AN: The sun is shining every day, the garden is growing at a ridiculous rate, and I spend my days thinking about pesto and spaghetti sauce because I constantly smell like basil from picking it every morning. It's a beautiful thing, even while we're quarantining because someone we spent time with came down with COVID the next day. But I haven't forgotten my story. Hang on for a Carroll-esque ride! You know, without Carroll's actual talent.
Janice made me feel about a thousand times better about this chapter! Plus, she fixed all of my grammar mistakes. (Thank you!)
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Outré / ü – trā' /
violating convention of propriety, bizarre, outlandish
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One second, Sam was standing in front of his very much awake and alive brother trying to get across very important information while feeling so very grateful that the deals he'd made had saved Dean's life, and the next second he was somewhere else. Again.
"You said I'd get a chance to tell Dean how to kill the yataveo!" Sam exclaimed, spinning to look for Puck to unleash his ire upon.
"You did," the other answered, still in the same guise as before. He was standing behind some rickety bleachers that Sam wouldn't have trusted to hold a child, much less the dozen or so adults sitting on them. "You decided to say other things first. Besides, you said enough. If he doesn't figure it out from what you said, he's not as smart as you think."
Sam scowled, then sighed, pissed but powerless. What could he do about it?
"Child of Destiny," Puck said solemnly, his voice echoing strangely. Sam gasped. He had felt those words, deep in his chest. It wasn't exactly pain, but the feeling of a grappling hook inside him anchoring him – or trapping him. "Sam Winchester," Puck said next, and the feeling intensified. Sam knew the repetition of his name was locking him here, wherever Puck had brought him. "Brother of Dean," Puck concluded and Sam doubled over at the sensation. Again, not hurt, but impacted, down to his marrow. He was fairly sure that he remembered that if Puck chose to say iterations of his name nine times, he'd be stuck forever, but the demigod stopped at three.
It took Sam a few moments to collect himself, but finally he was able to take a better look around. He knew this place, from the yellowing soccer field just beyond the bleachers to the squat school of faded red brick to the right and the line of stringy pine trees to the left. He even remembered the ugly purple shirts of the winning team. The parents were surging out of their lawn chairs and off the rickety bleachers to congratulate their kids. It was a poor town, the kind where half the kids left right after high school graduation and the other half never left at all. But Sam still remembered how faithfully the hard-working parents showed up at the games and cheered like they were watching the World Cup instead of 8- to 10-year-olds who whiffed as often as they actually kicked the ball.
With a reflexive wince, Sam turned his head to watch one little boy trudge away from his teammates' celebrations, his trophy clutched in one dirty fist. He climbed into the already-running Impala, knowing better than to make a fuss about their abrupt departure, knowing he should be grateful Dad had stuck around long enough for him to finish the game.
Little Sam climbed in the back seat and got up on his knees to watch the field and his friends as long as he could as the Winchesters left the town behind. His face was sad, and now-Sam could clearly remember wondering if Dad had even seen him kick the winning goal before getting into the car. Dean had, though. His pride had lessened the sting of leaving, at least a little. But Sam hadn't asked to play team sports again. He finally began to understand that it was easier to leave if you didn't have a reason to stay.
"Oh good," Sam said as flatly as he could, choosing to believe that Dean would definitely figure things out (and trying not to obsess over whether or not he could take out the yataveo alone). "Childhood memories again. Just what I was hoping for." He knew he should show Puck more respect, because reliving memories was pretty damn mild considering how much he could actually do to Sam if he so chose. But Sam was worried about his brother and, frankly, had never been good at showing deference to bullies. And Puck might be helping them, but he wasn't doing it to be altruistic, and he was taking advantage of the situation to dick with them, too. And, of course, Sam might not get out of the whole situation with his life and sanity. So he thought a little snark was warranted.
Luckily, Puck just chuckled. "Did you want me to look for happier childhood memories?" he asked with just a hint of bite. "It might take some time."
