Epilogue: Dream Hopping

They arrived in London at around midnight. Cas went to bed immediately, feeling very tired. Despite this exhaustion, he lay awake, thinking over the journey of the past week.

Azazel was definitely still at large, that much he knew for certain. But how had he pulled off that vanishing act? Was Beelzebub involved?

Feeling troubled, but too tired to care right then, Cas yawned and closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to come to him. Before long, it did.

Cas dreamt that he was on a street corner, and it was storming violently. Throwing up his arms to shield himself from the downpour, Cas ran under a red and gold awning that belonged to what appeared to be some sort of small, cosy, and well-lit bookstore. A flash of lightning came, followed almost immediately by the roar of thunder, and Cas was no longer alone under the awning.

Gabriel had come for a visit. He looked similar to the way Cas had first seen him, but very different. For one thing, he was now normal-sized, and he was wearing a white Sunday suit. Cas could hardly see the halo of white fire, and for now, Gabriel's wings weren't visible at all.

"Hello, Cas." Gabriel said, nodding amiably, and looking in the large front window of the bookshop with a manner that was very... well, human, in Cas's opinion, forgetting for a moment that he, himself, was also anything but human.

"You're Gabriel, aren't you, sir? Thanks for the help earlier." Even though Gabriel had softened his appearance, Cas still felt somewhat frightened of the archangel.

Gabriel smiled, looking away from the window. "You're quite welcome, Cas, but I was only doing what was asked of me by the prophet I have been set to protect."

Cas shrugged. "That doesn't change the fact that you saved our lives."

Gabriel seemed as though he didn't quite know what to do, and shoved his hands in his pockets. This seemed to remind him of something. "Oh, here. Castiel asked me to return this to you. Said you dropped it." Gabriel pulled out a lamp that Cas recognized as the one that he'd had when Castiel had visited him. Cas took the bronze lamp by the carved angel handle.

"Thank you, sir." Cas said respectfully, feeling the cool weight of the ancient item.

Gabriel nodded again, and his eyes left Cas and lingered once more on a book in the window display: The Arabian Nights.

"I have said this before, Cas, to many people. It's my favourite order to dish out, actually Do you know what it is?"

"No, sir." Cas said, also looking at the copy of Arabian Nights. Gabriel smiled.

"Read, Cas. That's the one order that never gets old for me. You can never read enough books. You're lucky. Nowadays, it's quite a lot easier to get ahold of books and read to your heart's content, but way back when, the majority of people didn't even know how to read. Your job, from now on, is to read as much as you can and as often as you can."

Another fork of lightning cracked the sky in two, and the next thing that Cas knew, he was back in his room in Nimrod's house. It was still pitch black outside, so Cas turned over, intending to go right back to sleep. His tired eyes fell on the mahogany bedside table, which he could have sworn hadn't had anything on it before he'd gone to sleep.

Now, however, Cas could see the silhouette of the bronze lamp with the ivory angel handle sitting, looking quite natural, on the little table. Immediately, his sleepiness was forgotten. Cas got up, made his way over to the lightswitch, and snapped the lights on. After blinking several times at the sudden brightness, Cas went back over to the lamp and picked it up. A post-it note had been attached to the base of it. Cas peeled it off, and read it.

He smiled. There was only one word scrawled on the yellow square of paper, written in black ink with swooping handwriting.

"Read."

"When the angel Gabriel visited Muhammad, do you know what the first word he said was? No, it was not 'Pray,' it was not 'Serve.' It was 'Read.'"