fanfic: On Stormy Wings
Title: On Stormy Wings
Rating: R
Characters: Castiel, Dean, Sam, Adam, Jo, John, Mary, Ellen, Bobby, Karen, Ash, Chuck, Pam, Gabriel, Rufus, etc.
AU: Animal Shifter
Author's Note: I read a SPN shifter fic and thought it was rather stupid even though it was highly reccomended to me. It was just so... unbelievable, poorly written and wrong that I wanted to write one for myself. So I did. This is the result. Enjoy the first SPN thing I've written in like months.
---
While he was born of the Storm Wing clan, Castiel was raised by the Wind Chasers. As a young raven, he had been thrown from the nest by an owl. Alone on the forest floor as a little chick, he had struggled his stubby little wings flapping frantically against the leaf litter and ground as he called and called and called for his clan to come for him. They never did.
Instead Castiel found himself in a warm, wet mouth with sharp teeth. The mouth was gentle though, holding him firmly but without hurting him. He didn’t know what was going on, though he was aware he was moving, going somewhere, going away from his clan’s traditional nesting territory.
Where he ended up was a floor like he’d never felt before. It was smooth, not like the forest floor with all the leaves and twigs. It made it impossible for him to get righted until some soft hands picked him up, cradling him gently. It was his first contact with the Wind Chasers, being rescued by Sam Wind Chaser and then cared for by Mary Wind Chaser.
The Wind Chasers, being wolves, were not quite sure what to do with a raven chick at first. Mary Wind Chaser found him a nice box which she filled with soft fluffy towels and then set him under a nice warm lamp. It took them longer to figure out what to feed him, but Bobby Long Howl’s fishing bate worked nicely. The Long Howls were an allied pack with the Wind Chasers, along with the Heart Veil pack but because Sam Wind Chaser had picked him up so Castiel was claimed by the Wind Chasers.
By the time of his first human shift, he was quite used to being cared for by wolves. Unlike the ravens, there was no expectation for him to figure things out on his own. The first time he tried to climb out of his box nest, Mary Wind Chaser kept putting him back in until he snapped at her fingers. He tumbled off the edge of the box, off the table and onto the kitchen floor where he righted himself, shook his baby feathers and shifted into a little boy.
It was easier for the Wind Chasers to care for him as a child. They stuck him together with their sons, Sam, Adam and Dean. All the Wind Chasers were variations on the same thing, earthy tones of brown and sandy brown hair and varying shades of green eyes. Castiel was an oddity to the Wind Chaser pups with his dark black hair and piercing blue eyes. Joanna Heart Veil was the most cautious around him, usually hiding behind Sam or Adam when he was around. Dean Wind Chaser has no fear, though, and quickly tried to introduce him into the wolf world of establishing dominance through play.
As a raven, Castiel didn’t understand this at first. He usually panicked and cried until Mary Wind Chaser soothed him, usually with a warm, fluffy blanket that he could hide in. It took some time for the Wind Chaser pups, especially Dean to figure out they couldn’t play with him like they played with each other. Sam was the best at playing Echo with Castiel. Castiel would make a call, Sam would copy it. Those were the games of birds.
Of course, during this time Mary Wind Chaser, Ellen Heart Veil and Karen Long Howl were also teaching them how to be like human children. They learned to speak human words, behave like human children and play human games. Castiel and Adam often competed for best tagger in the games of tag they’d play in the salvage yard run by Bobby Long Howl. No one could ever beat Castiel at hide and seek though. He was the best hider and was always the last one to be found. Sometimes he was so good at hiding that John Wind Chaser had to be called in to help find him. Dean was good at finding him too, learning from his father.
Even though he wasn’t living and be raised by his own kind, Castiel found himself quite content in the Wind Chaser pack. The peace didn’t last forever. Wolves were very territorial and the combined Wind Chaser, Long Howl and Heart Veil territory was big, with good hunting grounds and profitable human cover. The Yellow Eye pack had coveted it for decades and finally the tensions boiled over into an attack.
