Normal: The usual, average or typical state or condition of something. Not normal: This day that boggles the minds of everyone - even that of Jack Frost apparently!
Please read this note. This is a crossover between ROTG and Kate O'Hearn's Pegasus series. It's posted in the cross-overs section, but I was advised to also put it here, so please don't burn me with flames for also putting it here. I asked my friend and she says you don't particularly need to know the Pegasus series well to read it. It's really just for a laugh, so if you don't know this delightful book series, you get to join Jack and Wind at boggling at these weirdos.
Set Post-ROTG. For more of Jack's ice-sculpting, see my other story Of Pencils and Fiction.
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It had started out as a normal May's day in Kenai, Alaska. Some Alaskan kids were playing in the copious amount of snow they were always graced with. Cars skidded on the icy highway briefly before continuing on their travels. Locals were leaving the churches dotted around the town chatting about the week ahead and the jobs still left to do before the day was up. Even some teenagers were lounging around the Subway store waiting for the Sunday Special to come into effect at lunchtime, eager to get their hands on a free sandwich as part of the buy-one-get-one-free deal.
That was until normality got a kick in the face so hard it made that awesome move at the end of the latest Karate Kid movie look like a poke.
The crisis had started with, like most normal days that quickly turn downhill, a guardians meeting. It had been quite the start, from the northern lights failing to start to Bunny accidentally opening a tunnel under one of the sofa legs to Sandy's dreamsand plane somehow stalling and nearly plummeting out the sky onto some Swedish village that probably wouldn't have enjoyed the wide-spread coma all that dreamsand would've caused. But eventually all the guardians did indeed get the warning and headed for North's workshop. And now, the sun had set (metaphorically of course, because at the North Pole in spring and then summer the sun never sets - resulting in a midnight sun which was a very disturbing idea for one certain winter spirit) and after a near plane crash, a mid-life crisis, a hailstorm in Iowa, a botched delivery of carrots and an epic car chase down the Nimitz Highway with Sean Connery and Bruce Willis, all the guardians had finally assembled in the globe room.
And of course, Jack had to be complaining, because that's what Jack Frost does best. Except for maybe throwing snowballs.
...No, on second thought, it's definitely complaining.
Now, the complaining had started out on North banning another one of Jack's ice sculpture projects (North had refused to allow him to build a compete to-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower to join his replica Golden Gate Bridge outside Santoff Clausen - it was just a big no along with the Sydney Opera House request and the one about the Leaning Tower of Pisa), which soon turned into a rant against stupid vengeful summer spirits and then somehow become a tirade about anti-bullying techniques. And because North was busying himself testing out a new cookie recipe's taste and everyone else didn't really want to take part in Show and Tell (after all, Jack had already got the whole show thing down perfectly), nobody could either be bothered to stop him or thought it would benefit them to do so. So Jack was allowed to ramble on in the hope he would eventually run out of steam and shut up.
Unfortunately this plan failed miserably when Jack made an off-hand comment about kangaroos being better boxers than Sylvester Stallone, which Bunny misinterpretted as some sort of an insult and turned the three-hour-long rant into an even bigger arguement. Tooth had tried to calm the argument down by bribes of sugar-free lollipops, North by yelling across the table and Sandy by trying to get them all drunk on eggnog that was being served by the keg-full (even though the narrator is pretty sure eggnog doesn't come from a keg). But it was all in vain as it only took a disgruntled yeti, a mistimed ball of dreamsand and a declare of: "Rimsky-Korsakov!" to turn the argument into a fully-fledged fist-fight.
So, we have a 6'1" humanoid, tai-chi specialist rabbit against a twig-thin, androgynous boy who couldn't even beat the sandman in arm wrestling. Who's gonna win?
Doesn't really take a lot of imagination, huh.
