Bright light poured in as the door opened, along with the sound of muzak and hundreds of excited voices of all ages. Two silhouetted figures entered, but the larger of the two, behind the other, seemed to have trouble getting through the doorway.

A pretty young woman, a teenager really, cried triumphantly, "Jesus! We got you underwear! "

Her wavy, dark brown hair was pulled back into a pink Scrunchy. Her skin was brown, her large, gleeful eyes dark brown. She wore a periwinkle blue sweatsuit set and blue and white sneakers. Her sweatshirt was embroidered with a loon floating on a lake above the words Love from Minnesota. She held up a fancy shopping bag, silvery gray with a gray string handle and the word NORDSTROM in white.

Stuck in the door by his burdens was a man approximately twenty years older than the girl. He held a shopping bag in each hand, one over each shoulder, and a large, beribboned box that read See's Candies under his right arm. His curly brown hair was graying, his beard was dusted white. He had the large, dark brown eyes of a weary beagle. He wore brown corduroys and a brown sweatshirt brightly embroidered with fireworks, a Ferris Wheel and the words Mall of America.

The young woman and the man had small, quietly glowing halos.

Sam and Dean had spent enough time in Minnesota to recognize the stereotypical Range accent as the young woman added, "They're purple. You like purple, dear? And they're boxers."

Jesus muttered, "Mom. Step-Dad."

"Who?" blurted Sam and Dean.

"Don't bother to hold the door for me, I'm just your foster father," said the man in monotone.

Jesus hurried to the door and held it open. As the man dislodged himself and shuffled into the room everyone caught a glimpse of a balcony hall overlooking what appeared to be a huge indoor amusement park. The door shut and vanished.

Jesus took the NORDSTROM bag the young woman held out for him. He picked at the gray tissue paper stuffed inside it. "Aww, Mom! You're not supposed to mix with—"

"I'm not supposed to walk the Earth, yah, I know." She removed a packet of purple Jockeys, opened it and, much to the chagrin of Jesus and everyone else in the room, she held a pair of the boxers in front of Jesus' Madras shorts for size. "What am I supposed to do in Heaven, what with the angels having their little disagreements? Hide here forever? Look!" She lifted her arms and turned, holding the briefs in her hand like a banner. "I blended in! I even changed my voice to the right kind of regional English!"

"How did you pay for this?"

"The good Lord provides."

"She stands next to an ATM and it spits out money," replied the older man in monotone.

"Mom!"

"The one thing I can say for your Heavenly Father, He always provided child support."

"Meaning me," said the older man flatly. "I'm the child support."

"Joseph," the girl scolded affectionately.

"So what was I for, but child support?" Joseph clunked down the candies on top of the pizza boxes, apparently oblivious to the two humans, two angels and the demon. "Was He," Joseph jabbed a forefinger skyward, "making chairs and tables and cabinets? And was I doing it for free? Did we ever not have a meal on the table? No. And who was responsible for that? Him?"

"You've been a magnificent provider." Mary patted his cheek. "But now you're not allowed to work, so somehow He provides."

Joseph spoke to everyone in the room, having all along noticed they were there. "If there isn't an ATM an angel brings her cash."

"I never ask," Mary told everyone.

"You stand there and say, 'Oh, isn't that a lovely pair of shoes. Pity I can't afford them.' Pop comes an angel. Always with hundred dollar bills – they have the new ones, with the fancy blue stripe. I don't know where they get them. They must have some angelic printing press. Or they're robbing banks."

"I didn't buy those shoes, now did I? That money became a tip to the very nice gelato server." She clapped her hands. "Reminds me! We brought gelato! And Cinnabons and this stuff called lefse."

Crowley, holding his tumbler, came up beside the young woman and put his arm around her. "Hello, luv. You look absolutely delic—"

Mary took the drink from his hand and threw it in his face. While he smiled and wiped his face with his red handkerchief she pushed away from him. "I saw what you were looking at. But what can I expect from a man who sold his soul for a bigger," her nose wrinkled, "thingy."

"Mom!" yipped Jesus.

"Yes, I know about that!" She scowled at Crowley as he snapped his fingers and a fresh, clean red handkerchief appeared in his breast pocket. "Let me give you some advice. You should've asked for three inches around, not longer. Most women like them thick."

Jesus covered his face with his hand. Gabriel's face reddened. Castiel sunk deep into the bean bag and focused on his knees.

