Gone With the Wendigo (1/3)
Part 1
Dean didn't think he'd ever been colder. Not and still conscious, anyway. His breath had gone past misting in front of him to misting in his goddamn lungs, every breath weighing heavy in his chest. He huffed into his gloved hands and stomped his feet down harder into the snow with each step, trying to keep his muscles from falling asleep in the cold. Ahead of him, Sam strode forward, upright, as confident in the snowy woods as a goddamn yeti.
"Sure," Dean grumbled. "Let's go hunt the thing that's been turning people into solid blocks of ice. Whose goddamn idea was this?"
"You'd rather let them die?" Sam called back.
"This isn't a hunt, Sam." said Dean. "This is Man Versus Wild. I could be warm right now!" He pulled out Bobby's flask and took a swig. Even his whiskey was too damn cold. "How far out are we?"
Sam stopped and checked the GPS. "We've gone about 15 kilometers, now."
"Kilometers." Dean scowled. "What are you, Canadian?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes, Dean. I am Canadian." He set off again, his strides long and sure, and Dean had to hustle to keep up.
"Hey, Jolly Green Giant, slow the hell down!"
"The cross-country skiers went missing four hours ago, Dean, we don't have time to slow down."
Dean felt like the runt of the litter, trying to bound over the snow to keep up with the big dogs. "We don't have time for you to be an asshole."
"Really, Dean? You wanna get into who's an asshole right now?"
"Into the fact that my brother's being a giant douchebag? Sure, let's get into that."
"Fine!" Sam spun in place, stopping abruptly enough that Dean had to flail his arms to keep from running into him or falling over. "Let's get into the fact that we've lost our only goddamn friend left, and you still won't let me in. Let's get into how you trust me so little right now that you went behind my back to kill someone you promised to leave alone."
Somehow, that made Dean's insides go even colder. "We're even on that, remember? After you shot my daughter --" He started, but Sam wasn't listening, had barely even paused in his tirade.
"-- Let's get into the fact that I've got freaking Lucifer taunting me, and you're still the biggest pain in my ass, right now. Let's get into how --"
"It's snowing," Dean interrupted, as a frigid wind blasted them with thick, fat flakes. Sam closed his eyes.
"-- You were supposed to check the weather reports!" he finished without missing a goddamn beat.
"You're blaming me for the snow now? We're in goddamn New Hampshire, Sam."
"I asked you if it looked like it was going to get nasty out here."
"And the reports didn't say anything about any extra snow!"
The wind blew harder, whipping the surrounding trees back and forth and sending the snow into near white-out conditions. Dean bit his lip and squinted at Sam over his scarf. Sam had the grace to look chagrined, at least, though it was hard to tell when his hair kept blowing across his face like that. He shoved it out of his eyes and looked up.
"Uh, Dean?"
Dean grabbed for Sam's arm almost instinctively as the snow got thicker. "What?"
Sam pointed skyward. "What do those look like to you?"
Dean looked. It was hard to make out through the sudden blizzard, but he soon caught sight of what Sam was pointing at. "Giant ghost horses in the sky?"
Sam swallowed. "I think we've found what's been freezing people."
Dean nodded, hanging on harder to Sam's sleeve even though the snow was slowing again. "I think we don't have a big enough gun for this."
"We need to find shelter."
"And they call you the smart one."
"Less bitching, more moving." Sam grabbed onto the hand Dean had wrapped in his sleeve and started pulling him away from the path.
"Woah, wait, since when are you in charge?"
"Since I'm the one with the GPS!"
Dean yanked Sam back onto the path as a fresh burst of snow blew into his face. "You're also the one who's been hallucinating, dammit! Come on, I saw a cave back this way."
"What?" Sam balked. "There was no cave on the map!"
"Did the map say 'freeze self here'?" Dean dug in his feet and dragged harder. "Move it, dude, those horses' eyes are starting to glow!" Sam looked up, swallowed, and let Dean pull him back down the path to the narrow crack he'd spotted in rock-strewn, woodsy hillside. Dean shoved Sam in first, glancing back over his shoulder long enough to actually lock eyes with one of the horses swirling in the hurricane of icy death. Dean could swear he actually saw frost creep its way down the trees and wondered when they'd wandered into a damned Roland Emmerich movie. Then Sam's hands locked around his shoulders and he was yanked backwards into the darkness.
The cave was deeper than he'd first thought -- he'd been figuring on just a shallow little dip, enough to get out of the wind for awhile, but the crack widened a few feet in to a fairly substantial cavern. Dean pulled his scarf down off his nose and wiped futilely at the snow on his face. "See?" he said, and hearing that his voice shook faintly, took another swig from Bobby's flask. "Home sweet icy cave."
Sam shook out his hair, and Dean made a mental note to buy the guy a new hat. "Yeah, Dean," he answered, his voice dry enough they could have used it for kindling. "You're a genius."
Dean scowled. Sam was clearly locked into bitch-at-Dean mode, and frankly, he was sick of trying to argue with him. "I'm going to go see if there's anything we can use for firewood in here. Have fun sulking."
Sam sighed, tucking his GPS device away in his coat, then rubbing his hands together. "I'll come with you." When Dean shot him a look, he shrugged. "Just because I'm pissed doesn't mean I want you spelunking without me." He smirked. "You'd get lost."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Just try to keep up then, jackass."
*
Dean dreamed of monsters.
This was actually true as just kind of a general rule. Ever since coming back from Hell, his dreams had been full of blood and death, vengeful angels and gleeful demons. In the last several months the Leviathans had cheerfully joined the fray -- and obliterated all the others. Now his dreams came at him with gaping jaws and swiping tongues, devouring everything Dean loved with great, heaving swallows until he was left alone in a vast, echoing emptiness, locked in his own form as it slowly gave in to entropy and rot.
These were not those monsters.
Dean dreamed of monsters singular and immense, so brightly colored they hurt his eyes. There was an orange lion with bat wings and a scorpion's tail and a red dragon belching enough fire to blanket the world in darkness for hundreds of miles. There was a blue baboon-like creature with protruding fangs and an extra hand at the end of its tail. And there was a purple bear so large it seemed to be the night sky itself, a single one of its claws the length of the entire Impala. They loomed over Dean as he tried to run, only to stumble onto his hands so many times he was forced to crawl, screaming for Sam and hoping that he hadn't already been consumed by the beasts.
He woke with a gasp, his muscles spasming as he sprawled out across the cold stone floor. It took him several moments to get his bearings and remember where they were, each moment revving up his terror as he became more and more certain that something was very, very wrong. He half expected to roll over and see a massive purple bear foot bearing down on him, and he couldn't help a preemptive wince as he looked up --
And saw an enormous, barrel-chested purple unicorn staring down at him, its dark brown mane falling into its eyes.
"Dean," Sam called, and Dean blinked, because for a second there, it looked like the unicorn had -- "Dean! We have a problem!"
Oh god. He wasn't hallucinating. This was a thing. This was -- the unicorn -- Sam was a fucking barrel chested purple unicorn with giant anime eyes.
Dean panicked. He scrabbled against the floor, trying to get his limbs to coordinate long enough to make it to his feet. The cold in the cave must have invaded his muscles because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find his center of balance, and much like in his dream, he found himself crawling desperately away.
"Dean!" Sam said again. "Calm down! It's okay!"
"It is not okay!" Dean growled, giving up on making it to his feet and instead turning on the unicorn -- Sam -- crouched low on all fours, his breath heaving. "You're a purple unicorn! How is that remotely okay?!"
"Right," Sam said, tossing his head with a brief whinny. "Well, I was trying to calm you down first, but . . . it gets worse."
"How can it get worse?!"
"You're blue."
Dean blinked. ". . . No I'm not."
"No, you are. You're a blue horse. I didn't even realize it was you until you woke up and started flailing all over the place."
"I'm not -- that's --" Dean looked down at his arms and recoiled. What he'd taken for the fabric of his coat was actually a thin coating of fur over the world's freakiest chunky-ass horse legs, ending seamlessly in chunky blue hooves. Something moved in the corner of his vision and he lunged for it, trying again when it danced just out of his reach -- then froze as he realized he was chasing his goddamn tail. He reared up, kicking his front hooves in the air with a panicked whinny, then landed and ducked his head down to peer between his hind legs.
He was blue. He was blue all the way from his chest to his legs, his clothes having somehow vanished in the night. And as far as he could tell from this angle, he was completely dickless.
He let out something that sounded suspiciously like a goat's bleat and collapsed over onto his back, his legs -- all four of them -- in the air.
Sam sighed and rolled his giant, honey-brown anime unicorn eyes. "Are you done yet?"
"Sammy," Dean said -- and yeah, it was still fairly bleat-ish. "Sammy, we're candy colored ponies!"
"Actually, you're sort of denim-y. And I'm eggplant."
"And a unicorn," Dean noted. His eyes -- which he supposed were probably as ridiculously large as Sam's, right now -- widened. "Oh shit. Am I a unicorn, too?"
And he clubbed himself in the forehead with his right front hoof as he attempted to check.
"No," Sam said, sounding put-upon. "You're just a horse."
"Well . . . good," Dean decided finally. "At least I've got that going for me."
*
"Okay," Dean said, when he was finally feeling centered enough on his hooves that he could be pretty sure he wasn't going to collapse like a cheap toy if he tried to move too much. "Okay, so." He paced in a circle -- determinedly not chasing his tail again, thanks, though it was damned distracting. "Taking stock."
"We're horses," Sam said.
"A horse and a unicorn," Dean corrected, pointing at Sam with his hoof. He looked down at it. "Is this a thing? Do horses point hooves at each other?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"Right." Dean set his hoof carefully back down on the ground and resumed his pacing. "We're --" He shot Sam a look. "-- horse-shaped --"
"Equine," Sam supplied.
"-- And also naked," Dean continued. "Which means our clothes are missing. Along with all our supplies. We're in a cave --"
"-- That you dragged us into --"
"-- In the middle of the New Hampshire wilderness, while outside a herd of ghost horses --"
"-- Team of ghost horses --"
"-- is trying to bury us under the freaking Day After Tomorrow. Anything I'm missing?"
Sam was silent for a long moment, which just freaking figured, really. He looked around the cave, eyes landing on seemingly anything but Dean.
"I can make things levitate with my horn," he said.
Dean stopped pacing and dropped his head to peer down his now incredibly long nose at him. "Come again?"
A little glowing yellow cloud appeared around Sam's horn and one of the nearby rocks. The rock floated up into the air, while Sam continued to stare up at the ceiling, his big unicorn lips curled like he was whistling.
Dean stared. He kicked the floating rock, sending it spinning across the room like a ping pong ball. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me."
"It could be useful," Sam grumbled.
"That's it," Dean decided. "I'd rather face off against the crazy ghost horses." And he started stalking towards the entrance to the cave. He paused, glancing back at Sam, whose head was hanging low now, the glow gone from around his horn. "You coming, or what?"
Sam popped his head back up and trotted after him.
*
Dean braced his hooves as he approached the entrance to the cave. They no longer had a single stitch of clothes between them, and fur or no fur, that was going to suck in all that snow. He heaved in a breath and steeled his nerves. His nostrils flared. He felt the inexplicable urge to scuff his front hoof against the ground.
