A/N: I don't own Fablehaven. Number two of my Christmas fics.
Winter, Seth had always known, was good for a lot of things. Christmas presents, for instance. Snowball fights. Getting out of school.
Not that he was attending school these days. Sporadic tutoring on dragons, really, really ancient history, and the kind of math that came up in a siege didn't really count.
The snow was piled up around the walls in high enough drifts that he could probably survive the jump.
Not that he was considering it, even if it would be something to relieve the boredom of being stagnant. No way.
Unless there was some kind of emergency. Then maybe -
"Seth."
Seth jumped and tried not to look guilty as he turned to Kendra. "Hey! What are you doing out here?"
She eyed him suspiciously but held out of one of the mugs of steaming cocoa she was holding. "Special treat. They sent the ingredients through the bathtub."
"Neat." He accepted his mug and blew on it. "So what's the weather forecast?"
Kendra grimaced. "Your storm giant friend is getting tired of the cold, and he's not willing to risk angering the dragons by keeping it like this for much longer."
"So this time next week, all the little dragons will be rolling out of hibernation and be raring to go," Seth concluded.
"It was nice while it lasted."
"Eh." Seth made a so-so gesture. "Life's a little boring without someone trying to kill us."
"Seth!"
"What?" Seth said defensively. "It's not like you want to get back to normal either, little miss thinking-about-becoming-an-Eternal."
"Those are two totally different things! Becoming an Eternal is like the opposite of having a death wish!"
"Eh." He eyed her. "You know, it's not too late to go poke a sleeping dragon."
"Seth, no."
"Oh, come on! It's not like they're going to wake up! Besides, just think how cool it would be to be able to say that."
Kendra took a deep breath. "Technically, you can already say that. Remember that time you had to wake G-Navarog for watch and you poked him about fifteen times?"
Seth grinned. "Oh, yeah." He considered it for a moment. "Our lives are kind of awesome."
"And your's is probably going to be very, very short."
"Hey, if Patton Burgess managed to die of old age, I think I've got a shot." He squinted back down at the snow drift. "So I was thinking - "
"No."
"But if we climbed out of one of the tower windows with a sled - Joking! Joking!"
Notes:
Okay, so that first passage with Seth in Dragonwatch really bothered me because I thought Seth had grown beyond those kinds of hijinks. Admittedly, the passage turned into important worldbuilding/foreshadowing, but it still seemed to ruin his character development a little bit.
And then I thought about it and: Seth has grown in that he now understands just how dangerous the world is. He's less trusting, has greater understanding of the stakes, and won't take stupid risks for no reason while on a more important mission.
That doesn't mean he won't do stupid stuff when there's nothing going on.
Seth, canonically, can't bear to be bored. He always has to be moving, has to be going on an adventure. And if there's something important he can be channeling that energy towards, great; Seth's thrilled to help. It's just when there isn't that he gets into trouble.
So that's my justification for why he's a little recklessly minded in this fic. They're snowed in, so Seth is bored, and like Sherlock Holmes, that's a dangerous state for him to be in.
