Nature’s Spirit

Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters.

Summary: Faith, Dean, Dawn & Sam go camping, but the supernatural still comes a calling - REVISED

Faith, Dean, Dawn, and Sam were all on a camping trip to get away from it all. The guy who rented them the raft had given them a good deal; he had thrown in three free inner tubes to float down the river on when not in the large raft.

(Getting away from it all included nosey big sisters Buffy, demons, vampires, ghosts, etc. In other words, their lives, except Dean who was already looking his next hunt.)

Dean reclined in the big raft, shirtless working on his tan, and looking down at the front page of his newspaper. He re-read the article that described the bad event of the day.

‘’Local Man Found Dead’’

It was reported earlier today that the body of Mr. Alan James was found in a campground outside of Arlington, Texas. The body was found in a river by a family who was at the campground for the weekend.

After having the body examined, the owner of the campground reported that Mr. James, age 38, had apparently drowned in the river after slipping and hitting his head on a rock when trying to cross over the water.

Mr. James leaves behind a wife and two small children. His tragic accident and death are unfortunate events, but hopefully they will serve as a reminder of how careful people must be in nature and might save the life of another camper.

When Dean finished, reading he leaned back. I wonder, he thought, how people would feel if they knew that Mr. James’s ’tragic accident’ was no accident at all? I wonder what people would think if they knew the truth?

The truth that Dean knew was that Mr. James’s accident had actually been murder and Nature’s Spirit had been the murderess.

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She had not originally wanted to kill Mr. James because she never wanted to kill anyone. However, her job required her to watch over any human who went into the wilderness to make sure they caused no harm. Being in this line of work, she had come to learn that not everyone respected the wilderness. Most of these people only needed small scares to remind them of what the wilderness could do to people. But some, like Mr. James… She shuddered as the thought went through her head. Some people, like Mr. James, thought the wilderness’s only purpose was to be something they could use when they wanted and then leave when they were done trashing it.

Killing him had not been a hard thing to do. She had simply waited for him to try to cross the river. Then when he was halfway across, she had made the next of his stepping stones shift just as he was stepping onto it. This had caused him to lose his balance, fall forward, and hit his head on another rock rendering him unconscious. After that he simply never woke up again.

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Dean thought to himself, You do need to be careful with Nature and treat her with respect, Mr. James, because if you don’t It’ll Kill Ya. Suddenly, Dean was shocked out of his thoughts as the river made itself known once again.

Faith, Sam, and Dawn shrieked with joy riding the rapids and splashing in the waves. About an hour into their trip, Dawn was swept up ahead by the current while Faith was stranded on a rock. Dean and Sam looked ahead and saw a "majestic, powerful, serene, graceful, peaceful" looking swan calmly float up ahead to where Dawn was being swept to.

"Aw, it wants to mate with her," laughed Faith.

"Wow, look how close to her it's getting," commented Sam.

Suddenly, the large creature floated right up to the foot of the inner tube and began to rise, almost as if it was in slow motion, up to a huge, towering height. Dawn helplessly tried to back paddle away. The creature hovered there for a second, but then it struck. Gravity on the beast’s side, the very inexplicable forces of nature seemingly twisted into a freakishly morbid and destructive power, brutally the swan launched. It rose over and over again, each time descending in a flurry of feathers and hard bone-like, knobby joints and wings all over the loud sounds of paralyzing fear rising up in terror from Dawn.

Faith, still stuck on her rock looked on in horror as Sam dove from his inner tube to try and draw off the attack. Dean realized this was Nature’s Spirit coming for them to silence the hunters. As the raft slowly neared, Dean reached his paddle out to try and fend the hell demon off of his friend Dawn who by now was in hysterics.

Finally the demonic hell beast floated off away from the enormous barge and serenely as ever made its way off to find another defenseless victim to terrorize and scar for life. Sam, however, was not willing to let it go. He shot the beast with rock salt and it burst into feathers.

Once on the raft again, poor Dawn could do nothing but shake.

THE END