Spring: Changes

By: Wilona Riva

Disclaimer: I don't own ROTG or DP.

The first two chapters were written before I read the 4th book in the series. Mother Nature's name is staying Seraphina.

5 YEARS - Fenton Works, Jack's Lake

The first time Daniel noticed the changes signalling the time of the end, was the day before MIM's school was scheduled to open. It took a lot of business finangling and hiding the building from the humans' satellites to get it finished. The Spirits of the Seasons were sent as messengers by Mother Nature to invite all juvenile spirits to attend the school.

Daniel was shutting the window, when the sound of a chair scraping across the floor caught his attention. He turned around, emerald eyes flickering to his mother's shadow crossing over to the light switch. "Hi, Maddie," he greeted her. He didn't know when he'd stopped calling her 'mom' or even 'mother', but it seemed natural to him.

The electric light came on; Maddie walked over and took the bundles from him. "What happened to your clothes, Danny?"

"Um..." Daniel looked down at his barefeet. He still wore the jeans Maddie and he had gone shopping for a few days ago before he'd been called away to the West Indies to help Leto try to calm down a former nature goddess named Guabancex, albeit now stained with mud and salt water. The black and purple button-down dress shirt he wore had been given to him by Baron Samedi, after Daniel had threated to call down his grandfather on the old skeletal coot. He'd been chasing after Leto again, when the girl took to wearing West African print mini-skirts.

"Never mind," she sighed. "So, what did you bring back?"

"Some Barbados cherries and a few of those cherimoya that you like," he replied, noticing for the first time the faint lines around her eyes and the streaks of iron-grey in her hair. "Mom, are you alright?"

"It's late, Danny," she said, looking at the microwave clock. "Or rather a bit early in the morning to be thinking. Go get some rest. School begins in a few hours."

Daniel nodded. "Night, Maddie."

Maddie watched her son float to the ceiling, turn intangible, and float through. "I'm going to miss you, Danny," she whispered to herself. Looking back at the clock, she smiled thinly. Happy fiftieth birthday, Maddie Fenton.

"Hi, Little Brother!" Jazz sang, throwing open the sunlit curtains. "Time to rise and shine."

"Go away, Jazz," Daniel groaned, raising his messy snow-white hair to glare at her from the quilt he was cocooned in. "I just got in."

"About three hours ago, judging from the noise Mom was making in the kitchen," Jazz said, unceremoniously grabbing the quilt and dumping him onto the floor. He got up and threw a ball of lavender petals at her. She laughed and left the room. "Thanks, Danny!"

Daniel grumbled and went to his closet to grab whatever outfit Maddie had chosen for him to wear, a tradition every year she had. Stumbling downstairs half an hour later, hair still wet from his shower, he handed his mortal mother a beautiful blue silk wrapped package. "Maddie, this is for you. The Lord of the Deep sends his regards."

"So that's where you disappeared to last year instead of going to the races with Bunnymund," his sister muttered furiously. "I should have known."

"It wasn't free, Jazz," he told her tiredly. "Maddie, I know I may not call you 'mother' anymore, but you are the truest mother any one can ever have. Happy Birthday, Mom! I love you." Saying so, he hugged her tightly.

Maddie rested her head on her son's shoulder, hugging him tightly in return. You will miss this, Maddie. He has begun the separation process. Seraphina warned you this would happen.

"Aren't you going to open it, Mads!" Jack's voice returned her to reality. Releasing Danny, her son looked at her too knowingly. Picking up the package, she unwrapped the blue silk paper, then exclaimed at the contents.

"Daniel, this is...I don't know what to say," she said, pulling out a silver, filigree bracelet with sapphires set here and there.

"Just enjoy the moment, Mom," he said, smiling for the first time that day.

"Sapphires are beautiful reminders of the deep sea, Madeline," the beautiful voice of Seraphina Pitchner came to their ears, as the woman let herself in through the back door. She held up two garment bags, one of which she handed to Maddie, the other to Daniel.

"Upstairs, go and change now," she ordered him. "You still have time to eat, get changed, and take council with your brother and sisters and I after this sojourn."

"Right," he muttered, forgetting that Seraphina did not want her children to embarrass her on the first day MIM's school was opening. After today, he would be residing in a new dwelling she had designed for her sons and daughters. Turning, he saluted her, and in human fashion, walked out the door and up the stairs to his room. Maddie's blue eyes flashed anger; she was furious that this tall, regal woman was usurping her place in her son's life, even down to the yearly tradition of choosing the clothes he'd wear on the first day of the school year.