Here went nothing.
"Uh, Dean?"
Dean screwed his eyes shut and lunged out the door -- and into a perfectly lovely temperate night in what appeared to be late spring.
". . . The hell?"
"Yeah," said Sam, trotting out of the cave behind him. "I noticed it while you were bracing yourself." He lifted one hoof and waved it into the sky in a way that Dean was pretty sure horses' legs weren't actually meant to bend. "No wind. No snow."
Dean turned in place, his tail swishing anxiously as he glared at the tree tops. "No freaking ghost horses. There aren't even any clouds." He looked back at his tail, which was still swinging furiously. "Uh, here's a thing," he said. "How do I make it stop doing that?"
"You know I've never actually been a horse before, right?"
"You figured out how to levitate rocks, dude."
"It's still not the same skill set." Sam tilted his head. He actually looked amused. "What, not satisfied with the state of your poker tail?"
Dean turned away, deciding to pretend he couldn't hear Sam. His bristling tail probably told a different story, though. He turned his head back towards the sky instead, frowning. The moon was full and bright, taking up an incredible portion of the sky, yet the stars burned like stark pinpoints, almost all as bright as each other. "Check out the stars," Dean said. "Those are not New Hampshire stars."
"Maybe we traveled through time," Sam said, also staring up. "Maybe this is what the sky looked like a couple thousand years ago."
"Right," Dean said. "the cave totally transported us through time and just happened to turn us into ponies."
Sam blushed, his purple cheeks actually turning pale pink. Dean stared.
"Well, that's disconcerting," he noted.
Sam hmphed under his breath, head held low as he slunk past Dean, venturing further into the thick new forest. In the distance, a wolf howled. Dean stood at attention, peering around, then jumped to follow Sam.
"You're not in charge," he said, just in case Sam got any funny ideas. "You're just packing the only weapon we have, right now."
"Great," Sam grumbled. "Your confidence in me is inspiring."
A thought occurred to Dean. "Hey Sam," he said, peering at his brother's swaying tail. "Is the Lucifer in your head a unicorn now, too?"
"I hate you," Sam said, his head still slung low, though now more in anger than embarrassment. "And, uh, he's keeping quiet, right now."
Dean nodded, still keeping a close eye on the surrounding woods as he trotted after Sam. Man, he wished he had a rifle on him.
. . . Not that he had any idea how he'd manage to fire it without fingers.
*
They walked maybe a mile that way, Sam sulking along in the lead while Dean kept ever vigilant watch on their six. When Sam plowed through a set of low bushes like -- well, okay, like a plow -- and ended up taking a header down the side of a sudden rocky incline, Dean couldn't help but take just the tiniest moment for some well deserved vindication. He knew Sam wasn't watching where he was going.
Then Sammy and cliff shot through his brain, and he found himself lunging forward to catch the trailing end of Sam's luxurious freaking tail in his teeth.
Somehow, amazingly, it actually worked. Sam stared wide-eyed at him from where he dangled at the end of what had to be at least three feet of tail, and Dean blinked back, tasting the crappy motel conditioner that Sam had used two days ago, when they'd finally sprung for a place with running water. Why that taste would linger on Sam's tail, Dean didn't want to know.
Then the ground under Dean's hooves gave way and they were both sliding down the rocky cliff, only Dean had a mouth full of horse hair to go with him impending doom. He spat out Sam's tail and spread his hooves, trying to slow his descent. "Use your horn!" he screamed at Sam.
What Sam screamed back would have been hilarious coming out of a purple unicorn's mouth if Dean weren't pretty sure they were going to be the last words he ever heard.
They hit the bottom in a tangle of pony limbs, Sam's horn just barely missing taking out Dean's eye. Somehow, instead of going splat, they managed to roll, tumbling end over end away from the base of the cliff until they finally rolled right up a pine tree, ricocheted off of a branch with what Dean would swear was the sound of a pinball bell, and wound up in a heap at the foot of an enormous, craggy old tree with doors and windows built into the trunk.
Honestly, Dean wasn't sure why he was even surprised, anymore.
He levered himself up as best he could and tried to pull a pine cone out of his mane with his hoof. "You alright, Sam?"
"Yeah," Sam grunted, sounding winded, and Dean looked over as he tried to disentangle his hoof, which was now glued to his mane with pine sap. Sam somehow looked downright immaculate. Dean was about to tell him just how unfair that was when the door in the side of the tree burst open and out came a zebra looking like Storm from the X-Men in her punk rock phase, complete with excessive amounts of jewelry, only with fur instead of spandex.
"Who comes out to my house so late?" she bellowed. "And in such a very sad state!"
Dean flashed her what he really, really hoped was still his trademark "trust me" grin, still trying to pull his hoof from his mane. He indicated Sam with his nose. "He did it."
The zebra didn't much look like she believed him.
"Come inside then, you two, if you can walk. The forest at night is no place for a talk."
"Of course the zebra's a poet," Dean mumbled, as Sam wrapped both his front legs around the one Dean had gotten attached to his head and yanked, dislodging Dean's hoof and a good sized chunk of startlingly bright honey-colored mane. "Ow!"
"Quit whining," Sam said. "The zebra's clearly sentient. Maybe she can help."
"What, she gonna lay some spooky zebra mojo on us?" Dean groused, then froze as he got his first good look at the zebra's little tree home. There were enormous West African style masks along the walls and bundles of herbs strung from the ceiling. A huge cauldron stood bubbling happily in the center of the room.
"Call me Zecora, if you will," the zebra said. "You two are not from Ponyville."
"No, ma'am," Sam said, pony eyes all wide and earnest. "We're not even usually equine. I'm Sam Winchester. This is my brother, Dean."
Zecora gasped, looking between them. "The prophecy!"
"Dammit, Sam." Dean barely resisted the urge to smack himself in the face with his hoof. "You had to use our real names. You scared the rhyme out of her!"
"Darkness comes, and the world will fester," Zecora intoned, perching on her hind legs to wave both her front hooves at them. "Upon the arrival of the brothers Winchester!"
Dean groaned. "Really? That's the prophecy?"
"It's very a strong word that's used this time," Zecora admitted, looking a little sheepish. "But 'Winchester' is not that easy to rhyme."
"Sequester," Sam offered. "Semester."
"It's very clear in my books, you see," Zecora continued to Dean as she crossed the room to her bookshelf. "This is not a pleasant prophecy."
"Jester," Sam offered.
"Breast," Dean said. "Er."
Zecora didn't look amused. She looked from Sam to Dean, then back again as if to say 'are you two done, then?'
Only, you know, rhymier.
She pulled one of the books from the shelf with her teeth, then set it down on what appeared to be a workbench carved out of the tree itself. She sat down on her haunches and waved Sam and Dean over, then started flipping through the book with her remarkably agile hoof.
"My books are not very detailed, though. They say only that disharmony will grow." She tapped one of the pages, showing a drawing of stylized, brightly colored ponies running in terror from shadowy, humanoid figures, while a pair of yellow eyes stared down at them from the darkness of the background. Dean looked over at the facing page, but could only make out a series of scribbles. Apparently, Zecora's pony-world hadn't mastered writing in English, yet.
"To Ponyville is where you should go, to see what Twilight Sparkle might know." Zecora shut the book again once Dean and Sam had gotten a look. "Her library is much larger than mine. There's no telling what wonders you might find."
Dean shot Sam a glance and saw him looking right back. "Is it just me, or does this sound like the first scene of a crappy fantasy novel?"
Sam smirked. "When have you ever read a fantasy novel?"
"Shut up," Dean said. "Let's just get this thing over with."
*
Ponyville, as it turned out, was a cute little village on the edge of the forest, in easy walking distance from Zecora's tree. She left them at the edge of the woods, claiming that she had "other things to get done." Dean suspected that she meant she had to go back and pack so she could haul ass out of the way of the stupid "fester/Winchester" prophecy. The path out of the woods was clearly marked, though, and broad enough for Sam and Dean to walk side by side with plenty of room besides, so Dean figured they probably wouldn't get lost again.
Not that he put it past Sam to find another cliff to fall off of, anyway.
The whole place looked kind of like someone's hallucinatory vision of a Shakespearean town, full of exposed beams, overhanging upper floors, and thatched roofs. The sun was just starting to rise as they made it past the expanse of apple orchard surrounding it into the town proper, casting all the buildings in soft yellows and pinks.
Or, well, Dean hoped it was the sun that made them that color, anyway.
The streets were quiet. Dean only spotted a few ponies -- all as brightly colored as he and Sam were -- trotting about, making their way to whatever the pony equivalent of an early morning job was. One of them, a deep purply-pink pony with a flowery tramp stamp of all things, paused on the threshold of what looked like a classic one-room school house to wave. Sam lifted a hoof in return.
"Dude," Dean hissed. "For all you know, that was the unicorn version of giving her the finger!"
"I'm waving back, Dean. Why would she be flicking off a stranger?"
"What am I, the Horse Whisperer?" Dean started stalking off. "Come on, maybe this Twilight Sparkle chick will know how to get us home."
Sam trotted after him. "Mare," he said. "A female horse -- or pony -- is called a mare."
"Okay, seriously, if you don't knock off the horse lessons, I'm going to punch you in the face."
Sam smirked. "That'd be a nice trick."
"Kick you, then!" Dean screeched to a halt as he spotted train tracks going past. "Here's a question: how the hell did any of this stuff get built with no hands?"
An apple surrounded by a gold glow floated cheerfully in front of Dean's face. Dean shot Sam a glare and reached out to chomp it out of the air -- only to have it smack into the end of his nose. Rather than continue bobbing for apples in thin air, he lashed out with his hoof, sending it flying into the shutters of one of the houses. A broad-nosed pony with facial hair stuck its head out. "Hey, watch it, buster! Some of us are trying to sleep, here!"
Dean waved at him.
Zecora's description of Twilight Sparkle's library was right on, but then, loads of words rhymed with "tree". ("Sparkle", on the other hand, actually rhymed with less than "Winchester" did, near as Dean could tell.) Not only was the library the only building around shaped like a tree, it also had a nice big sign out front with a book on it. Dean paused as they approached the door.
"You know, maybe we would have been better off just crashing in the cave again and hoping it took us home eventually."
"Yeah," said Sam. "Because it's ever been that simple for us."
"Right." Dean raised his hoof to knock on the door, then paused. "This is so weird."
"Do you want me to knock?" Sam asked.
Dean hopped back a few steps. "Well, if you wanna."
Sam rolled his eyes and kicked at the door with his right front hoof. "I hope we're not waking her up."
Dean was torn between teasing Sam about worrying about disturbing a pony librarian and agreeing. They weren't exactly swimming in leads, here. This Twilight chi -- mare was their only lead. It wouldn't do them any good to get off on the wrong foot -- hoof.
Okay, he was going to have to stop that, or his head was going to explode. And considering that he was currently a blue horse, he wasn't about to put it past this world to make it actually explode.
No one answered Sam's knock for several moments, and Dean was just inching up to give it a whirl himself when the top half of the Dutch door swung open wide enough to reveal someone's enormous peering eyes. Dean wondered if they'd get home and think everyone had freakishly small eyeballs.
"Uh, hi," Sam said. "I'm Sam, and this is my brother Dean. Zecora said we should come here and talk to Twilight Sparkle?"
