🙍🏽♀️🐷🪷 (i scrolled and picked three random emojis pls enjoy)
“You wanna run that by me one more time?”
On the other end of the line, Patience lets out a long-suffering sigh — as though Dean’s the one making unexpected phone calls at quarter past three in the morning — and says it again. The words don’t make any more sense than they did the first time.
“In fourteen hours and — now seventeen minutes — a pig in Lotus, Illinois is going to die, and unless you save her life, she’s taking everyone in a 50 mile radius with her. And yeah, before you ask me to say it a third time, I am acutely aware of how stupid this sounds.”
“And when you say pig, are we talkin’ Babe, or—?“
“My visions aren’t symbolic, Dean. It’s an actual pig. Her name is Princess.”
“Right. Just… wanted to be sure before we started trailing all the cops in uh, where’d you say? Lotus?”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t find one there anyway. Internet says it’s an unincorporated community — looks like there’s maybe three farms there, total.”
“Looks like?”
“Satellite images,” she says.
“Right. Hey, hold on a sec.”
“‘Kay.”
Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm, Dean pushes the rest of the way out of bed and throws on the same jeans he took off two hours ago. Switches out the ratty t-shirt he’d been almost-sleeping in for a fresh one, and yanks on his boots.
For once, he’d been planning on sleeping a solid seven hours. He was going to make maple bacon with blueberry waffles in the morning. Jack was going to help him mix the batter.
Depending on how things shake out with Patience’s vision, he might never be able to enjoy bacon again. Or for a few months, at least.
Fully dressed and heading out into the hall, he puts his phone back to his ear.
“I’m back,” he says, making his way toward the kitchen. He thumps twice on Sam’s door as he passes it, barking out a gruff hunt in response to Sam’s bleary huh? “Please tell me you’ve got some idea of how exactly Peppa’s gettin’ popped so we can try to do something about it.”
“I have no clue.”
“And you didn’t see anything else? Any details at all. A barn, a farmer, anything? Because this is…”
“Impossible. I know. But that’s all I’ve got. The pig just keels over, then bursts in a blinding flash of light, and ten seconds later Illinois has a brand new crater the size of New Jersey.”
“Okay, well — that’s something.”
“What?”
“The light. What color is it?”
“White, mostly,” Patience says, then hums a little to herself. “But… huh, actually, there is a bit of purple. Right in the center. Right before it goes supernova.”
“Purple light usually means witchcraft,” Dean says, approaching the kitchen. He can see the light on; can hear the telltale sound of Cas stirring sugar into coffee. “Maybe the pig is the final ingredient in some kind of magic bomb?”
“Could be,” Patience agrees. “But hey, listen, I gotta try and get a couple more hours sleep — huge test in the morning. But if anything else comes to me I’ll call you, okay?”
“Yeah, sounds good. And uh— thanks. And good luck.”
“You too.”
The line goes dead just as Dean steps into the kitchen, and Cas looks up at him from the table, where he’s reading an article in one of the Men of Letters’ old issues of The Farmer’s Almanac. He frowns at the sight of the phone in Dean’s hand. Frowns harder still when Dean heads directly for the coffee machine with nothing but a brief brush of a hand over his shoulder.
“Is something wrong?”
“It’s a day ending in Y,” Dean says with a sigh, pouring a cup from the thankfully still-hot jug. “You up for a road trip?”
“Of course. Where are we going?”
"Illinois," Dean tells him, leaning back against the counter as Sam arrives, his hair sticking so far out to one side that Dean suspects it’s generating its own electric charge.
He eyes it over his mug and has the grim thought that all that static electricity might be the thing to light Miss Piggy's fuse. Oblivious to Dean's train of thought, Sam lets out an explosive yawn. Dean bites back the kind of mildly-hysterical laugh that can only come when sleep-deprived and preparing to drive toward impending danger.
"What's in Illinois?" Cas prompts him, and Sam yawns again as he waves a hand for Dean to explain, and Dean takes a long sip of his coffee as he searches for a better way to put it than Patience had managed on her first try.
He's not sure that he succeeds where clarity of substance is concerned, but as far as style goes? He thinks he's nailed it.
“Short version? Royal rescue mission, but the Princess is a pig."
Cas squints at him.
“I think,” he says, looking over at Sam, who is blinking slowly as he tries to parse Dean’s words, “We’re going to need the long version.”
[written for this prompt game] [find me on ao3 as imogenbynight 💚]
