I'm trudging along here, so I apologize. I've been moving, uprooting all my stuff, my home. I'm also working full-time. Things should calm down enough to write within the coming weeks, but for now I'm going to be slow in getting my chapters posted.

I do hope y'all like this one -!

Eastward, morning light harkens its gradual and uncompromising traverse over the landscape. Sam periodically squeezes his eyes shut, hoping to summon moisture or any other such tool he might find stocked in his vast arsenal of powers to keep them wide open. He hasn't slept for days.

A crisp wind whips through the hair on the left side of his face as he flies along the road. He notes the reddening sky, promising all the pink and purplish hues that no doubt must follow. Patches of trees and fields strewn with haphazard homesteads jot about the peripheries of his vision as he rolls speedily by. Just past a clearing in the patchwork landscape, he spots a coyote make hasty retreat from the imminent approach of the Impala, leaving behind a small animal lying mangled on the soft shoulder of the highway. The morning glow accentuates some soft brown fur congealed with dark red.

Little bit, lost now- its face to the ground, its colors wrapped round, Sam muses madly. For he's surely losing it, all the remnants of sanity in his corporeal quarter century now slipping away in the aftermath of emotion so bright red with anger and so sickeningly yellow with fear that he can barely even hang on to the power to breathe.

Yes color indeed links and defines life's passions, he tries to ruminate: the green of the earth's carpet, the phasing indigo of the sky, even rainbows, heh- and also vivid organic colors like the crimson skin of an apple and the lifeforce red of blood; earth tones too, such as the tawny coat on a cat, the sandy highlights in a person's hair, or the jade of long-lashed eyes; all kinds and colors of people adorned in all kinds and colors of fabric: rich jeweled tones, softer mauves and sepias, their patterns mixed with stark blacks, grays and whites to give them definition.

There's an existential and colorless aspect about the dawning of this day, though: a gleaning mark of memory robbing all prism and motion from the highway here before him.

The Hounds of Hell were let loose right in front of my eyes, but I could not see them.

Dean could, though. The moment those doors opened, the look of horror in his eyes was like something I'd never seen before. He was so scared – more terrified than I'd ever before known him to be.

So scared, so scared… So intensely fucking scared…

Sam feels his skin prickle. He wonders where color had ever been all along, and why he can even think of it now. For is this not the same endless grey ribbon that he's been following since before he can remember?

Behind him a quarter of a mile back, Bobby follows in an old grey Chevelle. His dear old friend and fellow hunter had been tiptoeing around Sam's psyche like a wary sentinel ever since he'd entered that blood-spattered room some five or so hours previous - phantom ages ago- offering quietly empathetic words and warm comforting touches.

He and Bobby had carefully wrapped Dean in a worn downy patchwork quilt they'd secured from a closet in the house in New Harmony- Dean, who now lies snuggled within it on the back seat, his eyes having since been closed and the blood having since been washed from his body, now oblivious of the earthly form that conjures all illusion of peaceful slumber.

He lies partway on his side, facing Sam, though his chin, mouth and the tip of his nose are obscured within the soft fabric shrouding him. All that Sam sees of his brother are two closed immovable eyes beneath short soft tufts of light brown hair. Sam gazes at him in the rearview mirror and notes that the litany of comfort phrases, from "He's in a better place now" to "At least he's no longer suffering" and even "His spirit will always be with you," do not apply to Dean.

Eyes back on the road, Sam glares out at the rapidly dawning day. Traffic is sparse, if non-existent but for Bobby's car and the Impala. Gusty breezes make the trees and grass sway like so many flamenco dancers- brisk, vibrant and alive. A swarm of sparrows flies into the wind overhead, their formation in the shape of a spearhead, aimed sure and true towards some distant destination. Here, for certain, breathes a world without Dean.

Sam tastes copper, and suddenly realizes he's been biting on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. Let it bleed, he thinks to himself, let all this and everything else just flow away from me. The constant turning of his thoughts is just too powerful to master, after all. He wants to come apart, leave all testimonies and aberrations behind. But the likelihood of any end to this twisted new reality stands vacant, unreachable and moot.

There's an unrelenting chill in the air, and Sam finds he cannot stop shaking. Ahead he sees a Rest Stop and so signals and slows his way into it. Bobby follows.

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The past couple days or so have been freakishly surreal to say the least, as far as Bobby is concerned. So now, with a new day cracking and their little battle-weary caravan unabashedly heading west, a Rest Stop, of all places, becomes their desired destination. Bobby pulls up beside the jet black Impala, as shadows partially cloak the tree-lined landscape hovering over the rectangular structure surely equipped with all the restrooms, vending machines and picnic tables acclaimed by such retreats

"Yeah, we need coffee," Bobby says to Sam as he rounds front to the driver's side, where Sam still sits, leaning forward and gripping the wheel like it's a lifeline, his knuckles white, his face drawn tense. Bobby realizes he's always had a talent for verbalizing the obvious, as if to confirm what inevitably must be. Yet he doesn't care, 'cause sometimes the obvious just needs to be stated. Affirmative situations, after all, must always be confirmed by what's real.

"We should reach it by mid-morning today," he tells the apparently still shell-shocked boy, "and we'll make do with the rest of what we need when we get there." He stretches his hand out to touch with his fingertips Sam's wind-blown hair.

Sam's eyes flick sideways for the fraction of a second. Bobby steps backward a few inches, then glances forward – his will to say what's apparent and must be said going forth above all else. "So we'll say a few words for Dean when we arrive. Then, we'll bury him."

Sam flinches at those words, but slowly nods in concurrence. He then abruptly gets out of the car and slams the door, stomping with his characteristic long-legged strides towards the restrooms.

Bobby sighs his frustration, for Sam is much more repulsed by comfort in his grief than his brother, one year ago, even came close to being.

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