AN: Looking through Pinterest for new knit stitches (hey, you have your hobbies and I have mine!) I came across an odd, one-sentence story prompt and et voila this weirdness was born.
Janice was willing to beta this (thanks, chica!) so it must not be *too* weird.
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Dean dodged around a kid who was maybe four feet tall if you included his cowboy hat, narrowly avoiding wearing the kid's bright blue ice cream cone but couldn't completely avoid taking a stroller wheel to the ankle. "I'm so sorry," apologized the frazzled-looking woman trying to wrangle both, plus a very sticky-looking child of about two. Dean smiled tightly, not slowing his pace. Catching sight of one of the tallest animals – er, people – in the crowded zoo, he waved his brother down. "I've been to the penguin enclosure, the tiger exhibit, and the herpetology house, which by the way, I am never doing that last one again. Not only is it snakes, it reeks, and – hey! Where's Cas?"
Sam neatly side-stepped a preschool class, all holding onto a long rope thing with handles on it, and frowned. "He was following you last."
"No, he wasn't. He wanted to see the chimpanzees again, remember? How could you lose him when he's like this?" Dean burst out, probably too loudly given the crowd.
A small coven the three Hunters had come to Michigan to confront had attempted to throw a nasty curse at Sam and Dean, and Cas had shielded them and taken the brunt of it. While it would have been fatal to a human, it had merely addled the angel. He was on his feet, but he didn't talk or respond much to them. He wandered, dazed, distracted by anything, barely able to follow the simplest directions.
Rowena was in Bali "for some much-needed me time, dearies," but had passed along a simple tracking spell to help them locate the original creator of the spell since their DNA was required to completely break the hex. "You probably don't even need to bother," she'd said over a very poor phone connection. "Feathers is tougher than you think. It should wear off in time."
But Sam and Dean weren't okay with "probably" and "should" when it came to their friend and had tracked the witch to...the zoo. And while maybe it would have been more prudent to go after him or her in a less crowded place, they weren't so good with prudent and didn't want to wait.
"I know that," Sam hissed back, a lot quieter than Dean had been. His brow was furrowed with worry and he was sweating even more than Dean was. "We – "
"Mrs. Garrett! Mrs. Garrett!" screeched the last child in the preschool line. "These two daddies lost their kid!"
"We're not –" Dean started as the teacher turned around, but Sam was faster.
"Not our child," Sam said quickly. "Our friend. He's an adult but he's, uh, special needs. But it's fine. We'll find him."
"You should find a p'liceman to help you," the same child advised. "Or we can help you look. What is he wearing? An Elmo shirt like mine?"
"No, Cas is the only one in a trenchcoat when it's 90 degrees out," Dean grumbled as Sam thanked the child for the offer.
"Come along, Dylan," the teacher encouraged, giving Sam and a Dean a brief teacherly smile. "Let the nice men take care of it. If we don't hurry, we won't have time for the petting zoo."
"Don't drop your leash," Dean warned the kid, turning back to Sam.
"It's not a leash, Dean," he corrected, but tiredly, like his mind was very much on the problem and not what he was saying. "Wait. Petting zoo. You saw how hard Cas was trying to get to pet the zebras."
"And the warthogs," Dean remembered. He looked at the odd, Seussian signs that directed zoogoers to different locations. "That way."
The zoo wasn't a large one, but it was absolutely packed, and making their way through the teeming horde wasn't exactly easy, especially since they couldn't exactly push and shove their way through the children that made up easily three quarters of the attendees.
"Something's going on up there," Sam, who was his own fire tower, reported. Dean saw it too. Nobody was moving past a certain exhibit, but instead crowding closer and tighter in.
A tug on Dean's shirt had him looking down at their buddy Dylan. "There's a man in a long coat in with the llamas," he reported with a gap-toothed grin.
Dean said something that he hoped the kid wouldn't repeat, got an elbow from Sam for his trouble, and thanked the outgoing child. A speaking glance and he and Sam were making their way through the crowd in opposite directions. Finally, Dean could see what was causing the ruckus. Cas was indeed in the center of the llama enclosure. Most of the animals were keeping their distance from the interloper, but one dirty white one with brown on its head and across its rump stood forehead to forehead with the angel as if they were in conversation. In sync, Cas and his new friend looked up at the crowd, the former with an arm over the latter's shoulders collegially.
"She doesn't like being here," the angel announced clearly, the first words Dean had heard him say since the hex had hit him. "See how sad she is to be locked up?" On cue, the llama hung her head and stuck out her bottom lip, drawing a collective 'awwww' from the onlookers.
"Free the llama, free the llama," Cas began to chant, a call quickly taken up by most of the kids and some of the adults.
Dean hadn't been idle while Cas riled up the crowd. Not seeing any kind of gate or door, he'd climbed the low wall, then the iron fence above it. He dropped into the enclosure, startling the crowd, but not enough for them to stop chanting. He grabbed Cas' arm. "We gotta get outta here now, buddy," he said under his breath.