Castiel remembered the night of the attack as a flurry of panic and crying. He was hurried down into the basement along with his playmates were they all huddled together behind a heavy locked steel door. Unable to see anything, they could only listen to the growls, yowls and howls of the fighting wolves overhead. Unlike the wolf pups he couldn’t smell the blood until it came under the door. Mary Wind Chaser died right outside their safe place. Dean dragged them all under the single cot in the room, hiding underneath it like a little fort, but Castiel struggled free. The Yellow Eye pack was getting the door open, the fighting was still going on but Castiel knew he could do something. He wasn’t wolf, but that was what made him special.
His first change back happened that night. One moment he was a child, kicking free of Dean’s hold and then he was a juvenile raven, his baby feathers giving way to the sleek black feathers of an adult. He began to flap furiously and call, the craw, craw, craw echoing around the room until it sounded like there were hundreds of ravens instead of one little one. Because he wasn’t raised among his clan, Castiel was unaware of why his people were called Storm Wing. While magical gifts were rare in wolves, they were common in ravens. As he flapped, Castiel began to call on his clan’s magic. Soon each wing beat sounded like crashing thunder and his cries were the crack of lightning. The Yellow Eye pack fled from the unexpected and unknown force.
They lost Bill Heart Veil, Karen Long Howl and Mary Wind Chaser in the attack. The pack went from eleven to eight, three adults, four pups and one raven. Castiel went from a child to a teenager the moment he changed back to a human. Shifters were the age of their animal form, not their human form. When he changed back he had to learn how to deal with puberty, gangly limbs and an inelegance that didn’t suit his raven side at all.
After the attack, things changed in the Wind Chaser pack. John Wind Chaser took Dean aside and got him through his second shift then he began to teach his son how to be an alpha wolf. Castiel was left mostly with Bobby Long Howl who was supposed to teach him how to fly. Bobby had protested but John’s word was law in the pack and eventually Bobby knuckled under. While Dean was off learning to hunt and track prey as well as fight as both a wolf and a human, Castiel studied the birds around the salvage yard with Bobby keeping one eye on him. He tried talking to them a few times, but the birds wouldn’t give up the secret of flight to a strange chick.
They were both frustrated, which was probably why Bobby grabbed him one day while he was cawing at some crows, brought him up to the roof of the main house and tossed him into the air. Castiel tumbled, panicked and started flapping frantically. Somehow, some way his body, his nature figured out what it was supposed to do and he soared above the salvage yard for the first time.
He began to spend more and more time as a bird, maturing faster than the rest of the pack. He couldn’t fly as a human and found the ground very limiting. In the air, as a raven, he was free. He could perch high on the piles of junk or the roof and watch the things going on.
Dean had become his father’s shadow. The two of them were never far from each other, either training or working on cars together. Castiel noted with some curiosity that not all these times were happy, like a father and son should be. John Wind Chaser demand perfection and when Dean failed to meet those standards, the disapproval cut him deep. Sometimes, Dean went on long training runs after he failed and Castiel would follow, soaring overhead so Dean wouldn’t notice.
Sam Wind Chaser didn’t seek his father’s approval, he rebelled against it in a way Castiel thought might mean he had more alpha potential than his brother. The worst happened when John caught Sam meeting with a female of the Yellow Eye pack. The two fought so loud, so long Castiel almost called down a storm to stop them. He was quite good with his magic by the time Sam left. He had seen Sam off, sharing a rare physical display of affection rubbing his beak against Sam’s muzzle. He ran off with the Yellow Eye girl and the next day the pack was more subdued. Dean went on his longest run that day, Castiel flew with him.
Jo Heart Veil took up with her mother, cooking, cleaning, learning how to keep house and raise pups. At night she snuck out and trained like Dean did. Castiel, being mostly diurnal, didn’t see these training sessions but at dawn he was often there when Jo came back in, muddy and exhausted. It didn’t take him long to figure out what the lone female pup was doing, though none of them were really pups anymore. They had all gone through many shifts and changes, rapidly growing into adults.
Adam Wind Chaser, most unexpectedly, rejected the whole wolf life together. He rarely shifted, spent most of his time in his human form, going to human school and becoming like them. Castiel didn’t understand, but he supposed if he was stuck on the ground like a wolf he’d probably prefer to be human. Eventually, Adam went to human college and most surprisingly Jo went with him. It left him with Dean.