"Dying of embarrassment," whispered Sam, whose face was the color of a boiled beet.

"Right there with ya," whispered Dean.

"Women, we have this thing called a cervix," Mary lectured the demon, "and having things banged against it doesn't feel too good, y'know."

"MOM!" said Jesus.

"What you should've sold your probably worthless soul for was knowledge of what pleases women. But it was never about you pleasing the woman, was it? No, like all men it was about pleasing yourself. A big ego requires a big—"

"MOM." Jesus jabbed his finger to indicate the others in the room. "Company."

"I see, dear, I'm not blind."

"I'm still a virgin, in case anyone's curious." Joseph sat in the La-Z-Boy, flipping through a Hard Rock Café Mall of America take-out menu. "Virgin when I married, and then after the boy came and her virginity was restored, well, it was 'God's not going to restore it a second time, Joseph.' This is why I work with my hands. A lot."

"Yes, dear, we're all fascinated," said Mary.

"Some years I cranked out a dinette set a week."

"MOM. DAD. COMPANY," Jesus insisted.

"I'll say hello here, then! Jeez o petes!" She spotted Gabriel sitting uncomfortably on the floor. Her face paled. "Gabriel."

His smile was more of a wince. "Hi, Mrs. God."

"I'm pregnant again," said Mary with horror, placing her hand on her stomach.

Gabriel waved his hands emphatically. "No, no! I'm just visiting!"

"The last time you 'visited' I ended up with this one!" She pointed at Jesus.

Synchronized, Sam and Dean stared at the archangel.

"I just announced it to her! I didn't do anything! It was the Holy Ghost!"

"And he never called after that," Mary muttered.

Crowley whistled. "Procuring under-age girls for your father. And one engaged to another man. And they call me a devil."

Gabriel protested, "In 33 B.C. fifteen wasn't underage! I didn't procure her, Dad picked her! He just sent me to tell her…," slowly, he thought about what had happened, "that…she was gonna …carry his… without really asking her if she wanted to…." He stopped and blinked. "Yeeaaah, I see that in a whole new light."

Mary shook her finger at the Messenger of God. "You tell His Father that if He wants another one I demand dinner and a movie. Handmaid, my tuchis." She turned to Castiel, who'd turned up his trenchcoat's collar to cover his ears. "Castiel! So good to see you again! It's been decades!"

Cas unwillingly scrambled to his feet and accepted Mary's kiss on his rough cheek.

"Ma'am."

Mary patted his sides. "Your vessel's thin as a rail! Don't you feed him?"

"He's fine, ma'am."

"Oh, you angels treat your vessels like they're only clothing, I hate it! What's with your voice there, then? You're not making your vessel smoke are you? You want a lozenge?" From one of the shopping bags she pulled out a large, quilted, over-the-shoulder blue purse and dug around in it.

"No thank you, ma'm."

"It's no trouble." A rattle, crinkle and a squeak came from her bag. "I got Ricolas."

"Hi, I'm Joseph." Joseph raised his hand in a weary acknowledgement of the Winchesters. "Jesus's meat dad. Just in case you were wondering. Not that anyone was."

"Cas, you knew they were alive and you didn't tell us?" said Dean.

"He didn't know Jesus was alive, because he wasn't allowed to know. And he knew better than to ask, being a good soldier." Mary yanked out a Ricola, pulled off the wrapper with some difficulty, and as Cas's mouth opened in silent protest she popped it in. She smiled at the boys. "Me and Joseph he could know about since, um, we're not that big a deal up here. But he wasn't ever to tell about us, either. Hello, Jesus' new friends. I don't recognize you."

Cas shifted the Ricola to one cheek and muttered with difficulty, "They're people. Living people."

Mary gasped.

"Oy," said Joseph, looking up and shaking his head.

"You can't have people here! Especially…" She experimentally squeezed Dean's arm. "Living ones."

"I didn't invite them, Mom. They found the secret back door."

"We don't mean to intrude," said Dean, as Mary continued to explore his right bicep, "ma'am."

"Don't mind me being in the same room," said Joseph, "I'm only the foster father." He pulled a fragrant box from a bag. "Cinnabon, anybody?" he asked unenthusiastically.

Dean politely stepped back and Mary let go and clasped her hands in front of her. "Ma'am," he had no idea the proper way to address her, "are you a prisoner here, too?"

Mary looked at Jesus with resigned disapproval. Jesus opened a Coke and sucked on it. "So, they know, then?"

