Sam's eyes adjust almost immediately to the brightness shining all around him. He is convinced the sun has just exploded and the world is currently engulfed in its painfully blinding waves of ultraviolet light. He knows this is not the case, because once he manages to focus on anything, he notices the bridge he is standing on. Wooden slats and fibrous manilla rope and everything.
The bridge is suspended above a deep canyon and is rocking slightly in the wind. It is a precarious and rickety thing, positioned between two uneven cliffs. The ravine below is at least a half mile drop and Sam understands that falling will surely kill him. The flinching brightness around him gets dimmer still, even after his eyes have fully adjusted.
And Sam realises with some amount of horror that the light is fast fading. And it doesn't stop fading. The cacti and sandstone boulders in the distance slowly start to get harder and harder to make out as harsh shadows envelop the land. And Sam is panicking.
In no time at all, he starts to see stars overhead, then they too disappear. And then it is pitch black. And he is still standing stock still on the swaying bridge, the howling wind ruffling his hair.
There is nothing around him but pressing blackness.
"Okay, Jesus. How in the world did I get here?" Sam mutters, mind whirling. He tries to think back to what he was doing previously, before he ended up here. His mind comes up infuriatingly blank, as though someone had plucked all the important memories out of his head. "This is definitely not good."
He shuffles an inch forward, but is a little terrified that he might drop over the edge of the bridge and kill himself. The wind picks up and the bridge rocks from side to side, jostling Sam a little.
A small sound emits from somewhere behind him and the wooden slats creak forebodingly as though something else is on it - a new weight. Sam whips his head around. He sees nothing. Just darkness.
"This doesn't seem like a place you want to be, moose."
The voice is coming from behind him. And the voice is cool, calm and very unmistakably Crowley's.
"Where the hell am I?" Sam demands as he slowly, ever so carefully turns his body around in the pitch black and hopes he is now facing Crowley, or who he thinks is Crowley.
"How the bloody hell would I know?" Crowley's voice comes out of the overwhelming darkness, sour and annoyed. He sounds a mere two feet from where Sam is standing. Sam can't decide if this comforts or distresses him.
The Winchester grits his teeth, his hands unconsciously moving to the waistband of his jeans where he usually tucks his firearm even though he knows it isn't there. "This is not funny, Crowley. How did you do this? Is this some trick?"
Sam gets no response and he throws a fist out. It connects with nothing but air.
Crowley is gone. Or maybe he was never there. Sam doesn't know what to think, so he does the only sensible thing he can come up with and gets on his hands and knees and blindly gropes his way forward, toward the other side of the bridge.
He gets a few inches along before he suddenly notes the loud swooping sound and distinct neighing from somewhere above his head. It sounds like a horse. A horse with wings.
Perhaps it is a pony.
Sam stands up and reaches a hand out toward the sound. His fingers find the haunch of a hairy creature. It screams and grunts and kicks a hoof in Sam's direction. Sam holds onto the horse's leg all the more firmly.
The horse takes off and Sam is pulled along with it while it flies, thrashing madly, through the air.
And then he sees it. Far, far out in the distance. A pale circle of light, probably 10 square miles big by his reckoning, just barely visible. He thinks to himself: maybe my brother will be there. And he wills the flying horse to take him towards the smoky light in the distance.
The horse doesn't do that. It doesn't do that at all. Instead, it flies in the opposite direction and Sam is left to wonder where this wild creature has decided to take him and how long he will have to hold onto it.