AN: Hey guys, sorry this took so long to post. I've been super busy the last couple of weeks. If anyone wants to follow me on Tumblr to get regular updates, it's .com . That way you'll know when I'm being incredibly lazy and you can bug me and stuff. Anyways sorry it's taking so long to get to the good bits, I just had to write this out. As always, reviews are alarmingly appreciated. 3
Vladivostok sat in the very center of the Administrative District of Primorsky Krai, the hub of all angelic-human relations. Since its founding almost three hundred years prior, it had expanded to cover the entirety of the Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, making it the largest city in Far East Russia. It was surrounded by the Amur Bay to the west and the Ussuri Bay to the East. To the South, the Zolotoy Rog bridge spanned across the Eastern Bosphorus, connecting it with Russky Island. This is where Castiel Novak was born.
He grew up mainly in his father's house, a gigantic empty mansion that overlooked Peter the Great Bay. His father begrudgingly allowed him quarter there, leaving him alone for weeks at a time. Castiel's mother lived on the main peninsula in the heart of Vladivostok. Since his birth, she had seen him once and that was during. Hours after his alarmingly abrupt entrance into the world as we know it, she had fled back to a meeting that she'd taken leave from that morning. His father only saw her once a year during the Great Session, when all important political figures of Far East Russia came to Vladivostok to figure out where they'd left off the prior year.
Castiel rarely ventured out of his home. In fact, he never had. He enjoyed a wonderful view of the city from the many balconies, but had never left. Most of his time was spent in the library. He would make forts from blankets and stack books upon books in piles around him and spend the entire night reading. Sometimes the maid would find him in the early hours of the morning passed out in the spine of a book and would lift him carefully to rest him on the sofa.
When he was smaller he read mostly history books, which was completely normal for a child his age, provided the child was for lack of a better word, an orphan with nothing but time on his wings. As he grew older, he began to branch out, so to speak, and picked up books about nature. The forests of Far East and Northern Russia were wild and unpredictable. It never ceased to snow or amaze the modern biologist and botanist, which were to say very few.
A week after no one remembered his eighth birthday, the little hybrid stole a hunting knife from his father's study and packed a bag of winter clothes, canned food, and several books detailing the important flora and fauna of his milieu. Waving to the maid who was currently polishing what could be either an ancient torture device or a television, Castiel strode out of his front door with supreme confidence.
Walking through Vladivostok was the single most terrifying thing that ever happened in Castiel's existence. Cars roared past him at the speed of light, people did basically the same thing. No one seemed to notice each other. He felt he should have installed his head on a swivel to see everything the city had to offer. Shops lined every corner, their windows filled with cakes, technology, vehicles, wing clippers, even things Castiel had never seen, let alone heard of before.
Many hours later, he had wandered slowly from the maze of buildings and into a tamer setting. There were mostly human families scattered around the huge town, but every once in a while, Castiel would spot a tiny, blue skinned angel, their miniscule wings far too small to lift them into the air. Since he had left Russky Island, he hadn't seen a single hybrid. In the city, no one stopped long enough to notice him, but here where the pedestrians were few and far between, he could see people and angels eyeing him with distaste. For the first time in his life, he felt the semblance of shame.
Fortunately, the suburban sprawl wasn't too large so Castiel took his place on the side of the M60 and headed north. He had studied enough maps to have committed the Russian continent and most things around it to memory. The only thing that remained hazy were the North and South American continents. Before his departure, Castiel had read an alarming amount of books that gave a general outline of how the angels came to be in this world. In the short amount of time they had shared the globe with the humans, already many social constructs were being torn down and replaced with new ones. Humans no longer hated each other because of race, gender identity, or sexual orientation. They had banded together to defend their race against the new one that had barged in.
Castiel still couldn't understand why the two races, who had inevitably created a third, shunned their offspring so diligently and without remorse.
Hybrid villages weren't marked on any human or angelic map worth its salt, so Castiel was travelling blindly, hoping to come across one on his own that would take him in. Luckily, he had inherited his mother's angelic endurance, so when the true winter months came to pass, he wasn't dead in a week.
One amazing thing had come out of his adventure, however. The wildlife didn't seem to hate him as much as his tomes had led him to believe. Quite the contrary, one fascinated reindeer actually crept up to the child while he was sleeping. While the broad, damp nose prodding at his cheek had woke him up and in turn startled the shit out of the poor animal, Castiel filed it under "small victory".
Within the next month, his small victories were dwindling. Almost out of food and unable to see an end to his trek, Castiel trudged through what seemed like mountains of snow, his wings wrapped tightly around him. He had mistakenly believed that simply studying the wilderness would fully prepare him to get through it with all fingers and toes intact. In fact, he wasn't sure he still had all of the aforementioned digits.
