Imaginary storytelling, Supernatural edition: Places to come from, places to go.

[hannah]

This is for neotoma and tiny_antares. And everyone who likes fictional anthropology.

I had a moment of great jubilation when I got to the fourth season of Supernatural - not just because the plot was kicking into high gear, not just because of Misha Collins, not just because the effects budget had been increased to about $72 per episode up from $65. A lot of it was from the fact I'd finally found something to fit the premise-in-search-of-a-plot that'd been kicking around my head for a few years.

Then I went and dedicated myself to Team Fortress 2 before I could get a chance to write anything. I did, however, take copious notes on the story idea set off long ago by the phrase "angel sanctuary" - an anime series I knew nothing about save the title, because I find late-90s anime trailers obtuse at the best of times - and might as well get around to sharing them since I don't have to be up early to go to work tomorrow.

With Supernatural, some of it was a reaction against all the fics forgetting angels are, in Castiel's words, "Multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent" and are instead treated as physical beings - while also giving them characteristics belonging to said multidimensional wavelengths in a way that struck me as internally inconsistent. Too many stories where it wasn't one or the other, or even lacking in a clear set of rules for the story itself. I found myself wanting to read a story that didn't seem to be written yet: something with angels not as wavelengths but entirely physical beings, with fingernails, digestive tracts, oil glands for their feathers, and all that good stuff. Something where - perhaps more importantly than having clearly delineated gestation periods - the culture of the angels was also given attention and care and not just added to as the author felt the story needed. Something set in a world where where angels were in textbooks along with kappas, selkies, and werewolves. And, going with the original story idea, live fairly removed from the rest of the world for their own safety.

In addition to being one of those, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if...?" stories, the underpinning of this AU would be an exploration of the relationship between Castiel and Sam and Dean, and the impact the brothers' have on angels - and through that lens, the impact of sudden external influence on isolated cultures.

Angels, being highly magical beings, have long been hunted by humans for use in spellcraft and magic - blood, feathers, eggshells, bones. Their original homelands were the Middle East, with them seemingly going extinct in the wild by the time of the Crusades, and went extinct in captivity a couple of decades after that. England and France have the largest collections of skeletons and assorted remains, and will sometimes tap into their dwindling stores if the need is great enough, such as a potion to save the life of the ruling monarch curently ravaged by lung cancer. There are a few bone flutes that still see use, and Sam and Dean were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time to hear one played once.

In addition to the shifts regarding angels, hunters are fairly well known in society as well. Somewhere between lawyers and plumbers in terms of prestige, it's a profession that ranges from the well-respected white collar academic to the dirty-fingernailed blue collar monster dispatchers. Mary and Sam Winchester lean towards the former; John and Dean, the latter.

As a side note, I didn't ever take the time to figure out if Mary and John are alive, if it's only Mary who's dead, what happened without an apocalypse two thousand years in the making to give Sam and Dean their current relationship. But I did settle on the Winchesters having a family cabin out in Arizona in the mountains somewhere. Because that's where Dean shoots down Castiel.



As it turns out, angels didn't go extinct in the wild; they managed to move themselves to the Southwestern US, a place so remote and so far from home they figured they'd be safe there to hide for a while. Deliberate exile. A couple hundred, at most, were what was left to move, and they had to rebuild their culture from the ground up. It used to be that angels lived in large, decentralized groups, with families having their own small territories and nests in the greater region. After they began life in hiding, they started to live in centralized villages, banding together for safety. As time went on, this led to a breakdown of the old social order, with the family being dissolved in favor of the society as a whole. There are now about 1800 angels, closer to 1900, the largest the total population has ever been, spread out across seven villages up and down the Rocky Mountains. Children are raised communally, not by their parents, in order to minimize the importance of individual bonds for the sake of the species at large. Pair-bonds, mated pairs, still exist, but as soon as the eggs are laid, they're taken from the mother. Angels always lay a pair of eggs, typically a day or two apart, that are cared for separately based on laying time. They ascribe the four personality types as older brother, older sister, younger brother, and younger sister, with each having its own specific word that communicates a good deal of information about that person. Gabriel and Lucifer, for example, are older brothers, and Raphael is a younger brother. Michael is an older sister. Castiel is a younger sister.