That was...well, it was rude, if not completely untrue. Sam didn't have a miserable childhood. He'd been pretty content despite the unconventionality of it, until he was a teenager. And honestly – a lot of teenagers were miserable without any weird life circumstances. Sam was still angry with Dad, and probably would be for a long time, but time away had at least given him the insight that the family's real problems weren't necessarily the obvious ones. The greatest sadness of Sam's young life had been loneliness, plain and simple. "I assume you're choosing certain memories on purpose, to make a specific point," Sam said instead of answering the question directly. He gave the type of dismissive shrug that drove Dad batty since it was a clear 'go ahead and do what you want because you'll do it anyway, no matter what I say.'
"Of course I am," Puck answered with his own shrug, but despite the light tone of his words, Sam got the impression that he wasn't expecting to be called out. "I intended to ask: will you choose to stay?"
"What?" asked Sam stupidly.
"Stay," Puck said again, a touch impatiently. "Escape from the life of hunting that you never had a choice about. No more blood and death and sleeping in a different forgettable motel room each night. No more orders to follow or expectations."
"I –" The offer was nearly the last thing Sam had expected. Seriously, Dumbo's pink elephants pulling him into a conga line would have fit his expectations better than an invitation to stay...here, in some place reality-adjacent with the sprite/hobgoblin/demigod/Old One or whatever Puck really was that was alternately pestering and helping him. "Um. Just...leave Dean?"
"Would you have come with me back then?" asked Puck, pointing at the little Sam whose scene had reset, since he was just picking up his trophy from the card table that had been set up to hold them. But this time, there was another Puck in the scene, too, standing just inside the tree line and looking vaguely otherworldly. That Puck caught little Sam's eye, though nobody else seemed to notice him. He lifted a hand in welcome and, though his lips didn't move, a sing-song, lilting version of his voice reached them. "Come away, oh human child, to the waters and the wild!"
"No," Sam answered, shaking his head and turning away from the scene. No, he wouldn't have gone with someone else, not with his family waiting in the car.
Puck hummed, the sound disbelieving, but didn't demur with words. "How about here?" he asked. This Sam was even younger, breaking the rules by watching out the window as the Impala drove away. He'd been invited to a birthday party, he remembered. Even then, he knew it was probably only because all the boys in the class were invited, but he'd had such hope that he could go. Then he'd come home to see Dad packing up his own and Dean's duffels and Sam hadn't even bothered to ask about the party. When he was on his own, he wasn't even allowed to leave the room, much less attend an event full of people Dad didn't know. Dean, who'd heard about the party the entire way back from school, side-eyed Sam but didn't bring it up.
Memory Sam tipped his head to the side in confusion as the taillights disappeared completely. The dust raised by the car's exit of the dirt and gravel excuse for a parking lot coalesced into a smiling figure that crooked a single finger in invitation. Again, Puck's voice floated on the air without any sign of his mouth moving. "With a faery hand in hand."
"No," Sam said again, through the hollow, despondent feeling of loneliness in his guts as if he were that child again. All he'd wanted then, far, far more than to go to the party of some kid whose name he'd forget in a year, was to be with the rest of his family and not left behind like old luggage, as useful as a burned out lightbulb.
"Here, then?"
The next scene made Sam catch his breath on the jagged edges of remembered pain. Puck wasn't just showing him memories, he was making him feel what he'd felt when they'd actually happened, which really was a dirty trick. This Sam was twelve, but he looked younger, his painfully rapid high school growth spurt still a few years in the future.
He was sitting in a tire swing he was too old for, his feet touching the tall grass underneath. He wasn't rocking or doing anything else, really, just sitting, his cheek against the top of the tire, heedless of the heat it held.
'Heedless' was a good descriptor for the boy all the way around. Listless was another, and real Sam had to fight the creeping lethargy that, as an adult, he would have termed depression. When Dad had first brought him to Bobby's with the curt explanation that Dean had been lost on a hunt and he had to stay while Dad went to find him, Sam had been absolutely terrified. He begged to be allowed to come help find Dean every time Dad called until Dad started hanging up on him.
