In Szaylco, the trees are permanently bent at a gruesome angle from the winds that whip down the mountains, trunks bending and creaking as they bow to the will of the wind. What little water runs through the creek is cloudy and bitter, tasting more like grime than mountain water. Practically no vegetation grows among the sharp rocks that cover the ground- no grass, no flowers. The only signs of life other than the crooked-backed trees are short, thorny plants more like twigs than weeds.
Any animals that tried to brave the hell-hole of Szaylco are long gone by now, nothing them but bones bleached white by the sun by now. An occasional bird will flutter through the trees, maybe perch and sing awhile, song sounding eerie and lonely as it echoes through the villages, but it always moves on.
There aren't any people here, either. The settlements dotting the mountainside are ghost towns, just like they have been for years and years. If you were to look in any one of the stone cottages, you would find plates still on the table, clothes still in the wardrobes, maybe a pot of water still hanging over a pile of ashes. They all left, abandoned their homes at a moment's notice. No one knows why.
In fact, the only thing people come to Szaylco for is the stars.
Here, this high on the mountain, where no factories chug their pollution into the sky and no cars belch exhaust into the air, the night sky is as clear as new glass. You can see the whole galaxy laid out in front of you. It's so quiet here that you swear you can hear the earth move. Some say it's a ticking, like an old clock, others fancy it's like a creaking door.
They all lie. Here, in the dead of Szaylco, the silence presses in on your ears so hard it feels like your eardrums might burst. Like a thick blanket laid across the rocky wilderness, the quiet is maddening, but for some reason nobody is eager to break the stillness. The few people that come up here at night to watch the stars tiptoe around and talk to each other in hushed voices, if they talk at all. Everybody flinches when a small rock is jarred and tumbles down the mountain, as loud as a scream in the silence.
The people, as quiet as they try to be, are still deafening. They come in hordes to gaze at the stars. Lovers, families, scientists, artists, young, old, fat, thin. You name them, they've been here.
I don't remember many of them. Some have stayed with me in the form of memories to help me through the cold nights of winter when no humans come to watch the stars. The young girl with blonde ponytails and a pink frilly dress. The writer with his sleep-blurred eyes and breath that smelled so strongly of whisky nobody sat within ten feet of him. The business woman with a sleek bun and cold blue eyes that looked as if this was the first break she'd had in years. There are more.
But none of them are who I'm looking for, waiting for, watching for. I have seen hundreds, thousands, millions come and go, but none are right. I don't know how I know, but I will when I see them.
It's starting to get cold. You can see your breath condense in front of you in a tiny cloud most nights and the rocks, warmed during the day from the sun's rays, don't stay that way for long. No more families come, only adults bundled up in coats and pants and boots and scarves and hats. I don't know if I'll be able to tell when they appear with all those layers.
At first, I think it's her. She comes on a particularly cold night wearing nothing but a small jean jacket to keep her warm. She is accompanied by no one, but seems to have no qualms with that fact, and plops herself down on a large rock almost immediately after I see her. Her lips are red like blood, roses, rubies. Mostly like blood. A foreign warmth pumps through my veins at the sight of her and I nearly cry out in joy. This is who I've been waiting for.
But then she pulls a phone out of her pocket and takes a few seconds to read whatever is on the screen before she laughs. It is not muffled or hushed like all the humans who came before her, but loud and raucous and grating. The few adults that are seated around her making shushing noises or stare disapprovingly at her and the warmth steadily trickles out of my body until I am immobile once more. She is not the one.
The winter comes and goes, followed by spring, summer, and then fall. They still haven't come. I begin to wonder if they ever will.
Another winter passes and I all but give up hope, letting the freezing rains and stinging sleet of a mountain winter rain still my mind. Maybe it would be better to just let myself slip into the endless sleep that keeps tugging at the edges of my consciousness. It has been calling to me for many years, telling me to give up, to let myself go already. It might be time to do just that. After all, what are the chances they will ever come after so many years? I am old, so very old.
I was here before this mountain grew out of the ground, before the dirt that covers the earth, before the air that blankets this planet. I don't know how or why I was created, or even what I am, but I know that I must wait.
By some miracles, the darkness does not engulf me, and the snows slowly melt away to give way to the rocks of Szaylco once more. The prickly weeds rise up from the cracks between the boulders and the winds howl and still I wait.
The first person to come this time is a child. He is alone, which is strange, as he can't be more than sixteen years of age. Surely someone must be here to accompany him.
Nobody comes. He watches the stars by himself all night.
I add him to my memory.
Spring comes to Szaylco. That doesn't really mean much except slightly warmer nights and slightly longer days. I expect nothing but the same, more thorny plants, more creaking trees, more heavy rains.
And I get all of those. But on the twelfth day of spring, when the sun is alone in the blue sky, there is a dot of green.
Curious, I watch. The dot soon grows into a seedling, which grows into a stem, which grows into a flower. It is nothing spectacular, only a few inches high with unimpressive white petals circling a tiny yellow center, but it is the first one I have seen on this mountain in all of my existence. It is beautiful.
The flower gives me hope. It survives the harsh winds and pounding rains of Szaylco, always standing tall, never breaking. The petals fold in on themselves every night and open every morning. Poor flower, I think. It can never see the one good thing about its horrendous home. It can never see the stars.
Two weeks after the flower, it rains.
But this rain is different than the usual rains here in Szaylco. This rain is accompanied by booming claps of thunder and jagged flashes of lightning. This rain washes a flood of dirt and rocks down the mountain. The avalanche buries the town of Szaylco, buries the crooked trees, buries the dirty crook, buries the flower.
By the time the rain is over, there is nothing left of Szaylco but the very tip of the tallest building.