"But what about Carlee?" asked Cas innocently, indicating the llama.
"We – we'll have to come back for her after the zoo's closed," Dean said, determined to get Cas moving, even if it meant fibbing a little. "She, uh, won't fit in the car."
Cas sighed sadly and turned back to the animal, putting a hand up to her face as if in apology.
"This way," called a familiar voice. Sam had opened a hidden door in the fake rock hill at the back of the enclosure and was waving them inside.
Dean half-dragged Cas through the door, grateful that he didn't resist. They ended up in some employees-only area where they apparently mixed food and stuff. They could still hear the crowd chanting enthusiastically.
They left the zoo a lot faster than they'd arrived, dragging Cas between them. In the parking lot, they pushed Cas into the back seat and left in a hurry.
"Carlee is the witch who originally made the spell," Cas said placidly.
"You doing better?" asked Dean, pleased to hear him talking even if he was inciting zoo riots and getting overly attached to a smelly camel-thing.
"She joined the coven as a teenager and proved to be highly skilled at writing spells. When she learned what they really did, she tried to leave," Cas continued in a distant voice. "So they turned her into a llama and left her at the zoo."
"What – really?" Sam asked, as if they could trust a word out of Cas' mouth at the moment.
"He's got scrambled eggs for brains right now," Dean protested.
Sam, as he was wont to do, ignored Dean. "Why didn't they just kill her?"
"Sometimes they visit and give her the opportunity to be human again if she'll write more spells," Cas offered. "Ooh, look! A pinwheel! Can I have a pinwheel?"
"We need some of that llama's DNA," Sam said. "In case he's right."
"She gave me this." Cas put his hand over the seat between the brothers. It was full of sticky spit.
"Oh, gross, gross, do something with that!" Dean yelled. He was not cleaning llama spit off the seats and he sure wasn't touching it. "Wait! Empty the bag first!" He yelled the last even louder when he saw the plastic sack Sam had grabbed.
The only thing the stupid little town of Hickory Corners had going for it was that it was the home of the Gilmore Car Museum. While Sam worked on Rowena's spell and angel-sat, Dean had taken half an hour to visit the museum and had splurged on what Sam called a coffee table book full of pictures of the cars. ("Hey, we have coffee tables now," Dean had said when Sam made fun of him. It was not "car porn" and the included poster of the Impala from American Graffiti was not a "centerfold" no matter what Sam said.)
And now there was llama spit on his book.
"If the llama isn't actually some disgraced witch, I'm going to make you both walk back to Kansas," Dean snarled.
But luck was with them, for once. The spit was sufficient to complete the spell to restore Cas back to a his normal level of obliviousness, though he still loved his pinwheel. Dean, pouting a little, made Sam take care of the spell alone and turned on the TV, frustrated by the loss of his book. ("No, won't be fine once it dries, Sam. It is sullied," he'd said, and tossed the thing in the trash, only touching it with his shirt wrapped around his hand, which was not being dramatic, thank you very much.)
"Oh, man," Dean groused as the overly-excited blonde newscaster opened the broadcast from a familiar-looking zoo. "We gotta get out of town."
"There was an odd scene at the zoo today," chirped blondie. "Witnesses tell us that two men climbed into the llama enclosure, hugged some of the animals, and incited the onlookers to chant that the llamas should be freed. None of the cell phone pictures and videos show the men clearly, and they got away before zoo security and local police arrived on the scene. Zoo spokesman Del Gilbert made a statement, reminding the public that such actions are very dangerous to the people and the animals and you should never –"
Dean turned it off. "We did not hug any llamas. At least, I didn't," he grumbled. "Hey, wait. There's not a single clear picture or video with all of those people around?" he asked, a little disbelieving.
"Er," Cas spoke up. He seemed embarrassed by his actions while visiting la-la-land. "Carlee, the, uh, llama, told me a spell for that. She could communicate it to me but couldn't speak the words."
"That's a useful spell!" Sam stated, instantly interested.
"Sadly, I believe it's a one-time-use," Cas said, sounding apologetic.
"Now, not only do we have to track down the rest of the coven, we have to free that fricken llama and figure out a way to get her re-humanized?" Dean lamented. "I hate witches. And llamas."
"Since we can stay around a little longer, we should all take a visit to that museum," Sam said, because very occasionally, he was awesome. "And pick up a new copy of that book. After all, we have coffee tables now. It would be irresponsible to leave them naked."
Despite himself, Dean smiled, mostly mollified. "Let's hurry all that up. I need to get home and wash the llama stink out of my clothes before it's too late."
"Can we visit the zoo just for fun after we free Carlee? I hardly remember –" Cas asked unwisely.
Both brothers blurted, "No!"
And Dean would have sworn that there was a tiny smile on the angel's face.
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AN: No llamas were harmed in the making of this story.
The sentence that started this whole thing was: "Get away from that llama." Yes, really.
The Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan really exists and is very cool. The Impala from American Graffiti is actually there, too. There is not actually a zoo in the (tiny) town.