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How Now Brown Cow

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Once upon a time on a farm far, far away, there was a bull named Dean.

He was a bull of outstanding bloodline, hailing from the original grand stock of Winchester cattle. His sire, John, had recently passed on to the Great Pasture in the Sky, and there had been no doomed chariot from the slaughterhouse for John. No, John had been a special bull, expiring in his favorite patch of sun on a Sunday morning. Dean was sad to see his sire go, but, as he was a bull, this did not keep him off his cud and duties as a bull to the cows. This made the farmer very happy, and Dean was given lots of grass and hay pie as a reward.

Dean was a rare bull as he was able to be around the cows and also his brother, a gigantic bull named Sam, without trying to gut Sam for being competition for the cows. Perhaps part of Dean knew that he was simply a better stud than Sam, who, despite his gigantic size in all areas, was something more of a prize bull than an actualy bull bull. Dean was certain and sure in his place in the farmer's large and spacious field.

For a while after John's passing, Dean and Sam were content in the field. The only annoyance were the chickens and roosters who were near to the farmer's house, and Dean and Sam did not have to care for the poultry except when Bobby, the old and croaky rooster, occasionally spoke up in the night.

One day, the farmer decided he wanted to enter Dean and Sam in a fair. The winner of the competition would be declared the most Heavenly Bull in the County! Sam was the obvious choice, and Dean was fine with that. But, at the fair, Dean overheard from a number of pigs in the tent next door, that the winner of the contest would be slaughtered for the most Heavenly Steak in the Country award!

Dean was terrified. No, he thought, I can't let Sam suffer this fate! Not even John, who was old and gone, had be subjected to the fate of the slaughterhouse. So, Dean made the decision that he would save his brother. He headbutt Sam, who was freshly groomed and oiled, in the side hard enough that his horn cut Sam's flank. Sam was injured and could not be entered. He was furious as was the farmer, but the farmer still wanted to win the contest. He entered Dean, scowling the entire way.

Dean won the competition, but Sam and the farmer were still so angry with him. When they got back to the farm, Dean was put in the barn with a number of pigs the farmer had purchased to expand the revenue of the farmer. Dean was in there for nearly forty days, the length of the veterinarian's quarantine against rabies. In that time, the pigs laughed at him, showering him with mud and slop until Dean felt he would never be clean again.

It was on the fortieth day that the door opened to the barn and Dean was besot with the gaze of a the strangest creature he'd ever laid eyes on. It was a horse, yet not a horse. It was smaller than a horse, and it had strangely intense, blue eyes, its flanks dappled with dark spots. Dean learned that it was a pony, and it was named Castiel.

Dean was released from the barn that day and returned to the field only to find it much changed. Castiel was not the only pony that the farmer had purchased and added to his livestock. No, in fact, Castiel was one of many ponies, all of whom were given a huge amount of the field all to themselves, fenced off from Dean and Sam and the cows. Dean and Sam could not navigate the fence like the ponies, and it became common place for Dean and Sam and the cows to have to fight for their once abundant patches of sweet grass with the ponies. The pony Castiel was the only one who did not attract Dean's ire for Castiel was different than the rest of the haughty ponies, looking at Dean as intensely as he did on the fortieth day of Dean's quarantine. Castiel also did not eat Dean's grass.

Dean the bull decided he was alright with Castiel the pony. Sam, however, hated all the ponies, and he stayed away from Castiel and subsequently Dean, who he was still angry with over the Heavenly Bull contest. Instead, Sam began to spend more and more time on the other end of the field where the pigs were now kept.

The pigs were mostly contained in their own part of the field. Dean hated the pigs. They were always dirty and low to the ground, grunting and snorting into their slop. He hated that Sam preferred the pigs over him now, and he and Sam fought vicious for the first time in their lives. The farmer was dismayed and divided the field, pushing Sam towards the pigs and Dean toward the ponies. Sam did not like the pigs, and Dean did not like the ponies, but they were angry with each other and there was nothing to be done.

After months of this, of Dean and Sam angry with each other, the ponies jumping the fences, and the pigs laughing at them all, the farmer came back from a trip to town. He brought with him four beautiful horses, all of racing stock. The ponies flocked to the horses, but one horse did not like the ponies. This horse was the sleek black one, the fastest and most beautiful, and he made no secret that he hated them all. Not just the ponies, but the bulls and the cows and the pigs and the chickens and the roosters. He could not stand how he and his brothers were crowded onto this field with all the slaughterhouse-bound. His name was Lucifer, and he rebelled.