"Who?" a voice -- most likely belonging to the eyes -- asked.
"Twilight Sparkle. Zecora said she might be able to help us with some information."
"Who," said the voice again.
"Twi-light Spar-kle," Sam enunciated carefully. "We heard about her from Ze-cor-a, the zebra who lives in the woods."
"Who."
"Oh for chrissake," Dean said. He lashed out with one hoof, sending the door flying the rest of the way open. "It's an owl, Sam!"
The owl flapped in the now open doorway, its huge eyes staring down at them. "Who," it said.
"Who is it, Aloysius?" another voice called, this one apparently belonging to the purple unicorn with pink and purple bed-head trotting up, yawning. "Oh! Hello, there!" She leaned her head over the lower half of the door, peering sleepily at Sam and Dean. "I don't think I've seen you two ponies here before."
Dean and Sam shared a glance. "Twilight Sparkle?" Dean asked, unconsciously adopting his "official business" tone. His hoof itched to be grabbing a badge from his non-existent pocket.
"That's me," the unicorn said. A pink glow appeared around her horn and her tousled mane smoothed itself out into a quaint little bob with bangs. "What can I do for you?"
This place was never going to stop being ridiculously weird, was it?
"I'm Sam," Sam said. "This is my brother Dean. Zecora the zebra sent us here, Ms. Sparkle. She said you might be able to help."
"Twilight," she said. The pink glow surrounded the door and it swung open. "Come on in. I'll certainly do my best!"
She was so damn perky!
Dean let Sam lead the way into the library, if nothing else so he could see just how much his brother and this new pony matched. Purple unicorns were apparently totally a thing around here, though Sam didn't have the little anime girl flair of a purple and pink mane. His was more of a cherry wood color, not too far from his actual hair. Still, purple unicorns. They actually looked kind of adorable together.
And there was a thought Dean was going to be banishing to the dark reaches of nowhere just as soon as everything stopped being pony-shaped.
The owl -- Aloysius, apparently -- had flapped over to perch on the wooden unicorn head statue in the center of the main room, watching the proceedings ponderously. Dean eyed it as he made his way in -- the last thing he needed was owl crap to add to the pine sap still stuck in his hair.
"Now," Twilight was saying. "What was it you need -- oh goodness!" She stared wide-eyed -- or wider-eyed, anyway -- from Sam to Dean, her little pony mouth hanging open. Dean frowned. Sam cleared his throat, and Twilight lifted one hoof to physically close her mouth before assuming a bright, extraordinarily awkward smile. "Sorry! I just -- I've never seen full grown stallions without cutie marks, before."
"Cutie what-nows?" Dean asked, then recoiled with a whinny as Twilight's jaw actually literally hit the floor.
"Holy crap," Sam said. "Did you just dislocate your jaw?"
Twilight didn't need her hoof to pick her jaw up off the floor this time, she just snapped it shut like she was made entirely of rubber. "Uh -- ha ha, sorry, it seemed like you didn't know what a cutie mark was."
"We don't," said Sam, then held out his hoof. "Please don't drop your jaw again."
"Ah ha ha," said Twilight. She started pacing in a circle. "Oh, no, of course not, I just -- well, everypony knows what -- I mean, it's a cutie mark. It's a pony rite of passage! Like this, see?" And she turned sideways, and pointed to a little pink and white starburst on her flank.
"Ohhhhh," Dean said. "Back home we call that a tramp-stamp."
A book came flying off one of the shelves and whacked Dean in the back of his head. Dean rubbed at it with one hoof and glared at Sam, who was busy looking innocently at the ceiling.
Twilight just blinked at them. "What do hobos have to do with anything?" Dean opened his mouth to give an appropriately inappropriate answer, then caught Sam's glare and closed it again.
He didn't need his unicorn brother magically throwing any more books at him.
"Twilight!" a pre-adolescent male voice called from up the stairs that ran up over the bookcases on one wall of the room. A purple lizard, enormous compared to most lizards Dean had ever seen, yet still much smaller than any of the ponies had been, came rushing down into the room. "Why didn't you tell me we had guests?" he asked, skidding to a stop in front of her. "You should have woken me up!"
"I only just woke up myself, Spike. Aloysius answered the door."
Spike shot a glare at the owl. Dean wondered if it had ever crapped on his head.
"Well, then he should have woken me up," he grumbled, then flashed a grin at Dean and Sam. He had fangs. "What can we do for you gentlecolts? If you need something fun to read, Twilight here has the whole Daring-Do series!"
Twilight nudged him aside with her hoof. "Which is already on loan to my good friend Rainbow Dash," she said. Dean wondered how much he and Sam stood out just by virtue of not being named, like, Sunset Rosegarden or Moonbeam Cookie. "But I'm guessing if Zecora sent you and you're --" She blushed and waved a hoof vaguely at Dean's ass -- or un-tramp-stamped flank, he supposed. "-- you know, that you probably need something a little less frivolous than the adventures of Daring-Do, pegasus adventurer."
"Uh," said Sam. "Yes." He was clearly as nonplussed by all this as Dean, even with the addition of shiny new magical powers. "You see, we're not actually ponies."
Spike raised an eyebrow. "Come again?"
"Who," said Aloysius.
Before either Sam or Dean could elaborate, yet another voice chimed in, this one rapidly approaching from the front door. "Twilight!" it called, and the door creaked open, letting in a yellow, winged pony with pink hair and butterflies on her ass. "Oh Twilight, come quick! It's terrible, it's just terrible, all the birds -- oh!" She let out a soft squeak and hid behind her hair. "Oh, uh. Hi."
"What is it, Fluttershy?" Twilight asked, and Dean ticked off another cutesy name in his mental tally. He was so introducing himself to the next set of ponies as Hotblood Thunderstruck or something.
Sam could be "Acid Reflux".
"Oh, no, I couldn't," Fluttershy whispered, refusing to make eye contact or even really look at Sam or Dean. "I'll just come back later."
"Man," Dean mumbled. "That is one chick who lives up to her name."
"Twiiiiiiiiiiliiiiiiiiight!" Dean spotted another pony, this one a white unicorn with long, curly purple hair and thick, curly eyelashes. "Oh Twilight, darling, I simply must speak with you -- oh, Fluttershy! I didn't expect to see you here so early and -- ohhhhhhhhhhh." The new unicorn's knees actually wobbled, and she started fluttering those eyelashes like mad. Dean noticed she was wearing blue eyeshadow, and wondered how the hell she managed to apply it. She stared right past Fluttershy and Twilight, past Spike and Dean, too. This pony apparently only had eyes for Sam. "Well hello there, handsome!" She preened, fluffing her mane with one hoof and angling her body in what Dean had to suppose was a pony pin-up girl pose, showing off the three diamonds decorating her butt.
"Uh, Sam," Dean said, leaning over towards his brother. "I think the new pony's hitting on you."
"Yeah," Sam mumbled, his head ducked low in embarrassment again. "I noticed."
"Rarity," said Twilight. "Not that it's not good to see you, but --"
A rainbow streak blasted in through an open window and screeched to an audible midair halt. "Twilight!" cried the new blue pegasus, this one with a rainbow mane and tail and a storm cloud spewing a rainbow lightning bolt on her flank. Dean was willing to bet this was Rainbow Dash. "Omigosh, I'm so glad I caught you."
"Of course you caught me, Rainbow Dash, the sun's barely even up! Now what is going on here?"
All the ponies started talking at once, and Dean and Sam tried to subtly back themselves into a corner as they looked for an alternate way out. Dean was feeling like he'd well and truly hit his pony quota for the day, and any more would result in pony critical mass. The only thing that would top this off would be --
"Hi!" Dean spun in place, letting out a startled whinny before he could stop himself. He'd just nearly backed his way right into the central sculpture -- and the bright, Pepto-Bismal pink pony standing in front of it, her mane a riot of darker pink curls. "I've never seen you in Ponyville, before! And trust me, I know everypony in Ponyville! Which means you're not from Ponyville, which means you might not know anypony here just yet, or even know your way around! Well, you're in luck, because I'm Pinkie Pie, and I give the very best, most amazing welcomes anypony could ever ask for! Wanna see my welcome wagon?"
"That's it!" Dean cried, and all the ponies fell silent around him, blinking. He huffed, stamping his foot and looking from wide-eyed, snub-nosed pony to wide-eyed, snub-nosed pony, then finally managed to pick Sam -- just as wide-eyed, but with a somewhat longer nose -- out of the crowd. He pointed his hoof at him. "I need some freaking air," he said, and started stalking purposefully towards the door. "You -- deal with the ponies right now. Okay?"
He didn't wait for an answer, just shouldered his way between the crowd of candy-colored ponies and out into the growing sunshine.
"What?" Sam called after him. "Dean! You -- jerk!"
Dean rolled his eyes. Maybe if he tried hard enough, he could pretend this was all part of Sam's hallucinations or something.
Hey, maybe they'd been drugged! That was almost a cheery thought.
"You're right!" said Pinkie Pie, once again just behind him. "It's way better to do the welcome out here!"
"SONOFABITCH!" Dean yelled. Pinkie just blinked at him for a moment, looking supremely confused.
"You're kind of grumpy, aren't you?" she said. "Is that your name? Can I guess? Can I? Is iiiiiiiiiiit . . . Grumpy Jeans? Honeygrumble? Glowerson or Mergatroid or Steve or Wooly Loathsomeness? Am I getting close? Tell me when I get close! Ooo, how about some initials?"
"No!" Dean put up a hoof in an attempt to stop her and ended up actually shoving it into her mouth. She didn't seem to mind. "Holy crap, woman! What are you on?"
Pinkie pulled her head back, her mouth pulling off his hoof with an audible pop. She looked down. "The grass, silly! Ooo, is that your name? Sillygrump?"
"Pinkie!" Oh, great, here came another new voice. An orange-and-blond pony with a cowboy hat and a country twang came trotting up, two barrels full of apples strapped to her back. "Can't you see this poor pony's tired? Give him a minute to breathe, now, would ya?"
"You're right, Applejack!" Pinkie said, looking thoroughly abashed. "Sorry, mister. I just get really excited when there's new ponies to meet, and I've never seen either you or your friend before! So I thought, 'Pinkie, you have to meet these new ponies right away!' and when you stalked off, I thought 'oh no, he must be shy! I should --'"
"Pinkie!" Applejack cut her off again, giving Pinkie a stern look. Dean decided he kind of liked her. She was kind of like a pony-Ellen.
"Right!" Pinkie said again. "Sorry!" And she mimed zipping her mouth shut, then locking it with a key. Then she trotted a few feet away and started pretending to dig, then waved her hooves in the air for a bit, then sat grinning proudly up at them, blinking her huge blue eyes. Applejack sighed, nudged an apple out of one of her barrels with her nose, tossing it into the air and then headbutting it to Pinkie like a soccer champion. Pinkie caught it in her mouth.
"Now go along then, Pinkie," Applejack said. "He'll come and find ya when he's feeling less shy, alright?"
"Okay!" Pinkie said, happily chewing her apple. "See you later, Grumplestiltskin!"
Dean didn't relax until she bounced her way back into the library. He shot a wary eye at Applejack, who was watching Pinkie just as sternly.
