my grandmother (Father’s Mom) are teaching me and when the whole gang is here, we all show off some by doing magic tricks.

My Family life is funny in a lot of ways. Mom and Juliette and Daddy Nick and Kelly and I all live in the same very big house. Mom’s hidden inheritance was big, and Juliette’s vet practice for animals and Wessen is really big and profitable.

And my father is very generous to mom and me. He even has made peace with Daddy Nick about me splitting time in both houses. The only bad thing (for me) is that he and Nick talk about me and what I do. And when I screw up, there is no relief when I go from one house to the other. The “Dads” talk, and the punishment follow me from house to house. Now that really sucks.

With Portland getting so weird among the non-Wessen the whole crowd decided to move further inland. The decision was made to move to Cur’d Lane Idaho, where the population was not in so much uproar, and the education and housing costs were reasonable. So, we went shopping for a house about two years after the “Mirror Event” and found a big old Mission-ranch style place with 6 bedrooms and 7 1/2 baths and a pool for our family, and just down the road we found another place the same size for Rosalee and her brood, and the Internet let her open her Spice and Tea shop to the whole world.

And let me tell you, she got real busy with that real fast. When the Wessen found out that she could compound things for them that no one else could, orders came in from around the world. That is the business she and Juliette started. A Wessen specific pharmacy disguised as apothecary medicine. Add to that Juliette’s “Vet” practice which did a lot of “spillover” with Vessen as well, and you get some real impact on health care for our community.

Monroe’s clock repairs business got a big boost when Sotheby’s sent him a couple of pieces for “refurbishing” based on recommendations from a customer of theirs. The next thing you know, he was doing watch and antique clock repair and refurbishment for people around the world. (He used to laugh that he has more Arabic, Chinese, and Latin American addresses then the State Department.) So that meant that he and Rosalee would be able to afford a comfortable life if it was just based on his work. With the combined income for both businesses you have a need for a serious tax accountant. And so Trouble (sorry, aunt Teresa) ended up working that gig. It turns out that Grimms have a real talent for math as well as well as artistry. (And pure violence)

We ended up owning a small set of stores in a strip mall northeast of town. We had to do this because we needed warehouse space for the businesses and the library. (More on that later.)

Teresa did a bunch of pencil sketches of me and Kelly growing up and I swear that I never looked as good as she put on paper. She was finally convinced to do a “Showing” for comic book patrons for the “Graphics of the Beasts” art show. Who would have ever thought that reality would sell so well as fantasy. She did shows in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. Really big shows of all her Pencil sketches (which sold like gangbusters.)

Add to this mom passing the Idaho, Montana and Washington state bar (she said that was not all that hard) and still having credibility within the Vessen community as a litigator and we ended up with lots of money coming in. And the interesting thing was how the whole law enforcement family moved into the Idaho/Montana State Level.

Father decided to get out of Portland and got a job (and budget) as the director of investigations for the Idaho State Attorney General. And of course, he needed a few other “Experienced Criminal Investigators” to do the grunt work and field work that the office had to perform on behalf of the State. They ended up developing a Task Force for Washington, Montana, Idaho and Oregon. We added to that by building a state-of-the-art criminal investigation lab as well. And we did it for a lot less than the Washington folks could do. Sgt. Woo took over crime scene investigation training (With a heavy emphasis on Wessen or magic events) and the folks in his lab got national (and some international) credit for events that no one else had any idea of. And we even published some of them. (The non-Wessen, non-Magic ones.)

Do you see a pattern here?

Oddly enough, most of the “Investigative issues” were in support of major financial and Ecological issues on behalf of the states. Which created a very nice fiction to allow Daddy, and his partner to blend in across the state. As the Senior investigator team, they did a lot of backchecking on “Strange and weird” cases across the northwest. Things like cows being slaughtered for ovaries. There were a group of Glowenvolk in route to their hermitage in Alaska that we had to host for a while. Father got shipments sent up from slaughterhouses in Texas, Missouri, and Chicago to help the mothers for their gestation of kids. We saved over 12 of the species (Parents and daughters) that way.