The two of them struck up a strange friendship. Castiel often perched around the garage where Dean fixed cars. Sometimes, when no humans were around he would perch on the tool box and hand Dean the tools he requested. If Dean asked, he would become human so they could talk. They never talked about Sam, though they did sometimes discuss Adam who kept sending letters home about his experiences at human college. Dean often asked him if he was going to look for other ravens. His answer was always a shrug.
He had thought about finding his own kind, his old clan but he wouldn’t fit in with them now. He was a raven, yes but he thought mostly like a wolf and behaved very similar to them. He was a Wind Chaser, not a Storm Wing. If he ever felt the need for avian company, he would perch with the crows and talk with them, listening to their stories of the world beyond the salvage yard and the dangers and treasures. He didn’t feel the need to find the clan which had left him on the ground as a chick. He had a pack.
Things again settled into a comfortable routine until Dean came of alpha age. John Wind Chaser and Robert Long Howl drove him off, snapping and howling until Dean fled his home territory. Castiel went with him. They passed through many pack territories, survived many things together until they came to a lake in Montana near the Canadian border. The winters were harsh, prey scares and the only reason the nearby town survived was tourism that came in the long summer months. Dean claimed it as his own and like always Castiel claimed it with him.
They became the Wind Wing pack of Montana, a pack they would eventually grow to include Ash, an incredibly intelligent if somewhat crazy river otter, Chuck, the hyper active, incredibly nervous fox squirrel, and Gabriel, a golden eagle and Pamela, a cougar shifter born blind. In shifter circles they became known for taking in outcasts, lost causes and rebels. Word reached them through Rufus, a lone wolf who came through their territory now and again, that Sam had made his own pack in California with the Yellow Eye girl. They called themselves the Rift Valley pack and were considered a very strong, healthy pack. Adam came to visit now and then, though always as a human. Jo came too, though she didn’t stay. She wanted to find her own pack, establish her own territory. Through luck or fate, Castiel met another raven shifted one summer. Anna was a photographer, she traveled the world taking pictures for National Geographic. He found her fascinating but such a raven. She offered him a chance to travel with her but he had his territory.
He chose his pack, strange as it was. He always had.
Rating: R
Characters: Castiel, Dean, Sam, Adam, Jo, John, Mary, Ellen, Bobby, Karen, Ash, Chuck, Pam, Gabriel, Rufus, etc.
AU: Animal Shifter
Author's Note: I read a SPN shifter fic and thought it was rather stupid even though it was highly reccomended to me. It was just so... unbelievable, poorly written and wrong that I wanted to write one for myself. So I did. This is the result. Enjoy the first SPN thing I've written in like months.
---
While he was born of the Storm Wing clan, Castiel was raised by the Wind Chasers. As a young raven, he had been thrown from the nest by an owl. Alone on the forest floor as a little chick, he had struggled his stubby little wings flapping frantically against the leaf litter and ground as he called and called and called for his clan to come for him. They never did.
Instead Castiel found himself in a warm, wet mouth with sharp teeth. The mouth was gentle though, holding him firmly but without hurting him. He didn’t know what was going on, though he was aware he was moving, going somewhere, going away from his clan’s traditional nesting territory.
Where he ended up was a floor like he’d never felt before. It was smooth, not like the forest floor with all the leaves and twigs. It made it impossible for him to get righted until some soft hands picked him up, cradling him gently. It was his first contact with the Wind Chasers, being rescued by Sam Wind Chaser and then cared for by Mary Wind Chaser.
The Wind Chasers, being wolves, were not quite sure what to do with a raven chick at first. Mary Wind Chaser found him a nice box which she filled with soft fluffy towels and then set him under a nice warm lamp. It took them longer to figure out what to feed him, but Bobby Long Howl’s fishing bate worked nicely. The Long Howls were an allied pack with the Wind Chasers, along with the Heart Veil pack but because Sam Wind Chaser had picked him up so Castiel was claimed by the Wind Chasers.
By the time of his first human shift, he was quite used to being cared for by wolves. Unlike the ravens, there was no expectation for him to figure things out on his own. The first time he tried to climb out of his box nest, Mary Wind Chaser kept putting him back in until he snapped at her fingers. He tumbled off the edge of the box, off the table and onto the kitchen floor where he righted himself, shook his baby feathers and shifted into a little boy.
