Well, it is a chapterlet. Short. Ish. For me... anyone who's read 'Balls' will recognise the reference to the fig tree on the road out of Bethany, and what *really* happened with it... *snigger snigger* Roman figs, *snigger snigger*...

elf, Dean's okay, the werewolf whacked his arm and deadarmed him, but the claws missed, so after a bit of swearing and Jimi kissing it better, it was fine. (You can still help if you want: '... then elf appeared in the doorway and Dean held up his arm and showed her the bruise and pouted and said "I has an owie" and she said "I'll get the liniment" then she and Dean had some Special Time in the bathroom and used up all Sam's shower gel...')

I'll be at the beach. Preparing to repel swimming plot bunnies.

***ETA on 25 MARCH 11: BUNNY ALERT! Can you believe it? One of the litle bastards has made it ashore already, and is hopping around under the desk, pestering me... oh, hell's bells, it's even got a working title, 'Can You Dig It?' Gaaaah! I blame Elf completely, wanting the full story of Jimi digging out a revenant on his first proper Hunt... HOWEVER I will not be able to do anything with this until the FFN site iss-ews are resolved - the New Story workaround is not satisfactory (anyone who's having trouble, or is interested, go and check out the discussions in the Help forum, under General forums), so I have NFI how long it will be until I can post anything. I have to get some proper actual work done, too, which has to take precedence on account of gainful employment being less fun that writing fanfics, but it pays much better. Keep thinking those positive waves at the FFN Interwebs Gurus - OM!

Chapterlet the last

One day later…

"Git out of it, ya idjit animals!" growled Bobby good-naturedly as Rumsfeld and Janis leaped at him, tails wagging, when Sam surreptitiously unleashed the power of The Whuff on the unsuspecting old Hunter.

Dean laughed all the way from the car into the house. "They can't help themselves, Bobby," he wheezed, flopping down on the sofa, "Bitches just love you! It's that animal magnetism thing that you exud-OOF!" His amusement was cut short when Jimi, prompted by Sam with The Whuff, threw himself at Dean for some Alpha lovin'.

"Well, I guess it's nice to know that I'm appreciated by somebody," mused Bobby philosophically.

"It's Sam," frowned Dean, carefully repositioning Jimi's paws in his lap before they permanently raised the register of his singing voice, "He's been watching The Dog Whisperer. He makes this noise, and the dogs go nuts for a bit of full-frontal action, with tongues."

Bobby narrowed his eyes at Sam. "You been talkin' to Ronnie, boy?" he demanded. Sam beamed back innocently.

"She's a very interesting... person," he answered carefully.

"That much is certain," Bobby agreed. "So, Dean," he continued, deliberately changing the subject, "How did you like being a parent?"

"I think I like him just fine like this," answered Dean, patting the dog slouched across his lap.

"It was amazing, Bobby," Sam picked up the topic, "He was just like Dean. He looked like him, ate like him, jerked off like him, screwed like him..." Dean let out a squawk of outrage.

"Sounds like your Daddy must've put The Dreaded Parents' Curse on you sometime," pronounced Bobby. "It's a terrible thing for a parent to do, wish your kids offspring just like themselves."

"I never crawled into my Dad's bed nekkid," Dean specified, "And I sure as hell never argued with him about getting dressed." He looked down at Jimi, who was gazing back adoringly. "I've already raised a Sasquatch," he added, "And that was traumatic enough."

"For which one of us?" asked Sam.

""Me," specified Dean, "Definitely me. C'mon, J-Man," he continued, nudging the dog, "Daddy needs a drink, so get off his lap..."

"Sit tight, bro," Sam told him. "Jimi!" he called for the dog's attention, and gave him a signal unfamiliar to Dean. "Jimi – Beer."

Jimi jumped down from the sofa and trotted briskly into the kitchen. The sound of bottles tinkling in the door of the refrigerator wafted to them, then the slam of the door closing again. The dog trotted back into the living room, a bottle of beer in his mouth. Sam praised him, and waved him in Dean's direction. Dean sat, a smile growing on his face, as Jimi presented him with the bottle.

"Dude," he said to the dog, ruffling his ears, "Dude, that is awesome!" Jimi took his favourite place on the sofa, head slouching in Dean's lap, and soaked up the approval with a happy expression.

"You have been talking to Ronnie," smirked Bobby in a low voice, as Dean patted and praised Jimi.

"It was just a case of teaching him each step, backwards in sequence," explained Sam, "He might act a bit, er, blonde, sometimes, but really, he's smart. Suicidally unconcerned with his own welfare, but smart."

"Hmmmm, remind you of anybody else we know?" asked Bobby with a raised eyebrow, as Dean and Jimi started a tug-of-war with Oinker Stoinker.

"Can't think who you could possibly be referring to," smiled Sam, heading for the kitchen to get his own beer.