"Thanks," he said. "It's too early for that kind of shit."
She turned that stern look at him. "It's way too early for that kind of language. My granny would wash your mouth right out if she heard you talking like that."
Dean snorted. "She wouldn't be the first. I'm Dean, by the way." He hesitated, then added "Dean Winchester," half expecting her to freak out like Zecora had. Instead, she nodded to him.
"Applejack. I was just coming over from Sweet Apple Acres, but it looks like Twilight's a little busy."
"Yeah, I'm guessing there's a lot going on." Dean gave her a quick look over, from the freckles at the corners of her eyes to the three little apples on her flank under the barrels. "Say, you didn't happen to be human once upon a time, did you?"
"I didn't happen to be a what now?"
"Yeah, it was a long shot." Dean gave the library door a wary look, his head drooping as he let out a soft groan. "Guess we'd better get this show on the road."
"Oh! Are you a traveling performer?" Applejack asked.
"This is going to be my longest day ever."
*
"Everypony shut up!" Twlight stood up on her hind legs and flailed her front hooves in the air as Dean walked back in, Applejack close on his heels. The other ponies all went quiet in order to stare at her. "Thank you! I can't hear you all if you're talking at once!" She shook her head, then started pacing in front of where the ponies had gathered by her horse statue. Dean trotted over to join Sam.
"What do you think the odds are that any of these ponies have any whiskey?" he asked. Sam just sighed.
"The Hollywood starlet might have some brandy somewhere," he guessed. "And the pink one is definitely on some kind of uppers. But they don't really seem like a whiskey kind of crowd."
"Damn." Dean looked around for some sort of chair, then gave up and flopped his ass down on the ground, his hind legs sprawled out to either side. "I was really hoping to get drunk right about now."
"Yeah Dean," Sam said, carefully folding his hind legs as he sat next to him. "I know."
"Now," Twilight was saying. "Fluttershy, what were you saying about the birds?"
"Oh!" Fluttershy gave Sam and Dean an uneasy look past her long-ass shwoopy bangs, but at least she wasn't whispering any more. "They're all gone."
"Wait, what?" Twilight blinked. "All of them? Are you sure?"
"Oh yes! I went out to direct them in their sunrise song, and they weren't there! I looked all along the Everfree Forest, and I even asked the other animals to help me look, but we couldn't find them anywhere."
"Maybe they all . . . went on a field trip?" Twilight guessed.
"Ooo!" Pinkie waved one hoof in the air. "I love field trips! We could all go to Manehattan!"
"It can't be all the birds," Spike said, with little more than a quick shrug at Pinkie's meandering away from the point. "After all, Aloysius is still here, and he's a bird."
"Who," said Aloysius.
"He's the only one I've seen," said Fluttershy. "Even my flamingo's run off."
"That's very strange." Twilight turned to one of her bookshelves, and with a glow of her horn, pulled out several volumes. "Spike, start going through these books on the migratory patterns of the local birds. Maybe there's something there."
"Oh, but Twilight!" This was from Rarity, who seemed to have finally gotten tired of flipping her hair at Sam every two minutes. "The birds aren't the only trouble! As you know, I have a very important order to fill for Hoity Toity -- he's even gotten the magnificent Fleur de Lis to model them for me! -- so I've been up all night for the last few days, trying to get it all done --"
"Get to the point, Rarity!" groaned Rainbow Dash. Dean was glad he didn't have to say it.
"-- And as I was up all night working on the fabulous outfits which will surely make me one of the most popular designers in all of Equestria, I heard this absolutely terrible noise coming from the forest! I went to the window to see what was the matter and this -- thing went dashing by! I didn't get a very good look, but it was monstrous! I came over just as soon as I was sure it was gone, just to tell you!"
"Omigosh," Fluttershy said. "You saw a monster? Oh you must have been so scared!"
"It was horrible!" Rarity popped up on her hind legs and pressed one forehoof to her head. "It was the worst. Possible. Thing!" And then she collapsed backwards onto a fainting couch that Dean knew hadn't been there a moment ago.
"Seriously, dude," he muttered to Sam. "A beer, that's all I'm asking."
"Dean," Sam said, his face all super serious as he stared at Rarity and her couch. "She saw a monster in the woods. Maybe we're supposed to be here to help them!"
"Dude." Dean poked him in the chest with his hoof. "We're in the land of ponies. Who knows what counts as a monster around here? I'm not an expert in pony monsters."
"Are you an expert in other kinds of monsters?" Pinkie asked, suddenly right beside Dean again. Dean let out a faint squawk, then glared at her.
"You really need to stop doing that."
"What kinds of monsters are you experts at?" Pinkie asked, unconcerned. "Hydras? Manticores? Basilisks? Dragons? Do you have a monster cutie mark?" She craned her neck to peer at his flank, then blinked. "Oh! I know! You're experts at invisible monsters!"
"His cutie mark isn't invisible," Twilight said, coming over to stand next to Pinkie. Dean noticed all the other ponies staring at them now, too, and drew himself up as tall as he could while still sitting on the floor like a dog. "It's not there at all. Girls, this is Sam and Dean. Zecora sent them here. They say they've never even heard of cutie marks."
That got a few different reactions. Rainbow Dash scoffed, glaring suspiciously down at them from where she was hovering by the staircase. Rarity flopped over on her fainting couch again. Fluttershy let out a tiny "oh my!" and covered her mouth with her hoof.
"Now how in tarnation is that even possible?" asked Applejack. "Everypony in Equestria gets a cutie mark. And them's that don't have 'em yet sure as sugar know about them."
"Yeah," Sam said. "That's the thing. We're not from Equestria. We're not even usually ponies. We're humans."
All six of the ponies were staring at them now, along with Spike and Aloysius. A ripple of gasps and "that's not possible"s went through them. Rainbow Dash finally landed, trotting over until she was nose to nose with Sam. She looked him over with a dangerous glint in her eye, then backed off a step.
"You look like ponies to me," she declared, looking over at Twilight, then back at Sam and Dean. "Everyone knows that humans aren't real. They're just an old mares' tale."
"You came here as frantically as we all did, Rainbow," Rarity said, climbing up off her couch and kicking it away with a quick flick of her back hoof as though it were on wheels. "What did you need to tell Twilight?"
Rainbow Dash scowled. "The clouds aren't behaving."
"The clouds?" Pinkie bounced over to the window and peered out. "There aren't any clouds, silly!"
"But there should be," Applejack said. "We've got showers scheduled for just after lunch!"
"Exactly! But Cloudsdale is totally out of stock! The night crew stayed up putting them all together, but then when they released them, they all just flew out over the Everfree Forest and disappeared!"
"Wait, hang on." Dean raised a hoof, waving it from Applejack to Rainbow Dash. "You telling me you guys create the weather? Like in a factory?"
"Uh, duh," Rainbow said. "Where else do you think clouds come from?"
"I give up," Dean said, folding his front legs so he could flop his head down onto the ground. "There's not enough booze in any world for me to deal with this."
Then Applejack twisted her head around and pulled a metal flask out from behind one of her apple barrels with her teeth and tossed it to Dean, who managed to catch it between his hooves. He blinked at it, then up at her.
"Cider," she explained. "It ain't fresh, but I get the feeling it's about what you're looking for."
Dean wondered if his eyes were doing the pitiful wobbling thing that anime characters sometimes got. He had a feeling they probably were. He wasn't a huge fan of hard cider, but it would sure as heck do in a pinch. Sam sighed. "You want me to --"
"I got it!" Dean protested, and after some consideration, raised the flask, clenched between his hooves, up to his mouth to unscrew the lid with his teeth. He sipped it cautiously, and when the distinct tang of alcohol hit his tongue, took a long swig and let out a satisfied sigh. "You," he said to Applejack, "are my new favorite pony ever."
"Sure thing, sugarcube."
"Hey, wait a minute." Rainbow Dash jabbed a hoof in Applejack's direction. "Why are you here this early?"
"Same reason you all are," she said. "Things aren't going the way they ought to. The timber wolves started howling last night, but we haven't seen a single spark on the zap apple trees. Granny says in all her years in Ponyville, she's never heard of the like."
Twilight started pacing. "Birds and clouds going missing, timber wolves acting strangely, and a monster at Rarity's." She stopped and looked at Sam and Dean. "And you two, with no cutie marks, claiming to be humans from somewhere beyond Equestria."
Dean shot a glance at Sam. "We didn't do it."
"But it's got to be connected," Sam said. "Zecora said something about a prophecy."
"Like the Mare in the Moon?" Pinkie asked. "We all thought that was just an old mare's tale, too, but then boom! Nightmare Moon came to kidnap Princess Celestia and everything! Maybe humans are really really real, too!"
"I guess they could be," Twilight said, though she didn't sound convinced. "Did Zecora say anything else about the prophecy?"
"It rhymed," Dean said helpfully.
"Well, yes," Twilight said. "We are talking about Zecora, here."
"It's about the Winchester brothers," Sam said. "That's our last name. I think it was about chaos or something."
Pinkie let out an excited gasp, and suddenly was in front of Sam, shaking him by the withers. "Chaos? Do we get chocolate rain again? Oh tell me there'll be chocolate rain!"
Sam's eyes were actually spinning with the force of her shakes. Dean set Applejack's flask aside and reached out a hoof to push Pinkie back. "She used the word 'fester'."
"Oh," Pinkie said. Her nose wrinkled. "Ewwwwww."
Twilight had another book down from the shelves, floating in the air in front of her as she flipped the pages with her horn. "I think I remember something about that. I didn't pay much attention. I mean . . . humans? It's just too silly."
"Says the purple unicorn," Dean muttered. Sam gave him a sympathetic look, but the others just stared.
Twilight cast her book aside and turned back to the shelves, pulling several more out. "I'm sure it was just here, somewhere."
Sam let out a jaw cracking yawn that actually echoed through the whole library, and Twilight paused. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry. You two must be exhausted! Maybe you should go get some rest, and we'll meet back here this afternoon."
"Sounds good." Dean got back to his feet, feeling a bit steadier now that he had some cider in his belly. "Don't suppose there's a motel in town?"
"Dean," Sam hissed. "We don't have any money."
"Well, you can come stay with me!" Rarity offered, batting her lashes at Sam. "I'm sure I could find somewhere for you in my boutique."
"Uh, you sure?" Rainbow Dash asked. "They think they're humans."
"Er. Well, nopony's perfect."
"I'd offer Sugarcube Corner," Pinkie said. "But the Cakes already have Pumpkin and Pound to take care of." This apparently made some kind of sense, since the other ponies just nodded along. "And Fluttershy's cottage is too small."
"It's not that small," Fluttershy said, but she didn't seem to have the vocal power to overcome Pinkie's repeated "TOO SMALL!"
"It's alright," Applejack said, sounding a bit resigned. "We've got plenty of room over at Sweet Apple Acres, so long as you ponies aren't too good to sleep in a barn."
Dean gave her a tired smile. "Sweetheart, I can guarantee we've slept in worse." And right now, he was pretty sure he could fall asleep in the middle of a rawhead nest, if there weren't any ponies chattering in his ear.
"We really appreciate it," Sam said. "If you need anything in return --"
"Don't you worry about that," Applejack said. "The Apple family is nothing if not willing to lend a hoof."