Then it occurred to Sam that when Dad got extra brusque, it meant that there was something he wasn't telling them. Something big, usually. Something like Dean being dead. Or maybe, Dad had simply decided that hauling Sam with them around the country was just too much work, given how puny he was and the way he preferred less useful pursuits than hunting.
Those two possibilities had swirled in Sam's mind over and over until he couldn't think of anything else. Then, eventually, he stopped thinking about much of anything at all. He ate when Bobby put food in front of him and reminded him what to do with it. He took a shower when Bobby told him to, went to bed and got up and put on clothes when told, but he didn't do much else. Even when he was completing a task for Bobby, he didn't really talk much, and often found himself simply staring off at nothing, not even really thinking much. After a time, reading was completely beyond him, but he didn't mind. Well, no, he could still read, but nothing that he read stuck, and it all just seemed like too much work to bother.
As preteen Sam sat on the tire listlessly, he could hear Bobby's raised voice inside the house, but he simply let the words wash over him, uncaring. Adult Sam, however, listened to the words and phrases that made it across the distance and quickly picked up on the fact that he was talking to Dad. Bobby rarely reached that particular register with anyone else, at least in Sam's hearing, but there were plenty of other clues. He thought even in the heat of the moment, he'd had a vague idea that Bobby had been talking about him.
"...barely eats, hardly sleeps, doesn't...do something before...listen, you self-righteous...Dean…"
Memory Sam's head came up at the name, his brow furrowing. His hair was mussed and his cheek was red where it had been against the heat of the tire and he looked impossibly young – except for his eyes. Watching Sam flinched at how dead they looked. He'd lived it, but still it hurt just to see.
Then Puck was there, standing next to Bobby's shed like the salvage yard wasn't one of the most warded places in the world. He looked serious, sympathetic, and he crouched and held out both arms as if coaxing a much younger child. "For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
Actual Sam swallowed hard and channeled anger, or at least desperately tried to. "No," he managed, more hoarse than angry-sounding. It was true, too. That sad child had still held a kernel of hope that Dean was alive and that he'd eventually convince Dad to come for Sam again.
Not surprisingly, the Puck next to the real Sam was starting to look a bit annoyed. He wasn't exactly known for being patient. What was surprising, however, was that he also looked a bit sad.
"Here?" the creature demanded, showing Sam a bland motel in Marion, Illinois and one of the worst fights he'd ever had with Dean. It wasn't the first time that they'd come to actual blows, but it was the first time Dean had left afterward. In fact, he'd gone to the meeting with some pretty sketchy hunters that Sam had begged him not to attend alone. Sam, smarting from a new bruise on his jaw, the easy way with which his older brother had beaten him (and pulled his punches, which only made Sam angrier) and completely disregarded both Sam's worries and offers to come as back up, had fled all the way to Flagstaff. Dean never knew that the last thing Dad had done before leaving on a solo hunt that morning was to casually throw away an unsolicited written offer from a teacher to give Sam a letter of recommendation to the college of his choice even though he was only a sophomore. Dad hadn't even bothered to comment on it, both considering it unimportant and simply assuming Sam had dismissed it that easily too.
Sam had been so angry, but also felt so very trapped in what felt like an ever-shrinking world. Stay in the room. Stay behind. Kill this monster. Research that monster. Don't ask questions. Just obey.
"No," he said confidently this time. That Sam was so fill of piss and vinegar that he wouldn't have wanted to follow anyone anywhere. He was confused and lost. At school he got praise from teachers and ridicule from his peers. At home he was firmly in the shadow of his older, bigger, stronger, much better at everything hunting brother, who got along with Dad without even trying and seemed so at ease in his own skin that if Sam had loved him even a little less, he might have hated him a little. The easiest alternative would have been to hate himself, but Sam chose the more palatable option of hating their lives and everything that made them different.
