This year I signed up for the 2018 Dean/Cas Big Bang and was lucky enough to snag Superhoney’s story, Silver and Cold. Superhoney was an absolute delight to work with! I was drawn in by the description of Maine woods and the emphasis on isolation and snow and wolves… I’m a huge sucker for a case fic as well, and an ex-priest hunter Castiel? Clenches fists in excitement. This story is wonderful, and you’re going to be so glad you read it! Head on over to read Silver and Cold now.
Summary
The death of a young man in an apparent animal attack brings hunter Cas Novak to the small town of Sydnam, Maine. It doesn’t take long for him to realize he’s tracking a werewolf, but discovering the killer’s identity is no easy task. All signs point towards Dean Winchester, a lonely recluse who lives in the middle of the woods and whose antagonistic behaviour does little to lessen Cas’ suspicions.
As the investigation drags on, their mutual distrust gives way to a wary alliance. Cas’ instincts warn him that Dean is hiding something, but as he uncovers the man beneath the mystery, his professional interest becomes far more personal. Praying his faith in Dean isn’t misplaced, Cas races to catch the killer before the next full moon rises and another life is abruptly cut short.
The Cover
The cover is 5 layers of paper and cardstock, glued together into two separate groups and photographed in a shadowbox frame to add a little depth and shadow. The light was initially too warm, so I dropped a sheet of blue tissue paper between the light source and frame to cast blue light instead.
The Cabin
I loved the description of the cabin in this story. It’s a little spot of domesticity out in the wild woods. Castiel is wearing a warmer coat because it’s winter, so let’s all pretend it’s a nice thick camel hair wool so I can get away with using the trench colors.
LOOK AT THE WEE FLANNEL SHIRTS!
The Church
One of the reasons I wanted this story is because a scene it described included an abandoned church with stained glass windows. As much as I may run from it sometimes, I’ll probably never fully shake my fondness for churches as places of beauty and reverence. I loved the idea of making backlit windows for a church.
And speaking of windows… Clears throat and dons Sam’s flannel. So get this. I was doing a Google image search for St. Christopher and found an image of him with a wolf’s head. Everybody read this, and have your mind blown. Did the werewolf legend start with St. Christopher? I clearly had to riff on this idea for my own windows. On the left: sun windows and St. Christopher, the dude, carrying a child. On the right, moon windows and St. Christopher the wolf.
The nightmare
There’s a nightmare scene that’ll make your toes curl. This is my take on it. I had fun with the little flannels and the snarling wolf 🙂
Materials and Techniques
All of these are papercut pieces, taped to a deep picture frame, lit with desk lamps, and photographed. I used a precision blade to cut each piece and glued them together so they wouldn’t drift as I worked. Three of these pieces have some space between layers for an added dimension of shadow or space between them.
Here are some alternate and work-in-progress shots:
I hope you enjoyed these! Don’t forget to head over to read Superhoney’s Silver and Cold story. You’ll love it ❤
He didn’t tell Dean just how hard these last few months had been, it had been more than just a little. Yet he didn’t want to bother his older brother with it. It wasn’t like this whole Lucifer business didn’t affecting his brother as well. He hadn’t been through what Sam had with the angel, didn’t know Lucifer like he did but Dean had Alistair running rampant once so he knew he would understand. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell his brother, Dean had enough to deal with himself, with mom especially. Or perhaps part of him didn’t want to say anything because he knew Lucifer to well, yet nothing that would make his capture easier. It was all useless, unfair, how he hardly held any advantage over the Archangel even after all their time “together” as the angel might say.
It was such a funny thought, that other than a few angels and God himself he was probably the one who knew the fallen angel better than anyone.
