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Sam crept to the edge of the clearing, gun at the ready, more silver bullets handy in case he needed them. So far he hadn’t seen a trace of the werewolf he and Dean were tracking, but usually the damn things managed to find them before the night was over. He glanced around the clearing – and nearly gave himself away by blundering into a bush in surprise.
There was the werewolf he was hunting, but it wasn’t charging or growling or gnawing the bones of another victim. It was staring intently up into a tree. Sam thought this was the first time he had ever seen a werewolf sitting still. Not giving himself a chance to think, he sighted and fired. The werewolf jerked around, howled, and came barreling at him, but another bullet dropped it before it got halfway across the clearing. Quickly, he reloaded and resighted at the tree it had been staring at. No telling what was up there that would make a werewolf act like that.
Nothing appeared. After a long minute had passed with nothing moving, Sam cautiously moved out into the clearing to make sure the werewolf was really dead. It was, and Sam turned away from the corpse in a hurry because he hated werewolves…and nearly fell backwards on top of it, because there was a huge bird behind him, maybe five feet away.
His gun was up in a second, but it didn’t move, except to cock its head to the side. Sam’s finger twitched on the trigger, because, damn, this thing was big, but when it just blinked at him, he didn’t shoot, tried taking a step to the side instead, to where he wouldn’t trip over the dead werewolf if he had to move fast. The bird still didn’t come closer, but it did stretch its absurdly long neck to the side and eyeball the werewolf. It hissed/screeched at it, causing Sam to jump, but it just seemed to be an expression of defiance at its dead furry menacer (at least, Sam now assumed that this was what had been in the werewolf’s tree). Then it turned its look on Sam and blinked.
“Stay back,” he told it, gesturing to it with the end of his gun.
It made a funny caw, and then flipped its wings at him in almost the same gesture.
Sam frowned, and after a hesitation, waved one hand in the air.
The bird waved one wing back at him.
Sam straightened and lowered his gun. “What are you?” he demanded, not really expecting any answer but the one he got.
The bird stood up straight and made an approximation of a questioning noise back at him.
Sam sighed and took the opportunity to look more closely at it. It was at least a foot taller than him, maybe more, and seemed to be kind of an ostrich/crane/dodo cross, if you then threw buckets of paint over the result so that it was then colored like a parrot. And it seemed to be at least semi-intelligent. He cocked his head to the side in thought (the bird did the same) and reached for his camera phone to take a picture.
Before he got the chance, though, Dean burst into the clearing behind him. “Sam! Are you—“ He skidded to a halt, gun trained on the bird. “Sam, get down!”
Sam whirled around, arms out. “Wait, Dean! Don’t shoot! It’s okay.”
Dean didn’t shoot, but he didn’t lower his gun either. “What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know, but the werewolf was after it,” Sam answered, pointing to the dead werewolf.
Dean’s eyes flicked quickly down to the corpse, and then back to Sam and the bird. “I don’t think it’s dangerous,” Sam added. Of course, at that point the bird stuck its head over Sam’s shoulder and hiss-screeched at Dean like it had at the werewolf.
Sam and Dean both jumped. “Well that don’t exactly sound friendly,” Dean said.
Sam shoved the bird back behind him with a “Stop that!” It swung its head around over his other shoulder and screeched again. “Hey!” He shoved at the bird again to distract it from Dean and looked it in the eye. “Stop.” It blinked at him and warbled.
Hoping that meant agreement, he turned back to Dean – just as another werewolf burst out of the trees behind the bird.
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Dean watched with horror as the werewolf ran towards his brother. Sam and the bird were in his way – he couldn’t shoot without hitting one of them. “Sam!” he shouted, hoping his brother could somehow turn and get a shot off before the thing leapt.
Suddenly the bird reached out and grabbed Sam by the back of his collar. It jerked its head, and Sam flew back over its shoulder with a strangled shout of surprise. The way suddenly clear between him and the werewolf, Dean shot once, twice. It collapsed in a heap and didn’t move.
“Sam?” he called, looking to see if his brother was okay. Sam was laying flat on his back, the bird hovering over him making warbling noises. Dean didn’t exactly lower his gun, but he didn’t take the shot he now had of the bird. After it had pulled Sam out of the way like that…he was reserving judgment for now. “Sam, you alright?”
Sam coughed. “Yeah, just got the wind knocked out of me.” He pushed the bird’s head aside so he could sit up. Dean approached, keeping one eye on the bird. It eyed him back but didn’t screech at him again. Evidently killing a werewolf got you into its good graces.
“That’s the farthest I’ve seen you thrown since you grew out of your beanpole phase,” Dean commented, pulling Sam to his feet. He began to dust the leaves and debris off Sam, mostly because he knew it would annoy Sam, and then laughed when the bird copied him, buffeting Sam with its wings so that Sam almost fell over in surprise. Maybe this bird wasn’t so bad after all.
“Hey!” Sam protested, breaking away and scowling at both of them. “Well at least we know it’s friendly – it just tried to defend me against that werewolf.”
Dean looked over at the bird, which cawed at him. “But why is it here? And what is it?”
“I’m not sure,” Sam admitted. “I haven’t heard of anything like it at all.”
“Well, it got here somehow – hey! What are you doing?” Dean interrupted himself to address the bird, who was nudging at him. He started to step back, and the bird’s head darted forward and into his pocket. “Hey!”
It emerged from his pocket with a half-eaten candy bar. Before he could grab for it, the bird threw it up in the air and swallowed it. It warbled happily and then began nosing around his other pockets. He swatted at it. “Oh no, you did not just do that. Get away!” He glared at Sam, who was chuckling. “Yeah, you think this is funny until it throws you across the clearing again.”