Sexual dimorphism in angels takes a lot from raptors and other birds: they have a ZW chromosome system, with females being the heterogametic ones and the larger and stronger of the two sexes. They also lack external genitals, instead possessing a cloaca roughly where the navel is on a human. The males are the village-keepers that stay and raise the children, and the females are the hunters and protectors. Castiel was traveling between one village and another, disguised as a flock of geese, when Dean shot him down thinking he was just shooting at a flock of geese.

After he finds Cas and takes him to the cabin, after he and Sam secure him in the barn - the two of them there on vacation, because it's a universal truth the Winchesters always need a vacation - they don't believe what they found was a real live angel. To test, they get a little of his blood and pull out one of the oldest recipes in any of the books they've got, something that people don't do anymore because nobody can get their hands on fresh angel blood. But this time, it works, and that's the proof they need.

Sam comments on Dean finding something long thought extinct to the point of myth by shooting it down by accident. Dean isn't amused. It gets worse when Castiel wakes up after two days unconscious and they realize he doesn't speak English and they don't speak Enochian. Sam tries a few words, but it's no good: the pronunciation is off, there's no semblance of grammar or sentence structure, and there's no time to parrot things back-and-forth until something clicks. So Dean tries another spell, something people can do now but tend to avoid because it's risky. It involves cutting his tongue and using the blood from that in a potion, and they manage to get Castiel to drink it - when he does, he has their tongue, and can speak English. It's a very literal translation, though, so when Dean asks him about his navel - something he was poking at when he was out and they were dressing the hole in his wing - Cas doesn't say cloaca, he says sewer, because that's what the word means. Translating figures of speech from the Enochian is a two-step process, from the literal "We might as well eat our eggshells" to the more pragmatic "We're down to clutching at straws." Although, as Cas points out to them, it doesn't communicate the full meaning behind the necessity of such eating, as it's only done when a pregnant mother is extremely sick as a folk remedy.

As Cas heals, they talk more and more, at least after Dean does his full-body heeby-jeeby thing he does after he realizes just where he put his finger. Cas is hesitant to talk, and explains it's because humans are the monsters in the stories he grew up with. The older brother in charge of Cas and his fellow younger siblings told them stories about how humans would hunt them, carve them up, keep them in cages and pull out their feathers that they couldn't fly away and drain their blood that they might not even draw a sigil to free themselves, blast themselves elsewhere.

Before they could talk to each other, they'd watch each other do things neither party understood. Once Cas was up and about as best he could be and wanted to get clean, it was Sam who understood what he was doing first - he was taking a bath. A dust bath. The driveway isn't paved or graveled, just loose, dusty dirt, and the angel was rubbing it in his hair and shaking it out, rubbing it into his feathers, and Sam recognized it from birds. The angel was taking a bath.

Cas never took their option to bathe in water. He never accepted their offer of eating birds, either - other animals that hatch are forbidden to him. They too spend some time sleeping before waking. Mammals are born awake, but creatures that hatch are allowed to dream, to listen to the hum of the world, and that's something which should be respected by not eating them.

The three of them spend a lot of time discussing spellcraft and spellwork and magic, and Cas tells them there's no word for magic in Enochian. What he does - it's not magic. It's just something he can do. But he can do comparatively little now, as he has no grace. When Dean says he thought all angels had grace, Cas has to explain it's not that simple. Since he's alone, apart from the group, he can't be said to have grace. He'd have it again if he was home, with his brothers and sisters, but not alone like this. He can exert influence on the world, but that's not his grace. That's different - it's just something he can do.

From their research, Sam and Dean know angels are one of the few beings in the world that can cast spells instead of just tapping into their inherent abilities. A shapeshifter can copy other people down to the memories, a siren can cast illusions and make people love them, but those aren't like drawing up a spell to to summon a ghost. Those are just things they do. Humans can cast spells to drive out demons and locate people on maps, but have no such inherent abilities. Angels, however, have both. Ritual and craft as well as raw application of power. Which is no small part of why they were hunted to near-extinction.

