Not much action going on in this part... I think I've got a cliffhanger stuck down the back of the sofa, but it might take me a few chapters to find it...

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"Yeah," Sam looked down, whistling in admiration. "That's a big cliff."

He stood right on the edge, gazing down at the water below him, choppy and dark in the continuous onslaught of Stillwater's relentless rainstorm.

"Sam – " Dean stood some six feet behind him, edgy and obviously uncomfortable with his brother's proximity to the precipice.

Sam glanced back at Dean, laughing at the worried expression on his face, when really he knew he shouldn't be mocking his brother's concern for his safety. Still, he couldn't help making a great display of edging a little further towards the brink, just to torture his big brother a little more.

"Sam!" Dean fairly barked his kid brother's name as Sam continued to laugh at him mercilessly.

"Dean," he said, slapping his hand against the cold wet metal inches from his face. "I don't think there's much chance of me falling, what with this eight foot metal fence being here and all…" He took a step backwards, craning his neck to check out the razor wire atop the security fence surrounding Stillwater Reservoir, before turning back to his brother, who was shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot. "Not unless you're a hell of a lot stronger than you look."

"Hey," Dean challenged, mock hurt invading his voice as he failed pretty miserably to keep the freaked-out look off his face. Yeah, so there was a cliff here. So what? "I may not have any obvious superpowers like you, Rosie Lee, but how do you know I couldn't launch you over an eight foot fence? Arm wrestled me lately?"

Sam sniggered. "Not since I was fifteen. And I seem to recall I won…"

Dean reconsidered his challenge. "Oh yeah," he said, grinning. "Just goes to show you what a great big brother I am."

Sam frowned. "How'd you figure that one?"

Dean shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. "Letting you beat me," he explained. "Bolstering your fragile teenage ego."

"Bite me," Sam returned, turning his attention back to the fence. "Besides," he added. "Even if you could pull a Clark Kent on me, I wouldn't have that far to fall."

Dean sidled up to him cautiously, squinting down through the fence at the restless reservoir churning below them.

But not that far below them.

"Is the water supposed to get that high?" he asked, not really expecting an answer, while he subconsciously ticked off every little difference between the landscape around them and the one in his dream. There was the fence for starters. And the fact that it was a reservoir, not a bay, clearly artificial and without a jagged rock in sight. Of course, the water was so high, there could be a ton of rocks hidden beneath the surface for all Dean knew.

But Sam was right. With the water level this high, even if he did somehow get pushed in, by a crazed older brother or otherwise, he'd still only have a fifteen foot fall at most.

Fifteen feet between Stillwater and a catastrophic Biblical flood.

Which left Dean with Sam's uncomfortable alternative explanation for his dream: Deep down inside, Dean had known it wasn't a nightmare like the ones Sam had. But the thought of it being put in his head by some way-distant long-dead ancestor with an unhealthy obsession with eggs, water and dead bishops was even weirder.

Which left option three: Random coincidence. And although Dean didn't believe in coincidence any more than he believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, right now, coincidence seemed the more rational alternative.

If it wasn't for that whole 'St Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, Patron Saint of Drought Relief, forty days of rain' thing.

Coincidence?

Those were some pretty big freakin' coincidences.

"So forty days from St Swithun's day…" he began finally, still contemplating the dangerous level of the reservoir.

"August 23rd," Sam replied instantly, as if reading his brother's thoughts as he, too, considered the water a few feet beneath him. "Today."

Dean raised an eyebrow, mere inches from impressed. "Tell me you didn't just work that out."

Sam grinned, like a magician revealing his secrets. "Checked before we came," he confessed.

Dean shook his head. "Ah, Sammy, now look what you've done! Who the hell else am I gonna put on that pedestal I'd got you on?"

Sam flashed a wicked grin. "Even off the pedestal," he said. "You've still got to look up to me."

Dean punched his arm. "Have some respect for your elders, Stretch," he admonished, turning from the reservoir and heading back up the slight incline towards where they'd left the car.

And stopping so suddenly Sam almost walked into him.

"Hey, Grandma," Dean muttered, smiling nervously at the old woman who'd suddenly appeared a couple of feet in front of him. "You sure didn't leave us much time to fix whatever it is that's pissing you off…"

She was even freakier-looking in daylight than she was at night, Dean found himself thinking, the weak light glinting unnaturally off her coal black eyes while the green cloak contrasted starkly with her papery skin.

She regarded him unblinkingly. "Restore him," she ordered. "You understand now."

"What that a question or a statement?" Sam whispered in Dean's ear.

"Hell if I know," Dean whispered back.

The old woman continued to regard them thoughtfully. "Forty days and forty nights," she said. "Restore him or all will drown."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, you told us that already," he pointed out, as the woman continued to stare through him as if he'd not spoken at all.

"You understand," she repeated. "God will show you the way."

Dean bit off the smart-aleck comeback struggling to make its way out of his mouth, just as the old crone suddenly… wasn't there any more.

"Well," Dean observed, trying to hide his discomposure at the crone's parting statement, but failing miserably. "That was odd."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Never figured you as the Instrument-of-God type."

"I keep telling you I have hidden depths," Dean muttered sarcastically. "Although I'm not sure the wings and halo will fit in the car..."

Sam smirked. "You ever get a halo, someone'll strangle you with it," he predicted, before ambling over to the place where the woman had just been standing. He kicked at a tuft of grass, as if it could tell him where she'd gone. When it didn't, he looked back up at Dean uncertainly. "So what now, Gabriel?"