"Like, I don't have anybody new to talk to for a couple hundred years, so..." Jesus shrugged. "I spilled."

"I'm not a prisoner, dear." Mary put her purse back in the shopping bag. She sat with excellent posture in the La-Z-Boy. "I can come and go because other than teleportation and eternal youth I have no magic, so his Father doesn't…didn't…see me as, well, able to complicate things."

"Dad doesn't call it 'magic,' Mom."

"Well, there's no difference in my book." She addressed Sam and Dean with her incongruous Minnesota accent. "God allows me to go forth among the people but without anyone knowing who I am, ya know. I have the power to blend in, and I have some angels who watch over me. Well, they used to, until they all went kinda, sorta…" She wiggled her forefinger in a circle around her temple. "Not that I need guarding, I can't die, but God always said demons couldn't be trusted." She glared at Crowley standing behind the bar, who lifted his glass to her and drank. Smiling at Cas she added, "Castiel had guard duty over me for a while, didn't you? We had fun."

Cas dryly reported, "We were at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. I would debate the description of 'fun.'"

"Yes it was! We and those nice young men in dresses overturned a paddy wagon!"

Joseph flipped a page of The Watch Tower. "And I was here, reading Portnoy's Complaint. All in all, I'd've rather been at the riot."

"Ma'am," said Sam, hopefully, "do you know where God is?"

Mary patted his arm. "No, dear. Nobody does." She gripped his upper arm while smiling up at him. "Oh, look at Mr. Worry Face. All the little muscles are twitching." She looked at her right hand, which was clenched around Sam's forearm, and pulled her hand away. She poked his side and walked over to her bags. "You need to eat. We got Arbys. Want some curly fries?"

Gabriel came over to the bag. "Sure! Did you get marinara sau—"

Mary slapped his hand, which he yanked back and rubbed. "You can conjure food from thin air. If you want curly fries you can pull them out of your- you make your own! Can't you see how hungry and scared and lonely these boys are?"

Gabe whined like a five year old. "It takes energy to make stuff out of thin air. I want real food for once."

"We're hungry, yeah," said Dean. "But ma'am, we're not scared or lone—"

Mary beamed at him as if she understood that Dean was protecting his pride. "You've a strong, brave boy, but you're a liar. We got rib tips from Famous Dave's. I love Famous Dave's!"

"That's right," Gabriel grumbled jealously, "pamper the humans."

The corners of Mary's mouth tightened as she dug out through the shopping bags.

"Did I hear someone say something?"

"Gabe," Castiel warned lightly, but sympathetically.

Gabriel snapped, "C'mon, Cas! Doesn't it irk you, even a little bit? From Dad to… His mom, the humans have always been the favorites." He held up his hands to Mary when she glared at him. "Don't get me wrong, I think they're better'n us." He added as he addressed everyone in the room, "But damn, when have we ever, ever, been shown the attention and kindness and...and love they get?"

"Yeah, demons and monsters trying to turn us into their personal Happy Meals," said Dean. "We feel so loved."

"We're not meant to be objects of love," Castiel reminded his brother. "We're not supposed to even feel it."

"So why then do some of us know what it is?" The archangel confronted his brother. "And want it? And miss it? Yes, miss it! Dad loved us! You felt it, too. We loved each other, big brothers, little brothers, all of us, we did know love, the love of the heart. " He hit his chest with his fist. "You may have gone to Earth as a dutiful solider, an officer of the Lord, but you didn't stay that way. And I didn't stay what I was. Because we missed love."

"You were always different," Castiel insisted.

"Yeah! And why's that? If Dad created me with the intention that I have no thought but to be his Servant, then how is it I was unhappy doing what He created me to do? How did I change? Why was I even capable of change? And why do I feel…not loss…" Gabriel's expression was restless, as if both searching for and avoiding something. "An emptiness." He looked Castiel in the eye. "You don't feel it?"

"I don't know what it is I feel," Cas muttered.

"Liar. All the times in the early days when we saw Mary doting on Jesus, didn't you think, 'I want that. Why doesn't someone give that to me?" With pain in his voice Gabriel added, "'Why did Dad stop giving that to me?'"

Crowley had been silent and immobile during this exchange. The façade of smugness had melted from his face, revealing a bare, weather-beaten surface.

The demon croaked, "I feel it."

"Who's asking you?" Gabriel sneered.