As Cas heals, he asks to go in the house. When he does, and sees the picture of John and Mary, it leads to another culture clash. Sam and Dean had some idea he was raised by one of his siblings - something Cas finds comfortable about Sam and Dean, the idea it was siblings raising each other, as civilized beings ought to do - without understanding the full extent of it. In modern Enochian, the words for father and mother exist only as nouns to refer to the role in reproduction, and other words for family relationship have almost totally faded from use. When he learns John and Mary are Sam and Dean's father and mother, his immediate reaction is disgust, because he knows John and Mary were incredibly selfish people to keep their children all to themselves like that. It takes a long time for Sam and Dean to understand why Cas is so bothered by the fact that they know their parents, and Cas never manages to understand why the two of them think it's so upsetting he doesn't know who his parents are or that when he has children he won't raise them himself. He knows there was an angel who laid the egg he hatched from, and there was another angel who helped make that happen, and by the time he was three he'd learned to not ask questions about who they were, no matter how curious he was. And when he has children of his own, he'll have the eggs taken from him almost as soon as they're laid.

He explains it to Dean as such: humans sacrifice. Angels relinquish.

When he's well enough to go, he casts a spell alerting some other angels that he's actually alive - when he was shot and struggling to crawl to safety, he put out a spell that declared him dead, that he wouldn't risk others' lives by coming to save him. But now he's well, and he understands Sam and Dean, at least, won't come in with guns and knives to cut his family to pieces, so he calls them that they might come. Six angels arrive, four females and two males, one of whom is the first to step forward and embrace Castiel, someone a good few inches shorter and slighter - his mate, Muriel.

It's not until after his family arrives that Cas does the spell Sam and Dean did to him, giving the two humans his own tongue of Enochian, and they'll never forget the look of joy on his face when they spoke it for the first time - blood ringing in their ears, their tongues boiling, words and ideas rushing through their heads, and even as they swore, Cas simply looked at them, and listened, and asked them to keep talking, say a few words that he could hear someone use his language. But even though he doesn't know the words they use, when Dean finds Muriel grooming Cas' wings, the two of them speaking softly, he understands what they're saying well enough he doesn't intrude. Angels have magnificent hearing - and great eyesight, but very poor senses of smell and taste, or else they never would've gotten that potion down his throat - and they still didn't hear him coming.

Around here, the story broke down somewhat in my head. I never got far beyond that image, partly because of where the canon went and what it started to bring in, and partly because Team Fortress 2 ate my brain. When I consider what would happen next, though, it'd be in the realm of the phrase "angel sanctuary," with everyone understanding if this accident happened, it'll happen again, and the best way to keep that from coming to pass is to educate and inform. Let humans know they're there. Because there's nowhere left to run, there's no place left to hide. And - this is a big hope, something that they used to sustain themselves - if they're known, and protected, then maybe, just maybe, they might be able to go back to where they came from.

It's still something I think about from time to time. There was a lot of time spent on it, and I really would like to read this sometime. And I honestly can't think of a better reason to write a story.

Comments

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

I'm really tempted to do something similar for the gabriel_bigbang -- something in the 'angels are physical beings' line, I mean. Of course, I also want to do a sedoretu marriage fic as well, so who know what I'll do. Maybe combine the two?

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

Is that the one where they lay eggs in giant nests, megapode and crocodillian-style?

If you want help working on the anthropological details, I'd be happy to pitch in.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

haha! the angel-=megapode fic is going up Wednesday (if I can get it finished -- you wouldn't want to do a last minute beta, would you?)

This one is more of the idea that maybe angels are an endangered species, they're not breeding well because it's hard for a sedoretu to get set up with such a small and widely scattered population, and Gabriel is a captive-reared angel that Jess and Sam are trying to set up with a female from the opposite moiety, except that they're also have to stand in as surrogates for the other heterosexual pair in the sedoretu, because they're just aren't enough angels left for Gabriel and Kali to find two other angels of the appropriate genders and moieties to marry... or something like that.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

I want to, but I don't know how helpful I'd be, or if I had the time. How long is it, and what would you need me to do?

