A/N:

Thank you so much to Kajensen07, goldacharmed, Kayla and itsmuffintimesir for the reviews!

Rischa sighed, feeling the slow tide of Dean's longing of many years wash over her. Even with Sam back, the healing wouldn't be instantaneous. These brothers had been apart for over a decade, one knowing his older brother was out of reach and the other believing his little brother dead. No Prayer could heal that, and time was a slow medicine.

Rischa felt a stirring in Sam, too, and she suspected what would come of this. They'd all known how much Sam wanted to be back with his big brother, no matter that he'd become a member of their community in the woods. It was simply bad luck that something bad was in the forest, robbing them of a carefree reunion after all that time.

She glided tentatively forward, alighting on Dean's shoulder with unsure steps. She'd ridden astride Jacob's shoulders before, and he never seemed to mind. Now, she had the chance to get to know a man she'd heard so much about and wanted to meet for so many years.

Bowman flew a lazy lap between the two humans, the last one in flight as his heart was drawn to the air like a fish to water. "Guess we'd better be on our way."

"Wait, I can come to the village, too?" Jacob asked, his eyebrows arched and his expression hopeful despite the dire situation. So far, Sam and Bowman had yet to take him to see the little village. He'd only known them a few months, and understood their need for caution after his first encounter with the pair. Dean was changing that caution just by being in the forest, a long lost family member welcomed back.

Bowman rolled his eyes. "What, you wanna stand out here on your own?" he shot back before hovering between both humans. "I'm betting Scar will want to plan with two giants around to hear it." He glanced over at Sam to see his thoughts on the matter, the one who knew Scar better.

Sam smiled at that. "Do you really think Scar's gonna forgive me if we find Dean out here, and don't introduce them?" He shook his head. The High Knight had spent many long days out in the forest, tirelessly searching for Sam's family, giant or not. He peered off the edge of Dean's head again, wishing he could lock eyes with the hunter he was standing on. "Just follow us, okay?"

With that, Sam leapt back into the air, pushing off of Dean's head with his boots. Dean was only just able to hold in a gasp of shock, his eyes widening at the sight of the tiny glider falling and catching air when it was level with his chin. With his brother soaring through the air and a tiny girl perched on his shoulder, Dean was out of his depth. The familiar was long gone.

He sent Jacob a faintly desperate look. "Do you ever actually get used to this?" he asked, grappling with Sam's very existence and worried he would let Sam down because he was so damn big by comparison. His little brother was living, thriving at barely four inches tall with people his own size sequestered in the depths of some random forest. Without the demon on the prowl, Dean might not have ever known Sam had survived that attack. The coincidence was as colossal as Sam was small.

Jacob shrugged and shook his head as they started on their way. "I'm not that far ahead of you, dude. I only stumbled on them a couple months ago," he admitted. From what he had gathered, humans were a fabled thing the sprites had plenty of stories about. When they'd come to see him in his camp, they had a constant, unusually keen stream of questions. He had to assume that Sam's stories about his brother had spread to each and every Wellwood sprite.

"If it helps, they know not to sneak up on you," Jacob added, sending a smirk Bowman's way. The sprite very nearly broke out of his meandering flight pattern to dart back to him. Jacob snickered at the way Bowman faltered midair just because of his indignant look over his shoulder.

"No one will ever let me live that down!" Bowman complained.

On Dean's shoulder, Rischa covered her mouth to hide her giggles, having heard all about Sam and Bowman's first run-in with the human. They could hardly hide it from her.

Sam glanced over his shoulder, grinning madly at the sight of his older brother following him. That might never get old, and nor would the strange thrill that two towering humans were following his direction without complaint. "Bowman almost got himself swatted! " he called over his shoulder. "He decided to try and get Jacob's attention when he was wearing his earbud things, and it happened in front of two nobles."

He'd never seen Jacob and Bowman both so simultaneously flustered than at that moment. Bowman had even ended up tumbling off Jacob into a hand when the human jerked himself up at the discovery of more sprites come to visit.

They'd told him others would come visit, but they should probably have warned him about the nobles, without a doubt the highest ranking sprites of Wellwood.

Dean winced as he remembered how he handled spotting Rischa. "I might not swat them if they catch me off guard, but I can pretty much guarantee they'd get grabbed." Hunter instincts were almost impossible to suppress. It was important to always be on edge. Letting down his guard could cost him at the worst times, as Dean had reminded himself constantly in the years since he lost Sam. It wouldn't go away just because he'd finally found his brother.

Bowman shot Dean a wary, pointed look, as if the human had declared his intention to grab someone right that moment. He had to face front to guide Sam towards a useful updraft, sparing Dean from a snarky comment, but hopefully his look had gotten the idea across anyway. Bowman had been grabbed once already, and that was more than enough for him in one day. His wings almost twitched at the reminder of their time confined in such a small space.

Jacob chuckled. "Hopefully it won't come to that, but I think even Bowman will forgive you for it, no matter what he says."

Bowman scoffed. "Humans are impossible," he said, glancing aside at Sam. It went without saying that his adopted brother was easily included in his grousing.