Crowley's mouth twisted and his large eyes narrowed and glowed. "No one ever does ask me, do they, eh?" His register lowered and he spat his words. "You angels. All holier than thou. You say it's your duty to protect humans, but where were you when Lucifer began corrupting us? Eh? In Mexico I've seen murals of angels walking behind little children, protecting them, overseeing their day to day lives with mercy." Crowley's eyes shone not with internal fire, but surface moisture. "Where, where was an angel to protect me? You think I was evil as a little child? No. I was scared and lonely, and maybe, just maybe, I cried out for Mother Mary," he glared at Mary, "or some angel," he looked blades at Gabriel, "to intercede on my behalf. And what'd I get? Another beating." He hissed with bile rising, "I may have been darker by nature from birth, I can't know, but it didn't take much of a push, not when at a very young age one is made quite clearly to understand that the protection of mothers and Heaven is a lie."

"Crowley," said Sam, not unkindly, "the human blood is—"

Crowley snarled with tears in his eyes, "Yes, I bloody well know, it's turned me into a pathetic, mewling-" he shot a finger at Sam. "And that's your fault! Damn you, and I will, given a chance!" He ground his teeth at Gabriel and Castiel. "You hypocritical bastards, we all of us want that," he nodded at Mary as his voice cracked, "from a mum, from a dad, from two dads, two mums, a grandparent, an auntie, a guardian! Why don't we have a mother's love, from someone?" His voice and expression collapsed. He sobbed, "I want a mummy!"

Tear streamed down Gabriel's cheeks. "I want a mommy too!"

Cas, his face red as he burst into tears, cried, "I want a mommy too!"

The angels and the demon grabbed each other and hugged fiercely.

"Cinnabon?" offered Joseph.

"Well," said Mary as the three beings sobbed and embraced. "That's different."

"Anyone else find this deeply disturbing?" asked Sam.

"Oh, as opposed to the non-disturbing day we've had so far?" said Dean.

"We want our mommy!" wailed the angels and demon.

Jesus sat on the couch, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and sighed.

"Dudes, what I said about the room, being, like, responsive, uh… "

An earthquake rumble shook the floor. Everyone flung their arms wide for balance.

Bits broke from the walls, the carpet, and all the furniture, and flew to a vortex that swirled the very air in the center of the living room. Water from the wet bar faucet swept upward and curved into the spiral, as well as Coke and pieces of food. Particles of everything in the room save the beings there joined the tornadic spin, coloring it, thickening it. Light bulbs burst, electricity from their sockets and the sockets in the walls sizzled through the air and sparked throughout the undulating, turning maelstrom. With a flash and a roar that made everyone slam their hands over their ears, the elemental form solidified.

Slowly, everyone uncovered their ears and widened their eyes.

The woman was medium height and yet she seemed to loom over them all. Her skin was the color of rich, warm brown earth ready for planting. Her hair was blacker than deep space and fell to her hips in thick waves. Her features were full, her figure was bountiful. Her body wasn't clothed; what covered her from shoulders to hips was a constantly shifting mosaic of leaves, grasses, bark, flowers and other vegetation.

Everyone was very silent when her gaze examined them. Her irises and pupils were like portals into the eternal reaches of space, whose view changed as if it were seeing all the universes one after the other. They saw spans of stars, brilliant suns, milky bands of galaxies, planets forming from space dust, suns exploding and feeding upon themselves until they became pinpoints darker than description.

It, she, looked at her hands. Her lips snickered. "You envisioned me as," she paused, tilted her head as if listening to something to which only she was attuned, "a Hawaiian woman?" She snorted. "Isn't that just unsurprising. You think brown women are more in touch with Nature, isn't that the stereotype?"

They blinked at her. No one moved.

"I appear in a form the gestalt of your imaginations subconsciously chose in order to best perceive me. So I look like this because of you."

"Ma'am?" Sam squeaked.

"Who the hell?" Dean blurted.

"What the frick?" Jesus swore.

"I like your hair," said Mary.

"My what?" The woman, or whatever she was, turned her head slightly, as if hearing an internal translation. "Oh, the stuff on my head." She looked at Mary with her disturbing eyes. "Strange how homo sapiens shed almost all their body hair but kept the stuff on their heads. Must have been advantageous. Or is that due to the evolution of sexual signals and a preference for mates with head hair? What a strange thing to prefer."

They blinked at her.

"I know you all can talk," said the woman-creature. "The problem is usually to get you to shut up."

Jesus said abruptly, "Who are you and how did you get in here?"

