"Happy birthday, Jack!"
Jack couldn't stop smiling. Even when he was trying his best. He tried to get an annoyed tone to come out from his throat, but he failed miserably.
"It's not my birthday, actually. It's, like, my deathday."
"Is there actually something like a deathday?" Bunny asked, rolling his eyes. He was acting like he didn't care at all about the winter spirit's birthday, but of course he cared. If he didn't, he wouldn't be here.
"But we have no idea when your real birthday is, so let's celebrate the day when you became immortal. That is kind of rebirth, isn't it?" North asked, his eyes sparkling like always.
"Kind of. But it's sad to celebrate someone's death so we'll call this 'the day when you became one of us for the rest of the eternity' -day!" Everyone, even Sandy turned to look at Tooth. She blushed slightly when she realized how weird that had sounded.
"That's a bit too long. Let's just call it re-birthday and I'm happy," Jack said, with a laugh.
Everyone sat down around the table where there was a HUGE cake. Jack was sure it was the yeti who had made it because it was so perfect in any ways. Jack was sure, by looking at it, that it would taste absolutely wonderful. The text 'Happy Birthday, Jack!' was written so straight across it that it looked almost like it was made by a machine.
And there were candles – at least 300 of them. But he knew from experience that it wasn't actually a lot compared to the others. Tooth had been really embarrassed when her cake was covered with at least 1,050 candles. Bunny had 1,700. North had 1,730. But Sandy held the record with 2,800 candles. So, basically, Jack was the youngest one of them.
These days, Jack actually lived at Santoff Clausen. At last it was what he called 'home'. Really, he was there for spring and autumn. Summer he spent at the South Pole, because it was winter there when in the North, it was summer. It was too hot for him go outside to either of poles in spring and autumn. But in the winter and summer he took off and spent almost all his time out.
"How old actually are you, Icicle?" Bunny asked while Jack was taking the first piece of the cake. It took a while before he gave his answer.
"Three hundred seventeen, plus sixteen years because I was sixteen when I died. So technically I'm three hundred and thirty-three now," he said, while tasting the cake. He had been right - it was absolutely wonderful. Tooth looked at him, a bit grumpily. The fairy obviously didn't like that he was ruining his beautiful teeth with sugar. She glared at the other guardians as well while she ate her own piece of cake that had no sugar or caffeine or anything that could harm her beautiful teeth. Jack thought it was only xylitol.
Sandy jumped happily in place. Above his head were three threes and an exclamation point. North laughed.
"Yes, Sandy, triple three. This is lucky day, Jack. Or should it be your lucky year?" North laughed. Bunny rolled his eyes.
"The one day when Icicle here is lucky is the worst day for the world," the Pooka said. His head hit the table when a snowball flew right into his occipital. Jack began to laugh when he realized that Bunny's face had collided with his cake. Quickly, he shuffled away from the table and out of Bunny's reach. Lightly he jumped on his staff and stood there balancing and laughing. Which were, by the way, hard to do at the same time.
"Bull's eye!"
"... I'm not kidding. This time I'll kill you!" Bunny muttered angrily before turning around to throw Jack's plate of cake right toward the winter spirit. It was a really close one and Jack was able to dodge it only barely.
"Wow! That was close! But catch me if you can, kangaroo!" the winter spirit said, laughing, and with a light jump, he was out of the open window, an angry Bunny jumping right after him.
Tooth and North looked at each other.
"Every year."
"Yep. And this has only happened 16 times. We have the rest of the eternity time to see if they will ever stop."
Sandy smiled and took another piece of cake.
Special thanks to galacticEntity from Beta reading! 3