So a few tumblr friends and I livestreamed Stonehenge Apocalypse the other day, and someone came up with the idea of writing a Stonehenge "prequel." So here is my alternative theory to ancient aliens on where Stonehenge came from.
disclaimer: don't own Gabriel or Supernatural but they do own my soul.
It was miserable and cold. All the action was going down back east, where there happened to be a lot of sunshine and beautiful, dark-skinned women. This place was depressing. The few humans who had managed to migrate their way north to this desolate rock were surely regretting it. The small, bedraggled group he was following were huddled around a bonfire, shouting convoluted phrases to the gods in the sky, praying for sunshine. The rain beat down harder, mocking their efforts.
Gabriel wasn't sure exactly how he ended up here. Maybe it was punishment. Mike had warned him about messing around with the humans too much. "We can't affect their development," he had lectured when they were in Africa, overseeing the construction of the world's first irrigation system.
Mike was a hypocrite. And Gabriel really tried to be good. Really. Besides, no one ever proved that it was his fault the Tower of Babel had fallen. Nevertheless here he was, sitting on the ground, watching short beings in furs pray their hearts out to nothing whatsoever. He kinda felt bad for them; they really did try to get along despite all the horribleness thrown in their direction. He wanted to skip ahead a few centuries, when, according to Raphael, things over here got really interesting. But he knew that if the job wasn't finished first the whole timeline might get thrown off.
It was a stupid assignment: give them spiritual direction. Inspire them in the word of our father. Nothing was said about also making sure they didn't lose half their population in the unbearable island winters, or about how insufferably stubborn they would be. He traveled half the countryside, village after village, trying to give their wayward earth religion some sort of coherence. It was impossible. Their gods lived in too many places: in the sky, in the forest, underground, in the water... It was needlessly confusing.
One of the young men he had interviewed, a tanner in a place called Caerdydd, was a perfect example.
"How many gods do you have?" he had asked, disguised as a Frankish pilgrim.
"I don't know." The boy was very uncomfortable – Franks were not well-liked in these parts. Gabriel knew this, of course. But it was too funny to watch them get all flustered about a perfectly normal human from another place, especially when there were much more dangerous things out there.
"Do you pray to them?"
The boy scratched his chin. "Yes. We always pray in the autumn, and in the spring."
"No, I mean do you pray to them. Yourself."
"But I am not a priest. I cannot."
Well that explained a lot. "What do the priests ask for when they pray?"
"Many things. Good weather, plentiful crops..."
"And do these gods deliver?"
The boy shrugged. "Yes, I suppose. We are surviving."
Apparently that was all one looked for in a god these days.
And the boy wasn't lying. It was the same in every town: a small group of priests handled all spiritual and administrative affairs. They had a lot of clout with the locals, who seemed to eat up whatever ridiculous canons and rituals they dished out. Giving the northerners spiritual direction was NOT going to be such an easy task after all. His brothers were lucky – at least they got to be in places where the priests tended to be naked women.
The group he was watching now was made up of four priests and a shaman. Gabriel didn't know the difference between the two and didn't really care. They were all nuts. At least he had managed to get this far. He spent months trying to send them "signs," celestial notes of encouragement that would steer them in a more intellectual direction.
One day, he took away the rain. This was a big deal, considering it had rained for six months straight previously. But instead of taking the chance to plant new crops, they had a four day festival thanking the gods for the sunshine.
Another time he called in a favor to have the eclipse moved up. It had two effects: the first was that many people went into a panic, thinking the sun was about to explode. This was a disaster. The second was a bit more productive: some of the priests started to question the movement of the celestial bodies. They even started drawing images of the patterns of the stars on stone. He thought it was a huge success.
Right now they were deciding where to build a working map of the stars. The preferred spot was in the middle of a field of no obvious import. Apparently some great spiritual event happened here a few centuries ago, but Gabriel didn't bore himself with the details. He had gotten so annoyed with the place and its infinitely depressing weather that he bailed for a while, spending the past month on one of the lesser-known Pacific isles, tempting young maidens and drinking out of coconuts. When he got back the priests were planning to build a large stone monument to praise the earth goddess, whoever she was. He tried to persuade them away from this completely useless course of action, but they were dead set on it. The star map had been forgotten.
So, taking a more direct approach, he subtly suggested to one of the more intelligent priests that maybe the monument ought to have some sort of astrological use. It could help them rotate crops at the right time while serving as a satisfactory goddess temple. The seed was planted – they were going to progress after all.
At least that's what he thought, before they actually started to build the damn thing. How was it that Michael could direct large civilizations in Africa with vast tracts of land to organize themselves into perfect agricultural machines while he could barely move a few Europeans out of idle mysticism? The constant pushing and prodding was doing very little to motivate the priests toward intellectual and spiritual awakening. All they seemed to want to do was throw rocks in a pile and pray at them. It was time to suck it up and ask for help.
He prepared himself for direct communication with his brother, but a small voice in his head made him stop. Michael will laugh at you, it said. He'll mock you and then do the whole thing himself, like he always does. Well that wasn't going to happen. Not this time. The priests were well overdue for a bit of divine intervention anyway.
The sky grew cloudy (or, cloudier, as it were) and lightning flashed in the distance. The group huddled close together, confused by the sudden cacophony of thunder. A growing amber light descended from the sky only yards away. They watched in utter terror as it reached the ground, converging on a single spot. In a brief moment the figure of a beautiful woman could be seen. She had thorns in her hair and ivy covered her body. If that wasn't the spitting image of an earth goddess then Gabriel didn't know what was. She flashed brightly before disappearing in an explosion of light, leaving the ground smoking all around them.
The priests were in shock. They didn't move for several minutes. After a while one of them pointed to the ground. They walked slowly in circles inspecting the field, where a perfect map of the heavenly bodies had suddenly appeared, seared into the soil. There was no doubt in his mind that Gabriel's work was done.
A few months had gone by before he visited the place again. It was important to make sure everything was perfect before showing off his handiwork to his brothers. What he saw made his stomach drop.
There were large gashes in the earth cutting across his perfectly-laid pattern. Each trench led to a stone lying on its side, and there were about twenty of these. Smaller stones littered the ground further out, making a semi-circle. Well at least they got the outside right, he thought, hanging his head. It was hopeless. The stones sat in silence, heavy reminders of his wasted efforts. It was offensive. This place was offensive. The stupid weather and the stupid grassy plains and the stupid priests - they were all mocking him.
In a fit of frustration he raised all the stones off the ground and threw them in a pile in the middle of the circle. "That'll confuse 'em someday," he said, satisfied.