It was easier for the Wind Chasers to care for him as a child. They stuck him together with their sons, Sam, Adam and Dean. All the Wind Chasers were variations on the same thing, earthy tones of brown and sandy brown hair and varying shades of green eyes. Castiel was an oddity to the Wind Chaser pups with his dark black hair and piercing blue eyes. Joanna Heart Veil was the most cautious around him, usually hiding behind Sam or Adam when he was around. Dean Wind Chaser has no fear, though, and quickly tried to introduce him into the wolf world of establishing dominance through play.
As a raven, Castiel didn’t understand this at first. He usually panicked and cried until Mary Wind Chaser soothed him, usually with a warm, fluffy blanket that he could hide in. It took some time for the Wind Chaser pups, especially Dean to figure out they couldn’t play with him like they played with each other. Sam was the best at playing Echo with Castiel. Castiel would make a call, Sam would copy it. Those were the games of birds.
Of course, during this time Mary Wind Chaser, Ellen Heart Veil and Karen Long Howl were also teaching them how to be like human children. They learned to speak human words, behave like human children and play human games. Castiel and Adam often competed for best tagger in the games of tag they’d play in the salvage yard run by Bobby Long Howl. No one could ever beat Castiel at hide and seek though. He was the best hider and was always the last one to be found. Sometimes he was so good at hiding that John Wind Chaser had to be called in to help find him. Dean was good at finding him too, learning from his father.
Even though he wasn’t living and be raised by his own kind, Castiel found himself quite content in the Wind Chaser pack. The peace didn’t last forever. Wolves were very territorial and the combined Wind Chaser, Long Howl and Heart Veil territory was big, with good hunting grounds and profitable human cover. The Yellow Eye pack had coveted it for decades and finally the tensions boiled over into an attack.
Castiel remembered the night of the attack as a flurry of panic and crying. He was hurried down into the basement along with his playmates were they all huddled together behind a heavy locked steel door. Unable to see anything, they could only listen to the growls, yowls and howls of the fighting wolves overhead. Unlike the wolf pups he couldn’t smell the blood until it came under the door. Mary Wind Chaser died right outside their safe place. Dean dragged them all under the single cot in the room, hiding underneath it like a little fort, but Castiel struggled free. The Yellow Eye pack was getting the door open, the fighting was still going on but Castiel knew he could do something. He wasn’t wolf, but that was what made him special.
His first change back happened that night. One moment he was a child, kicking free of Dean’s hold and then he was a juvenile raven, his baby feathers giving way to the sleek black feathers of an adult. He began to flap furiously and call, the craw, craw, craw echoing around the room until it sounded like there were hundreds of ravens instead of one little one. Because he wasn’t raised among his clan, Castiel was unaware of why his people were called Storm Wing. While magical gifts were rare in wolves, they were common in ravens. As he flapped, Castiel began to call on his clan’s magic. Soon each wing beat sounded like crashing thunder and his cries were the crack of lightning. The Yellow Eye pack fled from the unexpected and unknown force.
They lost Bill Heart Veil, Karen Long Howl and Mary Wind Chaser in the attack. The pack went from eleven to eight, three adults, four pups and one raven. Castiel went from a child to a teenager the moment he changed back to a human. Shifters were the age of their animal form, not their human form. When he changed back he had to learn how to deal with puberty, gangly limbs and an inelegance that didn’t suit his raven side at all.
After the attack, things changed in the Wind Chaser pack. John Wind Chaser took Dean aside and got him through his second shift then he began to teach his son how to be an alpha wolf. Castiel was left mostly with Bobby Long Howl who was supposed to teach him how to fly. Bobby had protested but John’s word was law in the pack and eventually Bobby knuckled under. While Dean was off learning to hunt and track prey as well as fight as both a wolf and a human, Castiel studied the birds around the salvage yard with Bobby keeping one eye on him. He tried talking to them a few times, but the birds wouldn’t give up the secret of flight to a strange chick.
They were both frustrated, which was probably why Bobby grabbed him one day while he was cawing at some crows, brought him up to the roof of the main house and tossed him into the air. Castiel tumbled, panicked and started flapping frantically. Somehow, some way his body, his nature figured out what it was supposed to do and he soared above the salvage yard for the first time.