So there's what, barely a three-digit population? Was it hunting that drove the population down, habitat encroachment, disease? How intelligent are they?

This also makes me think of this one turkey vulture at the raptor rehabilitation center I worked at, actually - he was hand-raised by people and imprinted on them, and couldn't live in the wild. Is Gabriel in a similar position? I ask because otherwise I don't think he'd acknowledge Jess and Sam as proper sedoretu participants.

And please tell me Dean is working with Cas somewhere.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's 21K (and I'm still typing, because apparently I work best under pressure :headdesk:), and basically I need spelling/grammar/tense check, and to make sure that I haven't got scenes out of order.

I figure that the population is probably under 5000 for sure -- something that would need management, but not so desperate that they've no choice but inbreeding. And I think it was more likely habitat encroachment and disease than hunting. The angels are human-level intelligent, but a bit more stereotypical, like birds? They have a hard time overcoming some of their maladaptive behaviors, anyway.

Gabriel would have been born in the wild but somehow wound up being raised by humans from a young age (before fledging, and he'd have runaway from his family for some reason, to keep with canon), so he's got a messed-up image of whom he should be looking as mates -- I think Kali was brought from overseas to hopefully add some genetic diversity to the local angel population, but she's not getting along with any of the available proper-gender-and-moiety threesomes that are out there.

I think Dean and Cas are out there somewhere, or maybe Cas is Gabriel's younger brother who is even more fixated on humans as mates, and has decided that Dean is his Night mate, and that they just need to find a nice Day (f/f) couple to marry.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

One detail I forgot to put into that wall of notes was that the feathers over the wound where Dean shot down Cas all grow back black, and stick out from pattern on the rest of his feathers. I wonder if something like that happened to Gabriel, assuming he's got wings: injured at an early enough age and far enough distance from other angels humans had to take him in so he wouldn't die. If he ran away, then it'd be easy enough to argue whoever found him contacted the local wildlife services to come help.

Where are the populations found?

If Cas is Gabriel's younger brother, that brings me to thinking about someone finding a cache of unguarded eggs, or that Cas was just unhatched and nearby when they found Gabriel to bring him in. If that's the case, Dean could make a lot of canon-paralleling comments about how Cas is wonderful and kind and careful, but doesn't know how to be an angel.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

I figure that angels live in mountain areas, so Gabriel is probably from the Appalachias somewhere (given that he code-switches in canon, this makes sense). Possibly he was injured or the only member of his family that survived some virulent disease.

Cas could even not be Gabriel's brother, but if his egg was unhatched when found, and he eventually hatched at the place Gabriel was being raised, Gabriel might see him as a younger sibling anyway -- and since Gabriel would have been old, perhaps his helper (as, young unmated birds helping parents raise the next brood) instincts were triggered.

But Cas would be completely spacey as far as 'wild' angels are concerned, since he only had humans and an immature male for a models...

Otoh, Dean working as a angel conservationist? I find that unlikely -- maybe he's the facilities engineer at the sanctuary and Cas takes a liking to him? I think Jess would be the conservationist (since we have no idea what she was studying in canon, why not) and Gabriel develops a sibling-like bond with her, and then a shine to her husband, and just starts thinking of them as an almost-married threesome who just need to find a woman that's in opposite moiety to settle down and start raising young?

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

Bird flu can and does jump the species barrier. And social siblings instead of genetically related ones - I like that. Cas makes for a very good case study for Sam the researcher, specifically demonstrating how instinct can only go so far.

Dean works as the engineer, and every so often helps out with the caring and feeding of the young ones under Jess' supervision. (Why not make them all friends? They could've been friends, we just never learned!)

That last scenario is fairly plausible, given the set-up you have going.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Bird flu might do it -- especially since birds and mammals can react differently to the same strain. And yes, social siblings, and possibly different moiety-sibs,if a nest is all the young from two females of different moieties together.

I think angels might live longer than humans, since birds tend to live longer than similarly sized mammals. Gabriel looks 40ish, but is actually older and has been one of the consistent failures of the rebreeding program, though they've learned a lot from him and Cas (mostly, what *not* to do).