She, it, focused on him for a few seconds before replying. He shuddered.

"I'm not a who, as such. I am all whos and none. And I didn't get in here. I was always here. I AM here."

"Oh wow, it's a Taoist," said Sam, reflexively needing to say something.

She, it, focused on him. Sam felt the way he had the time he and Dean had stumbled across a grizzly, far closer to it than any human should have been. It had risen on its hind legs and gazed down on them. The brothers had been petrified. The grizzly had slowly lowered itself onto all fours, turned, and disappeared into the pines. Neither brother confessed to wetting himself, but both changed clothes as soon as they returned to the Impala.

"No," said the force in human form, "but you're right, the Taoists come the closest to a poetic understanding of science and nature."

"You're Mother Nature," Sam stated, as calmly as he knew how.

"What?" the rest of them exclaimed.

The it-woman spoke to them all while her disturbing eyes focused on Sam, who forced himself to return the gaze, respectfully.

"I am a consciousness gathered together in order to communicate in a way you'll understand."

Dean's skepticism and guardedness prickled. How many times had a thing claimed to be something it definitely wasn't? "Gathered together from what?"

Nature looked at him. Dean stiffened but held his ground. "OK, I'll simplify. I am nature. Let's make that capital N, Nature, since that seems to add gravitas to how you hominids of this time and place interpret something. I am the laws of physics, laws of classical dynamics, gravitation, relativity, radiation, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, photomics, quantum mechanics, geophysical and biological laws. I am matter dark and light; I am everything. I am Science. I am Nature."

Dean, not ready to concede, said, "But you're talking and thinking."

"You're composed of atoms and electrical impulses, yet you're talking and thinking," said Nature. "Allegedly."

Gabriel at last found his voice. "How can you be all those things and be a consciousness?"

"You're all those things. Are you conscious?"

Gabriel defiantly and defensively said, "God our Father created nature."

The it-woman grinned. It was magnificent and frightening. "Ask him where he was before the Big Bang."

"You remember the Big Bang?" Sam scoffed.

Nature stared at him. He swallowed, hard. "I was the Big Bang. I'm sorry; I thought you were the one with the university education. Would you like me to draw pictures? If I recall hominids have the capacity to see and comprehend in two dimensions."

Crowley smirked and clapped, three times, slowly and sarcastically. "Very good, darling."

"I really don't think you should do that,' Sam warned, not taking his eyes from the it-woman as her head slowly swiveled to face the demon.

"You had me impressed when you broke in in the first place." The King of Hell walked up to the it-woman, who wasn't much taller than he. While he strolled in a circle around her, eyeing her with intentionally disrespectful and exaggerated salaciousness, he added, "I score you ten for showmanship and concept – or should that be showpersonship? I'm inhaling a reek of feminism. Not that I mind! All's equal in Good and Evil! But truly, pet, to attempt to pass yourself off as a goddess of nature—"

Her rich voice spoke with absolute calm as her fathomless eyes watched his sarcastic circuit around her. "I'm not a goddess."

"I know you're not. So what are you?"

"A goddess is a part of nature. You are a part of nature. I am Nature."

Crowley stopped and his nostrils flared disdainfully. "Oh look, someone who studied at the Jonathan Livingston Seagull School of Pretentious New Age Philosophy."

"Jonathan who?" everyone asked.

"Oh, stupid bleeding book from the '70s, huge bestseller!" snapped the demon, irritated that they hadn't found his antiquated pop reference clever. "I hold the contract on Richard Bach's soul, y'know."

"Who?" everyone asked.

"Never mind!"

Castiel's eyes narrowed as he flipped through the rolodex of his memory. "Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I know that reference. I liked the book. He had wings." He glanced at everyone staring incredulously at him. Confused, he pointed out, "He was a seagull."

"Shut up!" ordered Crowley, his patience gone. With contempt he said to the it-woman, "Look, dearie, don't insult my intelligence by—"

The flash in the woman's eyes was barely perceptible. At first everyone thought they'd witnessed a flaming comet fly across the galaxies in her irises. But they saw Crowley's eyes expand as if he felt that something very, very wrong was happening with his body. In an instant Crowley, body, suit, shoes, his entirety, collapsed as a pile of multi-colored powder, pellets, and a large puddle of water.

Everyone yelped.

"Holy crap!" yelled Dean.

"Thank you," Mary said to Nature. "Really, he didn't know when to stop."

