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As dawn passes into a new day, a breeze blows up, warm and scented heavily with lilac as it sails across the well-cut lawns of the cozy suburban neighborhood. It bestows a light, playful touch to each house it passes – ruffling a set of curtains here, tinkling some wind chimes there. In the blue house on the corner of Oak and Rose, it curls in through a kitchen window and knocks some loose papers off the counter. With a shooff, they slip smoothly under the refrigerator, where they won't be found again for several days.
A pair of gray squirrels chase each other through a stretch of contiguous backyards, nimbly clearing the fences that divide the individual properties. Their path darts and twists, and the pursuit is by turns playful and fierce. They scale a towering maple tree, the tip of the leader's tail tickling its follower's nose, then perch side by side near a large cluster of winged seeds. They dig in to their fourth breakfast of the day with a fervor one would expect from someone facing the service of their very last supper. There will be several more breakfasts before lunches begin, and each will be as eagerly devoured.
The birds, too, are drunk with the addled enthusiasm that a blue-sky early morning in mid-May naturally produces. The exuberance of their overlapping songs results in a wall of sound that phases between cacophony and splendor. One mockingbird in particular is running through his entire repertoire – songs he was born with and songs he's stolen from other species and songs he's stolen from car alarms, back to back to back in an endless liquid procession of notes.
There are as many reasons to live in the suburbs as there are people who live there. Some are here by choice, some through no choice of their own. Some are escaping outwards from the city and some are just starting an inevitable spiral inward towards it. Many are born here, many die here, but few do both, for who among us can be so still for so long in these unsettled, striving times?
Not everyone who moves to this collection of manicured blocks finds what they are looking for. For some, the problems they'd hoped to escape have no trouble following. For others, the dreams they are chasing remain frustratingly out of reach. On this particular sunny spring morning, though, when nobody is awake yet except the birds and the squirrels, an aura of quiet contentment suffuses the neighborhood. The populace is united in a single, fully realized desire, for just a little more sleep.
In a green house with rosebushes out front and beehives in the back, a window blind bounces softly in an open bedroom window as the breeze kicks up again. Dean Winchester stirs in his sleep but doesn't wake. The arm his husband has wrapped around his middle tightens, an instinctive admonishment: stay here. He sighs and slips easily back into the depth of a shared dream.