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

Eighteen months later…

"Oui, Maitre, je l'ai ici," answered Robert, hefting the carefully measured bowl of dried herb and answering the summons of the brewmaster. The old monk smiled, and offered encouragement on his progress, then dismissed him when the bell rang. Robert scuttled obediently to his cell to begin his readings and meditation, feeling a small sense of achievement at having answered readily in French. Then he sighed. He'd probably have to confess that – Pride. Still, he mused, being a Novice meant making mistakes, so it would be more surprising if he didn't have things to confess…

"C'est vrai," agreed a gruff voice behind him which followed immediately after a large flapping sound, "Etre un novice, ca veut dire, vous etes comme un infant, avec beaucoup des choses apprendre…"

Robert spun around, nearly tripping over his cassock, and let out a little shriek. A small detached part of his brain wondered if he'd have to confess that as a breaking of Grand Silence…

"You!" the work squeaked out of him at the sight of the dark-haired man, wearing the same slightly rumpled suit and trench-coat he'd worn on that day, when, when, when…

"You… how…what are you doing here?" he hissed, figuring that if he'd already broken Grand Silence, he couldn't make it worse.

"The last time we met, I enjoyed our conversation," replied Castiel, looking around the small spartan space, "And I thought I might visit you again, and continue to assist you with your book. Your current situation is… most unexpected."

Robert's mouth fell open. "That was a year and a half ago!" he exclaimed, dumbfounded. He shook his head. "You're a hallucination," he declared, "Induced by a marijuana-laced brownie." That had to be right, because rumpled-looking men did not pull fountain pens out of thin air, then sprout wings and fly away and disappear into thin air… He looked anxious. Had he been inhaling too deeply whilst weighing out the herbs for the brewmaster? He'd have to confess this, and see if there was a dust mask or something he could wear…

"I am Castiel, an Angel Of The Lord, a Warrior of Heaven," corrected Castiel gently, "However, I enjoyed instructing you even for one afternoon. I would be happy to continue now – do you have your book?" He waved his hand, and called forth the Red Pen Of Heavenly Correction, an expression of anticipation on his face.

Robert pointed at the small desk, where a Bible sat next to a Book of Offices. Castiel picked it up, and looked confused for a moment.

"I was not expecting this," Castiel reiterated, "But since we are here, and this book also is the flawed work of men, we can still spend some educational time together. Quite recently, I became aware of a particular parable that was altered after the fact, because real events were deemed insufficiently solemn by the men of the church some hundreds of years later. It concerns the passage where Jesus is leaving Bethany, and encounters a fig tree, which reportedly bore no fruit, and so he cursed it. The real sequence of events, I think, offers a human insight into the love of our Father's Son for the people He lived with, and died for, and one human I know found it uproariously amusing…" Castiel flipped through the pages, finding the offending text, and began to correct it.

"Um, I'm not supposed to talk during Grand Silence," Robert told him, a touch reproachfully. Damn, something else to confess, that probably counted as Anger…

"Then I will lecture, and you may listen," Castiel told him with a benevolent smile.

Robert considered his options.

He could run screaming from his cell, find the Master of Novices and tell him that the angel he'd seen back in North Dakota – yep, an angel, only I didn't tell you that when I applied to enter this Order because I knew just how completely crazy I'd sound – well, that angel I didn't ever tell anybody about, he's back, he's wearing exactly the same clothes, he's in my cell, he's correcting my Bible, and it's all his fault I broke Grand Silence and felt Anger, but the Pride bit earlier was all me. Frere Jerome would hear him out, nodding, wearing the cat's ass expression that the grumpy old codger habitually wore whenever one of his charges managed to screw something up – oh, no, his next confession was going to take forever – then suspect he'd been getting stuck into the green Chartreuse when the brewmaster wasn't looking…

Or, he could sit here, and listen to Castiel.

After all, being instructed by an angel didn't actually count as sin, did it? That was a tricky question, because he'd found out pretty quickly that according to Catholicism, just about anything could count as sin, but…

A small part of him was also intrigued at the thought of something uproariously amusing in the Bible. And if he was truthful, there were passages in it that he had wondered about from when he was very young…

"A sincere desire for knowledge is not a sin, Robert," intoned Castiel, sounding stern and imposing, yet reassuring.

Robert made his decision.

He nodded, and pulled up a small stool to sit beside Castiel, who smiled, and began to explain what really happened on the road out of Bethany.

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

Three years later…

Tammy-Faye was sitting on his face again, thought Cody muzzily as he woke up. She did it because she was fond of him, liked to be close to him, but sleeping with a half-Persian-probably-according-to-the-lady-at-the-animal-shelter-but-could-equally-be-part-Pomeranian-because-she-thinks-she's-a-dog cat sitting on your head, well, it wasn't always a recipe for a completely restful night's sleep.