Sam stood over the puddle and the powders. "What did you do?!" he demanded of the it-woman.

"Reduced him to his elements." Her tone was matter of fact.

"Elements?" said Gabriel, staring at the mess.

Nature dispassionately listed, "Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus, to begin with. There were more petroleum products than I would have imagined. His tailor snuck in some cheap thread."

"Nothing's supposed to die in my room, dude!" cried Jesus.

"Define 'die,'" said Nature.

Sam sputtered, "Bring him back!"

Dean blinked. "Did you just say that?"

Sam blinked. "Did I just say that?"

After a few calming breaths Castiel addressed the being. "Truly, Mother Nature-"

"Just Nature. I encompass all genders, sexes, combinations and lack thereof, and ones you can't imagine on planets and dimensions far beyond your understanding."

"It wasn't …fair…the way he was…dismantled," Castiel explained.

"Fair. That's a mental construct some sentient creatures have. It's not natural law."

Dean scowled. "What, you don't care if you kill someone?"

"Does water care when someone drowns in it? Does fire feel traumatized about burning someone to death?"

Mary chimed in, "If it wouldn't be an inconvenience, would you mind reassembling him? Just so they boys won't fret."

Nature looked at the elements and the expanding puddle of water. Her eyes flashed.

Crowley stood before them exactly as he had been before, except for the expression of sheer terror.

"You going to be polite now?" asked Nature.

"yessum," squeaked the demon.

"Where were you?" Sam asked with a mixture of concern and curiosity.

"I think I wet myself," Crowley rasped, not daring to move or blink.

"Ma'am, uh, Nature…" Dean chose his words and tone very carefully. "Seriously, with all due respect…why have you…appeared to us?"

"Appeared to you? I'm not a deity. Not any more than a flower blossoming is, or a bee gathering honey, or a sun going super nova." She nodded at the angels and the demon. "These are creatures that have a greater ability to manipulate the laws of Science than your species does. Which is all natural, they evolved that way, but sometimes they make big enough splashes in the kiddie pool to disturb others. So -"

"We didn't evolve!" protested Gabriel. Crowley whispered a warning at him from the corner of his mouth, but the archangel continued. "We were created by God, our Father!"

"Yes, you angels were," said Nature. "But there's nothing special about that."

"I beg your pardon?" asked Gabriel, ignoring Crowley's head-shaking.

Nature's eyes narrowed. "What patience I've managed to scrape together by forming a brain with the ability to communicate with a hominid consciousness doesn't have the patience to educate you. And I sense you don't want to hear it. Let's just say that in all the universes as well as on Earth there are creatures that can create forms identical or similar to themselves without sexual reproduction."

Gabriel blinked. "Say what?"

"Your dad can do what any asexual single-celled animal can. Bravo. Feel special now?"

"HA!" laughed Crowley. "You're a celestial amoeba!"

"First," explained Nature with a surprisingly amused tenor to her tone, "you angels did evolve somewhat after your God 'made' you. You just don't remember it any more than these two," she looked at Sam and Dean, "remember when their species evolved from being Homo Habilis. The difference being, you angels, as individuals, can evolve in your lifetimes because they span the millennia, while these Homo Sapiens have never been Homo Habilis." She paused, taking in their staring faces.

"Look, angels, it's with you and your father as it was when Zeus birthed Athena fully formed from his forehead."

Castiel's mind wasn't accepting any of it. "I beg your pardon, but Our Father's creation of the Heavenly Host was nothing like that."

Nature sighed with impatience. "Why is Athena's birth a less attractive creation story than your God snapping his fingers and all you angels appear?"

Gabriel put his foot down. "Because Zeus wasn't real! Not real real, like Dad!"

Nature smiled at the archangel in a way that wasn't pleasant because it was trying to be pleasant and didn't fully comprehend the concept. "And here we have why I've come to talk to you all today, besides the fact that you were crying for your mommy." She added, pointedly, "Which I am. I am the mother and father of everything." She turned to Gabriel.

"Why weren't you surprised that Baldur didn't realize that you weren't his brother Loki? The brother who killed him?"

Gabriel's face went blank. "I, uh – he what?"

"Uh huh." Nature clicked her tongue knowingly. "You angels recognize each other no matter what human body you're wearing. Why is that? It's because you see the form beyond the form. Don't you think other gods would recognize their kin, too? Baldur didn't know you weren't Loki because he wasn't Baldur."

Gabriel scoffed. "Yes, he was. I'd known him for years."

