Cherry Pie

Baba Yaga

[Rayne]

"Okay, so this is how the legend goes," I said as the three of us were sitting in a little coffee shop early the next morning. "The witch that you found, Sam, is called Baba Yaga, which translates roughly to 'wicked old woman'. She is one of the most famous characters in Slavic folklore."

"So what's her deal?" Dean asked, taking a bite of his bacon.

"Well," I continued, skimming the myth and legend website that I was on. "her hut that stands on chicken legs is typically where the killings take place. It says here that: 'Inside her hut, heroes usually encounter her stretching across her cooking stove, the enormous stove itself reaching from one side of the hut to the other, subtly emphasizing her size and magic. The stove is another common detail in tales of the Baba Yaga, as the punishment for the failure of certain tasks is a fate of being cooked and eaten.'"

Dean glanced down at the food on his nearly empty plate distastefully and pushed it away from himself. "Awesome."

"Does it say how to kill it?" Sam asked.

"That's the thing," I said. "In every story that depicts this Baba Yaga, she is never killed. You can only defeat her and escape alive by outsmarting her or completing whatever trial she has laid out for you."

"Maybe no one's ever tried to kill her," Dean suggested. "Maybe she has the same weakness as any other witch."

"Okay, well in that case I think I can take the same spell that I used against the witch that made you and Rayne switch bodies and figure out a more effective way of using it," Sam said. "We might not have enough time to mix all the ingredients in a bowl in her chicken-legged hut."

"Good idea," I told him.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "That might work."

"I saw a library a block from here. I'll go see what I can find on that spell. I'll meet you guys back here in about an hour."

"We can go with you," I said to Sam as I closed the laptop.

"Ray, you've barely touched your food," Dean pointed out. "Eat first."

"Oh, right." I looked down at my forgotten plate of eggs.

Sam grabbed his laptop that I'd be using and left for the library. While Dean went up to the counter to refill our cups of coffee, I picked at my cold breakfast. When he came back, instead of sitting back across from me, he slid into the booth right next to me.

The sudden proximity startled me and I instinctively moved away. "What are you doing?"

"Sitting beside you?" He gave me a confused look and closed the distance between us. "Should I not?"

"No, no. It's just that, you usually sit across from me."

He raised an eyebrow and then shrugged. "Well, today I felt like sitting here."

I glanced around the room but except for the barista and the teenage boy washing the floors, the coffee shop was nearly deserted. Our booth was also situated near the back, behind the counter, so no one could really see us. When I turned back to Dean, he was watching me closely. I tucked my hair behind my ear awkwardly and gave him a smile. "So...how are you?"

He snorted. "Cherry Pie, are you going all shy on me again?"

"Maybe," I mumbled, biting the inside of my cheek.

"Why?"

"I don't know. I feel like there's some sort of...expectation now or something."

His brows lowered. "What do you mean?"