Next
Master post
Dean didn't think he'd ever been colder. Not and still conscious, anyway. His breath had gone past misting in front of him to misting in his goddamn lungs, every breath weighing heavy in his chest. He huffed into his gloved hands and stomped his feet down harder into the snow with each step, trying to keep his muscles from falling asleep in the cold. Ahead of him, Sam strode forward, upright, as confident in the snowy woods as a goddamn yeti.
"Sure," Dean grumbled. "Let's go hunt the thing that's been turning people into solid blocks of ice. Whose goddamn idea was this?"
"You'd rather let them die?" Sam called back.
"This isn't a hunt, Sam." said Dean. "This is Man Versus Wild. I could be warm right now!" He pulled out Bobby's flask and took a swig. Even his whiskey was too damn cold. "How far out are we?"
Sam stopped and checked the GPS. "We've gone about 15 kilometers, now."
"Kilometers." Dean scowled. "What are you, Canadian?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes, Dean. I am Canadian." He set off again, his strides long and sure, and Dean had to hustle to keep up.
"Hey, Jolly Green Giant, slow the hell down!"
"The cross-country skiers went missing four hours ago, Dean, we don't have time to slow down."
Dean felt like the runt of the litter, trying to bound over the snow to keep up with the big dogs. "We don't have time for you to be an asshole."
"Really, Dean? You wanna get into who's an asshole right now?"
"Into the fact that my brother's being a giant douchebag? Sure, let's get into that."
"Fine!" Sam spun in place, stopping abruptly enough that Dean had to flail his arms to keep from running into him or falling over. "Let's get into the fact that we've lost our only goddamn friend left, and you still won't let me in. Let's get into how you trust me so little right now that you went behind my back to kill someone you promised to leave alone."
Somehow, that made Dean's insides go even colder. "We're even on that, remember? After you shot my daughter --" He started, but Sam wasn't listening, had barely even paused in his tirade.
"-- Let's get into the fact that I've got freaking Lucifer taunting me, and you're still the biggest pain in my ass, right now. Let's get into how --"
"It's snowing," Dean interrupted, as a frigid wind blasted them with thick, fat flakes. Sam closed his eyes.
"-- You were supposed to check the weather reports!" he finished without missing a goddamn beat.
"You're blaming me for the snow now? We're in goddamn New Hampshire, Sam."
"I asked you if it looked like it was going to get nasty out here."
"And the reports didn't say anything about any extra snow!"
The wind blew harder, whipping the surrounding trees back and forth and sending the snow into near white-out conditions. Dean bit his lip and squinted at Sam over his scarf. Sam had the grace to look chagrined, at least, though it was hard to tell when his hair kept blowing across his face like that. He shoved it out of his eyes and looked up.
"Uh, Dean?"
Dean grabbed for Sam's arm almost instinctively as the snow got thicker. "What?"
Sam pointed skyward. "What do those look like to you?"
Dean looked. It was hard to make out through the sudden blizzard, but he soon caught sight of what Sam was pointing at. "Giant ghost horses in the sky?"
Sam swallowed. "I think we've found what's been freezing people."
Dean nodded, hanging on harder to Sam's sleeve even though the snow was slowing again. "I think we don't have a big enough gun for this."
"We need to find shelter."
"And they call you the smart one."
"Less bitching, more moving." Sam grabbed onto the hand Dean had wrapped in his sleeve and started pulling him away from the path.
"Woah, wait, since when are you in charge?"
"Since I'm the one with the GPS!"
Dean yanked Sam back onto the path as a fresh burst of snow blew into his face. "You're also the one who's been hallucinating, dammit! Come on, I saw a cave back this way."
"What?" Sam balked. "There was no cave on the map!"
"Did the map say 'freeze self here'?" Dean dug in his feet and dragged harder. "Move it, dude, those horses' eyes are starting to glow!" Sam looked up, swallowed, and let Dean pull him back down the path to the narrow crack he'd spotted in rock-strewn, woodsy hillside. Dean shoved Sam in first, glancing back over his shoulder long enough to actually lock eyes with one of the horses swirling in the hurricane of icy death. Dean could swear he actually saw frost creep its way down the trees and wondered when they'd wandered into a damned Roland Emmerich movie. Then Sam's hands locked around his shoulders and he was yanked backwards into the darkness.
The cave was deeper than he'd first thought -- he'd been figuring on just a shallow little dip, enough to get out of the wind for awhile, but the crack widened a few feet in to a fairly substantial cavern. Dean pulled his scarf down off his nose and wiped futilely at the snow on his face. "See?" he said, and hearing that his voice shook faintly, took another swig from Bobby's flask. "Home sweet icy cave."
Sam shook out his hair, and Dean made a mental note to buy the guy a new hat. "Yeah, Dean," he answered, his voice dry enough they could have used it for kindling. "You're a genius."
Dean scowled. Sam was clearly locked into bitch-at-Dean mode, and frankly, he was sick of trying to argue with him. "I'm going to go see if there's anything we can use for firewood in here. Have fun sulking."
Sam sighed, tucking his GPS device away in his coat, then rubbing his hands together. "I'll come with you." When Dean shot him a look, he shrugged. "Just because I'm pissed doesn't mean I want you spelunking without me." He smirked. "You'd get lost."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Just try to keep up then, jackass."
*
Dean dreamed of monsters.
This was actually true as just kind of a general rule. Ever since coming back from Hell, his dreams had been full of blood and death, vengeful angels and gleeful demons. In the last several months the Leviathans had cheerfully joined the fray -- and obliterated all the others. Now his dreams came at him with gaping jaws and swiping tongues, devouring everything Dean loved with great, heaving swallows until he was left alone in a vast, echoing emptiness, locked in his own form as it slowly gave in to entropy and rot.
These were not those monsters.
Dean dreamed of monsters singular and immense, so brightly colored they hurt his eyes. There was an orange lion with bat wings and a scorpion's tail and a red dragon belching enough fire to blanket the world in darkness for hundreds of miles. There was a blue baboon-like creature with protruding fangs and an extra hand at the end of its tail. And there was a purple bear so large it seemed to be the night sky itself, a single one of its claws the length of the entire Impala. They loomed over Dean as he tried to run, only to stumble onto his hands so many times he was forced to crawl, screaming for Sam and hoping that he hadn't already been consumed by the beasts.
He woke with a gasp, his muscles spasming as he sprawled out across the cold stone floor. It took him several moments to get his bearings and remember where they were, each moment revving up his terror as he became more and more certain that something was very, very wrong. He half expected to roll over and see a massive purple bear foot bearing down on him, and he couldn't help a preemptive wince as he looked up --
And saw an enormous, barrel-chested purple unicorn staring down at him, its dark brown mane falling into its eyes.
"Dean," Sam called, and Dean blinked, because for a second there, it looked like the unicorn had -- "Dean! We have a problem!"
Oh god. He wasn't hallucinating. This was a thing. This was -- the unicorn -- Sam was a fucking barrel chested purple unicorn with giant anime eyes.
Dean panicked. He scrabbled against the floor, trying to get his limbs to coordinate long enough to make it to his feet. The cold in the cave must have invaded his muscles because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find his center of balance, and much like in his dream, he found himself crawling desperately away.
"Dean!" Sam said again. "Calm down! It's okay!"
"It is not okay!" Dean growled, giving up on making it to his feet and instead turning on the unicorn -- Sam -- crouched low on all fours, his breath heaving. "You're a purple unicorn! How is that remotely okay?!"
"Right," Sam said, tossing his head with a brief whinny. "Well, I was trying to calm you down first, but . . . it gets worse."
"How can it get worse?!"
"You're blue."
Dean blinked. ". . . No I'm not."
"No, you are. You're a blue horse. I didn't even realize it was you until you woke up and started flailing all over the place."
"I'm not -- that's --" Dean looked down at his arms and recoiled. What he'd taken for the fabric of his coat was actually a thin coating of fur over the world's freakiest chunky-ass horse legs, ending seamlessly in chunky blue hooves. Something moved in the corner of his vision and he lunged for it, trying again when it danced just out of his reach -- then froze as he realized he was chasing his goddamn tail. He reared up, kicking his front hooves in the air with a panicked whinny, then landed and ducked his head down to peer between his hind legs.
He was blue. He was blue all the way from his chest to his legs, his clothes having somehow vanished in the night. And as far as he could tell from this angle, he was completely dickless.
He let out something that sounded suspiciously like a goat's bleat and collapsed over onto his back, his legs -- all four of them -- in the air.
Sam sighed and rolled his giant, honey-brown anime unicorn eyes. "Are you done yet?"
"Sammy," Dean said -- and yeah, it was still fairly bleat-ish. "Sammy, we're candy colored ponies!"
"Actually, you're sort of denim-y. And I'm eggplant."
"And a unicorn," Dean noted. His eyes -- which he supposed were probably as ridiculously large as Sam's, right now -- widened. "Oh shit. Am I a unicorn, too?"
And he clubbed himself in the forehead with his right front hoof as he attempted to check.
"No," Sam said, sounding put-upon. "You're just a horse."
"Well . . . good," Dean decided finally. "At least I've got that going for me."
*
"Okay," Dean said, when he was finally feeling centered enough on his hooves that he could be pretty sure he wasn't going to collapse like a cheap toy if he tried to move too much. "Okay, so." He paced in a circle -- determinedly not chasing his tail again, thanks, though it was damned distracting. "Taking stock."
"We're horses," Sam said.
"A horse and a unicorn," Dean corrected, pointing at Sam with his hoof. He looked down at it. "Is this a thing? Do horses point hooves at each other?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"Right." Dean set his hoof carefully back down on the ground and resumed his pacing. "We're --" He shot Sam a look. "-- horse-shaped --"
"Equine," Sam supplied.
"-- And also naked," Dean continued. "Which means our clothes are missing. Along with all our supplies. We're in a cave --"
"-- That you dragged us into --"
"-- In the middle of the New Hampshire wilderness, while outside a herd of ghost horses --"
"-- Team of ghost horses --"
"-- is trying to bury us under the freaking Day After Tomorrow. Anything I'm missing?"
Sam was silent for a long moment, which just freaking figured, really. He looked around the cave, eyes landing on seemingly anything but Dean.
"I can make things levitate with my horn," he said.
Dean stopped pacing and dropped his head to peer down his now incredibly long nose at him. "Come again?"
A little glowing yellow cloud appeared around Sam's horn and one of the nearby rocks. The rock floated up into the air, while Sam continued to stare up at the ceiling, his big unicorn lips curled like he was whistling.
Dean stared. He kicked the floating rock, sending it spinning across the room like a ping pong ball. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me."
"It could be useful," Sam grumbled.
"That's it," Dean decided. "I'd rather face off against the crazy ghost horses." And he started stalking towards the entrance to the cave. He paused, glancing back at Sam, whose head was hanging low now, the glow gone from around his horn. "You coming, or what?"
Sam popped his head back up and trotted after him.
*
Dean braced his hooves as he approached the entrance to the cave. They no longer had a single stitch of clothes between them, and fur or no fur, that was going to suck in all that snow. He heaved in a breath and steeled his nerves. His nostrils flared. He felt the inexplicable urge to scuff his front hoof against the ground.
Here went nothing.
