May 2014
Something I've wanted to try to write for a while. Looks like I finally got around to it.
Writing this made me realize how much my skills have deteriorated over the past year. I fixed it up as best I could. :( I guess that's what happens when you're a science major and you spend two semesters writing all dry and factual all the time. Wellllll taking a gap year or two means I have plenty of time to do ALL the reading to build my working vocabulary back up, which shall result in ALL the writing, provided the literary gods choose to smile upon me again. :)
I figure this is during his first year as Jack Frost.
Bear with me on this one; it's a little ridiculous if you think about it too much. That said, it certainly didn't come out the way I hoped it would. But I hope you like it anyway.
There came a day when all the snow Jack Frost called toward the ground, turned to drizzle before it even hit the tree tops. Spring had fully arrived; the moist warmth rising from the ground in the morning sun made Jack itch and ache to move. To travel. To search far and away for some place new.
It was bizarre, to say the least. Jack had never known anywhere other than the little township established by Colonel Burgess. He knew all the villagers' names by now, and who was friends with whom (and, who he had brought together with snowball fights). He also knew that not one among them could see him...
Jack shifted where he was perched on a sturdy tree branch. It dawned on him by some instinct or other that there was nothing for him here. Not until winter came to the Burgess township again, anyway.
The Wind called him south. It pulled his cloak and caressed his hair enticingly. It had been doing that for days now, but finally it was so insistent he could no longer ignore what it was telling him.
"Alright," Jack agreed, "Let's go." And the Wind swept him up and away above the tree branches. The thrill of flight still felt new and exciting, not dampened by experience. Jack hoped, very strongly, that riding on the Wind would never lose its fun. He had a lonely existence, he had come to realize; and he feared he needed all the joy he could ever find.
The Wind carried him southward through the dusk. After winding through the treetops a while, he had the Wind take him up higher, closer to the clouds for more direct flight. Weaving like that was tiring.
Even in the darkness Jack could see the tall black thunderheads looming in his path. They would be on top of him in less than an hour. Jack wondered if he could skirt under them before they started dropping rain.
His anticipation mounted as he came closer to the storm. Sheets of rain pulled down on the heels of the clouds ahead, blurring them into the black sky. Thrills of fear pushed him to turn back, drop under the trees, seek shelter. He only pushed back harder, defiant. He traveled with the Wind, and the Wind was not afraid.
The rain hit him suddenly. Momentarily blinded, Jack faltered, blinking water out of his eyes and trying to recenter himself. He grasped his staff more securely and felt like glass had crusted on his knuckles. He looked and saw a sheen of ice on his hand, broken with hairline cracks around the joints. The ice invaded his cloak, too; more than usual, as the rain soaked it to heaviness and froze at his skin.
His breath stuttered in his surprise; he had no idea what to make of it.
Gales buffeted him sideways and Jack steadied himself again. The deluge continued, striking him hard as hail for being directly under the swollen clouds. Jack spurred himself forward, angling down and scanning the ground for shelter at last – he had a feeling he needed it after all. Probably sooner rather than later.
Lightning forked down around him and leapt between clouds above him. The thunder was deafening and primordial terror seized him at its every roar. Yes; hadn't he always feared the thunder?
The height of the storm surrounded him and the more rain splattered over him, the thicker the ice grew on his skin. Jack bee-lined for the ground, but found that he could hardly move, could barely break the ice encasing his joints. "Wha… Wind!" he cried, panicking. Thunder bellowed in response and he yelped, flinching; ice snapped and pierced his skin.
The staff slipped out of his grasp. Jack didn't notice until he realized he was no longer flying toward the ground, but plummeting. He called again to the Wind, felt it rush around him and try to catch him; but without the staff it couldn't catch its grip on him.
He continued to fall. The approaching ground was marked in staccato flashes of lightning. Gritting his teeth and closing his eyes, Jack covered his face for impact.