I let the darkness start to engulf me. No one will visit the mountainside now, not when the avalanche destroyed the village.
So I wait. But now I wait for the everlasting the sleep to take me. I wait for death.
An undecipherable amount of time passes. Gradually, the blackness starts to take me. People start disappearing from my memory. I can't remember what color that old man's shirt was or if that woman had a daughter or a son. A few times, I panic, but then the hopelessness overtakes me again and I relax into the impeding non-existence.
And then, I awaken.
Nothing in particular stops the sleep from soaking up my brain. Szaylco, or what's left of it, is the same. Mud and rocks and a few shingles sticking out of the whole mess. I try to call the darkness back, but it doesn't come.
Perhaps I cannot die. Perhaps this is my fate, to gaze out over the bare expanse of a buried mountainside for the rest of eternity.
It's a crisp autumn night when that all changes.
It's a crisp autumn night when he comes.
I can hear his footsteps far before I see him. They squelch in the mud and kick rocks down the mountain and even stumble occasionally.
When he comes into view, I am a bit startled at his appearance. The jeans he wears are obviously old, frayed in many places and stained in even more. He sinks up to his ankles in the mud every time he takes a step and his scuffed boots are completely coated in dirt and pebbles by now.
Under his thigh-length leather jacket is a simple black shirt, stretched tight across his wide chest, and I can just make out the glint of a copper amulet hanging around his neck. He reaches into his pocket, so deep it engulfs his hand up past his wrist, and draws out a silver lighter. The man flicks it on, presumably to light his way so he stumbles no more, and the tiny flames sheds light on his face.
His eyes are so green.
Even from this far away, I can see the flecks of different colors in his irises, little sprinkles of darker green and gold. His long lashes cast inky shadows across his cheek, fluttering over his stubbly jaw every time he blinks. The lighter throws sharp angles across his face, filling the hollows of his cheeks with pools of black.
The man sits down on the tip of roof sticking out of the mud and tips his head back to look at the stars. As soon as he's settled, he shuts the lighter and tucks it back into his pocket.
And then, he starts to sing.
I have never heard music. I know what it is, obviously, but no one ever plays it, so unwilling to break the silence that they don't even hum.
But this man, he sings like he doesn't know how not to. His voice is deep and rich, rising easily to the higher notes and sinking even easier to the lower ones.
I start to tingle with warmth.
The man sings, and I grow warmer. The stars twinkle and shimmer and reflect in his eyes, green even in the darkness of the mountain night. He taps his foot in time to the beat of the song and I feel a heartbeat start to pump in my chest to that very same beat. Muscles I never had before flex and tingle as blood that never pumped through veins I never had filters through a body that was never real. I blink with eyelids that never were and feel eyes I never saw with focus on the silhouette of the man.
With feet I've never walked with, I take a step forward. The another. And another. Every step takes me closer to the singing man.
I stop behind him. Lay my hand on his shoulder.
The man startles at my touch and turns, his eyebrows jumping up as he lays eyes on me. Immediately, he jumps up and strips off his coat. When he wraps it around me, the leather brushes against my new skin with quiet rasps. I decide I like it.
"What the hell are you doing up here with no clothes, man?" he asks.
"Waiting for you," I answer.
The man laughs. "I think you're drunk."
"I'm not."
The man's laughter slowly dies and he studies me closer. With a hesitant hand, he reaches out and places a grasps the lapel of his coat
"Can I?..." Without knowing what he's asking, I nod.
Gently, he peels the coat back to reveal the patch of skin over my heart. His breath hitches in his throat and his eyes grow wide.
I drop my head to look down at my own chest. There, seared onto my skin like a brand, is a strange symbol. It's a circle with a symbol in the middle. The circle is surrounded by several smaller symbols, similar to the way young children draw suns.
"What is it?" I ask. The man says nothing. He simply wraps the coat tighter around me and runs his hands up and down my arms, trying to coax heat into my body.
"What's your name?" he finally asks, quietly.
I tip my head back, look at the stars, like I could find the answer there. "I don't know."
"Well," he says with a soft smile "how 'bout we get you warmed up, and some clothes would be nice."
"Yes, I would like that."
The man takes my hand in his, interlaces our fingers, and starts to walk down the mountain. I follow, falling into step beside him. The mud under my feet is cold and slick, and I slip more than a few times. He catches me every time. I can see him stealing glances at me out of the corner of his eye, his fingers tapping an irregular beat on high thigh, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips when they dry from the cold mountain air. His palm is sweaty in mine.
We're halfway down the mountain before the man speaks again.
"Dean," he blurts. It sounds like the word forced its way out on its own, like his brain didn't give his mouth permission to speak. He clears his throat and says, calmer this time, "My name is Dean."
...
I was stuck in the car for two hours today so I asked my sisters to give me seven letters and based this fic off that [s-z-a-y-l-c-o]. I'm not entirely sure what creature Cas is, but basically, in this universe, some people get these "soul mates." A sort of spirit or essence that is tied to a location or object until they come upon whoever they were created to be with. Cas, obviously, is tied to Szaylco. All of theme are identifiable by a mark, the brand that Cas had over his heart [which was based off of the angel-banishment sigil]. So Dean wasn't just being a creeper and bringing the random naked dude on the mountain home with him. He saw the mark and knew Cas was for him.
So...please review and let me know how it turned out(: I take suggestions for oneshots, you can either message me on here or on tumblr [ .com]. I can work with an idea or a theme or a few words or even if you just have a really good sentence you want to work into a fic. I've written whole oneshots around a sentence I really liked [Warm Apple Pie on a Rainy Day is actually one of those]
So yeah...I guess that's it.(: Have a great night/day/whatever!