The only good thing to take away from Lucifer running rampant and jumping from vessel to vessel was that at least the Angel didn’t pursue him anymore. Perhaps it was a bit selfish but knowing that he was probably the only person that could hold the fallen angel permanently. He’d given the Devil a clear message a while ago: he would never let Lucifer possess him again. Since then the angel had given up on him. So perhaps he did have one advantage over Lucifer, his only one. He wished it made him feel less afraid knowing he actually had something, anything to hold against the person who once took everything from him. But no, even that didn’t give him power, because now Lucifer had burned through perhaps a dusin vessels not pursuing him, and in a way he was responsible for that to.
They hadn’t heard anything about the angel since he jumped out of Vince. And while he felt concern about not knowing he also felt relief. The Angel was the last person in existence that he wanted to see, that he wanted ANYTHING to do with every again. He wasn’t looking forward to the time where they would have to face him again. Honestly stepping outside the bunker now carried such a heaviness to it, he could never relax, not as long as he knew Lucifer was still out there somewhere.
He’s found himself wandering the bunker looking for scraps of knowledge to memorize, anything to keep Lucifer out of his mind.
Pretty hard when the Angel was their main priority and when he kept hearing about yet another failed possession, the Angel burning yet another human looking for a suitable vessel after Vincent.
Vince
Of course Lucifer had decided to possess one of his idols. A good old “fuck you” directed at him, it was no coincidence. Lucifer had been in his head, in the bunker and in his room. He knew him inside out and that was a vulnerability the Angel would always hold over him. The only thing of comfort as of late was that at least he was free from the visions and The Devil’s whispers in his head, or at least the ones sent by the Devil himself. His mind would still conjure up nightmares and hallucinations echoes of his broken soul but it was nothing compared to how it’d been before. But with Lucifer back and roaming the earth his mind had been in a fragile state, unknown to Dean And Cas but at least he had it under control.
“— Or they’d try to have a movie night and whisper arguments back and forth at each other (which Sam had to stifle laughter at because it was utterly ridiculous watching how serious and frustrated they would get while Dean’s head was in Cas’ lap and their hands laced together) until Sam had to separate them by sitting between them, which only led to them arguing over or behind him. Sam couldn’t remember the last time he watched a movie start to finish and actually was able to pay attention to the entire thing.”
Unpopular opinion: Filler episodes are good because most of them provide a nice break from heavy plot lines and it’s fun to see what the characters are like in different situations and sometimes they’re just plain entertaining
Why does this not have more publicity. This needs it!
I want a reality tv show where politicians have to live in poverty for a month. They have to live in Government housing, shop with food stamps, and get only a limited amount of money for clothes. Because here, they still have all their trappings, lilke nice cars and thousand dollar suits. I want them in Walmart jeans trying to determine if they can afford a carton of milk.
Give them a full calendar year. I want to see them confident in January, and sometime around June choking back tears at the Safeway because they are tired, so tired, of eating 25 cent cup noodles, eyeing other peoples’ full grocery carts with a dull bewilderment.
Let me see them despair because they have a persistent nagging cough that won’t go away and might be turning into pneumonia but the minute clinic is $60, which might as well be as six million dollars, either way they ain’t got it to spare – and that doesn’t count the cost of prescriptions. Let me hear them tell people about the muscle cramps they get at night due to eating non-nutritious garbage for months, the weakness from persistent hunger.
Let them know the shame and frustration of only owning one pair of cheap polyester pants for work and one pair of thrift-store jeans, and both persistently have ripped crotches and seams coming undone, no matter how many times they get sewn back up.
Let the women know the particular sort of despair that comes once a month when you can’t afford even the cheapest pads or tampons.
Let them understand the frustration of being charged a $35 fee for a $2 overdraft. Let them watch as the bank holds charges from different days in “pending” till they all come through on the same day, and the bank charges them four times for a single overdraft because “the charges all cleared at the same time”.
I want them to know the particular pain of having to decide between food for the week, or transportation costs to and from work. You can’t have both. Choose wisely.
You do not truly understand poverty until you’ve lived it and a month isn’t enough to encompass it. Not even close.
artherra 