"Uh, Dean?"
Dean screwed his eyes shut and lunged out the door -- and into a perfectly lovely temperate night in what appeared to be late spring.
". . . The hell?"
"Yeah," said Sam, trotting out of the cave behind him. "I noticed it while you were bracing yourself." He lifted one hoof and waved it into the sky in a way that Dean was pretty sure horses' legs weren't actually meant to bend. "No wind. No snow."
Dean turned in place, his tail swishing anxiously as he glared at the tree tops. "No freaking ghost horses. There aren't even any clouds." He looked back at his tail, which was still swinging furiously. "Uh, here's a thing," he said. "How do I make it stop doing that?"
"You know I've never actually been a horse before, right?"
"You figured out how to levitate rocks, dude."
"It's still not the same skill set." Sam tilted his head. He actually looked amused. "What, not satisfied with the state of your poker tail?"
Dean turned away, deciding to pretend he couldn't hear Sam. His bristling tail probably told a different story, though. He turned his head back towards the sky instead, frowning. The moon was full and bright, taking up an incredible portion of the sky, yet the stars burned like stark pinpoints, almost all as bright as each other. "Check out the stars," Dean said. "Those are not New Hampshire stars."
"Maybe we traveled through time," Sam said, also staring up. "Maybe this is what the sky looked like a couple thousand years ago."
"Right," Dean said. "the cave totally transported us through time and just happened to turn us into ponies."
Sam blushed, his purple cheeks actually turning pale pink. Dean stared.
"Well, that's disconcerting," he noted.
Sam hmphed under his breath, head held low as he slunk past Dean, venturing further into the thick new forest. In the distance, a wolf howled. Dean stood at attention, peering around, then jumped to follow Sam.
"You're not in charge," he said, just in case Sam got any funny ideas. "You're just packing the only weapon we have, right now."
"Great," Sam grumbled. "Your confidence in me is inspiring."
A thought occurred to Dean. "Hey Sam," he said, peering at his brother's swaying tail. "Is the Lucifer in your head a unicorn now, too?"
"I hate you," Sam said, his head still slung low, though now more in anger than embarrassment. "And, uh, he's keeping quiet, right now."
Dean nodded, still keeping a close eye on the surrounding woods as he trotted after Sam. Man, he wished he had a rifle on him.
. . . Not that he had any idea how he'd manage to fire it without fingers.
*
They walked maybe a mile that way, Sam sulking along in the lead while Dean kept ever vigilant watch on their six. When Sam plowed through a set of low bushes like -- well, okay, like a plow -- and ended up taking a header down the side of a sudden rocky incline, Dean couldn't help but take just the tiniest moment for some well deserved vindication. He knew Sam wasn't watching where he was going.
Then Sammy and cliff shot through his brain, and he found himself lunging forward to catch the trailing end of Sam's luxurious freaking tail in his teeth.
Somehow, amazingly, it actually worked. Sam stared wide-eyed at him from where he dangled at the end of what had to be at least three feet of tail, and Dean blinked back, tasting the crappy motel conditioner that Sam had used two days ago, when they'd finally sprung for a place with running water. Why that taste would linger on Sam's tail, Dean didn't want to know.
Then the ground under Dean's hooves gave way and they were both sliding down the rocky cliff, only Dean had a mouth full of horse hair to go with him impending doom. He spat out Sam's tail and spread his hooves, trying to slow his descent. "Use your horn!" he screamed at Sam.
What Sam screamed back would have been hilarious coming out of a purple unicorn's mouth if Dean weren't pretty sure they were going to be the last words he ever heard.
They hit the bottom in a tangle of pony limbs, Sam's horn just barely missing taking out Dean's eye. Somehow, instead of going splat, they managed to roll, tumbling end over end away from the base of the cliff until they finally rolled right up a pine tree, ricocheted off of a branch with what Dean would swear was the sound of a pinball bell, and wound up in a heap at the foot of an enormous, craggy old tree with doors and windows built into the trunk.
Honestly, Dean wasn't sure why he was even surprised, anymore.
He levered himself up as best he could and tried to pull a pine cone out of his mane with his hoof. "You alright, Sam?"
"Yeah," Sam grunted, sounding winded, and Dean looked over as he tried to disentangle his hoof, which was now glued to his mane with pine sap. Sam somehow looked downright immaculate. Dean was about to tell him just how unfair that was when the door in the side of the tree burst open and out came a zebra looking like Storm from the X-Men in her punk rock phase, complete with excessive amounts of jewelry, only with fur instead of spandex.
"Who comes out to my house so late?" she bellowed. "And in such a very sad state!"
Dean flashed her what he really, really hoped was still his trademark "trust me" grin, still trying to pull his hoof from his mane. He indicated Sam with his nose. "He did it."
The zebra didn't much look like she believed him.
"Come inside then, you two, if you can walk. The forest at night is no place for a talk."
"Of course the zebra's a poet," Dean mumbled, as Sam wrapped both his front legs around the one Dean had gotten attached to his head and yanked, dislodging Dean's hoof and a good sized chunk of startlingly bright honey-colored mane. "Ow!"
"Quit whining," Sam said. "The zebra's clearly sentient. Maybe she can help."
"What, she gonna lay some spooky zebra mojo on us?" Dean groused, then froze as he got his first good look at the zebra's little tree home. There were enormous West African style masks along the walls and bundles of herbs strung from the ceiling. A huge cauldron stood bubbling happily in the center of the room.
"Call me Zecora, if you will," the zebra said. "You two are not from Ponyville."
"No, ma'am," Sam said, pony eyes all wide and earnest. "We're not even usually equine. I'm Sam Winchester. This is my brother, Dean."
Zecora gasped, looking between them. "The prophecy!"
"Dammit, Sam." Dean barely resisted the urge to smack himself in the face with his hoof. "You had to use our real names. You scared the rhyme out of her!"
"Darkness comes, and the world will fester," Zecora intoned, perching on her hind legs to wave both her front hooves at them. "Upon the arrival of the brothers Winchester!"
Dean groaned. "Really? That's the prophecy?"
"It's very a strong word that's used this time," Zecora admitted, looking a little sheepish. "But 'Winchester' is not that easy to rhyme."
"Sequester," Sam offered. "Semester."
"It's very clear in my books, you see," Zecora continued to Dean as she crossed the room to her bookshelf. "This is not a pleasant prophecy."
"Jester," Sam offered.
"Breast," Dean said. "Er."
Zecora didn't look amused. She looked from Sam to Dean, then back again as if to say 'are you two done, then?'
Only, you know, rhymier.
She pulled one of the books from the shelf with her teeth, then set it down on what appeared to be a workbench carved out of the tree itself. She sat down on her haunches and waved Sam and Dean over, then started flipping through the book with her remarkably agile hoof.
"My books are not very detailed, though. They say only that disharmony will grow." She tapped one of the pages, showing a drawing of stylized, brightly colored ponies running in terror from shadowy, humanoid figures, while a pair of yellow eyes stared down at them from the darkness of the background. Dean looked over at the facing page, but could only make out a series of scribbles. Apparently, Zecora's pony-world hadn't mastered writing in English, yet.
"To Ponyville is where you should go, to see what Twilight Sparkle might know." Zecora shut the book again once Dean and Sam had gotten a look. "Her library is much larger than mine. There's no telling what wonders you might find."
Dean shot Sam a glance and saw him looking right back. "Is it just me, or does this sound like the first scene of a crappy fantasy novel?"
Sam smirked. "When have you ever read a fantasy novel?"
"Shut up," Dean said. "Let's just get this thing over with."
*
Ponyville, as it turned out, was a cute little village on the edge of the forest, in easy walking distance from Zecora's tree. She left them at the edge of the woods, claiming that she had "other things to get done." Dean suspected that she meant she had to go back and pack so she could haul ass out of the way of the stupid "fester/Winchester" prophecy. The path out of the woods was clearly marked, though, and broad enough for Sam and Dean to walk side by side with plenty of room besides, so Dean figured they probably wouldn't get lost again.
Not that he put it past Sam to find another cliff to fall off of, anyway.
The whole place looked kind of like someone's hallucinatory vision of a Shakespearean town, full of exposed beams, overhanging upper floors, and thatched roofs. The sun was just starting to rise as they made it past the expanse of apple orchard surrounding it into the town proper, casting all the buildings in soft yellows and pinks.
Or, well, Dean hoped it was the sun that made them that color, anyway.
The streets were quiet. Dean only spotted a few ponies -- all as brightly colored as he and Sam were -- trotting about, making their way to whatever the pony equivalent of an early morning job was. One of them, a deep purply-pink pony with a flowery tramp stamp of all things, paused on the threshold of what looked like a classic one-room school house to wave. Sam lifted a hoof in return.
"Dude," Dean hissed. "For all you know, that was the unicorn version of giving her the finger!"
"I'm waving back, Dean. Why would she be flicking off a stranger?"
"What am I, the Horse Whisperer?" Dean started stalking off. "Come on, maybe this Twilight Sparkle chick will know how to get us home."
Sam trotted after him. "Mare," he said. "A female horse -- or pony -- is called a mare."
"Okay, seriously, if you don't knock off the horse lessons, I'm going to punch you in the face."
Sam smirked. "That'd be a nice trick."
"Kick you, then!" Dean screeched to a halt as he spotted train tracks going past. "Here's a question: how the hell did any of this stuff get built with no hands?"
An apple surrounded by a gold glow floated cheerfully in front of Dean's face. Dean shot Sam a glare and reached out to chomp it out of the air -- only to have it smack into the end of his nose. Rather than continue bobbing for apples in thin air, he lashed out with his hoof, sending it flying into the shutters of one of the houses. A broad-nosed pony with facial hair stuck its head out. "Hey, watch it, buster! Some of us are trying to sleep, here!"
Dean waved at him.
Zecora's description of Twilight Sparkle's library was right on, but then, loads of words rhymed with "tree". ("Sparkle", on the other hand, actually rhymed with less than "Winchester" did, near as Dean could tell.) Not only was the library the only building around shaped like a tree, it also had a nice big sign out front with a book on it. Dean paused as they approached the door.
"You know, maybe we would have been better off just crashing in the cave again and hoping it took us home eventually."
"Yeah," said Sam. "Because it's ever been that simple for us."
"Right." Dean raised his hoof to knock on the door, then paused. "This is so weird."
"Do you want me to knock?" Sam asked.
Dean hopped back a few steps. "Well, if you wanna."
Sam rolled his eyes and kicked at the door with his right front hoof. "I hope we're not waking her up."
Dean was torn between teasing Sam about worrying about disturbing a pony librarian and agreeing. They weren't exactly swimming in leads, here. This Twilight chi -- mare was their only lead. It wouldn't do them any good to get off on the wrong foot -- hoof.
Okay, he was going to have to stop that, or his head was going to explode. And considering that he was currently a blue horse, he wasn't about to put it past this world to make it actually explode.
No one answered Sam's knock for several moments, and Dean was just inching up to give it a whirl himself when the top half of the Dutch door swung open wide enough to reveal someone's enormous peering eyes. Dean wondered if they'd get home and think everyone had freakishly small eyeballs.
"Uh, hi," Sam said. "I'm Sam, and this is my brother Dean. Zecora said we should come here and talk to Twilight Sparkle?"