And there were some other Wessen issues. The plains and mountains were great for the Wessen community, and Idaho had three things going for it. It was relatively unpopulated, The living spaces were fairly cheap, and the people were more “Live and let live”. The fact that the Idaho population overlapped didn’t hurt either. Worst thing was the Winter Weather. I swear, I never thought zero was warm until after we moved and I had been here for 3 years. But at least it was Dry and not damp three hundred days a year.

The biggest thing was the influx of the various Wessen Communities. First came the Fuksbau, Blubadt and other canids. Monroe’s parents moved here (Sold their old house and moved) and felt like they fitted right in. When the Damen-fur colony in San Francisco needed a new home, they came up here. They heard that there was a new kind of Grimm that wanted to help keep the peace and that living wasn’t too expensive. I must tell you, having 10 of them showing up in a bus as a big extended family sure tipped the Wessen balance from small to suddenly growing. (One of them was Aerial Eberhardt, who tried to seduce Nick and had kidnapped Juliet when she was a Norm. That made for a couple of interesting meetings, let me tell you. Tempers got a little heated, but no flames flew.)

I don’t know all the Vessen we have here. From Shackle’s to Bauerschwine, to a whole pack of coyotles (who came up from Texas) to entire groups of families of different ancestry. It’s almost a new age state. Even the Sheep and Goats came up.

The biggest thing about our move to Idaho was that we had lower profile, less chance of people seeing us when we were letting our skin out, and Room for all of everyone to run. We even got a new Trailer. (It doesn’t go anywhere, but it’s nice and big, and it had a lot of interesting archives. It’s an entire Grimm/Vessen Museum. Someday, we are going to build a building with shelves, and a locker, and desks and everything else and have a museum. At least that’s what Dad and Father want.)

The biggest challenge was economic. Finding jobs for Wessen in rural Idaho, Montana and eastern Washington that didn’t cause stresses was a big thing. How do you dump several thousand newcomers into a state that is primarily agrarian without raising eyebrows?

But Dad and Father and Mom did it. With Woo and Uncle Hank tracking criminal activity (Shackles either are crooks or Lawyers. One of them you don’t usually lock up.) it became a very law-abiding area. When the Wessen Council finally reformed after 2 years, they sent a couple of investigators to “Do some possible damage control”. The junior one had worked with Daddy Nick a couple of times and tried to guide his senior. After a brief encounter with Daddy Nick (and a loss of his left ear from a sword) he agreed that “American populations are under control and the council really doesn’t need to interfere.”

The Wessen community overall has gone through a lot of changes. With the Insurrection of Black Claw, the liquidation of the Vessen council, and the other stresses that we had, as well as the Royal Families being liquidated (There are only a few left, and Father is one of them) there was a real power vacuum. And so, we kind of became the focal point in the new world. That makes it interesting because we really didn’t want to be that high profile. But Father felt that he had to step in to help settle a lot of issues, and the surviving members of the new Council (Eventually) deferred to Nick and Trouble for the issues in the new world. Getting the Red Sea bacteria nailed down put a very hard point into their mindset about how the methods of treatment of Vessen had to be evolved in the age of technology and science. Dad (and Father) spent a lot of time looking into all the Wessen legends both here in the US and in Europe and in Asia to track down root cause and find methods of handling and treatment.

Not that this was easy. Old Habits die very hard. And the Predator and Prey mindset of many Wessen had to be seriously worked on to get rid of it. Which caused a set of basic rules to be put out to all the Wessen coming into the northwest America.

No sentient person is a Meal. Not Human, Not Bauerschwine, not Sheep, not anyone. And anyone who commits murder (the deliberate taking of a life where your own or others are not at risk by the decedent) is subject to capital punishment. No more “Outdoor BBQs”. And more important, everyone had a place in peace.

No harvest of Human organs for “medical Purposes for Wessen”. Organs are not to be taken from the Living or from organ doners (Unless the donation has a prior agreement). A lot of Vessen medical treatments were able to be treated through the use of human organs, particular liver, and kidneys. They were dried, ground up and then treated with other herbs to form the remedies for a lot of Wessen ailments. Obviously, this was not in the line of “Normal’ Pharmacology. So some agreements had to be put in place to allow the continued (and safe) harvesting from bodies (That were already dead) rather than from wholesale lots. This put the organ business on a whole new path. Mom and Jueliett and Rosalee did a LOT of legal work on that and managed to find a way to get donations from all of the funeral homes in the Northwest region that were certified as not transplant needed. That brought a big boost to Wessen medication where we were able to ship human based treatments to national and international patients. And Rosalee worked her buns off to manage to keep pricing at a low and reasonable level. And Juliet handled certification of the organs for non-transferrable diseases.