Puck was watching him now, as the scene switched to a craphole in West Virginia where Sam had really thought that Dad would finally break down and punch him. The last time he'd seen Dad. The thought that he might never get to see him again caught in Sam's throat as he remembered some of the horrible things he'd said. And the sound of Dad telling him to never come back.
"Are you having fun?" Sam asked, unable to keep the acid out of his voice. "Why don't you show me my mom dying on the ceiling just like my fia – girlfriend? Or maybe to Jessica d-dying? If you'd been there, I'd have followed you as long as it was back into the fire." He clamped his lips shut.
"You don't recognize my mercy," Puck sighed. "But you will." He faded away like a sun-worn photograph and the world around Sam followed suit. The surroundings resolved themselves into another forest, but this one resembled the first one only in the fact that it was made up of trees. Everything here was, for lack of a better word, wrong.
The colors were wrong, too bright, too many, in all the wrong places, and Sam didn't even have names for some of them. And the proportions for everything were odd in ways he didn't know how to express. The edges of everything were sharper than should have been possible, like an artist's rendering of reality made a little too perfect with too many details to truly show how eyes perceive the world. Even in dark corners, Sam could make out every blade of grass, all cut as with laser precision. Worse was looking at the distance. Far away things were as clear as the ones up close and not foreshortened with distance, meaning Sam could hardly judge distances at all, which made him feel slightly dizzy. Anything he saw might be within arm's reach or a mile away. Even the clouds were so clear that he thought he could see the individual water droplets if he focused. Then he realized that some clouds were holding still and others were moving off in random directions, apparently independent of wind and looked away quickly.
Something like butterflies flew past, if butterflies had two and three bodies for their wings to hinge around, and if they were covered in constantly changing, psychedelically colored fractals. And if they were the size of a 747. They didn't seem to displace a single molecule of air as they flew past, or at least, Sam didn't feel any wind. They were flying away yet somehow moving toward him and Sam was disoriented and nauseated, unable to absorb even half of the sensory input he was getting. He could see the smells and taste the colors, and everything was too sharp and too much and made Sam feel like he was the wrong one, out of sync with the rest of reality.
Sam's body felt hot and tight and his whole damn aura felt like it was shrinking in on him, not that he'd ever imagined that such a thing was possible, much less been able to feel it happening. He couldn't breathe because he couldn't find his lungs, which was something else that was painful and novel. Somehow, Sam was drifting away from...himself?
The world broke into honeycomb shaped sections which reformed into something entirely new, and Sam didn't know which way was up or down, couldn't find himself, couldn't remember what was wrong, couldn't hold onto a concept long enough to experience it and certainly not long enough to understand it. Sam tried to find something, anything to hold onto to ground himself, but he was hopelessly spinning and lost and…
"Dean?" Sam asked, sounding like he'd been drinking sand and gasoline. His throat hurt, but he...he was grateful that he had a throat, and he knew that he had it, because minutes earlier (or hours, or days, or years, he had no idea) he couldn't have strung together enough coherence to know even that. He was surprised he'd managed to actually say something. "Dean," he said again, reaching a hand out toward his brother, who hadn't reacted at all to Sam's admittedly weak first call. He was unreasonably proud of himself for not only finding his hand but getting it to do what he wanted. He was panting and his heart was racing but he couldn't remember why, nor could he figure out why Dean was pouring something red Sam didn't have the word for at the moment into a container that looked familiar.
The fact that Dean ignored Sam's call was so odd that it jolted him to more awareness. Sure, Dean ignored him plenty, but never, ever when Sam truly needed help.
"He can't hear you," said someone else, and Sam turned – hey, he had a whole body! – to see a shorter man next to him. He knew it was Puck better than he currently knew who he was, and he felt very wary around him. "He's not here. You were losing the plot there for a minute and I showed him to you to bring you back." Puck stared into Sam's eyes for a moment while Sam tried and failed to look away, then Dean and his surroundings disappeared.