Kali comes through because she keeps getting in fights with the not-quite-married threesomes and pairs the rebreeding program tries to introduce her to ... but she finally takes a shine to Gabriel, who is after all part of an almost-complete-threesome, even if his two almost-mates are humans. It'd also explain why she disses Dean when he (non-seriously) flirts with her -- if Dean is Sam's brother, and Sam is Gabriel's opposite moiety male mate, than Sam and Dean are both of her moiety and Dean is joking about incest (YUK!).

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Starting a new thread because the old one was getting ridiculous...

I still need some sort of external conflict hang the plot on, something that parallels things that happened in canon somehow, so that it feels like it's an actual SUPERNATURAL story...

Maybe something about demons? Maybe angels can also sell their souls, and the demons that they become are ... more dangerous? more plotting and good at the long game? Or maybe angels can't sell their souls and can always see demons, so the plot revolves around hunters trying to recruit angels to the cause, except that angels don't even last as long as most hunters because they are violent the ways humans are?

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

That's assuming angels have a soul, which might be a characteristic unique to the human species.

If the plot isn't mostly focused on the exploration of Gabriel and Kali trying to form a sedoretu with Sam and Jess, and you want some external conflict that draws from the canon story, demons wouldn't be a bad way to go. It doesn't necessarily have to be a one-for-one parallel - I don't think exploring the impact Dean and Sam have on Castiel and, by extension, all other angels needs to have an apocalypse attached to it if the characters were written strongly enough. Drawing angels into a human conflict while they have related-but-not-identical concerns could be developed into something close enough to the lines canon drew to be worth looking into.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I dislike the idea of angels not having souls, at least if they are physical near-human beings.

I obviously need to think on this. Because I don't usually write stories that are just romances, even if they have romance as a subplot.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

Maybe they do, and the translation from Enochian is better rendered as "grace."

Seconded. The romance has to come from the characters and not be the sole reason for the story existing. Otherwise, we're only one step removed from the likes of Nicholas Sparks, and then only because we can write better sex scenes.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

I do like that. Not that angel souls might not be slightly differet from human souls in ways that make difference to angels...

Basically, I need something that would have been the overarching reason to warp Sam and Dean into the Winchester brothers as they are in canon, or something close. John still has to go off the deep end and make it impossible for them to have normal lives, until Sam rebels to go to college...

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

They're different in how they're considered by those that possess them, in what those possessing them can do with theim present within themselves, and and the cultural connotations of that ownership. Angels might see soul ownership as something less personal - though it's something that is unique to each angel, it can't be fully realized or made true without other angels to be there to establish the fact. Something like that, I think, might also tie in the sedoretu. Four angels, one complete soul.

The first thing that came to mind was actually poaching. But John wouldn't ever be a poacher; he's an asshole but not evil like that. Hunting poachers, maybe. Since the supernatural is known that's a lot of stress off the family, but it's not fully diminished. If Sam winds up working with angels, either because he fell into it with Jess or decided to do it himself, he wouldn't be running from something as far as he can, as it allows the supernatural as an active part of his life. Possibly he wanted a more modern method of saving people and hunting things that instead involved helping things and hunting people, working with angels and the center and pressing through with lobbyists for more control over poachers and protected grounds?

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.... angels could definitely consider souls more as group property, or family property, especially if it comes out of their flocking instincts...

No, John wouldn't be a poacher, though he'd probably deal with people who were, at least occasionally. Especially if angel feathers/blood/what-have-you make for extremely useful magical items/spell components. Maybe the first time Sam meets an angel he's still a kid and John's just rescued one from a witch?

I do think Jess was the one to get involved in angels, and Sam just happened to specialize in something that made him useful to the center in an non-angel capacity, like property law or something.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

It was one of the things that made initial angel-human relations difficult, this extremely different way of looking at the same thing - how can one human own something like that all on their own? And how can something be seen as something close to human when by their own admission they don't have their own soul?