Inter-Species marriage is entirely up to the Participants. NO, it’s not up to their parents, not their brothers and sisters, not anyone else. And Racial slurs are discouraged. Sometimes Violently. (Monroe and Rosalee’s Kids are three of the most adorable people on earth, of any persuasion. The first time I heard them called a half breed by a pair of Texas Coyotel’s I thought Kelly was going to do an early Grimm talents demonstration. I asked him where he intended to mount the heads. When he had calmed down.)

Deliberate unmasking in public is a SERIOUS Offense. Vogues are to be private except at Halloween, or at Vessen parties where the sudden change can be written off as costume. We don’t need any DOD, FDA, or any of the other Alphabet agencies coming in and claiming people for “Research”. And archeologists who research interesting bones and other specimens are carefully monitored to make sure they don’t expose a “remarkable Fact” to the public. That’s the hardest job that we must do, where we have a lot of “Freedom of the Press” kinds of issues. (Catching a Fusbow in vogue is amazingly cute, and we had to do a lot of “Don’t do that in the public” education there for a while with the triplets)

Oh. And a codicil. For Hexenbeasts, and other magical species. NO OFFENSIVE MAGIC without cause. (See Rule 1) As long as the hexenbeast population was small that was easy to enforce. Then again, some teenage daughters occasionally needed corrective attention. (Did you know that Grimms are almost invulnerable to magic? I didn’t at first. Until Kelly gave me the payback for doing things to him. Reference glue in my underwear. I have to admit that the kid is pretty smart. And Sneaky.)

When the larger Hexenbeast population (and the bees as well) found out about a “Policed state” in the Northwest, we had them coming from eastern Europe, and lower America to a place where they were respected. Mom and Juliet started a council, and Grandmom got involved as well. Aunt Juliet (Honorary aunt) was the only black-haired woman on the council, being the “By magic Born” member. That caused a few grumbles among the “Naturals” but they quickly accepted her ability. (Something about raising the entire complaining group up to the ceiling and tickling their feet until they quit yelling and agreed. Juliet even scared mom a bit with that. She said something about Brute Force is a quality all its own. And Juliet has that in massive quantities.)

And a few words about Mom. Mom’s training in Magic (and further development of it) made her an artistic mage. I mean Picasso, Monet artistic quality. She dug into it from her early life and with grand mom coming around (to pester me a bit) she really got into it. I mean that that Grimoire was never closed. And when Rosalee brought her books along too, (Apothecaries have a lot of natural herbs remedies) and you add that to that the Vesssen stuff, you have a Whole cornucopia of witchcraft, going from mild to Massive.

Juliet however was never that focused on “Fine-tuned magic”. Her immediate reaction is “Don’t force it, use a bigger hammer” philosophy. She has connection to Ether in massive quantities and she is smooth in her application of power. And her use of Offensive magic scares everybody. This is the “EVE” holdover. Juliet won’t talk about Hadrian’s wall and her indoctrination. When she finally was rejoined in her soul between Juliet and Eve, there was a lot of guilt. But she was able to work through it.

And that started a whole Peyton Place set of issues. After coming back through the Mirror, Eve’s personality reverted entirely to Juliette. Totally. And the angst of that triangle (Mom, Juliette, and Daddy Nick) was a domestic minefield for a while. Juliet found out that she was sterile (the result of the transformation) and that she couldn’t have kids. Which meant that she wrapped herself around me and Kelly and Rosalee’s three like a fairy godmother. When new Juliet broke out of Eve and became a human hexenbeast (like mom said she did) she became almost insufferable. (To a kid anyway). Thank God Rosalee got her involved in the Tea/Spice/Vessen medical business. It gave her something to do besides be a 2^nd mom.

You think normal mothers are total monitor freaks? Imagine magical spells that allow you to see through your kids’ eyes to see what they are doing. Took me a while to figure that out. I was 14 and she saw my first kiss. Embarrassing does not even begin to explain that one. Mom was upset a little. But then she laughed and told Juliette to please let me grow up. Rosalee was even funnier. She asked in front of her kids if Juliet could please do the same with them and tap into their ears too. Not to do any animation, but to just report on what they said, heard and did. Now that is going way overboard with child monitoring.