"Who?" a voice -- most likely belonging to the eyes -- asked.
"Twilight Sparkle. Zecora said she might be able to help us with some information."
"Who," said the voice again.
"Twi-light Spar-kle," Sam enunciated carefully. "We heard about her from Ze-cor-a, the zebra who lives in the woods."
"Who."
"Oh for chrissake," Dean said. He lashed out with one hoof, sending the door flying the rest of the way open. "It's an owl, Sam!"
The owl flapped in the now open doorway, its huge eyes staring down at them. "Who," it said.
"Who is it, Aloysius?" another voice called, this one apparently belonging to the purple unicorn with pink and purple bed-head trotting up, yawning. "Oh! Hello, there!" She leaned her head over the lower half of the door, peering sleepily at Sam and Dean. "I don't think I've seen you two ponies here before."
Dean and Sam shared a glance. "Twilight Sparkle?" Dean asked, unconsciously adopting his "official business" tone. His hoof itched to be grabbing a badge from his non-existent pocket.
"That's me," the unicorn said. A pink glow appeared around her horn and her tousled mane smoothed itself out into a quaint little bob with bangs. "What can I do for you?"
This place was never going to stop being ridiculously weird, was it?
"I'm Sam," Sam said. "This is my brother Dean. Zecora the zebra sent us here, Ms. Sparkle. She said you might be able to help."
"Twilight," she said. The pink glow surrounded the door and it swung open. "Come on in. I'll certainly do my best!"
She was so damn perky!
Dean let Sam lead the way into the library, if nothing else so he could see just how much his brother and this new pony matched. Purple unicorns were apparently totally a thing around here, though Sam didn't have the little anime girl flair of a purple and pink mane. His was more of a cherry wood color, not too far from his actual hair. Still, purple unicorns. They actually looked kind of adorable together.
And there was a thought Dean was going to be banishing to the dark reaches of nowhere just as soon as everything stopped being pony-shaped.
The owl -- Aloysius, apparently -- had flapped over to perch on the wooden unicorn head statue in the center of the main room, watching the proceedings ponderously. Dean eyed it as he made his way in -- the last thing he needed was owl crap to add to the pine sap still stuck in his hair.
"Now," Twilight was saying. "What was it you need -- oh goodness!" She stared wide-eyed -- or wider-eyed, anyway -- from Sam to Dean, her little pony mouth hanging open. Dean frowned. Sam cleared his throat, and Twilight lifted one hoof to physically close her mouth before assuming a bright, extraordinarily awkward smile. "Sorry! I just -- I've never seen full grown stallions without cutie marks, before."
"Cutie what-nows?" Dean asked, then recoiled with a whinny as Twilight's jaw actually literally hit the floor.
"Holy crap," Sam said. "Did you just dislocate your jaw?"
Twilight didn't need her hoof to pick her jaw up off the floor this time, she just snapped it shut like she was made entirely of rubber. "Uh -- ha ha, sorry, it seemed like you didn't know what a cutie mark was."
"We don't," said Sam, then held out his hoof. "Please don't drop your jaw again."
"Ah ha ha," said Twilight. She started pacing in a circle. "Oh, no, of course not, I just -- well, everypony knows what -- I mean, it's a cutie mark. It's a pony rite of passage! Like this, see?" And she turned sideways, and pointed to a little pink and white starburst on her flank.
"Ohhhhh," Dean said. "Back home we call that a tramp-stamp."
A book came flying off one of the shelves and whacked Dean in the back of his head. Dean rubbed at it with one hoof and glared at Sam, who was busy looking innocently at the ceiling.
Twilight just blinked at them. "What do hobos have to do with anything?" Dean opened his mouth to give an appropriately inappropriate answer, then caught Sam's glare and closed it again.
He didn't need his unicorn brother magically throwing any more books at him.
"Twilight!" a pre-adolescent male voice called from up the stairs that ran up over the bookcases on one wall of the room. A purple lizard, enormous compared to most lizards Dean had ever seen, yet still much smaller than any of the ponies had been, came rushing down into the room. "Why didn't you tell me we had guests?" he asked, skidding to a stop in front of her. "You should have woken me up!"
"I only just woke up myself, Spike. Aloysius answered the door."
Spike shot a glare at the owl. Dean wondered if it had ever crapped on his head.
"Well, then he should have woken me up," he grumbled, then flashed a grin at Dean and Sam. He had fangs. "What can we do for you gentlecolts? If you need something fun to read, Twilight here has the whole Daring-Do series!"
Twilight nudged him aside with her hoof. "Which is already on loan to my good friend Rainbow Dash," she said. Dean wondered how much he and Sam stood out just by virtue of not being named, like, Sunset Rosegarden or Moonbeam Cookie. "But I'm guessing if Zecora sent you and you're --" She blushed and waved a hoof vaguely at Dean's ass -- or un-tramp-stamped flank, he supposed. "-- you know, that you probably need something a little less frivolous than the adventures of Daring-Do, pegasus adventurer."
"Uh," said Sam. "Yes." He was clearly as nonplussed by all this as Dean, even with the addition of shiny new magical powers. "You see, we're not actually ponies."
Spike raised an eyebrow. "Come again?"
"Who," said Aloysius.
Before either Sam or Dean could elaborate, yet another voice chimed in, this one rapidly approaching from the front door. "Twilight!" it called, and the door creaked open, letting in a yellow, winged pony with pink hair and butterflies on her ass. "Oh Twilight, come quick! It's terrible, it's just terrible, all the birds -- oh!" She let out a soft squeak and hid behind her hair. "Oh, uh. Hi."
"What is it, Fluttershy?" Twilight asked, and Dean ticked off another cutesy name in his mental tally. He was so introducing himself to the next set of ponies as Hotblood Thunderstruck or something.
Sam could be "Acid Reflux".
"Oh, no, I couldn't," Fluttershy whispered, refusing to make eye contact or even really look at Sam or Dean. "I'll just come back later."
"Man," Dean mumbled. "That is one chick who lives up to her name."
"Twiiiiiiiiiiliiiiiiiiight!" Dean spotted another pony, this one a white unicorn with long, curly purple hair and thick, curly eyelashes. "Oh Twilight, darling, I simply must speak with you -- oh, Fluttershy! I didn't expect to see you here so early and -- ohhhhhhhhhhh." The new unicorn's knees actually wobbled, and she started fluttering those eyelashes like mad. Dean noticed she was wearing blue eyeshadow, and wondered how the hell she managed to apply it. She stared right past Fluttershy and Twilight, past Spike and Dean, too. This pony apparently only had eyes for Sam. "Well hello there, handsome!" She preened, fluffing her mane with one hoof and angling her body in what Dean had to suppose was a pony pin-up girl pose, showing off the three diamonds decorating her butt.
"Uh, Sam," Dean said, leaning over towards his brother. "I think the new pony's hitting on you."
"Yeah," Sam mumbled, his head ducked low in embarrassment again. "I noticed."
"Rarity," said Twilight. "Not that it's not good to see you, but --"
A rainbow streak blasted in through an open window and screeched to an audible midair halt. "Twilight!" cried the new blue pegasus, this one with a rainbow mane and tail and a storm cloud spewing a rainbow lightning bolt on her flank. Dean was willing to bet this was Rainbow Dash. "Omigosh, I'm so glad I caught you."
"Of course you caught me, Rainbow Dash, the sun's barely even up! Now what is going on here?"
All the ponies started talking at once, and Dean and Sam tried to subtly back themselves into a corner as they looked for an alternate way out. Dean was feeling like he'd well and truly hit his pony quota for the day, and any more would result in pony critical mass. The only thing that would top this off would be --
"Hi!" Dean spun in place, letting out a startled whinny before he could stop himself. He'd just nearly backed his way right into the central sculpture -- and the bright, Pepto-Bismal pink pony standing in front of it, her mane a riot of darker pink curls. "I've never seen you in Ponyville, before! And trust me, I know everypony in Ponyville! Which means you're not from Ponyville, which means you might not know anypony here just yet, or even know your way around! Well, you're in luck, because I'm Pinkie Pie, and I give the very best, most amazing welcomes anypony could ever ask for! Wanna see my welcome wagon?"
"That's it!" Dean cried, and all the ponies fell silent around him, blinking. He huffed, stamping his foot and looking from wide-eyed, snub-nosed pony to wide-eyed, snub-nosed pony, then finally managed to pick Sam -- just as wide-eyed, but with a somewhat longer nose -- out of the crowd. He pointed his hoof at him. "I need some freaking air," he said, and started stalking purposefully towards the door. "You -- deal with the ponies right now. Okay?"
He didn't wait for an answer, just shouldered his way between the crowd of candy-colored ponies and out into the growing sunshine.
"What?" Sam called after him. "Dean! You -- jerk!"
Dean rolled his eyes. Maybe if he tried hard enough, he could pretend this was all part of Sam's hallucinations or something.
Hey, maybe they'd been drugged! That was almost a cheery thought.
"You're right!" said Pinkie Pie, once again just behind him. "It's way better to do the welcome out here!"
"SONOFABITCH!" Dean yelled. Pinkie just blinked at him for a moment, looking supremely confused.
"You're kind of grumpy, aren't you?" she said. "Is that your name? Can I guess? Can I? Is iiiiiiiiiiit . . . Grumpy Jeans? Honeygrumble? Glowerson or Mergatroid or Steve or Wooly Loathsomeness? Am I getting close? Tell me when I get close! Ooo, how about some initials?"
"No!" Dean put up a hoof in an attempt to stop her and ended up actually shoving it into her mouth. She didn't seem to mind. "Holy crap, woman! What are you on?"
Pinkie pulled her head back, her mouth pulling off his hoof with an audible pop. She looked down. "The grass, silly! Ooo, is that your name? Sillygrump?"
"Pinkie!" Oh, great, here came another new voice. An orange-and-blond pony with a cowboy hat and a country twang came trotting up, two barrels full of apples strapped to her back. "Can't you see this poor pony's tired? Give him a minute to breathe, now, would ya?"
"You're right, Applejack!" Pinkie said, looking thoroughly abashed. "Sorry, mister. I just get really excited when there's new ponies to meet, and I've never seen either you or your friend before! So I thought, 'Pinkie, you have to meet these new ponies right away!' and when you stalked off, I thought 'oh no, he must be shy! I should --'"
"Pinkie!" Applejack cut her off again, giving Pinkie a stern look. Dean decided he kind of liked her. She was kind of like a pony-Ellen.
"Right!" Pinkie said again. "Sorry!" And she mimed zipping her mouth shut, then locking it with a key. Then she trotted a few feet away and started pretending to dig, then waved her hooves in the air for a bit, then sat grinning proudly up at them, blinking her huge blue eyes. Applejack sighed, nudged an apple out of one of her barrels with her nose, tossing it into the air and then headbutting it to Pinkie like a soccer champion. Pinkie caught it in her mouth.
"Now go along then, Pinkie," Applejack said. "He'll come and find ya when he's feeling less shy, alright?"
"Okay!" Pinkie said, happily chewing her apple. "See you later, Grumplestiltskin!"
Dean didn't relax until she bounced her way back into the library. He shot a wary eye at Applejack, who was watching Pinkie just as sternly.
