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[Saturday is rubbing sleep from her face as she talks, hair disheveled and her bunk in the background. The sounds is slightly unsynced, just enough to be annoying, and the image is tinted purple. Still, it's coherent]

Hey, crew. We've all had a real fucking night an' I'm sorry to add more, but this might be useful. I think I just a clue from like, some kinda supernatural dream-traveling hint-dispenser? Called themselves Cain and Abel, gave me a choice between a secret and a mystery, I picked mystery 'cause it meant I could tell you guys about it.

Man, I hope this sounds familiar to someone.

It was Cain I talked to, he told me a story about two brothers who uh - fuckin' hell - one killed the other because they were both in love with some invisible chick named Bell but she hadn't picked him. Their parents thought the one brother just flipped out and did murder for some fuckin' reason, because they thought Belle was fictional? Someone who knows what they're doing, start asking me some questions because I don't know how this is supposed to be relevant, but the dude said it was and he was for real. I got some experience an' I know when the dream I'm having didn't come outta my own head.

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I was under the impression that we almost certainly were not. They're too good at processing us, and too disinterested in the why and how of our arrival. No one can be that self-absorbed.

[Well, maybe Victoria Ash]

In the tradition I've studied, Caine's sin is pride; God's judgement enrages him because he believes he's done nothing wrong, and that his offering was equal to Abel's. As with the apple, the crime itself isn't the sin - it's his defiance, afterwards.

[He's struck by a thought]

I wonder if Belle isn't meant as an analogue to the serpent? In some traditions, the serpent is God's agent, sent as a moral challenge. Perhaps she views herself as one who reveals people's true natures through temptation, if our target and the Belle of the story are meant to be the same.

Hmph. If I was home, I'd know exactly where to start looking. But I doubt she's a Setite.

We don't have confirmation on it, but I agree with you. We're almost definitely not the first set of New Hires they've had. I kinda doubt we're even the second. It's all a little too...well orchestrated.

I think it's a bit of both. Though there are good reasons why Pride is one of the seven deadly, after all. That and envy, which Caine was also guilty of.

What's a Setite, by the way?

Vampire cultists. They worship the Egyptian god Set as the first vampire, and their origins do stretch back that far. They consider giving into temptation - and leading others to it - a religious imperative. Not bad people to know, as long as you don't accept anything they offer.

[He's got his device propped up in a lounge somewhere; Sam can see him drumming his fingers irritably along the chipped, cracked, patched leather of the couch he's on.]

Three hundred bloody years of education, and this is what stumps me. I truly hate this wretched place.

[Sam looks like he's in one of the regular rooms where they house the new hires. Though maybe a bit bigger. He has a couple of roommates, after all.]

[But the desk is big enough for him to have his device propped up so he can write.]

Well, I don't have that much, but I've been doing this sort of thing for around twenty years or so. [Considering he looks like he's early thirties at the most, that's a long time.] The problem that we're all working with, though, is that we know what applies in our own worlds. But we're playing with a brand new set of rules here that nobody's bothered giving us a run down on and, given how the Stuff works, are also rules that could change at any time in ways we can't predict.

Precisely, young one. [He is definitely being condescending, but in the manner of a an adult expert towards a precocious child - there's real approval there, mixed in with the vague surprise.]

It's infuriating. The - Stuff [this terminology hurts him deeply] allows her to be literally anything the mind can conceive of - a personal nightmare, a myth from a world that never was, or one we've never heard of - perhaps the parable is meant to give us some insight into her origin, but how can we know?

Perhaps the use of Cain and Abel means we can assume she's at least from an earth's mythology? But there's apparently dozens - though there does seem to be significant overlap.

[The condescension gets a quick glance up a grimace that his brother would have classed as a 'bitch face'.]

This is the sort of thing that keeps my brother and I alive back home. The better I am at it, the better our chances.

[Still, it eases off as they move on and the grimace turns to a frown of thought.]

I know that some of us have powers here that we don't back home. I wonder if, maybe, she's something like that? Brought here as...an imaginary friend or something similar. Made more real by the Stuff and given powers. Or enhanced.

[He tosses his pencil down, reaching up to rub at his face.] Not that that helps. It's all just theories at the moment. We don't have much that's solid, if you forgive the phrasing.

[God, he wants Castiel. Cas could probably figure this out.]

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