Turning her attention back to Maddie, Mother Nature handed her the other garment bag. "As Daniel has made a trade with the Lord of the Deep, so I have made a trade with the Lady of the Lake," she said.

Hooking the end of the garment bag on a chair, Maddie unzipped it to reveal a beautiful sapphire gown, much like the one the elven princess Arwen wore in Return of the King. Seraphina also handed her a pair of sapphire-hued slippers-dyed to match the dress- and a small cedar wood box contained a silver-and-sapphire necklace and tear-drop shaped earrings matching the style of her son's gift.

"This is all so much," she stammered. "I can't accept this."

"It is overwhelming," Seraphina said, closing the lid of the jewelry box and placing it on the table. "You have done so much for the spirits of this world, Maddie-you and yours-that we are willing to express all our thanks to you. Ah, here's Daniel now."

Daniel Spring, looking every inch the way a Seasonal Spirit should look, glared at Mother Nature. "Seriously?"

"It works for your brother; it will work for all four of you," Mother Nature calmly replied, taking in the sight of her youngest child. Jazz has to giggle; her brother looked so cute. He was wearing a pair of forming fitting deerskin pants criss-crossed to look it had been wrapped around his legs like silk. He wore a bluish-purple linen shirt with a forest green waistcoat with round gold buttons. And of course-he was barefoot.

"Danny-boy, put some shoes on!" his father scolded from behind him. "The floor's colder than ice."

"Seasonal spirit, Dad," he said, looking over shoulder at his father, who grinned impishly back.

"There's more to the outfit, Daniel," his mother, said, handing him a small wooden box, similar to Maddie's. Inside was a necklace of forest leaves with an amethyst teardrop pendant on a silver chain.

"All my children will thus be marked," she stated. "Oh, I don't expect you to wear the outfit except on formal occasions, Daniel, but the necklace-always. Your brother and sisters will have their own variations."

"Thanks...I guess," he said, handing it to Jazz, who quickly fastened it around his neck.

"Okay, now, eat breakfast, and go. You need to get to the lake," Seraphina told him.

Fenton Works was a short, few blocks from Jack's Lake, as the Burgess children called it. Jamie Bennet was now fourteen and his sister, Sophie, was pushing seven. Both were still of the Age of Belief, as were Jamie's friends.

"I can't believe we get to go to school with Jack Frost," Jamie was saying to Claude, when Daniel swooped down from overhead and snatched his slouchy beanie. "But why does it have to be in the summer?"

"Off season," Jack replied, pelting his younger brother with a snowball. Daniel grinned and gave the hat back to Jamie, who got a snowball to the face, for sticking his tongue out at Spring. "I've been here for hours; what took you guys so long?"

"Mom," Jamie replied, and the same time as Daniel. "Jinx!"

Daniel "zipped" his lips, locked them, and threw away the key. Facing Jack with a knowing look, he gestured up and down his body. Jack rolled his eyes and turned away in disgust.

"Jack Frost!" Cupcake burst out laughing. "What are you wearing?"

"Nothing as outlandish as that elvish gettup Spring is wearing," he countered. "Ya, like?" He struck a super-model pose, sending everyone, except Sophie, falling down laughing.

Jack's outfit was even worse than Daniel's. He wore his usual 300 years old deer-hide trousers, but was sporting a white linen shirt, a light blue waistcoat with frost sparkling all over. Completing the ensemble was a fur-lined hooded cloak. "It's almost what I wore when I was human."

"Almost, but not quite, my son," Mother Nature said from the outline of a tree. "Come inside to my sanctuary, children. Be welcome!"

A necklace that had escaped Daniel's notice, caught Jamie's eye. "You're wearing jewelry now, Jack?"

Jack looked down at his winged blue sapphire snowflake pendant. "Mother's request," he said, quietly. Daniel nodded, showing them his own.

"So we've got to go inside Mother Nature's house in order to get to the North Pole?" Claude wondered.

"Not quite," Jack answered. "North gave me a special snowglobe to get to the school. It will only activate inside Mother's gardens."

"Which are on the outer fringes of her sanctuary," Daniel added. "North and Bunnymund have agreed to create talismans which will take the form of ordinary watches for the boys or jewelry for the girls so you can get back and forth at will to school."

"When we get to the school, MIM will explain everything else," Jack added. "Everything Spring and I have told you, was told to us by Mother a few days ago. We know nothing more than you."

"Then let's rock and roll!" the Burgess Seven shouted.