The wind swept across the side of the mountain, ruffling Jack's messy white hair. It never ceased to amaze him how nature still affected him, even though he was technically dead. In turn, of course, he was also skilled at affecting nature.
He noticed something then. It was small and vibrantly colorful, and it stood out against the white snow dusting the rocky surface. It was almost buzzing as it whisked across the cliff, and he realized it was heading straight for him. Its target was obvious, regardless of the fact that the winged thing was no bigger than his fist.
Was it a hummingbird? Hummingbirds could be pink and yellow and blue, couldn't they?
Despite the reality that he was much larger than the creature approaching him, he still tensed as it drew closer. He knew all too well that things that seemed innocuous were rarely as harmless as they appeared to be. Ponds covered in ice being at the top of that list.
The sprite-like creature grew alarmingly close, and he gripped his staff reflexively, ready to use its powers as a weapon, should this microscopic beast prove formidable. The feel of the knotted wood and the sight of the curved portion at the top were comforting. He supposed that the light gray staff would feel icy to a mortal, but being Jack Frost, and all that entailed, meant that the cold never bothered him anymore.
He was now able to make out the more definitive features of the impish being before him, and he relaxed. It was only one of the Tooth's little fairies.
His concern was rekindled when he saw the frantic look on the fairy's face. Though they had succeeded in defeating Pitch, he couldn't bring himself to not be cautious of any dangers that might continue to lurk.
"What is it?" he asked when the fairy landed on his open palm and tugged at the sleeve of his blue sweatshirt.
"You're needed back inside the North Pole," she squeaked, hovering off of his palm as she relayed the message. "There's...there's, uhm..." She twisted her tiny fingers together and bit her lip.
"There's what?" he encouraged. He needed to know. Was someone hurt? He didn't think he could take it, not again. He was grateful that Sandy had turned up, still alive, but thinking his friend dead had been hard enough, especially when he'd been the one who had failed to save the Sandman. Despite discovering that his friend had lived, he still couldn't forgive himself for his failure, though the others, Sandy especially, refused to blame him for any of it.
Tiny, harried breaths fluttered the fairy's chest, and after a moment, she finally spoke, though her vague sentence didn't offer much more than her original statement had. "There's something you need to see."
She flew off without another word.
He stared questioningly after her, expecting her to disappear, but after she had gone twenty feet, she stopped and turned back, motioning for him to follow her. He sighed, complying.
He vaulted himself from the cliff, hovering in the sky for a moment before he shot off like a rocket after the fairy. He didn't need to follow her. He knew how to get back to the North Pole on his own. He trailed behind her, regardless, because he was fond of the little fairy. Even though she looked identical to all the rest, the intense recognition he'd felt upon seeing this particular one told him that this was the sprite he'd saved from Pitch's siege on the Tooth Fairy's palace. The rest of the fairies had been rescued from Pitch's cages later, but the little fairy he was following now was the last one that had escaped the siege, and that was only because Jack and the rest of the Guardians had arrived in time to save her.
Jack followed the fairy through the secret tunnel entrance in the North Pole facility, relying on instinct more than sight as he maneuvered his way through the twists and turns. He kept his tall staff parallel to his body and tucked in close. Wouldn't want it hitting a wall and snapping in half. Again. He was tired of fixing it.
In truth, he didn't actually need the staff to use his powers, but he preferred using it. He couldn't explain why. Maybe it was having something solid, something concrete that he could use to more easily concentrate on channeling his powers.
When he broke through the last part of the tunnel he was right on the colorful little sprite's trail. She didn't look back at him again, even when she had reached the Tooth Fairy's side. Tooth was standing in front of the large globe that dominated the central space in North's main workshop, along with Bunny, Sandy, and North himself.
Jack's suspicion had ignited the second he'd entered the room. North hadn't greeted him with the usual, "Jack, my boy!", and Sandy hadn't smiled and waved. Bunny, who never acknowledged him with much more than a grunt, didn't even glance his way. In fact, none of them did.
"Hey…guys?" Jack asked.
No one responded. Or looked at him. Seeing their inattentiveness now, he wondered how someone had even made the decision to send Tooth's little fairy out to find him. If they had at all. The fairy in question ignoring him now, just as much as his fellow Guardians.
What in the name of the Man in the Moon were they looking at?