Sam didn’t stop laughing until it started rifling through his pockets in search of chocolate.
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“Come on princess, I want to be on the road – Bobby’s got a job for us across the state line,” Dean called back into the cabin Bobby’s friend had loaned them for this job. He took a deep breath and stretched until his back popped. Werewolf cases sucked, but the cabin had been sweet, the case of beer Bobby’s friend had left as a rare thank you had been sweeter, and the next case was a straight-up salt and burn – as simple as them came. Plus, Sam had picked up donuts on his last supply run. Life was good.
Jingling the keys to the Impala in one hand and a donut in the other, he turned to go start packing their gear. Only there was suddenly a large shape behind him. One that cawed and snatched his donut. He yelped and stumbled back…and then scowled up at the bird from yesterday.
“Dean?” Sam called from inside, having obviously heard Dean’s shout. He charged out of the door, skidding to a halt when he saw the bird. “Uhhhh…”
“What is this thing doing here?” Dean demanded.
“It likes you?” Sam hazarded, earning himself a glare. “Does it matter? It won’t follow us in the car, will it?”
“It had better not,” Dean muttered. He frowned down at his hand. “It ate my donut.”
The bird made a warbling noise and then reached out to tug on Dean’s jacket. “Hey!” he protested, trying to shove it off, but it kept tugging him off the porch. It stopped momentarily to look at Sam and then towards the woods. It warbled and tugged on Dean again before he could escape, and dammit, it was too early to be manhandled by a freaking giant bird.
“I think it wants something,” Sam said, completely unhelpfully.
“No , really?” Dean retorted. “Okay, enough!” He broke free from the bird and stepped away, straightening his jacket. It cawed at him again, but stopped when he crossed his arms. Giant, feathery force, meet immovable object. It bobbed its head towards the woods and then back to them.
“Dean…it almost looks worried,” Sam said after a second. Dean could feel his resolve to just pack and leave weakening as he watched the bird cluck nervously at the words.
“We tell no one about this,” he warned Sam, going to lock their stuff in the car and grab some gear. No telling where this bird would lead them.
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Sam laughed at the look on Dean’s face as a baby bird climbed out of his arms and into his jacket, almost dislodging the other baby that Dean was holding. That baby took offense with a squawk and tried to also climb in the jacket after the first one. Dean hastily unloaded both of them off to the side, away from where they were clearing the rocks away.
It turned out the bird had come to find them because the cave it had nested in had caved in, fairly recently. When they had gotten there, the bird had gone over to the side of the covered opening and began nudging at the rocks there, where it had made a small opening. Through that, they had heard the noises of the baby birds.
They had moved a couple of the rocks, and then, as soon as the opening was big enough, four baby birds had come tumbling out, clustering around their mother. They were the same bright colors as their mother, and their feathers were downy soft. And they were tiny compared to the big one, a little bigger than a football. Sam was no expert on birds, but these babies had a lot of growing to do to catch up. Still, he had to admit that they were kind of cute. Pretty fricking adorable actually, although he would never say that out loud in Dean’s hearing.
Not that Dean could really talk. Once they’d come over to get a look at the brothers, three of them had decided Dean was the most fascinating thing ever and followed him closely as he and Sam tried to clear the cave opening enough that the mother could enter too. He pretended to be annoyed, but Sam saw how closely he watched to make sure that none of them got hit by rocks. Watching him ferry them back out of the way, only to have them tag at his heels right back to where he was working over and over was pretty hilarious. He checked on his own tagalong.
Since he only had one dedicated baby follower, and because he was smarter than Dean, Sam had stuck his in his hood, where it had settled down happily and contented itself with warbling and sometimes preening his hair. It trilled at him as he tried to look over his shoulder at it, and he smiled and got back to work. There was just a few of the bigger rocks left to roll out of the way.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this for birds,” Dean commented, trying to scowl as he shook one of the babies off his bootlaces. Momentarily succeeding, he took his place beside Sam and pushed a boulder off to one side.
“Like you would’ve walked away, especially once we saw there were babies,” Sam retorted, dusting his hands off.
Dean muttered something about not being a baby killer, glared at him, and went over to the final rock, shifting babies out of the way as he went.
Sam grinned and went to help.
With the last rock out of the way, the entrance to the cave was at least unblocked enough for the mother bird to enter. Sam sat down on one of the discarded rocks to rest. He reached up to lift his passenger free, upon which it sat on his feet and tried to eat his shoe strings.
Dean sat down beside him and was immediately attack by his three. “Hey!” he said as he tried to fend them off without actually hurting them. Sam cackled as this was answered with three sets of wings waved in the air with a remarkably Hey!-sounding warble.
“You sure do have a way with animals, Dean,” he commented as the three babies then went right back to trying to rifle Dean’s pockets.
Dean flipped him off and gave up, taking a chocolate bar out of his pocket and distributing it among the babies. The one on Sam’s feet got up to join in the melee. Sam grinned at the picture Dean made, in the middle of four fighting baby birds. He started to get out his phone to take a picture…
“Don’t even think about it,” Dean growled before he could even get it out of his pocket. “We tell no one about this, or I will end you.”
Sam did his best to look innocent as he nodded. Sure, no one – if by no one Dean meant “just Bobby and Ellen and every one they ran into until Dean caught him and killed him.”
Behind him, the mother bird warbled and stuck her head in Dean’s other pocket, extracting another candy bar. Sam grinned and took pictures while Dean was too preoccupied to notice.