Dean was horrified by how his pasture, once his own, had been invaded and warped. He was helpless as he watched the horses divide his world, how the pasture fell into partioned sections and fractions. Sam came back to him, horrified as well, but Dean knew that Sam was tempted by Lucifer, by his undeniable speed and power. Dean knew that Lucifer would take Sam, would attract him as Lucifer had rounded up the pigs and some ponies and even some of the cows and chickens. Dean knew this and raged, angry at them all.

Castiel was terrified by the change in his brothers after the arrival of the horses, and he mourned bitterly as the close quarters and the tension of so many species together at once took its toll on his brethren. He stuck closer to Dean, who, in his anger and grief, was the only thing that he could recognize: for Castiel had never felt so strongly before, and Dean openly displayed the hurt and terror Castiel felt inside. Castiel despaired and felt not at all like a pony.

A year went by like this, and then it was time for the annual fair again. The farmer did not take Dean this time, packing the trailers that once took Dean, Sam, and John places with Sam, Lucifer, and Michael, the most obedient of the horses. Dean raged, but he had been locked into the barn with Castiel, who had taken to acting out on his anger and frustration like Dean. Dean fought against the bars holding him in, but it was useless. Dean grieved as he watched the trailer's pull away, Sam's head just visible, his eyes bleak but determined.

It was three days later when the trailers returned, empty of their previous occupants. Dean was released, but he was not glad to be free to roam his field. It was no longer his field, no longer filled with Sam and the simple life they had lead before. Dean grieved bitterly, taking no cows and feeling only a flash of pleasure when the farmer tried to ply him with his once favorite pies.

The horse Gabriel disappeared late one stormy night; he had not been the swiftest, but he had certainly been the kindest, and Dean was strangely sorry to see him go. The last horse, Raphael, the most ill-tempered, snapped at the ponies, and they cowered before him. Castiel's treatment was the worst because he would not cower, and he was chased from his rightful share of grazing ground. Nowhere else to go, Castiel trailed after Dean, and they alternatively admired and cursed each other for all that they shared.

Then, one spring morning, Dean looked up from his grass and hay pie to see a burdened trailer coming up the road. He thought nothing of it for ever since the farmer got the pigs and the ponies and the horses, there had been many visitors to the farm. He didn't care about the visitors, only cared if they took away more of the ponies because that made Castiel sad, even though none of the ponies would associate with Castiel anymore. Dean was about to turn back to his pie when he smelt a familiar smell, a smell he never thought he would smell again.

Dean looked up with a snort of grass and hay and cud to see the farmer leading Sam up the road. Sam looked exactly the same as when Dean last saw him, and Dean stared in shock as Sam ambled into the field, the farmer shutting the door behind him. Sam moved over to Dean, and he was Sam against all odds, Sam brought back from the Great Pasture in the Sky, where not even John had been able to come back from. Sam snorted, shaking his great head, and began to eat the rest of Dean's pie. And Dean was so happy.

For a while, the field seemed good again. Dean and Sam grazed together, huffed at each other, flicked away flies with their tails. But, eventually, Dean realized that Sam was different, and Castiel noticed it, too. They did not know what made Sam different, and neither did Sam, although he did not care as much. It made Dean uneasy, and it drove Castiel to stand apart from Dean, who stayed so close to Sam.

Now Castiel was truly alone. He was not frightened as he had been when Lucifer and Michael were in the field. No, he was determined as he had learned to be from Dean. He would find the strangeness in Sam, he decided, and he would stop it from spreading to Dean. He would not let the ponies cower any longer under Raphael, who denied him his grazing ground. He would make things better, and Dean would always try to do himself. And so Castiel, in a show of great strength and cunning, chased Raphael from the field in a vicious snowstorm, but, in doing so, he left Dean, who stood confused and terrified with only the changed Sam at his side.

In that moment, looking upon the field, Castiel realized that he was not a horse. He was not tall or great among the ponies, and he could not control them, his brethren who had been for too long beneath the rule of the taller, stronger horses. Castiel did not know what to do. For all that he had studied Dean, he realized, Dean was a bull; he was not a horse or a pony, and he could not know how to rule all the ponies as well as the cows and bulls and pigs and chickens. Castiel did not know either, did not know where to start. He knew he could not win a fight for dominance against all the animals in the field, and he was forced to back down before them all, turning in the opposite direction that Raphael had galloped and disappearing into the snow.

Dean grieved Castiel's leaving as bitterly as he had grieved the loss of Sam. Sam stayed by his side, still strange and irrevocably changed. Around them, the field that had once been theirs was uncertain and chaotic. Dean did not understand what had happened to his field. At times, he knew not what had happened at all.

One day, as the sun set and twilight fell, the farmer brought Dean a pie, leaning on the fence and his wide brimmed hat low over his face.

"Well, Dean-o, them horses and ponies ain't coming to fruitation... What do you think 'bout bears...?"