He followed their intent gazes to the side of the room. There, there was a door he'd never seen before. It looked heavy, and made of dark gray wood, with an intricately-carved pattern in the front. Jack walked by the others, who didn't say anything or move to stop him. He reached it and laid his hand on the doorknob.
He gasped, jerking his hand away and looking at the other Guardians in shock.
Because of his icy internal temperature, touching anything cold didn't bother him, but because the workshop was warm, he'd noticed immediately that the doorknob was much colder, if not completely frozen—at least from the other side of the door.
Jack turned back to the others. "What's in there?"
Tooth's silvery wings flapped as she hovered off the ground a few inches, opening her mouth and holding up a delicate finger. Words seemed to fail her as she touched back down to the floor and remained silent. North fiddled with one end of his mustache. Bunny crossed his fur-covered arms over his chest and pursed his thin lips as he stared over Jack's head and behind him at the wooden door. Golden images made of sand danced in the air above the Sandman's head, but they fluctuated too fast for Jack to make any sense of them. Though he did think he saw a snowflake amongst the jumbled pictures. Hmm. Must be seeing things.
He was about to repeat his question when North finally answered him. His normally booming voice was soft for once as it carried across the short space to Jack. "In there is a…new Guardian. I think," he amended.
Jack's eyes popped wide and his mouth fell open. "What?"
North crossed his arms and continued. "Thirty minutes ago, the globe here"—he tapped the gargantuan sphere in question—"opened up and started to glow with bright blue light, in a circle. The circle rotated, spinning faster and faster, until a…girl popped out. We finally coaxed her out of her hiding place under the globe, and she's being hiding in that room over there ever since. She won't talk to us, but she might talk to you, seeing as how you two share certain…traits."
Jack hadn't regained his ability to speak in sentences with more than one word yet. "Me?"
Tooth seemed to find her voice then, and she spoke in a gentle cadence. "She hasn't told us how she died, but we think that when she did, she was sent through time to us."
Jack still couldn't utter anything more interesting than his newly-assumed monosyllabic answers. "How?"
Tooth touched her finger to her bottom lip. "We're not exactly sure, but nevertheless, she's in there, and she was born a long time ago…. We think that she lived in the same era you did.
Curiosity was now shoving against the shock radiating inside of him, and he turned back to the broad wooden door. Now prepared for the icy temperature of the doorknob, he gripped it and twisted it to the right.
Snow-like air blasted from the other side of the doorway, and Jack stepped inside and pulled the door closed when he saw that the other Guardians had started to shiver. He took a deep, steadying breath before turning towards the room.
There were no lamps or overhead lights inside the gray wood-paneled room, so the only illumination in the space was offered by the large, semi-circle window that dominated the opposite wall.
There was a slender figure standing in front of it.
The petite girl was silhouetted against the light of the morning sky outside the window, and her back was turned toward the room.
She was wearing a dress composed of several shades of ice blue, and the fabric alternated between shimmering like tropical water and glittering like freshly fallen snow. It was floor-length and tight fitting, and made of shiny fabric that slipped and slid over every curve of her small body like a waterfall. The sleeves were edged in sheer white, and were draped off her shoulders, hugging the tops of her arms. A white sheer cape patterned with glittering snowflakes was attached to the back of the sleeves, and it fell to the floor from there, flaring out in a subtle train.
The girl was even more striking than the dress she wore. Her skin was pale white—almost as pale as his own—and her thick white-blonde hair hung in a French braid that was draped over her left shoulder.
"I said I wasn't ready to talk."
He jumped. Her sudden sentence was low and strangely melodic.
And angry. Jack gripped his staff reflexively as the girl's body tensed up. She brought her hands up in front of her, balling them up into fists. After a minute of silence, she relaxed visibly, letting her arms fall back to her sides.
Jack was the one to tense up this time. This girl was obviously holding herself back—but what was she holding back? Just what kind of power did she have, exactly?
Jack cleared this throat. "You weren't ready to talk to the others, but you may want to talk to me." He decided not to mention that talking to beautiful girls wasn't something he'd ever really done, aside from talking to Tooth. "I'm Jack Frost. What's your name?"
For a moment, the girl didn't answer. Then he heard her take a deep breath, and she said, in a quiet voice, "Elsa. But you're wrong. I don't want to talk to you. Please leave."