My Birth, a rise of the guardians fanfic

Second Draft

Warmth.

Perfect warmth. Not the heat of a summer day or the warn ache of tired muscles after a hard days work. Just perfect, comfortable warmth. My sleep-addled brain was succeeding in keeping me quietly drifting on the edge of conciousness in the void, my hair flowering like a halo around my head.

The realisation that I was floating shouldered its way into my passive brain and demanded to be heard. Was this normal? I didn't think so, but at that point I had known nothing else, just this place and this feeling of absolute serenity. I cracked my eyes open ever so slowly and let the light trickle in...

Perfectly still, I didn't bother to turn my head to see where I was, more interested at that moment at the scene around me. The light, while dim to me now was almost blinding to me then. As my eyes adjusted, I noticed shafts of light spearing their way through the gloom like silk ribbons, azure blue fading into the darkness that hugged them protectively from all sides. Then I saw the sky. It has been years and still I cannot describe to you all the sniping, swirling shades of blue in the sky above me. The darkest patches barely stood out around the uniform black of my surroundings, where as the lightest parts appeared to be the origins of those shafts of light the interspersed the gloom. In my content state I did nothing more than watch the light show above me, the shifting hues of blue dancing in front of my eyes. What an amazing thing it would be to fly up there to the sky.

It never occurred to me that I couldn't.

My back arched, limbs trailing behind me as I ascended slowly upwards. The closer I got to the sky's above me the more my brain awoke. I reached my arm up sluggishly to trail my fingers along the clouds.

They weren't clouds.

Ice. It was ice, although it didn't feel like it, the points of my fingers were not chilled by its touch. I think it was at that moment I really awoke from the dream-like state I had been wrapped up in, content until that moment to just go along with whatever was happening. A sudden wave of fear washed over me, a stark contrast to all the other emotions I had been feeling up unto that point. If I was under ice then this sensation of floating wasn't just some strange dream, I was under water. But If I was under the water for as long as I had been awake, surely I would have drowned by now, swallowed water and sunk back down to my waking place.

Forcing myself to calm I squashed all the raging, rebellious thoughts that were screaming at me to panic. Looking around I spied one of the fingers of light very near me. I had to concentrate on floating over to it, not yet confident enough in my body's ability to move or swim. When I reached the thin patch of ice, I again raised my hand to lay it flat against the ice, except this time it was so thin that my palm broke through .

And then my arm.

Head.

Torso.

I was out of the water completely and suspended in mid-air bathed in the soft moonlight, water streaming out of my nose and mouth. I breathed deeply, the feeling of claustrophobia dissolving in the cool night air and open space around me. I spun slowly in the air, feasting my eyes on all the new sights that assaulted me. Pine trees stood sentinel-like around the edge of the clearing, above their snow bent branches, mountains rose up jagged and bone white. All was silent, not a sound escaped the blanket that covered the whole forest. Below me was my pond, sprinkled with a new layer of snow, the hole I had emerged from minutes ago already icing over.

The ice held one more feature, a strange staff that lay a few feet from my hole. My sense of wonder was at that point overridden by curiosity, concentrating carefully, I tried to let gravity take hold. After a few attempts I begun to descend slowly from my heavenly vantage point, it seemed almost instinctual, my ability to float, it occurred to me that I hadn't even begun to test the limits of what I could do. Later, that would come later, first I was determined to touch the ground for the first time. My feet sunk into the freshly fallen snow, I noticed with mild curiosity that I was bare-footed.

I knelt down, curled my long fingers around the staff and pulled it from its resting place. Back then it felt rough and unfamiliar to my fingers, soon it would be an extension of myself, a new friend. My first friend. In the snow-less ice left behind by the staff I caught my first glimpse of myself. Its funny you'd think that would be one of the first things you'd do, look at yourself. I knelt above my birthplace sweeping away the snow to reveal the ice below. Not many people can say they remember seeing themselves for the first time. I was pale, so pale that I almost blended in with my surroundings. My face was sharp and thin, my eyes azure blue and my hair some might call blond, but really there was not even a hint of blond in there, whiter than the snow beneath me and spiking up at all angles. Resting on my knees I tried in vain to smooth it down. My eyes drifted down to my clothes, rags over rags it seems, I had a dirtied white sailor shirt on underneath a half torn brown overcoat, one of my trouser legs ripped down the seam on one side. In fact, the only new thing I seemed too own was the powder blue scarf wrapped snugly around my shoulders.