"Thanks," he said. "It's too early for that kind of shit."
She turned that stern look at him. "It's way too early for that kind of language. My granny would wash your mouth right out if she heard you talking like that."
Dean snorted. "She wouldn't be the first. I'm Dean, by the way." He hesitated, then added "Dean Winchester," half expecting her to freak out like Zecora had. Instead, she nodded to him.
"Applejack. I was just coming over from Sweet Apple Acres, but it looks like Twilight's a little busy."
"Yeah, I'm guessing there's a lot going on." Dean gave her a quick look over, from the freckles at the corners of her eyes to the three little apples on her flank under the barrels. "Say, you didn't happen to be human once upon a time, did you?"
"I didn't happen to be a what now?"
"Yeah, it was a long shot." Dean gave the library door a wary look, his head drooping as he let out a soft groan. "Guess we'd better get this show on the road."
"Oh! Are you a traveling performer?" Applejack asked.
"This is going to be my longest day ever."
*
"Everypony shut up!" Twlight stood up on her hind legs and flailed her front hooves in the air as Dean walked back in, Applejack close on his heels. The other ponies all went quiet in order to stare at her. "Thank you! I can't hear you all if you're talking at once!" She shook her head, then started pacing in front of where the ponies had gathered by her horse statue. Dean trotted over to join Sam.
"What do you think the odds are that any of these ponies have any whiskey?" he asked. Sam just sighed.
"The Hollywood starlet might have some brandy somewhere," he guessed. "And the pink one is definitely on some kind of uppers. But they don't really seem like a whiskey kind of crowd."
"Damn." Dean looked around for some sort of chair, then gave up and flopped his ass down on the ground, his hind legs sprawled out to either side. "I was really hoping to get drunk right about now."
"Yeah Dean," Sam said, carefully folding his hind legs as he sat next to him. "I know."
"Now," Twilight was saying. "Fluttershy, what were you saying about the birds?"
"Oh!" Fluttershy gave Sam and Dean an uneasy look past her long-ass shwoopy bangs, but at least she wasn't whispering any more. "They're all gone."
"Wait, what?" Twilight blinked. "All of them? Are you sure?"
"Oh yes! I went out to direct them in their sunrise song, and they weren't there! I looked all along the Everfree Forest, and I even asked the other animals to help me look, but we couldn't find them anywhere."
"Maybe they all . . . went on a field trip?" Twilight guessed.
"Ooo!" Pinkie waved one hoof in the air. "I love field trips! We could all go to Manehattan!"
"It can't be all the birds," Spike said, with little more than a quick shrug at Pinkie's meandering away from the point. "After all, Aloysius is still here, and he's a bird."
"Who," said Aloysius.
"He's the only one I've seen," said Fluttershy. "Even my flamingo's run off."
"That's very strange." Twilight turned to one of her bookshelves, and with a glow of her horn, pulled out several volumes. "Spike, start going through these books on the migratory patterns of the local birds. Maybe there's something there."
"Oh, but Twilight!" This was from Rarity, who seemed to have finally gotten tired of flipping her hair at Sam every two minutes. "The birds aren't the only trouble! As you know, I have a very important order to fill for Hoity Toity -- he's even gotten the magnificent Fleur de Lis to model them for me! -- so I've been up all night for the last few days, trying to get it all done --"
"Get to the point, Rarity!" groaned Rainbow Dash. Dean was glad he didn't have to say it.
"-- And as I was up all night working on the fabulous outfits which will surely make me one of the most popular designers in all of Equestria, I heard this absolutely terrible noise coming from the forest! I went to the window to see what was the matter and this -- thing went dashing by! I didn't get a very good look, but it was monstrous! I came over just as soon as I was sure it was gone, just to tell you!"
"Omigosh," Fluttershy said. "You saw a monster? Oh you must have been so scared!"
"It was horrible!" Rarity popped up on her hind legs and pressed one forehoof to her head. "It was the worst. Possible. Thing!" And then she collapsed backwards onto a fainting couch that Dean knew hadn't been there a moment ago.
"Seriously, dude," he muttered to Sam. "A beer, that's all I'm asking."
"Dean," Sam said, his face all super serious as he stared at Rarity and her couch. "She saw a monster in the woods. Maybe we're supposed to be here to help them!"
"Dude." Dean poked him in the chest with his hoof. "We're in the land of ponies. Who knows what counts as a monster around here? I'm not an expert in pony monsters."
"Are you an expert in other kinds of monsters?" Pinkie asked, suddenly right beside Dean again. Dean let out a faint squawk, then glared at her.
"You really need to stop doing that."
"What kinds of monsters are you experts at?" Pinkie asked, unconcerned. "Hydras? Manticores? Basilisks? Dragons? Do you have a monster cutie mark?" She craned her neck to peer at his flank, then blinked. "Oh! I know! You're experts at invisible monsters!"
"His cutie mark isn't invisible," Twilight said, coming over to stand next to Pinkie. Dean noticed all the other ponies staring at them now, too, and drew himself up as tall as he could while still sitting on the floor like a dog. "It's not there at all. Girls, this is Sam and Dean. Zecora sent them here. They say they've never even heard of cutie marks."
That got a few different reactions. Rainbow Dash scoffed, glaring suspiciously down at them from where she was hovering by the staircase. Rarity flopped over on her fainting couch again. Fluttershy let out a tiny "oh my!" and covered her mouth with her hoof.
"Now how in tarnation is that even possible?" asked Applejack. "Everypony in Equestria gets a cutie mark. And them's that don't have 'em yet sure as sugar know about them."
"Yeah," Sam said. "That's the thing. We're not from Equestria. We're not even usually ponies. We're humans."
All six of the ponies were staring at them now, along with Spike and Aloysius. A ripple of gasps and "that's not possible"s went through them. Rainbow Dash finally landed, trotting over until she was nose to nose with Sam. She looked him over with a dangerous glint in her eye, then backed off a step.
"You look like ponies to me," she declared, looking over at Twilight, then back at Sam and Dean. "Everyone knows that humans aren't real. They're just an old mares' tale."
"You came here as frantically as we all did, Rainbow," Rarity said, climbing up off her couch and kicking it away with a quick flick of her back hoof as though it were on wheels. "What did you need to tell Twilight?"
Rainbow Dash scowled. "The clouds aren't behaving."
"The clouds?" Pinkie bounced over to the window and peered out. "There aren't any clouds, silly!"
"But there should be," Applejack said. "We've got showers scheduled for just after lunch!"
"Exactly! But Cloudsdale is totally out of stock! The night crew stayed up putting them all together, but then when they released them, they all just flew out over the Everfree Forest and disappeared!"
"Wait, hang on." Dean raised a hoof, waving it from Applejack to Rainbow Dash. "You telling me you guys create the weather? Like in a factory?"
"Uh, duh," Rainbow said. "Where else do you think clouds come from?"
"I give up," Dean said, folding his front legs so he could flop his head down onto the ground. "There's not enough booze in any world for me to deal with this."
Then Applejack twisted her head around and pulled a metal flask out from behind one of her apple barrels with her teeth and tossed it to Dean, who managed to catch it between his hooves. He blinked at it, then up at her.
"Cider," she explained. "It ain't fresh, but I get the feeling it's about what you're looking for."
Dean wondered if his eyes were doing the pitiful wobbling thing that anime characters sometimes got. He had a feeling they probably were. He wasn't a huge fan of hard cider, but it would sure as heck do in a pinch. Sam sighed. "You want me to --"
"I got it!" Dean protested, and after some consideration, raised the flask, clenched between his hooves, up to his mouth to unscrew the lid with his teeth. He sipped it cautiously, and when the distinct tang of alcohol hit his tongue, took a long swig and let out a satisfied sigh. "You," he said to Applejack, "are my new favorite pony ever."
"Sure thing, sugarcube."
"Hey, wait a minute." Rainbow Dash jabbed a hoof in Applejack's direction. "Why are you here this early?"
"Same reason you all are," she said. "Things aren't going the way they ought to. The timber wolves started howling last night, but we haven't seen a single spark on the zap apple trees. Granny says in all her years in Ponyville, she's never heard of the like."
Twilight started pacing. "Birds and clouds going missing, timber wolves acting strangely, and a monster at Rarity's." She stopped and looked at Sam and Dean. "And you two, with no cutie marks, claiming to be humans from somewhere beyond Equestria."
Dean shot a glance at Sam. "We didn't do it."
"But it's got to be connected," Sam said. "Zecora said something about a prophecy."
"Like the Mare in the Moon?" Pinkie asked. "We all thought that was just an old mare's tale, too, but then boom! Nightmare Moon came to kidnap Princess Celestia and everything! Maybe humans are really really real, too!"
"I guess they could be," Twilight said, though she didn't sound convinced. "Did Zecora say anything else about the prophecy?"
"It rhymed," Dean said helpfully.
"Well, yes," Twilight said. "We are talking about Zecora, here."
"It's about the Winchester brothers," Sam said. "That's our last name. I think it was about chaos or something."
Pinkie let out an excited gasp, and suddenly was in front of Sam, shaking him by the withers. "Chaos? Do we get chocolate rain again? Oh tell me there'll be chocolate rain!"
Sam's eyes were actually spinning with the force of her shakes. Dean set Applejack's flask aside and reached out a hoof to push Pinkie back. "She used the word 'fester'."
"Oh," Pinkie said. Her nose wrinkled. "Ewwwwww."
Twilight had another book down from the shelves, floating in the air in front of her as she flipped the pages with her horn. "I think I remember something about that. I didn't pay much attention. I mean . . . humans? It's just too silly."
"Says the purple unicorn," Dean muttered. Sam gave him a sympathetic look, but the others just stared.
Twilight cast her book aside and turned back to the shelves, pulling several more out. "I'm sure it was just here, somewhere."
Sam let out a jaw cracking yawn that actually echoed through the whole library, and Twilight paused. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry. You two must be exhausted! Maybe you should go get some rest, and we'll meet back here this afternoon."
"Sounds good." Dean got back to his feet, feeling a bit steadier now that he had some cider in his belly. "Don't suppose there's a motel in town?"
"Dean," Sam hissed. "We don't have any money."
"Well, you can come stay with me!" Rarity offered, batting her lashes at Sam. "I'm sure I could find somewhere for you in my boutique."
"Uh, you sure?" Rainbow Dash asked. "They think they're humans."
"Er. Well, nopony's perfect."
"I'd offer Sugarcube Corner," Pinkie said. "But the Cakes already have Pumpkin and Pound to take care of." This apparently made some kind of sense, since the other ponies just nodded along. "And Fluttershy's cottage is too small."
"It's not that small," Fluttershy said, but she didn't seem to have the vocal power to overcome Pinkie's repeated "TOO SMALL!"
"It's alright," Applejack said, sounding a bit resigned. "We've got plenty of room over at Sweet Apple Acres, so long as you ponies aren't too good to sleep in a barn."
Dean gave her a tired smile. "Sweetheart, I can guarantee we've slept in worse." And right now, he was pretty sure he could fall asleep in the middle of a rawhead nest, if there weren't any ponies chattering in his ear.
"We really appreciate it," Sam said. "If you need anything in return --"
"Don't you worry about that," Applejack said. "The Apple family is nothing if not willing to lend a hoof."
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Master post