He met the unyielding ground with a solid crunch; he felt himself bounce and slide over the jagged surface, sharp rock tips catching his cloak and shirt. Scrapes tore open his hands and forearms, and along his cheek. When he finally came to a halt he took several ragged breaths and cracked his eyes open. He indeed had crash-landed on a rock face, slick and cold with rainwater. The cliff sloped down away from him and he could just hear a coursing river already swollen with the driving rain, a hundred feet below. The Wind rushed around him in the sparse tree line, the sound of it in the leaves rivaling the rainfall. "I'm okay!" Jack gasped, flexing his split and bleeding knuckles. "I'm okay… I just... can't move." The shock of the landing had beat the strength and breath out of him. Jack didn't feel cold, but he shivered anyway. Stuck here in an unfamiliar place, in the dark, without his staff, and by all appearances freezing solid. Jack Frost might have laughed at the irony of his situation. But he instead succumbed to exhaustion and let the encroaching blackness take hold.
–
Frenzied twittering and chirps around him coaxed him back into consciousness. Rain still poured down in earnest, but it sounded distant now – and it did not fall on him anymore. Curious.
He also felt multiple pinpoints of warmth around his body. They itched, made him want to scramble away. Jack tried to pull his hand from such a spot, elbow flexing only stiffly.
The chirping – like morning birdsong but not quite – intensified and Jack pushed his eyes open. In the dim pre-dawn light he saw himself surrounded by iridescent green hummingbirds.
No… not hummingbirds. They clutched twigs and moss in tiny hands, and though their eyes were violet they were more human than any bird's that Jack had ever seen. They had wings, true; translucent and veined like a dragonfly, yet their bodies were feathered. Fairies; they had to be. The one closest to his eyes smiled broadly beneath its beak-like nose and lifted off its little feet into a hover. The tiny buzz of its wings was nearly lost in the roar of the rain and the trickling runoff. Its excitement spread to its fellows, and soon there was a general clamor of tiny joyful squeals. "Where am I?" Jack asked, finally looking around him properly. He was in a low-slung cave, and the tiny spots of warmth were miniscule fires. How these fairies had managed to find dry kindling…
Water dripped down from his fingers and toes, off the fringe of his hair. The fairies must have brought him, frozen stiff, into this shelter and were now trying to thaw him out. He smiled gratefully, though he was certain he would have survived the ordeal regardless; the fact that they had thought of him and stayed to help did more to warm him up than the fires ever could. "Thank you," he said, smiling a little shyly, realizing that he had at last come across someone who could see and react to him. The little fairies squealed and he grinned; the ones nearest him practically swooned.
Jack forced off his embarrassment at their reactions with a laugh, and set to pushing himself to sitting. A flock of the fairies rushed to try to press him down again. "I'm fine," Jack insisted, "I feel much better, I promise." The fairies exchanged worried glances; for all they knew, they had just rescued a boy from hypothermia, mysteriously shelled in ice during a spring rainstorm. "The cold doesn't seem to bother me so much," he offered as a sort of explanation for his quick recovery. That seemed to work for the fairies. Jack settled in the center of the fires and bent his arms experimentally. There was little to do for his torn clothing, but the cuts on his arms appeared to have healed. He started at his empty hands and the fairies snapped to attention. "My staff!" Jack blurted, whipping his gaze around the cave. "Did you…" he didn't see it. The fairies returned blank looks. They couldn't have moved him far; it must still be at least hundreds of feet away, in the forest. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and let out a defeated sigh.
A barely-perceptible touch to the back of his hand made him look up, blinking away the colored splotches. The fairy started twittering at him. He thought maybe he could understand bits of it, but he had a feeling he was imagining things. He shook his head, glumly apologetic. After a moment of pondering, the fairy landed and pantomimed walking with a cane. Then it raised its "cane" hand and pointed, brow rising questioningly.
"What does it look like?" Jack guessed. The fairy nodded. "It's kind of… One end looks like this," he said, curling his finger. Several of the fairies mimicked the gesture to one another, exchanging nods. "I lost it, before I fell. I'm not sure where it is." Assertive twitters filled the cave and all of them swarmed together. The intended message was clear: We'll help you find it!
Beside himself at their offer of help, Jack couldn't stop the smile of gratitude stretching the corners of his mouth. "Thank you," he told them again, wishing he could think of more to say. Still a bit stiff from the ice and pain of landing on the hard ground, he pushed himself to his feet. "Let's go, then."