"The gods you knew weren't gods," Nature stated. "They were demons posing as gods."

"Why would they do that?" asked Sam.

Nature nodded to indicate Gabriel. "Ask the archangel why he posed as a god."

With all eyes fixed on him Gabriel shifted from foot to foot. "I …well..."

Nature cut to the point. "They were in hiding, the same way he was." Addressing the archangel, she said, "Of course you didn't know they weren't the gods they claimed to be." Her gaze swept across everyone in the room. "How could any of you have known?" She added, firmly, "Your 'God' didn't want his family and his believers playing with the neighbors. He moved into the Deity Neighborhood fairly late in the game. He thought the thousands of deities already in the world were weird and nasty. And, more important from his point of view, they were getting all the attention. Millions of people loved them. So, thought the creature who called himself God, if I can't make the humans love me, I'll make them fear me. I'll make them believe that if they put any gods before me I'll smite the life out of them."

Castiel set his jaw. "That isn't true."

Nature's head turned to face him. He swallowed and squared his shoulders. "Did he confide in you?"

"No."

"Did he, your God, ever speak to you at all?"

Castiel's cheek muscle twitched before he spoke. "I…don't believe He did."

Nature continued as if the angel had never interrupted. "After a millennia of only getting a few thousand nomadic desert people to fearfully worship him, God, as we'll call him, had an idea. Maybe if they love a part of me—"

"Meaning me," said Jesus.

"…I can get more of them to love me," said Nature. "I'll give them Heaven! Eternal life in Paradise! What a concept! So with his marketing and promotion team it stormed the world. Sure, it required some torture of nonbelievers, but what's a little genocide on your way to the top?" She concluded concretely, "But it didn't kill the other gods."

His face screwed up with confusion and frustration, Jesus said, "But, like, if they're, y'know, real, why haven't I met them? Like, nobody's stopped over with a six pack wanting to hang out."

Gabe crossed his arms over his chest. "They were the only gods of those names I ever met, and I've been around for, oh, a while. If there are others, where are they?"

"How much venturing out of the Christian-saturated North and South Americas have any of you done?" After they all glanced at each other, signifying that none of them had indeed been elsewhere much, Nature sniffed. "If you all would visit the other spiritual universes you'd know better. But no. You live in your little gated community with its KEEP OUT signs and metaphysical razor wire and believe you're all there is."

Dean sniffed cockily back at her. "You talk to these other gods? Why talk to them but not to us?"

"Because the Gods and I have never stopped talking. They know they're a part of Nature. But your Yahweh, or Jehovah or whatever name he's going by this millennia, is an arrogant jerk who's thumbed his nose at me since he first realized that he could think. By deity standards he's a teenager who believes adults are ignorant backward dullards to be ignored. So he made certain that his followers hate and fear nature." Nature snickered. "If I'd spoken to you you wouldn't have heard me. Nature talks to you all the time! Hey, you've polluted the water and the air, better stop! Hey, you're screwing up the climate; notice there's more bad storms, flooding and droughts? Excuse me, the glaciers are melting, does this say nothing to you? No, because you believe your God is going to move his hand and fix it all. Besides, Jesus will come to rule a perfect healthy Earth, so why worry?"

Jesus sulked, "Yeah, well, I'm not packing my toiletries any time soon."

Nature capped it off. "Your Dad God has taken a hike and left you without guidance." She paused as if balancing whether something was worth saying. She tilted her head, having made a decision, and examined them all. "Do you know why Metatron is obsessed with being a writer?"

"Enlighten us," grunted Crowley, impatience dominating his fear.

"Because his Father was."

"Yeah, we got that," said Dean. "God dictated the Word—"

"No. He was, literally, a writer. On Earth."

"On Earth?" Jesus, Mary, Castiel, Gabriel and Crowley blurted simultaneously.

"What twentieth century writer fits the description of arrogant, boastful, prideful, not particularly respectful of the female gender or people who aren't heterosexual, a 'man's man,' who apparently needed to constantly assert his dominance over nature in order to validate his superiority, and who was insanely jealous of other writers?"

Their faces were blank.

Sam flushed with revelation. "God was Ernest Hemingway."

"What?" the rest of them spouted.