All of an angel is useful, down to the gallbladder. Yes to that scenario, of Sam seeing an angel in his father's arms, shivering and weak. This witch was using renewable resources of feathers and blood, and had gotten desperate enough to make a power grab with bones. The angel had lost three fingers by the time John rescued her.

In the show, he seemed to be focusing on criminal law and procedural, according to the book in What Is And What Should Never Be. That could easily tie into something they needed help with that'd morph into a permanent position.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Restarting the threaded again, because it was getting too bunched up again.

The language barrier didn't help much. Him trying to explain that he likes how it feels, that it's warm like feathers, and - being a little kid at the time - crying when he doesn't have the words.

ooo, and Gabriel wondering if this was how humans fledged... and possibly getting the genders mixed up, because the differences between human males and females isn't obvious if you don't understand the cultural markers...

I am so NOT a linear writer. You may need an outline and a cheat sheet to keep up.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

It takes at least a year of near-total immersion for him to get fluency in English, possibly longer, and even at the center, there are so few humans who can speak Enochian. He only spoke Enochian to Cas, no matter what language humans used, to teach him this was their language, their words.

Depending on the characteristics of angel males and females, yeah, I can see Gabriel getting the genders of humans mixed up before he learned them well.

I can work with an outline.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Maybe angels have a harder time learning languages than humans, at least after childhood -- maybe their brains lose plasticity more completely? Gabriel is unusual in how fluent he is? Cas might actually have a harder time with Enochian than English, if that's the case.

Gabriel eventually learned to recognize clothes as a clue, but when he was little it was too confusing. Angels have moeity and gender colored into their feathers, so the idea that clothes signified gender was bizarre.

Okay then -- I'll work up an outline.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

I was thinking something closer to Gabriel having trouble adjusting to his new life, language and all - if he hadn't been in such a state when he'd arrived, it'd have been easier for him to learn English. I'd think adult angels that come through that are used to only speaking Enochian that also want to learn English would be able to manage fairly well, plasticity or not, simply because they're more willing to do so.

So possibly it was Lomax and the rest that was the tipping point to help him out with figuring out how to talk with humans. As for sexual dimorphism, at a place like the center with dress codes and uniforms, yes, it'd be much harder.

I look forward to it.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

you know now I have to read a biography of Lomax... darn.

Oh, I'm going to have to look up women in the sciences in the 1950s, too. That'll be fun...

I might sleep through the weekend first. Finishing the mini-bang was exhausting.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

After thinking about it some, the lack of brain plasticity in adult angels might account for their stereotypicality in addition to a diminished capacity to learn languages after childhood. It makes me want to reread select parts of Temple Grandin books on brain development and evolution and see what I can cobble from there. Something worth considering, at any rate.

Sleep, rest, and draw up a list of subjects to look into come Monday.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Given that at least some species of songbirds have the males grow and lose brain tissue on a seasonal basis (because why spend the energy to retain breeding songs from year to year?), I think angels might be very strange from a human perspective. At the very least, their cognitive biases are going to be very different.

Yeah, that sounds like a plan. I still have to figure out a plot beside 'establish a sedoretu with Sam and Jess and Gabriel and Kali.'

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

That makes me want to do a lot more reading so I can have a better base for extrapolating - not just the cognitive biases, but instincts and urges, too, what's written into them that isn't written into humans.

What about rewriting the apocalypse in a new context yet again? Fighting against demons, helping to stop the end of the world, where the end of the world isn't a literal implosion of the planet but something more mundane? There'd be a few bloody fights, some mightily powerful spells, and no small number of demons and nasty creatures coming out to fight, but in the end, it's won by research and arguments and supportive legislation getting passed at the state level, paving the way for federal reforms.

And on one level, I'm suddenly wondering about the crisis of conscious Sam would experience when he's arguing for angel rights, while he's also seeing Jess bring Kali in just so she can help Gabriel make some offspring.

And on another, I admit I'm suddenly taken with the idea of the Sam-Jess-Gabriel-Kali part of the story counterbalanced by the Cas and Dean part, which would involve the more traditional fighting and killing things and only pop up on occasion instead of dominating the narrative - reversing the show's typical format.