It made Sam twitch, but he forced himself to take a look around anyway. He still heard a light buzzing in his ears and there was an uneasy thrumming under his skin like he was standing in an electrical storm. Both together put him on edge, making him feel like his heart and breathing were somehow out of rhythm. He was fairly sure he'd lost some time. Maybe quite a bit of it. Still, his mind was back enough to remember the situation – and figure out the new setting.
"Stanford library?" he asked. He and Puck were seated across from each other at the little table Sam had favored for studying. He'd spent so much time there that Jess had referred to it as his second home. The newspaper he'd shoved under the too-short leg was still there, and the familiar gouges in the wood. It even smelled right. Yet, everything was wrong.
"You're trying to figure out a puzzle," Puck said. "For you, that means going to a library, and this is the one that you know the best."
There was a buzz in the air, like vibrations too low to hear, and Sam's skin felt odd, like it was too tight in some places and too loose in others. He had the impression of screaming without being able to hear it, of scratching his own eyes and ears to try to reduce the sensory input that didn't fit into any categories he knew. It felt like only moments since he'd arrived in Puck's demesne, but he knew it must be much longer. He wondered how long he'd been away from the place where the colors and proportions were so wrong...and his stomach rolled at just the memory like he was on day three of a stomach bug, and hunger and nausea were battling for primacy. He swallowed thickly. He had important questions about the length of time he'd been here and why Puck was trying to pander to him by bringing him somewhere he was comfortable, but there was another question that even more immediate.
"Is Dean okay?" Sam asked,
"You saw him," said Puck, not really an answer. "I am healing him, as promised. The asceónung is not dead yet, but not much time has passed there."
Sam tried to remember the details of his quick peek at Dean, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes hard enough to make white sparks appear in his vision. The buzzing was growing until it sounded like air blowing over the top of an empty 20-oz bottle. It was hard to pull up details, like recalling a dream after you've had a cup of coffee. In his mind, the space around Dean was fuzzy and indistinct, and he couldn't put a name on what Dean had been doing, but he knew his brother had been on his feet. Soaking wet, still muddy, and with the angry-focused expression he wore when shit was getting real on a hunt, but okay by all appearances. He'd seen Dean awake and upright before, too, he thought, when Puck had briefly sent him back, but that memory too was as insubstantial and fleeting as a sandcastle caught in the tide. "Where...why…" Sam struggled to formulate his questions.
"I thought perhaps you were lost," Puck said without waiting for him to finish. "We are here because I wanted to give you another chance to choose to stay."
The offer sounded familiar, and Sam might remember why, if only the phantom ants would stop running over all his skin. "Why – " Damn, it was hard to focus. "If you want to help, why don't you just keep me here, or in a memory?"
"This place, all of this place, was supposed to be a waystation between what is and what could be. It wanted to be more and grew, but it is utterly unnatural, and human beings cannot tolerate it."
Sam was fairly sure that he wouldn't understand that even if he weren't expending so much energy preventing his neurons from running off to join the circus.
Puck wasn't done. "When humans are brought here, one of three things happens. Most lose quickly and simply let go of what they knew and who they were. They become the wild things that roam this place. A few, a very few, are stubborn and headstrong and refuse to give in." He raised a bushy eyebrow. Actually, he was looking decidedly bushier in general, his hair and beard wildly curly and resembling some kind of bristly plant more than a human coif. "Those resist until they snap and lose their sanity and eventually their lives. But for a very, very few, I offer the chance to stay of their own free will. I can change you so you are still yourself and retain your sanity, and you will likely live many lives of man, but you can never leave. You are one of only three to whom I have bothered to make the offer." He smiled with teeth that were decidedly sharper than they had been before. "We could have many adventures."
"How many, um," a girl walking toward them nodded at Sam, not seeming to notice his companion's oddities. "How many have said 'no' to the offer?"