I looked again at the moon as I sat there, elbows resting on knees and staff resting between my hands. My mind was almost blank, to much information had been ushered it I just had no idea where to start. As my concentration waned, my arms let the end of the staff brush the ice. Frosted tendrils snaked their way out from my staff, decorating the ice with curls and patterns, not unlike an oversized snowflake. Mind still black it took a few moments for my brain to kick into overdrive, I scrabbled back, arms flailing and legs pushing to get away from my crook. After a few moments of staring at it suspiciously I reached for it again. I'm not sure what I was afraid would happen, but I think I found myself disappointed when it didn't do anything but act completely innocently, like it had done nothing at all to arouse my suspicion! I held it tentatively in my hands, almost daring it to explode in a shower of ice so I could be right. I held it out at arms length and tapped it gently against the ground. Again it created a flower of ice below, giggling, yes giggling, I'm not ashamed to admit I giggled, I did it again.

And again...

Then I was in the air again, swooping around my little glade, running the curled end of my staff along branches and rocks and anything else I could see. When the entire glade was coated I shot myself up strait up into the air, swifter than an arrow I flew, I think I wanted to decorate the moon, I cant quite remember my reasoning, maybe I just wanted to fly. Before long I started getting light headed, my glade not even a speck below me so I slowed,

slowed,

Stopped.

I let gravity wrap its long fingers around me and drag me back to earth. I laughed, I remember that, the joy of my first few minutes, the wind rushing through my hair, fanning it like a halo around my head as the glade approached at astonishing speed. I straitened as I fell, my speed increasing until the ground was almost upon me. Reckless was I that I waited until the last moment to pull sharply up, the tip of my toe making the smallest dent in the snow.

Tears steamed down my face as I landed again, a mix of the flight and the joy I felt, it rose inside my like a wave, pure happiness. I suppose if this were a story, the next part would be obvious, nobody can be happy forever.

While I stood, drenched in my own euphoria, I noticed a soft orange glow began to peak through the trees, my laughter stopped as I pulled myself together swiftly. I propelled myself into one of the nearby trees, wrapping its branches around me to hide myself from this warm intrusion into my frozen world. To me then, it seemed an eternity that I waited, shifting my weight from foot to foot to stay as still as possible. I'm not sure now why I hid away because the light was beautiful, it made the snow sparkle and bathed everything around it in warm light. I heard the quiet murmurs of hushed conversation before I saw the people, maybe that's why I hid, I guess I was scared because for all my wonder at this cold world I had been born into I felt no kinship or curiosity towards the adults that ventured into my home.

The I heard a child crying.

It pierced right through my heart, that sound. That was the first time I felt pain, my short life up to that point had been nothing but discovery and wonder so that feeling was so alien to me I was almost crushed. They came into view, at first they were just shifting shadows, darkness between the trees but as they got closer I started to see people, faces lined sadness.

At their head was a young woman wrapped up in a shawl, an old brown dress tied by an apron at the waist. Her hair was a light shade of auburn, almost like fire under the gaze of the lamp. She had a sharp angled face, although I suspect now that that was more due to malnutrition than genetics, and her eyes...her eyes. Over the years I have forgotten much, faces, names, dates, but those eyes I will never forget. So brown they were almost black, they carried such sadness, worry and fear, she was bent, bow-like, as if the weight of all those sorrows were literally pressing her into the ground.

Then I located the source of the crying. Around the woman's waist was a young girl, Almost an identical copy of her, or what I presumed was, mother although she was perhaps more soft of face, more child like. She wore a dirtied brown dress that hung limply over her thin frame. She stared, wide eyed and tears flowing over the ice, her little hands clutching her mothers skirt like a lifeline as she made soft noises and stroked her daughters hair. I could hear the soft mummer of their conversation, the racking sobs of the pretty little girl as she pointed out at the hole in the ice, gesturing wildly with her hands as she described her story. I moved closer, letting go of my earthly tethers and floating up into the night sky. I drifted over, carefully staying out of the orange glare of the lantern and settling down again on a closer branch. Still I could only hear snatches of the conversation, words drifting up, caught on the wind "Jack" and "staff" were of the few that I heard but even they meant little to me. I wanted to help the girl but she was backed by a sea of shadowy townsmen standing sentinel to the mother and daughters sorrow.

So I left, my heart weighed down by the little girl and her tears, a weight that I don't think was ever really lifted. I did leave a parting gift though, as I drifted thought the night sky above my birthplace, watching the sceptical that had so recently wrenched me from my happiness, I held my staff up high. A small blue spark sprinted away from the tip, shooting up into the night sky where it spiralled out into a colossal version of my little snowflake. It was there only for a moment, but what replaced it was in my mind even better.

The fell tentatively at first, like shy children, but soon they were falling out of the sky in disciplined regiments, a white army marching down towards the ground.

Maybe this would make her smile.

That summer, after the snow had thawed and the ice had melted, the men that had stood guard over the grieving family of two came with nets to drag the pond that I was born in, to the disappointment and confusion of everyone, the only thing they found of the boy who had drowned but a few months prior was a pair of half rotted ice skates.

My name is Jack Frost, and I was once alive.

Issy Langdon