An Update and Reborn Teasers
So I'm essentially trying to prepare for upgrading my computer (finally) to Windows 7.
See, the only thing I'm worried about is possibly losing my not-quite legal copy of Works, primarily Word and Notebook (technically, the programs came on the machine, but after the trial period, I got a product code that worked. So my concern is that the programs may no longer work after the upgrade).
The upgrade came free with the computer last year, I just haven't done anything with it. I know I should, but I'm putting it off until I get enough saved up to buy Works 2010. I know I could use OpenOffice, but I don't really like that layout and I'm more comfortable with Word in general. Then there's my customizations.
It's frustrating. So many things change rapidly in my life that I end up clinging to the only thing that really has something consistently familiar and that I have direct control over. Hell, I'm just getting used to Google Chrome.
---
Started a full-time retail job lately. And I'm now focusing applications on office work. An issue with that is that my city tends to require French as a second language-- while I'm bilingual, I'm not confident enough to speak it; I understand French just fine, reading, writing and listening, but I don't speak it. But my lease dictates that I'm in the city for another year.
---
And I have been (slowly) writing. On top of being out of the house for twelve hours a day and needing a fuck load of sleep while I get used to the change from 12 hours of work a week to 32, I have been working on a few ideas.
So...
There were three missing, one body, and a lot of questions regarding the nature of the crimes. Police were now a staple at the school, with uniformed officers prowling the campus and its boundaries alongside the kids in the school colours.
When the Winchesters found out about the missing teens and the body found, John had taken a closer look at the case. A few hunters had their eyes on the area already, but grown adults had a hard time getting anywhere near a school now, let alone with any sort of believable cover that would get them close enough to work a case. Yet not many hunters had the advantage that John Winchester had.
The school offered room and board for a small semester fee. This fee was beyond John Winchester, but the card that named him as “Matthew Herring” paid for the first month of a trial run at the school (late summer classes offered a month-by-month catch-up period before the full school year started).
John wasn’t happy about the whole thing. The money, the case, and definitely the fact that he had to let Dean saunter into that school alone. He wished he could have said something more encouraging than;
“Don’t screw this up, Dean. Save these kids.”
A shrug was the only response John received while Dean shouldered the bag containing his clothes and the newly purchased school uniform and sauntered towards the building that contained St. Michael’s High School.
It's sort of an aside to my "Reborn" story, based off a desire to move away from interpersonal drama for a while and jump into a hunt. The next proper chapter is also being worked on, though:
There was nothing calmer than the dead of night in a rural church. Peace and safety exuded from the stone and wood that held the small sanctuary together and slipped into the vicarage like the essence of the Holy Spirit itself was keeping things together. It seemed like the sort of place that really brought the local community together while still offering the same sort of sanctity and blessing to whatever hunters travelled through the area.
Gabriel thought it was all a load of shit. But he was there anyway.
He had a job to do and a promise to keep, so he stood in the centre of the church proper- wings stretched out behind him as far as he could make them go. Something like feathers grazed the edges of the pews, and a brief thought of the good luck that’d visit whoever sat there in the coming days amused him. His grace was intricately tied to the wings, splaying out across and through the building like a cloak of the holiest thing to touch that church throughout its existence. It spread through the ornate carvings on the wooden rafters and beams, and pressed against the stained glass saints who were supposed to be watching over these things.
It was a neat trick he had picked up: revealing his grace to almost his former glory without letting his brethren pinpoint his exact location. Really, it was something he had needed to learn when he pulled a fast one on Baldur and had to get out of sight really fast. If anyone up in Heaven was paying attention to the goings on of earth, they might catch a glimpse of him doing his thing. But it was a miracle in itself if the Host gave the slightest damn about what was going on in the humans' paradise. His brethren's intense disinterest in the mortal world had only made it easier to hide when he wanted to. No matter how close another angel was- and no matter how determined they were to find a Fallen brother- the grace of an archangel obliterated any hits on the angel radar. It was something of an ego boost, to be sure.
So he stood, in the dead of night, in the middle of a church in some town called Blue Earth, revealing enough of his true form to listen in on the static chatter of the family he pretended not to care about anymore.
He was there for a reason. Castiel had been sent to the church-- or rather, the Pastor running the church-- for a "summer vacation". Gabriel never understood the whole "school" thing, but he figured that knowledge shouldn't be limited to the rich and religious like it used to be, so he stayed out of the way after checking in on the kid every few years. And, this "vacation" thing was something he could approve of; even if it did include the younger Winchester kid. But he had promised that the kid would be safe, and so he created a shield around the kid, tucking him out of holy sight for the time being. He figured that a good deed here and there was a good break from his pagan duties.
"You're an angel, aren't you?"
Shit.
Everything-- grace, wings-- folded neatly back into his vessel and he offered a lazy smirk to the sleepy kid in the doorway. "Jeeze, kiddo. Don't you ever sleep?"
"Are you?"
"Kid," Gabriel threw his arms wide with an expectant look, daring the kid-- Cas-- to accuse him of anything. "Do I look like an angel?"
There was a moment of hesitation-- and a flicker of recognition that he really hoped had nothing to do with buried memories-- before tired blue eyes narrowed. "I saw wings. Four wings."
That earned a frown as Gabriel let his arms drop and he looked over the boy carefully. The kid was tired, anyone could tell that, but his eyes were focused, and Gabriel knew that this wasn't something he could just pass off as a sleep-deprived delusion. "Kid…" At the very least, he could figure out how to distract the kid- he’d known the boy, literally, since his conception. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I meant here, kiddo. Out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Are you going to tell me about the wings if I tell you?”
---
So there's my update. Writing is slow while I adjust to work, deal with writer's block, and deal with this whole "new life" thing. Prodding would be much appreciated. I've also been developing a taste for Sam/Castiel.