"None." Puck loomed without moving. "I am not one for compassion, but as a Child of Destiny, even if you somehow survived this, your life would be one of – ah, you might say interesting times. Nothing would ever be easy. If you agree, I will release you from the bargain to get my picture, so your brother would be free and clear."
"My answer is no," replied Sam through numb lips, somehow even the feeling of the invisible ants burrowing under his skin fading to the background in the wake of Puck's damning words. How long had he feared that there was something wrong with himself that evoked bad things happening around him? Puck was offering him a version of Twain's conundrum of the mysterious stranger: withdraw from the world, effectively dying to it, to avoid a future of pain. But Sam couldn't do that. "I have to try – Dean is waiting for me." He closed his eyes against the strange, swirling colors now in Puck's eyes. "Just please keep me here, or in a memory, where it's not so bad."
"The otherness that bothers you is bleeding into everything," Puck chided, maybe a little pityingly. "You are simply growing used to it. Look around. Really look. You'll see it's hopeless for even me to hold it back."
Sam cracked his eyelids reluctantly. Puck looked even wilder now, bare-chested and hairier than any human being. He was rolling a vial of red liquid back and forth between his hands. That should mean something to Sam, but he couldn't remember what while he tried to absorb his surroundings a little better. It was a bit like finding all the strange things in the book Wacky Wednesday, only a lot scarier.
The girl in the stacks who'd walked past earlier was normally-proportioned, except that her legs were so long her head nearly brushed the ceiling. How had Sam not noticed that was odd? And one bookshelf was covered in wormlike things of wild and varied colors instead of books. The things were constantly combining and separating and changing colors and it seemed impossible that Sam hadn't noticed them before. He quickly turned his eyes down to the tabletop, neither needing nor wanting to see more evidence of the truth of Puck's words.
"Still no," Sam answered, though it felt like something was chewing on the backs of his eyeballs. "I'll just have to try and hold on."
Puck said more, but Sam didn't listen. He just focused every iota of his attention on memories, trying to recall each minute detail. If memories could be weapons against him, they could be weapons for him too.
Kissing Jess the first time. The brush of her lips, the smell of her perfume. Her small hand on his shoulder pulling him back down for an immediate follow-up, making the butterflies in his stomach turn into a full-blown kaleidoscope.
Washing up in a stream after a successful hunt with Dad and Dean slightly downstream doing the same. Dean, who'd earlier eviscerated a berserker three times his size, yelping at the sight of a little grass snake swimming by and running bare-ass naked out of the water like his hair was on fire. Dad busting out laughing like Sam had rarely heard him his whole life.
Bobby handing over a book of lore that had a spell on it so it would self-destruct after it was read once. "You read faster and your memory's better'n mine, boy, so it makes sense you're the one to read it." Sam, not quite old enough to have the Winchester stoicism perfected, throwing his arms around the man in excitement, ignoring the pink on Bobby's cheeks and his grumbles that couldn't hide how much he enjoyed the show of affection.
Dean teaching him how to twirl his gun Doc Holliday-style "because what's the point of being able to shoot if you don't look cool doing it?"
A teacher telling Sam his essay was the best he'd ever read from a child his age.
Caleb, his hair dyed green due to a lost bet, walking sheepishly into the room and Pastor Jim snorting coffee out of his nose at the sight.
Flying much faster than the speed limit down a two-lane highway out in the sticks with all the windows down and Def Leppard screaming from the Impala's speakers, at ease with the world because the passenger seat – with Dean driving – felt like the only place Sam had ever truly belonged.
Dean handing over the tea he'd driven ten extra miles to get because Sam liked it and acting like it was no big deal.
Dean slipping a hundred bucks to the homeless vet who'd helped them identify a siren.
Dean stuffing his mouth so full of whoppers that it was amazing he could breathe.
Dean kicking a door down like a superhero.