For her part, Rischa glanced up at Dean's profile. He was still confused, and it didn't take her empathy to notice it in the angle of his brow and the set of his jaw. She merely had a deeper understanding of how much his view of 'normal' was twisting right before his eyes.

"I don't mind that you grabbed me, Dean," she said quietly. "I was just very startled! You're very sneaky."

Dean tried to catch a glimpse of her on his shoulder, thrown by the fact that he had a kid just hanging out over there. Not just any kid, either- Sam had called the two sprites his family, which made them Dean's family, and he hadn't quite worked that through his mind. In the course of the last hour, he'd transformed from a drifter without a family, hopping from case to case, to a guy who could hold his family in his hands. And had, for a few minutes.

"I mind that I grabbed you," he replied to her, keeping his voice lower as he watched the leaf glider soar higher up into the branches along with Bowman. "If it wasn't me, it could have been Bobby, and he wouldn't be letting anyone go just like that." The temptation rose in him to reach up and make sure she was okay after his earlier grab, but he quelled it for the time being. They were all so small. He might hurt her just checking on her, and the same went for Sam.

"You will find him," she replied with an easy confidence. After all, he was determined to help even before he knew there was a village of innocents out in the forest, and now that resolve had only grown. "You'll have Sam and Bowman helping you look. They're very good at patrols."

She glanced around as he walked along, his casual gait through the forest rocking his shoulders from side to side. Bowman finally flew back to dive at Jacob for his earlier comment, and the human ducked. Rischa giggled at their antics and added quietly "Even if they do mess around sometimes."

After divebombing Jacob, Bowman banked upwards again, but glanced down once or twice. Rischa looked perfectly at ease, speaking softly to Dean like that. She wouldget along with him that quickly. Bowman couldn't deny his own curiosity, but he didn't have Rischa's natural charm.

He flew up to glide alongside Sam, taking a steady course for once instead of flitting here and there. "How are you doing? He seems pretty thrown off by everything."

"He's not the only one," Sam admitted, glancing back for what must have been the tenth time. He could feel the occasional touch of eyes on him as they walked along, but both humans were paying attention to their paths more than the two fliers guiding them. Sam knew that was a good thing, considering how large they both were. Jacob was tall on his own for a teenager, but Dean was taller.

Winchesters run tall ran through Sam's mind, and he quirked a small smile.

It was short-lived, and he looked back over at Bowman. "It's just… he's so different than when we were kids. What if he doesn't want me around anymore?" It hurt him a little to vocalize his fears, but so far Dean was more aloof than he remembered, the cast on his face guarded. They used to do everything together, and for years Sam had held those memories close to his heart. Even as his older brother's face and voice faded from his memory. "What if we're too different?"

It was a different variation of his original question he'd posed Scar, tears streaming down his face when he'd first discovered how small he'd become.

W-what if they don't recognize me? What if I'm too small now?

Bowman frowned, thrown back several years himself. He'd seen that look in Sam's eyes before. Even before Bowman understood the gravity of what had happened to Sam, he'd seen those hazel eyes light up with a worry that couldn't be pushed away. Not completely. Sam really was different, after over a decade in Wellwood.

"Well ... you are pretty different, but I think you'll figure it out," he reasoned quietly, slowly gaining conviction. "I mean, you spent all this time remembering Dean, so much that sometimes I feel like I 'remember' him, too." Bowman had never described it that way, but he had often privately thought of Dean as his own lost brother.

"I think he probably spent all this time wishing he could see you, too." Bowman glanced behind yet again, checking on Rischa on her perch. She was completely at ease with the giant, even if he was still tense, those sharp green eyes tracking Bowman and Sam's progress every few seconds.

"I hope so," Sam whispered. The worry wouldn't completely leave, worming its way into his heart. Years away from humans meant he struggled with simple things, like the music player and Jacob. He didn't recognize the earbuds, so they blasted Bowman with sound. Cell phones were an entirely new concept to him.

Dean would be familiar with all of that and more, because he'd remained in the world while Sam was sent away from it. Sam's heart yearned for the chance to be with his family, all of them, but he knew there was no way that Dean would be able to stay in the Wellwood with them. It wasn't where he was meant to be…

But was it where Sam was meant to be?

Sam worried his lip as he glided around a few more branches, lost in thought. The moment he'd prayed for had come at last, but it was too late for him to simply go back to the way things were. He was a knight. He didn't know if there was a place for him back in Dean's world.

A/N

All these comments and reviews between the three different sites we post on complaining about the low-level angst like we're not on a demon hunt in the middle of Wellwood with the entire village at stake

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, those of you who noticed Spritely Sam has a different personality from Borrower Sam:

Yes! That is exactly on point! He did not grow up having to keep quiet, stay alert, under threat of constant capture. He grew up in the sun, welcomed by the people around him, confidently training to be a knight and learning to take on full sized animals with his trusty knife and sword.

I'm tired and had to just buy a replacement car in under a week, so I'm going to crawl back under a rock until Sunday.

Next: November 25th, 2018 at 9pm est

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