With all of this, you still could see that Juliet had something missing in her life. She had Nick to herself for years before she was transformed and then taken away. She and Nick had gone through a whole host of things that were not believable to anyone outside of the Wessen community. (And lots of shock within the community too.) So there was some elemental sadness whenever she saw me and Kelly with Mom and Daddy Nick. She missed the closeness and romance for a while. Mom saw it, and decided when Kelly was three and I was seven to bundle us both off to Father’s house for a summer.

I don’t know what all went on while we were gone, but when I came back, Nick, Mom and Juliet were all really calm. Juliet was embarrassed when I asked her when she moved out of her bedroom and moved in with Mom and Daddy.

Mom responded to my question while Juliet was blushing that “We three figured that we had enough in common that we didn’t need a lot of separation.” Of course, the bed was huge. Super California King. And I learned to ignore the sounds that came out of there most nights. When I hit fourteen, I figured out what the moans and groans and whines were all about. But that’s another story.

My Father thought it was funny as anything when he came over for Halloween that year. I overheard Him say something to Nick like “I cannot think of any punishment anyone could have done to you that would equal saddling you with both of them and my daughter. One hexene beast is usually much more than enough for most men. But three? I don’t know what you did to deserve that, but I’m glad I didn’t do it.”

I wondered what he meant by that. Daddy Nick replied “Gee, Thanks. At least you recognize it.”

After this sort of “Arrangement” developed, Father finally decided to start dating again. And guess who? The Damen-Fur that Daddy Nick had chased out of Portland. It was a real interesting series of events with Father meeting her when the Damen-fur colony moved into town, and finding out she was still single. Aerieal had a magnificent body, a real interesting sense of humor, and a great job. And they made a interesting couple (her teaching physical therapy and Father being in Justice.) and it did get a few odd looks from the Wessen community. And I think a few jokes at Father’s expense. (Daddy Nick said that she was too hot for him to handle, and he wished my Father a lot of luck)

She had matured a lot in the time since she had left Portland. With her father being killed (honorably) She felt at peace. Juliet was a little peeved at her. (There was a lot that went on in the 8 years in Portland that was almost too much to recover from.) Especially with her hang ups on the “Dragon Lore” way that they had first met. (Can you imagine being kidnapped, and then meeting Monroe in a dark tunnel and being saved from a massive firestorm?) But they worked it all out. It turns out that Damenfeur have as much of an archive on magic that Hexenbeasts have. The combined library spanned whole shelves. And they weren’t normal books, either.

Which is how we got into the library business. In a small but significant way.

When Kelly hit 14 and he needed something to do with all of his energy (and he had a lot) he camped out in the trailer that Dad and mom and Juliet and Rosalee all contributed books to and began to Digitize the whole collection. He got Rosalee and Mom to provide him with a spell that let him photograph and input all of the material into readable print (with lots of artistic fonts.) and to consolidate the books into a massive electronic library.

It turns out that his ½ Hexenbeast, ½ Grimm biological makeup allowed him to actually work spells that were created for him. This meant that he could defrag and read the spells in the Hexenbeast Grimoires as well as all of the others. (No one else could do that. He was able to open pages that no one else could, and the words would just fall into place. And let him photograph them. It made for some really interesting looks from the other Hexenbeasts. Grandmom (Father’s mother) said he was almost as much of a shock as I was.

The Vessen council sent their two “Observers” to “oversee” this little program. They stayed about a day before Kelly asked me to throw them out. I had just turned 18, and was full of Piss and Vinegar, and I admit that I probably shouldn’t have been quite as forceful. (They did leave. And promised not to interfere again. Dad and Father were impressed.)

The reason for the disagreement (and them leaving) was that Kelly wanted to include EVERYTHING. All the spells. All the historical Grimm descriptions of Wessen. All the battles waged going back to even before the Early Egyptians.

He even included all of the Personal Logs of the Grimms. We are talking about each and every record of combat, cooperation, and competition going back almost four thousand years. And applying a search engine codex to compare information automatically. Which really was the issue that the Council was concerned about.