Dean tossing Sam a shotgun with a manic grin, excited to go after a Chupacabra.
Dean. Dean. Dean.
If Sam was somehow going to hold onto the real world, it was going to be to Dean who anchored him.
Please hurry up, Dean.
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AN: The poem Puck recites a little of is The Stolen Child by W.B. Yeats.
The Mysterious Stranger is an unfinished book by Mark Twain. A self-proclaimed angel shows up in a small town and befriends some boys. The angel, whose name is Satan ("he is my uncle" he says of the better known Satan), tells the protagonist that a friend of his will have strife and pain his whole adult life, so he considers it mercy to nudge fate so the boy dies when he's young and still happy. The concept gave me nightmares when I read it, far more than anything I read in the horror genre.
Wacky Wednesday is a children's book by Dr. Suess. On each page, you are supposed to find the given number of things that are "wacky," like a random shoe on the ceiling.
Timelady66: Oh, I'm so sorry! Sinus pain and pressure is so awful. I really hope by the time you read this that you're feeling better. Hugs, my friend.
sfaulkenberry: Audrey's quieter, more stabby cousin! (Feed me, Dean!) OMG I love you. You always see the same little bits of humor that I do even in the whumpage. And sure, Sam's absolutely fine. *snicker* I'm just not very nice to the boys at all. I was going to add 'in this story' on the end of that previous sentence and realized that it was extraneous. In the next chapter, I promise to have both the guys so we can debate who got it worse.
Jenjoremy: It just kind of...happened. LOL. I actually went back and added Dean complaining about the healing process because it occurred to me that if it sucked that much, he'd certainly have something to say about it. Here's what was happening with Sam, as requested, but it's not much fun for him. A different sort of whump, I guess. You'll find out about Dean and the yataveo soon, promise.
Christine: I can't kill Dean off! If I did, Sam would definitely die, too, or at least lose his mind. And then who would stop the Apocalypse?
stedan: Yup, so much whumpage! I'm glad you brought that up about the deals. I thought about it, because this early in the show they didn't know anything about demons or deals or what Mary did when Azazel killed John. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but in many stories about Puck have him making deals with people, so I counted on Dean knowing that. I don't take comments like that as criticism, actually, especially from such a faithful reader/commenter. I find it very helpful and keep it in mind going forward – what did people like and what didn't feel authentic, etc. So, did you miss something? Nope. Maybe I made too big of a leap.
Kathy: In the interest of honesty, I have to tell you that the 'slight slurping sound' was a sentence Janice suggested. (She's good.) It's fun writing the fight scenes! Not that the fights in this story are working out very well for the Winchesters. It remains to be seen how the deal(s) work out for them. Are you surprised that Sam was one of the few stubborn ones who'd rather go crazy than give in and let the place change him? It was fun to write uber-smart Sam but stubborn-Sam feels just as real to me! Bleach was a good answer too! I never thought of that. I figured blood would tempt the yataveo to drink. Thank you for your lovely comments.
muffinroo: Well, I'm certainly glad you're not getting snacked on by any foliage (or anything else)! Ha! If you could send some of that rain this way, the farmers would certainly appreciate it. Speaking of life imitating art, yesterday I found myself spraying my cauliflower plants with dish soap and water to keep the bugs off them. No blood in my concoction, luckily. You want some Sammy? This entire chapter was Sam for you!
Colby's girl: Thank you! Dean does tend to come out with the funniest lines. I'm one of those weirdos who giggles while they write! Sorry there was a bit of a wait for this one, and that it didn't give any kind of update on Dean since time moves differently where the guys are. We'll be going back to him in the next chapter, I promise!
Jane: No worries about the timing of the review. For one thing, I couldn't even see the new reviews at first. For another, my writing speed has slowed down a little lately. And most of all, I appreciate any and all reviews, no matter when they show up. I'm impressed you're able to type at all with just one hand, and I'm so happy the surgery went well. And thank you for your very kind words!