Nature nodded. "It was as Jesus said, his barrage of questions made God realize that humans would never stop probing. His façade could collapse. Yes, he'd created Leviathans and Angels, Heaven and Hell, from his own being, but he hadn't created everything else as he made his children believe. Sooner or later, they'd catch on. He was a fraud, and, like all beings who plagiarize, he wanted to cover up his lies. He hadn't created anything poetic, anything beautiful. Angels were a part of him, so they shared his arrogance, his close-mindedness, his xenophobia. They weren't perfect and they weren't beautiful."

"Hey!" said Gabriel and Castiel.

"Not the way the things of humankind were. His demigod son drove home the difference between God and the humans. Jesus questioned. Jesus had original thoughts." Nature asked Jesus, "You do know that what you said while you were on Earth, what you preached, your philosophical and theological ideas, came from you, not him, don't you?"

Jesus frowned. "No. Like…it was His Word. Coming through me."

"He wanted you to believe that. He'd only planned to have you be as close to a perfect person as could be, to perform some miracles and give him the credit. But the sermons. The parables. How you brought people together. That was you. You surpassed your father. That wasn't part of his plan."

"Christ," said Jesus. He sat down. "So to speak."

"Your father realized he inspired artistic beauty in humans, but it didn't come from him. What was it that humans had that imagined what he couldn't? The only way to learn the secret, he thought, was to become human himself."

"What was He doing all those centuries between Jesus' resurrection and Hemingway's birth?" demanded Gabriel impatiently.

"First he sulked in The Garden. It was the one truly beautiful place he could take credit for. Joshua provided the companionship and worship he needed. But after a few hundred years God couldn't get past the fact that though he'd arranged nature in amazingly gorgeous ways in The Garden, he didn't create the things of nature or nature itself. He could make a tree bend to his will, but, contrary to what Joyce Kilmer wrote, God couldn't make a tree. It drove him nuts."

"He wandered the galaxy for another few hundred years, popping in on life there – there is life on planets other than Earth, you know – but what Nature, what I, had done on those other planets so confounded him, was so unlike what he knew, that he fled back to what was familiar. And loved. He did love Earth, and his children. But, like so many fathers, his family wasn't enough."

"And that's when he became Ernest Hemingway?" said Dean.

"In June 1918, an eighteen year old, seriously wounded American ambulance driver awoke in the wee hours in a Red Cross hospital in Milan. No one else saw or heard what was said, because his visitor had put them all in a deep sleep. Me, I am everything, everywhere, so I knew. The visitor had been deeply impressed with the young man. They shared similar tastes and opinions. The visitor saw a lot of potential in the young man. That potential could reach fullness with the visitor's assistance. So Ernest Hemingway said yes. He got to keep his legs, and his life."

"So Hemingway was God's meat suit." Dean's lip curled.

"It wasn't quite the same as the situation with you two." Nature looked at Castiel and Gabriel.

"Jimmy —" Castiel began.

"Jimmy has no autonomy," Nature interrupted, curtly. "Jimmy is nothing. Jimmy isn't. Gabriel. What's the name of the human you inhabit?"

The bitterness, pain, anger and sadness that moved in Gabriel's face answered her.

"Hemingway and God worked in accordance. But, as would inevitably happen when two huge egos are confined together in a small space, they grew sick of the situation. Notice, if you have any knowledge of that writer's life, how many fatal situations Hemingway escaped. Oh, at first Ernest and God were best buddies, tempting Death, mocking Fate and Nature. Running with furious bulls, drinking too much, driving too fast, diving into wars, killing every animal that could kill them, wooing and abandoning woman after woman, jealously insulting and punching other famous writers. But Ernest wanted his own life. He didn't know if his talent was wholly his own or from God. So things started to go wrong. A car accident; amoebic dysentery; another car accident; pneumonia; diabetes; and two plane crashes."

"Ernest wanted out of the partnership," said Sam grimly.

"They both did. Because, you see, God was wondering the same thing Ernest was. Was he a great writer because of his own talent, or only because of Ernest's?"

Gabriel asked, quietly, "Which of them pulled the trigger of the shotgun in Sun Valley?"

Nature looked at him without expression.

"And God went where?" Castiel rasped.

Nature continued, with no acknowledgement of the angel's question. "So, angels, without your father, you've ended up like the one family on the block who keeps everybody up all night with your fights in the front yard and your trash blowing all over. You're bad for the neighborhood."

"What neighborhood?" Crowley snickered. "We're all there is."

"Consider this an intervention," said Nature. "Your neighbors feel sorry for you."

"What neighbors?" said Dean.

Sam, looking past Nature, muttered, "Oh, crap."