Darkness.
That's the first thing I remember.
It was dark, and was cold, and I was scared.
There was a shimmering sheet of something in front of me. The fissures and kinks in the ice, that was the word for it, challenged the moonlight's rays. But I liked how the ice seemed to embrace the silver glow, soaked into the surface so that it could spread in a comforting halo into the darkness I was rising from.
I was moving closer to it, like something had a sharp hold on my collar and was guiding me upward, not pushing me from the depths. The surface before me was much more welcoming than the inky depth that had surrounded me before I'd even been conscious of the words I needed to understand what I was seeing.
I was scared and I was afraid that I would hit it, the thing that glowed so innocuously in front of me. Then I would return, trapped, to the cold and darkness.
The surface started to crack.
Small rifts appeared in the silvery sheet, letting in even more light that overwhelmed my straining eyes while my darkness slipped out from the flaws in the surface that smothered the water. The gaps grew wider, chunks of the ice splintering apart. When I pressed against it—fear widening my eyes—it continued to part into smaller, less threatening pieces.
The darkness stayed behind me. It couldn't pass with me into this other world, though it bled from me still in a few steady droplets.
I gasped in a breath that I hadn't needed in that watery space. Air linked me more closely to the brighter world that filled my eyes. I marveled over how crisp and cold it was, slipping down my throat.
The force that had raised me from the darkness was the first thing I remember that filled me with awe.
Jack Frost.
That name belonged to me or at the very least it was what the moon had decided to call me. That mysterious orb dotting the sky didn't decide to tell me why he had saved me or what I had to do next. I didn't even have a way to thank him for taking away my fear.
He set me down on the smooth surface. Ice, I reminded myself, or perhaps it was the moon who helped me to know what the right words were for the things that surrounded me. Happiness bubbled in my chest, reaching a crescendo when my toes touched the ice and it began to mend itself. Forming a new surface, a stronger one, knitting together in a chaotic pattern where I had broken through. Part of me was satisfied, thinking that I and others beneath the moon would not need to worry about falling into the darkness. The rest was distracted because feeling my toes had brought about the discovery of my body.
I wiggled the toes that were braced against the ice, no colder for that contact. Then there were my hands. I held them out in front of myself. I remembered words for the parts of what I was, yet I had no idea what I looked like.
I took a few steps forward—walking—because I wanted to find a place to see myself. Then my toe hit against something—wood, stick, staff—and I startled back at the white blur of designs that crept across its surface. I prodded it again. A slow grin spread across my face. It was beautiful. It was odd. I wanted more of it.
I reached for the staff, long white fingers spreading more threads of frosted ice across the wood's surface. There was an immediate, irrevocable connection as some part of it responded to some part of me. As surely as I knew that what the moon told me was my name, I knew that the staff was mine.
Lifting it, I felt a current buzz through my limbs, demanding to be set free. Instinct drove me to touch the staff's tip to something nearby—tree. New tendrils of frost leaked from the staff, from me, and crawled over the rough bark. Delighted, I bounced back on my heels, bobbing a few times before stretching for another tree.
Was there more that I could do? I raced across the ice—sure of my footing, though my muscles braced for a fall—and dragged the staff across the ground. More ice, spreading everywhere, growing stronger—my ice. I flung up my staff, grinning as I examined my work, something my mind didn't even have a name for.
Something swept me up into the sky. My stomach clenched and dropped as I wobbled. Breath lost, I wildly tried to keep my balance even though I couldn't understand what was happening. I was pulled away from the earth but this time it wasn't because of the moon. I was moving under my own power. I could control this!
Yet as soon as I found my ecstatic glee, I found out that I wasn't quite in control yet. I dropped from the sky. A surprised cry was muffled as I crashed through branches and slammed closer to the ground. The lake. I'm going to fall in the lake.
Then a thick branch slammed into me.
I wrapped my arms and legs around it, grasping at it desperately. A laugh bubbled from inside of me, as I was delighted to be alive and safe in the tree. Then I laughed again because I hadn't realized that was something I could do. I liked it. I wanted to find something that would make me laugh again.
My head popped up and I drew myself up to balance on the branch. I could find something else to do, a thing that would make me laugh.
My eyes caught on lights in the distance, reminding me of the moonlight I'd seen from so far within the darkness. Village. I couldn't quite picture would it would look like but there would be people. That was when I realized that I was by myself; laughter shouldn't be lonely. I could make others laugh. It would be . . .
I tried to think of the word as I grasped my staff and tried to call up the force that had lifted me before. Wind! I wasn't steady and wobbled as I flew but I was doing it.
It was fun.