See, the only thing I'm worried about is possibly losing my not-quite legal copy of Works, primarily Word and Notebook (technically, the programs came on the machine, but after the trial period, I got a product code that worked. So my concern is that the programs may no longer work after the upgrade).
The upgrade came free with the computer last year, I just haven't done anything with it. I know I should, but I'm putting it off until I get enough saved up to buy Works 2010. I know I could use OpenOffice, but I don't really like that layout and I'm more comfortable with Word in general. Then there's my customizations.
It's frustrating. So many things change rapidly in my life that I end up clinging to the only thing that really has something consistently familiar and that I have direct control over. Hell, I'm just getting used to Google Chrome.
---
Started a full-time retail job lately. And I'm now focusing applications on office work. An issue with that is that my city tends to require French as a second language-- while I'm bilingual, I'm not confident enough to speak it; I understand French just fine, reading, writing and listening, but I don't speak it. But my lease dictates that I'm in the city for another year.
---
And I have been (slowly) writing. On top of being out of the house for twelve hours a day and needing a fuck load of sleep while I get used to the change from 12 hours of work a week to 32, I have been working on a few ideas.
So...
There were three missing, one body, and a lot of questions regarding the nature of the crimes. Police were now a staple at the school, with uniformed officers prowling the campus and its boundaries alongside the kids in the school colours.
When the Winchesters found out about the missing teens and the body found, John had taken a closer look at the case. A few hunters had their eyes on the area already, but grown adults had a hard time getting anywhere near a school now, let alone with any sort of believable cover that would get them close enough to work a case. Yet not many hunters had the advantage that John Winchester had.
The school offered room and board for a small semester fee. This fee was beyond John Winchester, but the card that named him as “Matthew Herring” paid for the first month of a trial run at the school (late summer classes offered a month-by-month catch-up period before the full school year started).
John wasn’t happy about the whole thing. The money, the case, and definitely the fact that he had to let Dean saunter into that school alone. He wished he could have said something more encouraging than;
“Don’t screw this up, Dean. Save these kids.”
A shrug was the only response John received while Dean shouldered the bag containing his clothes and the newly purchased school uniform and sauntered towards the building that contained St. Michael’s High School.
It's sort of an aside to my "Reborn" story, based off a desire to move away from interpersonal drama for a while and jump into a hunt. The next proper chapter is also being worked on, though:
There was nothing calmer than the dead of night in a rural church. Peace and safety exuded from the stone and wood that held the small sanctuary together and slipped into the vicarage like the essence of the Holy Spirit itself was keeping things together. It seemed like the sort of place that really brought the local community together while still offering the same sort of sanctity and blessing to whatever hunters travelled through the area.
Gabriel thought it was all a load of shit. But he was there anyway.
He had a job to do and a promise to keep, so he stood in the centre of the church proper- wings stretched out behind him as far as he could make them go. Something like feathers grazed the edges of the pews, and a brief thought of the good luck that’d visit whoever sat there in the coming days amused him. His grace was intricately tied to the wings, splaying out across and through the building like a cloak of the holiest thing to touch that church throughout its existence. It spread through the ornate carvings on the wooden rafters and beams, and pressed against the stained glass saints who were supposed to be watching over these things.
It was a neat trick he had picked up: revealing his grace to almost his former glory without letting his brethren pinpoint his exact location. Really, it was something he had needed to learn when he pulled a fast one on Baldur and had to get out of sight really fast. If anyone up in Heaven was paying attention to the goings on of earth, they might catch a glimpse of him doing his thing. But it was a miracle in itself if the Host gave the slightest damn about what was going on in the humans' paradise. His brethren's intense disinterest in the mortal world had only made it easier to hide when he wanted to. No matter how close another angel was- and no matter how determined they were to find a Fallen brother- the grace of an archangel obliterated any hits on the angel radar. It was something of an ego boost, to be sure.
So he stood, in the dead of night, in the middle of a church in some town called Blue Earth, revealing enough of his true form to listen in on the static chatter of the family he pretended not to care about anymore.
He was there for a reason. Castiel had been sent to the church-- or rather, the Pastor running the church-- for a "summer vacation". Gabriel never understood the whole "school" thing, but he figured that knowledge shouldn't be limited to the rich and religious like it used to be, so he stayed out of the way after checking in on the kid every few years. And, this "vacation" thing was something he could approve of; even if it did include the younger Winchester kid. But he had promised that the kid would be safe, and so he created a shield around the kid, tucking him out of holy sight for the time being. He figured that a good deed here and there was a good break from his pagan duties.
"You're an angel, aren't you?"
Shit.
Everything-- grace, wings-- folded neatly back into his vessel and he offered a lazy smirk to the sleepy kid in the doorway. "Jeeze, kiddo. Don't you ever sleep?"
"Are you?"
"Kid," Gabriel threw his arms wide with an expectant look, daring the kid-- Cas-- to accuse him of anything. "Do I look like an angel?"
There was a moment of hesitation-- and a flicker of recognition that he really hoped had nothing to do with buried memories-- before tired blue eyes narrowed. "I saw wings. Four wings."
That earned a frown as Gabriel let his arms drop and he looked over the boy carefully. The kid was tired, anyone could tell that, but his eyes were focused, and Gabriel knew that this wasn't something he could just pass off as a sleep-deprived delusion. "Kid…" At the very least, he could figure out how to distract the kid- he’d known the boy, literally, since his conception. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I meant here, kiddo. Out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Are you going to tell me about the wings if I tell you?”
---
So there's my update. Writing is slow while I adjust to work, deal with writer's block, and deal with this whole "new life" thing. Prodding would be much appreciated. I've also been developing a taste for Sam/Castiel.