Dean shrugged. "Thomas Bradshaw."

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Stillwater, Nevada was obviously getting used to the rain.

Despite the incessant downpour, life seemed to carry on as normal in what had once been a small desert town: The streets had the usual number of cars sploshing up and down them; the sidewalks carried the usual number of people – all wearing waterproofs and carrying umbrellas, of course; and although the stores didn't bother advertising their wares out front any more, the displays could still be seen piled high in the shop windows.

Adapting. Stillwater was adapting to its new weather pattern. People were dealing with it and getting on with their lives.

But still, Sam thought, as Dean turned into the town's main street, tyres squealing ever-so-slightly as they negotiated the water collecting in gutters not designed for this amount of rainfall, there was a weird feeling hanging over the town and its inhabitants.

A feeling that something just wasn't right.

Many of the people who lived here had done so all their lives, and they knew that something was very wrong with their town. Something was just not natural.

Sam could see the knowledge reflected in the eyes of the barber, sheltering under his brightly-striped awning as he sneaked a quiet cigarette between customers, all the while glancing up at the grey sky with a gaze full of wistful misgiving; He could see it in the eyes of the cop sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup as he huddled in the passenger seat of his cruiser, praying he wouldn't get a call that would necessitate his having to leave the car; Even the little girl in the bright pink raincoat wheeling her flowery bike across the intersection seemed to have a nervous look on her face as her back wheel caught in a pothole, splashing her older brother with muddy water. He didn't yell at her. He just shrugged and helped her free the wheel so she could get safely off the road.

Sam glanced at Dean, who nodded slightly.

"Yeah," he agreed, without Sam evening having to put his thoughts into words. "I know."

The Bradshaw house nestled anonymously in an ordinary suburban street lined with a few hundred family homes that all looked exactly alike. Some were painted yellow; some had basketball hoops nailed above the garage door; others had little white picket fences weaving between the flowerbeds. But they were all basically the same, nice suburban houses surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns that had somehow been reclaimed from the desert underneath them.

If Dean were to imagine Hell, this is how it would look.

Minus the rain.

Looking a little more closely, he realised that one or two of the manicured lawns were starting to look a little less than perfect, mossy and waterlogged, while others were beginning to splay mud across the neighbouring footpaths and driveways. The house across the street had a cracked drainpipe that was gushing water onto the front porch, while the sewer cover in the middle of the road was barely containing an ominous bubbling sound.

Dean parked the Impala a little further out from the kerb than he would usually have done, nervous of the water gushing down the overworked gutter.

Opening the passenger door, Sam was glad he had such long legs, as jumping the steady stream of rainwater would not have been easy for a person of regular size. Stepping over the torrent with relative ease, his feet sunk into the muddy verge lining the sidewalk as he stood looking up at the house they were hopefully about to enter. The curtains were all drawn upstairs, as if to physically demonstrate that this was a house still in mourning, and Sam felt like some inhuman ghoul about to intrude on this family's grief.

Losing a parent wasn't easy.

Almost unconsciously, he glanced back over his shoulder to check what had happened to Dean, while stepping onto the firm concrete of the sidewalk.

His brother was still sat in the car, rooting through the box of fake IDs he kept in the glove compartment.

Sam shook his head uncomfortably, wiping rain from his forehead as it dripped from his hair and into his eyes.

A splosh at his side announced Dean's arrival, and Sam glanced over at him with a concerned look on his face.

Dean frowned, feeling like a little kid caught feeding sausages into the VCR. "What?" he asked innocently, the expression on Sam's face almost disapproving. "I didn't do anything…"

"Yet," Sam added, again looking up at the Bradshaw house, where he thought he'd briefly glimpsed a face at one of the windows.

Dean's frown deepened. "What?" he repeated, hunching his shoulders and stuffing his hands in his jeans pockets, as if that could really protect him from the rain.

Sam met his questioning gaze levelly. "So what lie are we using this time?" he asked resignedly. This was one of the less 'perky' parts of their job: lying to innocent bystanders.

Dean shrugged. "Power company interns," he replied, producing two ID cards, seemingly from nowhere.

Sam peered at the cards in disbelief. "No way you had time to make those…" he began, looking closely at the cards before giving Dean an even more disbelieving look. "These say 'Oklahoma' on them, Dean," he observed. "We're in Nevada, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Ever heard of recycling?" Dean returned. "College geek like you…" When Sam merely continued to stare at him disapprovingly, he added, "Hey, we're on a budget here. They're not going to notice."

"Mr Bradshaw worked for the power company," Sam pointed out.

Dean looked down at the ID cards thoughtfully. "Maybe we should try a different approach…" he admitted.

"You think?" Sam agreed with a grimace. "How about the truth for a change?"

It was Dean's turn to return the disbelieving stare. "Ah, excuse me, ma'am," he said in his best authoritative tone. "But some cranky dead bitch of an ancestor of ours is really pissed off about something your husband may have done and is going to drown this entire town tonight if we don't figure out what that was and make it up to her…"

Sam pulled a face. "We don't have to put it like that…" he objected, glancing back at the house and again seeing that face in the window. "But whatever we're gonna do, we need to do it now, otherwise I think these people are going to be calling the cops pretty soon…"

"Yeah," Dean agreed, following Sam's gaze. "I noticed." He shrugged in defeat. "OK Mr 'I-Always-Tell-The-Truth'. Dust off those puppy dog eyes of yours 'cause I think we're gonna need them…"