The second their hands made contact, the world around the Winchesters and the mystery women seemed to dissolve. The same strange shimmer that Dean had noticed over the area before consumed it, and what was left was possibly one of the strangest things he'd ever seen. The area was comprised of soft, pastel colors and nothing seemed solid. If he hadn't felt the ground beneath his feet, he would have said that there wasn't one. He started to say something, but Sam beat him to the punch.

"Really? Heaven is in the clouds?"

The girls, much calmer now, giggled ever so slightly, smiling at them.

"You could say that, I suppose," Sam's girl replied. "Although these are not truly clouds, not in the sense that you mean. When God made the clouds, he studied the composition of this realm. There are portions of this world that are like yours, because everything he made was inspired by this. The main difference is that all the planes here can be walked upon. It is why Jesus was able to walk on water. In the world he is from, they are all the same, but different."

"Do you drink the water?" Sam asked, looking around in awe.

The girl holding Dean's hand shook her head. "We take no sustenance from the realm's planes. We are sustained by the realm itself, by its energy."

"Magic," Sam said.

They shook their heads. "No, magic exists only in your realm. Here, all things are possible, through the use of energy. It is more like science than magic, truly. I believe there is a saying among more, ah, free spirited scientists on Earth, that magic is merely science they don't understand. There is more truth in that statement that many realize," responded the silver one. She glanced at her sister before meeting their gazes. "I believe you had more pressing questions to ask, Winchesters. Perhaps we should get to those and give you the tour later? We have all the time in the world, as they say."

Dean got angry then. "What do you mean, all the time in the world? You mean we're stuck here forever?"

She shook her head, her hair following the movement in soft waves, like water. "Nothing so terrible, Dean. Time does not exist here. While you are with us, here, your selves on the Earth are merely in a sort of stasis. Time there has stopped, in a sense. When you return, you will return to the exact moment you left. Once more, you will be on the road, exactly where you were when we began to bring you here."

Sam's expression grew confused. "Before we get to the who and what, I have a why. Why didn't you just bring us to that world at once? Why the long journey? We had to have been on that road in the in between for hours."

His girl replied, "You had to understand what was happening, at least in some sense. We could not appear to you until you acknowledged that what was happening wasn't what you thought it was. There is a reason God's children must accept him to be brought into the kingdom. A soul can only transverse the realms when they know that such a thing can happen, will happen or is happening. Because we had to bring you without informing you first, we had to wait until you realized, on some level, what was happening."

"I was surprised how long it took, to be perfectly honest. The two of you are usually so quick to jump to conclusions that something is amiss," her sister added. "If we had known how long it would take, we probably would have tried to come up with a more expedient plan."

Dean grunted a little. If the strange shimmering had been evident throughout the time they'd been on the in between road, he couldn't say he didn't agree. He chalked it up to being focused more on the road and getting away from Cas.

"Alright," he said, changing the subject, "So who and what?"

The sisters exchanged another look before nodding slightly and returning to the boys. Sam made a mental note to pay attention to when they did this. He suspected they were communicating with one another when it happened. Whatever they had discussed had only taken a couple of seconds, another thing he wanted to study carefully. If there were any chance it would help them out should things turns sour, he wanted to be aware.

"My name is Aeliana," the golden sister told them. She then gestured to the other woman. "This is Aemeliana. We are the first of God's sentient creations."

"You're angels?" Sam asked, his expression surprised. It was the last thing he'd expected from them. They seemed… different from the angels they'd met. Something was off. His confusion deepened with their answer.

"Not angels," Aemeliana responded. "We were made before that. The angels were made from the energy we give off, to be His servants and the guardians of His favorite creations, the humans."

"What was made before the angels?" Dean asked. He didn't remember ever hearing of anything before God and the angels.

"We are the physical manifestations and guardians of the realms. If there were lore on us, they would call us the Gatekeepers when referring to our duties. But our presence in the human world is known, just not as a physical being. Or, not any longer. There was a time that we were worshipped by old cultures."

"And almost always, I was represented by a man," Aeliana said, pouting ever so slightly. Sam wanted to laugh at her expression, but he felt like it would be a bad idea.

"So, what are you in our world?" Sam asked.

They exchanged and glance again. "In your world, I am the sun," Aeliana said simply.

"And I am the moon," her sister responded.

Sam and Dean's eyebrows shot up in surprise. They didn't know what they'd been expecting, but that wasn't it.

"And we are the stars and the planets and all the solid matter in space," they finished in unison.