An evening in December presented itself as the worst night of Castiel's life. Snow whipped around in a silly drunken manner, stinging his face and encrusting his unruly mop of dark hair with icicles. He was, unsuccessfully, attempting to find a snow drift to curl into for the night and finding none. Soon, he stumbled out of the thicket of trees onto a behemoth clearing. To his left and right was the treeline, in front of him was a swirling void of grey snow that blurred the line between ground and sky. He dropped to his knees, accomplishing nothing because the snow was to his midriff at this point.
The worst day of his life had just asked him out to dinner, only to stand him up at the restaurant and call him later that evening, piss drunk and apologizing but it had found someone much more attractive.
After a few minutes had passed, he decided that he was in Purgatory, because he must have died. His wings crackled under the stress of Castiel attempting to furl them closer to his body.
Several hours later, he woke up confused, probably because he didn't ever remember going to sleep. Wincing as his eyes pried themselves open, he was met with an Amur Leopard sitting directly in front of him. This was surprising, as the Amur Leopard had gone extinct at least one hundred years ago. Castiel pushed himself up a little to get a better look. Despite his lack of feeling in at least seventy five percent of his extremities, he found himself incredibly curious. At his movement, the great cat stood and walked away into the blizzard, his paws barely making prints in the snow.
"Wait...!" Castiel tried to yell, his voice barely making it past the mucus in his throat. With great effort, he pulled himself out of the snow drift that had formed around him in his brief nap. Since he was probably dreaming anyway, he began to follow the leopard as it walked unhindered through the blizzard. For over an hour, Castiel waded through the snow, the cat occasionally looking back to see if the boy was still there, or to just sniff at something invisible.
Suddenly, the leopard disappeared and Castiel began to panic. In a few moments, his panic subsided when he realized it had only gone through a fence made of gigantic trees. In the dark, the tree wall was rendered invisible but once he had gone through it, his entire body started to thaw out.
It was pitch black outside so Castiel automatically assumed it would be just as dark in the thicket but was proven wrong as a faint blue light washed over him. It was still completely dark, but now he could just start to see the outlines of trees and bushes dotted around him. He was too tired to try and ponder where all this blue light was coming from, so he simply let his legs drop out from underneath him next to a cozy looking bush. He made himself think about the fact that he was now pegging bushes as "cozy" and proceeded to drift into the most comforting sleep he'd had in months.
. . .
After a slumber that seemed to go on for years after the modern world had fallen, Castiel woke up slowly as a wet nose drug itself across his ice-less face. He scrunched his eyes up and shook his head lightly, forcing the cold appendage to cease its attack.
He opened his eyes slowly and let them adjust to the new surroundings. After the blur dissipated, Castiel could make out more of the thicket he had stumbled in the night before. It was still dark, but not at nearly the same level it had been. Now it was more of a twilight gloom and it still had a faint tinge of blue to it. Trees and plants were placed sporadically around him as if they had planted themselves on their own. From simply scanning the area, Castiel could immediately identify at least three different types of plants that had either been endangered or gone extinct in the past hundred years. Some of them, to his astounding confusion, weren't even native to his homeland.
He sat up carefully, making sure he wasn't injured in any way, before spotting the cold nosed perpetrator.
"You!" he mumbled, spotting the leopard from the night before. "You brought me here, didn't you?" In response, the once extinct animal dove into a pile of soft leaves, burrowing itself in them snugly and poking its head out to look at Castiel. The hybrid giggled at it and stood up gingerly, wincing at the soreness in his legs.
The leopard quickly hopped out of its leaf fort at the movement and bounded away into the further reaches of what Castiel now called the Sanctuary.
It was warm here, perhaps maybe not as warm as Australia on a bright spring day, but warm enough to make Castiel believe it was the middle of summer back on his little island. He strolled through the trees, clearly in no hurry to leave and taking his time cataloging the different plants and animals he observed. When he ventured a glance skywards, he noticed the thick canopy the strange dominant trees had formed above them, miraculously keeping out the frigid weather. They had done the same thing on the sides, weaving themselves together to form a thick, impenetrable barrier against the forces of nature.
As he progressed deeper into the Sanctuary, the animals and plants were more abundant and diverse. Some species he recognized from his books, others were foreign to him. Without a doubt, however, there were some species residing here that had been lost to the world for decades, if not longer. Eager to find the source of this wonderful mystery, Castiel picked up his pace and followed the animals towards what he could only assume was the center of the thicket.
When a clump of almost white rocks appeared between a group of closely placed trees, Castiel knew he was at the center. Birds chirped happily above him, making their nests warmer, more comfortable. The ground below him was carpeted in a thick, soft layer of grass which struck Castiel as decidedly odd.
The rocks that Castiel had begun to climb over were Emperador Dark Marble, surprising him because he was sure they were in the Northeastern expanse of Russia and not Hubei, China. Once he had scaled the largest of them, he could see a gigantic pond, almost a small lake, just beneath him. The rocks had formed a semicircle around the pond itself, creating a small enclave beneath him. He scuttled down the formation and began to make his way around the shore, gaping in awe at the natural architecture.