He began to spend more and more time as a bird, maturing faster than the rest of the pack. He couldn’t fly as a human and found the ground very limiting. In the air, as a raven, he was free. He could perch high on the piles of junk or the roof and watch the things going on.
Dean had become his father’s shadow. The two of them were never far from each other, either training or working on cars together. Castiel noted with some curiosity that not all these times were happy, like a father and son should be. John Wind Chaser demand perfection and when Dean failed to meet those standards, the disapproval cut him deep. Sometimes, Dean went on long training runs after he failed and Castiel would follow, soaring overhead so Dean wouldn’t notice.
Sam Wind Chaser didn’t seek his father’s approval, he rebelled against it in a way Castiel thought might mean he had more alpha potential than his brother. The worst happened when John caught Sam meeting with a female of the Yellow Eye pack. The two fought so loud, so long Castiel almost called down a storm to stop them. He was quite good with his magic by the time Sam left. He had seen Sam off, sharing a rare physical display of affection rubbing his beak against Sam’s muzzle. He ran off with the Yellow Eye girl and the next day the pack was more subdued. Dean went on his longest run that day, Castiel flew with him.
Jo Heart Veil took up with her mother, cooking, cleaning, learning how to keep house and raise pups. At night she snuck out and trained like Dean did. Castiel, being mostly diurnal, didn’t see these training sessions but at dawn he was often there when Jo came back in, muddy and exhausted. It didn’t take him long to figure out what the lone female pup was doing, though none of them were really pups anymore. They had all gone through many shifts and changes, rapidly growing into adults.
Adam Wind Chaser, most unexpectedly, rejected the whole wolf life together. He rarely shifted, spent most of his time in his human form, going to human school and becoming like them. Castiel didn’t understand, but he supposed if he was stuck on the ground like a wolf he’d probably prefer to be human. Eventually, Adam went to human college and most surprisingly Jo went with him. It left him with Dean.
The two of them struck up a strange friendship. Castiel often perched around the garage where Dean fixed cars. Sometimes, when no humans were around he would perch on the tool box and hand Dean the tools he requested. If Dean asked, he would become human so they could talk. They never talked about Sam, though they did sometimes discuss Adam who kept sending letters home about his experiences at human college. Dean often asked him if he was going to look for other ravens. His answer was always a shrug.
He had thought about finding his own kind, his old clan but he wouldn’t fit in with them now. He was a raven, yes but he thought mostly like a wolf and behaved very similar to them. He was a Wind Chaser, not a Storm Wing. If he ever felt the need for avian company, he would perch with the crows and talk with them, listening to their stories of the world beyond the salvage yard and the dangers and treasures. He didn’t feel the need to find the clan which had left him on the ground as a chick. He had a pack.
Things again settled into a comfortable routine until Dean came of alpha age. John Wind Chaser and Robert Long Howl drove him off, snapping and howling until Dean fled his home territory. Castiel went with him. They passed through many pack territories, survived many things together until they came to a lake in Montana near the Canadian border. The winters were harsh, prey scares and the only reason the nearby town survived was tourism that came in the long summer months. Dean claimed it as his own and like always Castiel claimed it with him.
They became the Wind Wing pack of Montana, a pack they would eventually grow to include Ash, an incredibly intelligent if somewhat crazy river otter, Chuck, the hyper active, incredibly nervous fox squirrel, and Gabriel, a golden eagle and Pamela, a cougar shifter born blind. In shifter circles they became known for taking in outcasts, lost causes and rebels. Word reached them through Rufus, a lone wolf who came through their territory now and again, that Sam had made his own pack in California with the Yellow Eye girl. They called themselves the Rift Valley pack and were considered a very strong, healthy pack. Adam came to visit now and then, though always as a human. Jo came too, though she didn’t stay. She wanted to find her own pack, establish her own territory. Through luck or fate, Castiel met another raven shifted one summer. Anna was a photographer, she traveled the world taking pictures for National Geographic. He found her fascinating but such a raven. She offered him a chance to travel with her but he had his territory.
He chose his pack, strange as it was. He always had.