Many little hands snatched his cloak and held them back. "What is it?" One fairy pointed to the torrential downpour, which in the interlude had become hail. Jack looked over the fairies again, at their wings as beautiful and fragile as stained glass. Ice pellets hurt his elastic human skin enough and the fairies were tiny and delicate. "I see," he conceded, settling down on the cave floor again. "We'll wait it out."
The fairies turned out to make good company. Jack found the more he heard their chatter, the more he could really understand their language. Pantomime of course also helped this process a lot. It turned out a single fairy initially had taken shelter in this cave when she saw the storm fast approaching. She had seen Jack crash-land outside the entrance, and called to her sisters to help bring the frozen boy out of the rain. They had bravely gathered fuel for their small fires to melt the ice encasing him, and proceeded to marvel that, after a point, the ice that melted away from his skin was continuously replaced with a fine layer of glistening frost.
"That's why I have my name," Jack interjected, realizing he hadn't properly introduced himself yet. To demonstrate, he conjured a little scattering of snowflakes from his palm. They all watched, entranced, eyes wide with wonder. "Jack Frost."
And they were the Tooth Fairies; daughters, in a way, to the Tooth Fairy. Pieces of her, but also their own beings, and all of them parts of each other. Jack tried to wrap his mind around it, but for all the fairies elaborated the point to him, he never reached an accurate understanding of it. The fairies exchanged glances and simultaneously shrugged like it was a lost cause. Jack laughed.
At last the storm waned. The fairies looked out the cave entrance as one. "Let's go," Jack said, twitching now to have his staff back. This time he met no opposition – in fact the fairies led the way. The sky had lightened and Jack could see the forest sprawling for many acres below the rock face. He gestured hopelessly. "It's somewhere down there, I think." He carefully stepped onto the sharply angled hillside to begin climbing down. This was met with a chorus of panicked chattering. "What?"
As one the fairies flocked to scoop him up, and he was airborne toward the trees. Jack flailed as he had the first time the Wind caught him up, but the fairies were sure and never risked dropping him. The leader of the troupe looked back to him, indicating the spread of tree tops. Which way?
Jack reached out to the Wind. "Do you know?" he murmured. The Wind kicked through his hair and pushed on him from one side. "That way," Jack said, pointing. "Just follow her." The fairies were attentive to the Wind, quickly learning to understand it as well as Jack Frost did; it guided them hundreds of feet over the forest, before stilling suddenly. "Here…" Jack concluded, "Somewhere around here."
The swarm of fairies descended through a space in the trees, righting him so seamlessly onto his feet that Jack stood amazed for several seconds before he remembered his mission. He looked around him carefully; the staff would be easy to miss here among the branches in the dim light. The fairies spread out, searching at the ground level and in the canopy.
With so many searching, it wasn't long before a triumphant squeal rang through the trees. Jack hurried over, tension falling out of him to see his staff laying unharmed across some tree roots. With immense relief he stooped to pick it up like a dear friend, his frost spreading into the wood's whorls and gnarls. That's better, he thought. "Thank you, so much," he said to the little fairy who had found it. She proudly puffed herself up, preening the feathers at the crown of her head. Immediately Jack leapt into the air with aplomb, and the fairies all cheered. They followed him above the trees toward the ever-lightening sky; the first hints of sunrise glowed scarlet on the horizon.
Most of the fairies rushed off to complete their tasks of gathering teeth. A few stayed, gazing imploringly at him. Jack paused. One twittered quietly, hopefully, her palms hanging together in a plea; Will we see you again?
Jack grinned and one of them nearly fell out of the air. "You probably will. It was great to meet all of you." The fairies gushed into their palms, bright-eyed with delight. Jack laughed and waved as they flitted away. He hovered for a while, watching them go. A pleasant warmth settled in his chest.
Jack had thought his only friends would ever be the children who couldn't hear or see him.
He was happy to know he had been wrong.
Tooth had to hear a lot about Jack (and his teeth) SOME way or other! ;)
Thank you for reading!