Fish circled each other and leapt about in the shallow depths and lily pads dotted the calm surface. Here and there, camps of various wildlife had positioned themselves in optimal range of the pond. Though most of these animals were documented to sleep during the winter, or at least hole themselves up and shiver for the next few months, most of them seemed perfectly fine wallowing in the shallow pools and rolling around in the grass. Granted, it was a decent temperature, Castiel thought.
The most remarkable thing about the whole place wasn't the extinct animals, it wasn't the mysterious glowing blue trees that meshed into one to protect its inhabitants from the harsh cold, and it certainly wasn't the plants from all over the world that had come to form a community here in the Sanctuary. For sure, it wasn't the blades of grass that had thrust themselves upon the forest floor in spite of the ice encrusted ground outside. The strange enclave of rocks could be crossed off the list as well.
No, by far the most extraordinary thing about the place was the enormous tree that had planted itself in at the north edge of the pond. Its roots had splayed out from it and embedded themselves in the ground around it, spreading into the water and forming an exciting turf for turtles and ducks to play on. Its branches were wispy and completely covered in delicate light blue leaves that were pedaled around it and grazed the water lightly. The gargantuan topiary was of the same species that made up the Sanctuary and at this size, Castiel immediately identified it.
"Chosenia," he whispered to no one. He had read, briefly, about the history of the Chosenia. They had been overlooked by botanists for many years before finally in the 1900s, someone distinguished them as a separate species. In time, they unreasonably began to disappear. It was said that the trees were going extinct and no one knew or cared why. They were thought to have gone extinct at least fifty years ago, but no one had any evidence of this, and the world had larger matters to attend to besides the passing of an unremarkable tree.
Castiel approached the tree with care, holding his hand out on instinct. Based on the evidence that he had seen today, Castiel came to the conclusion that the Chosenia tree had banded together as a species to create a safe haven for all other endangered creatures. He reached the ancient tree and carefully placed his hand on the trunk, feeling rough bark underneath his palms.
At the touch, Castiel fell in love with everything. Every plant, every rock, every living thing, every fungi, every grain of sand on every beach was suddenly the most precious thing in existence because when you break it down, it's all there really is. Every wave that crashed against a rocky cliffside was a goddamn miracle. Every song a cricket played on its alarmingly long legs could be confused with the trumpets of heaven, if there was one. Planet Earth, and indeed the universe itself, was a masterpiece of epic proportions and Castiel intended to thoroughly thank the artist.
An overwhelming sadness shot through him after this epiphany. Castiel looked up at the tree in shock. This was the Chosenia's last Sanctuary and it had slowly been dying for the last few years. Its pond was drying up and its animals were steadily leaving to fend for themselves in the wild. It was not man's doing. The trees had found a way to cheat extinction by evolving faster than nature had intended them to. In doing so, however, the tree's existence had been spread much too thin and were dying out quicker than was originally planned. They were now spending the remainder of their days in peace, attempting to save what was left of their community.
For the next year, Castiel recorded the story of the Chosenia tree and the stories of life in the Sanctuary. When winter turned to spring, he took detailed notes of the flowers that bloomed and the fruits budding on the trees. He jotted down the unique markings on the baby leopards. New plants blossomed out in the open area beyond the center of the thicket.
In the summer, he dipped his feet in the pond and took notes on all the fish that nibbled on his toes. There were fish that loomed in great shadows below him, coy fish whose scales glimmered in the iridescent light, tiny minnows that swam dangerously close to Castiel's toes and nipped at them playfully before darting back to safety. He drew the shapes of the leaves that were now covering every tree that was struggling to effloresce like it never had before the next winter came.
Summer faded into fall and Castiel noted how many evergreens were in the coppice. He saw the bears scurrying off to find places to slumber before the cold weather hit. He wrote about the cats whose coats were beginning to turn white and the sudden absence of many birds. He observed the woven canopy of Chosenia start to wither away, leaving shrivelled blue flowers in their wake.
And in the winter, most of the animals had journeyed elsewhere and the Sanctuary was little more than a sparse clump of dying trees. The pond was beginning to freeze over and Castiel found his eyes prickling at the thought of the fish in there. The ancient tree in the center groaned with age, some of its branches becoming frozen in the ice below it. Its beautiful blue flora were scattered around it in piles.
On a cold morning, Castiel stood before it solemnly. All around them were dead trees and piles of snow. Flurries swirled around them, catching in the hybrids hair and eyelashes. His pack was full of a year's worth of new knowledge. His coat was pulled tight around him and his wings were spread proudly, a stark black contrast against the milieu. A crack above him rang out and Castiel stepped back suddenly. A large branch had thrown itself at the ground in front of him, six feet long and gnarled into a perfect walking stick. Castiel picked it up and held it with a sense of fondness. Somehow he could feel what was left of the tree in it.
He smiled at the dying tree and turned away, walking out of the thicket and back into the unforgiving cold outside.