On the upside, he mused, sitting up and stroking Tammy-Faye's fluffy head, by doing so she had inspired a series of his most provocative and successful works: the 'Cat Hat Suffocating Bed Head God Correction' poems had come out of a run of dreams he'd had, precipitated by Tammy Faye's personal positioning preferences and the strange herbal extracts he'd been mixing into his hot chocolate for the previous week, in which a giant cat glided between clouds, trying to catch a man with messy dark hair who sailed effortlessly through the sky, streaks of red from his pen slashing crimson gashes across the blue background. The critics had acclaimed it, his fans had loved it, and three Elders from his old congregation had called for him to be excommunicated. Again.

Cody sat up, yawned, and pulled on clothes – whilst he wasn't that bothered about covering up in his own apartment, bitter experience told him that if he sat down to work for any length of time, Tammy Faye would insist on joining him, sitting comfortably in his lap, and she liked to knead – the 'Yow Yow Keyboard Coat Slave Transcending Pain Of Creation Claws' poems and essays had been testament to that. The students he'd been invited to address after they were published were almost disbelieving when he explained Tammy Faye's role as a feline muse.

He didn't try to explain the man in the trenchcoat, though – there was a difference between being alternative/eccentric/visionary and plain nuts. Alternative would get you money, fans, broad-minded girls, and pharmaceutically active substances. Nuts would get you locked up, still with pharmaceutically active substances, but not so much choice involved.

He made himself a cup of chocolate with a generous amount of his latest plant-based acquisition in it, added a dash of vodka as an afterthought, then slouched on the sofa, pulling the laptop towards himself, leaving plenty of room for Tammy Faye, of course, or she'd just walk on the keyboard, and he couldn't make sense of what she typed unless he'd had a really heavy night on the hot chocolate.

There was a flap-flap sound, and someone was sitting much too close to him on the sofa.

"Hello, Cody," said Flying Trenchcoat Man.

Cody stared, and for a moment Castiel worried that he was about to start screaming again, but instead he broke into a smile.

"I knew it," he said, mostly to himself, "I knew it, I knew I'd see you again…" he looked towards the small plastic bag of dried plant on the bench, and grinned. "All the way from Australia, and tastes like rotting toe fungus, even in vodka, but it was worth it!"

Castiel the Flying Trenchcoat Man stared at him inquisitively. "What does rotting toe fungus taste like?" he asked seriously. "Under what circumstances did you have cause to discover what it tastes like?"

"Dude, you are here just in time!" cried Cody excitedly.

Castiel suddenly sat up, looking around anxiously. "Is something going to happen?" he asked.

"Oohhhh, yeah," Cody told him, "When this stuff kicks in, sit back and watch the words fly. Just like you. Castiel The Flying Trenchcoat Man, the Corrector – do you have that pen?"

"Yes," answered the man on his sofa, waving his hand, and, yes, there it was! "I am gratified to see that you are keen to resume our discussion. Your companion Robert was somewhat… perturbed by my appearance. Do you have the book?"

"Always," hummed Cody happily, "It's inspired some of my best work." He chivvied Tammy Faye off his lap, and fetched his battered old copy of the Book of Mormon from a pile on the floor, handing it to FTM. The unexpected visitor gazed almost fondly at it, then opened the pages.

"Now, where were we?" he mused, "Ah, yes, the linguistic inconsistencies within the text. They are numerous, and there has been some debate amongst critics and apologists as to whether they are genuine anachronisms, errors, or just liberties taken with translation from 'Reformed Egyptian' into the contemporary English of the time, although of course the nature, actual identity and authenticity of 'Reformed Egyptian' is of itself a argument unto itself … what are you doing?"

Cody's hands were flying across the laptop keyboard. "Taking notes, man, taking notes!" he chirped, gazing in amazement as his fleeting muse, gone from his life after that one epiphanic moment, had suddenly dropped back into his lap, and resumed with the most amazing, inspirational, and utterly uncomprehensible spoken word performance he could ever have hoped for. "I don't want to miss a word of this!"

"Very well," said Castiel, feeling a small flutter of happiness at finding such a willing student, "I will lecture, and you may listen. That is the approach that Robert preferred, too."

Cody nodded eagerly. He could see the shape of his next essay unfolding in front of him, Straightjacked Language Outdated Argument Of Authentic Identity Crisis Teacher Feature...

Tammy Faye, disturbed by the earnest typing, shifted herself to Castiel's lap, where she settled and purred loudly. Later, she amused herself by batting gently at the tip of one of Castiel's wings; he let her do it, because he thought she was just adorable.

All three of them spent a very contented afternoon.

THE END

Ta-dah! That's all, folks! I might even make an attempt to exorcise further plot bunnies as time allows in future. May the Chocolate-Powered Inspiration Fairy visit all of you who write fanfics.

And I formally remove the curse I so rudely placed upon you at the beginning of this story.

UPDATED 01APR11 - IT'S COMPLETE! Huzzah to the FFN gurus, who apparently have fixed the sites that are playing up, because I can FINALLY mark this one off as Complete! Let's hope this is a permanent restoration. And shame on the people who were rude to the FFN techs, this is free for our use and amusement, and I'm sure the last couple of weeks have been dreadful for them.