So, Jack was fuming as he perched on top of the Kenai Municiple Airport's control tower, his face, stomach, chest and arms all covered in black bruises that showed up dramatically against his near-white skin and overall made him look far too much like a Dalmatian. His bad mood had leaked out into the pine-scented atmosphere of the town and resulted in a record-breaking May snowfall across most of the Kenai peninsula, which brought smiles to some children's faces and looks of utter frustration to adults'.
And so, Jack had just been cooling off, watching the kids play in a snowball fight in the field just next to the airport. That was when it happened.
With no warning, a snowball flew in out of nowhere and pegged Jack Frost on the back of the head.
The impact was so hard, Jack was nearly smacked off of the control tower. When he regained his balance (with the help of the wind of course, which was just as startled as Jack was at this unlikely chain of events), he looked over his shoulder to see who had hit him. Surely it couldn't be a kid - no one could throw a snowball up this high: not even Jack himself. So who...
"BULLSEYE!"
And that was when all hell broke loose.
Now, Jack Frost was the embodiment of winter and a guardian of children, not the mention the fact he'd been around for what was fast approaching 320 years (Jamie had been calling him an old geezer - that was one of the many reasons he wasn't currently located at Burgess) and had been to places all around the world: he'd seen many strange things from colourful eggs with legs to North doing an irish jig whilst drunk. This however topped the bill.
After all, it's not every day you see a teenager in a dress wearing flying sandals.
Jack had to stare for a few moments to process what he was seeing. But eventually - after pinching himself and rubbing his eyes a lot - he came to the conclusion was indeed seeing a boy with a mop of messy and tangled black hair wearing a tunic (Jack now remembered the word from Jamie's Romans project) and a pair of sandals with little wings poking out the side of them. No joke: wings. And this teenager was clutching his stomach and laughing hysterically, like he'd been given the laughing gas Jack had seen at carnivals and fairs.
And this strange boy had just thrown a snowball at him. Had seen him.
"Catch me if you can, human!" the boy yelled before zipping into the pine forest behind the airport.
Jack blinked.
Had the wind had eyes, it probably would've blinked too.
"What the..." was the only thing Jack could think to say.
Then the wind seemed to drop a bit, curling around Jack's shoulders. The message was clear - it was the shoulder-dropping feeling a person may get when they recognise a certain chirpy, touchy-feely, unwanted person was skipping towards them when all they wanted to do was just to home and curl up under a blanket and ignore the world outside.
Ah.
"You know him?" Jack asked, just to confirm he was getting this right. The whole 'South Africa - South Dakota' incident was still weighting on their respective (and in the wind's case, metaphorical) minds.
The lack of response from the wind said everything.
"You...wanna blow him into a tree?"
The wind promptly picked him up and pushed him towards the forest at a speed not even jumbo jets dared to reach for.
"Okay! Okay! Slower! Slower!" He yelped.
'Slower' was not as slow as Jack would've liked.
Racing through a forest of spiky trees at Formula One speeds was hobby Jack had given up in 1908 after his staff ended up in three pieces in the middle of nowhere Siberia in a miscellaneous pine forest that looked freakishly like this one. The fact Jack had been holding it when it broke resulted in an explosion so big everyone thought it was a meteorite impact.
Note to self: if the staff is gonna inevitably break, let go of it.
And Jack would prefer it if Kenai and most of Cook Inlet didn't explode. He was in enough trouble with his fellow guardians as it was, and the nature spirits would have an absolute field day.
The wind proceeded to tune out his complains.
After what seemed like an eternity (and Jack's living one so he knows a thing or two about eternity) Jack was buffeted to the left a bit and, over the wind, he heard a voice wail:
"No! No! Watch where you are go—"
SMOOSH!
The wind finally slowed down and allowed Jack to perch on a tree branch to see what was going on. The boy in the tunic with the silly sandals had slumped down onto a branch, his face still smooshed into the trunk of the sturdy pine tree and covered in a mound of displaced snow that had fallen from the higher branches during impact.
Jack felt slightly vindicated.
The wind felt very victorious.
"Ow" the boy whined, peeling his face off of the poor tree and rubbing his nose which, surprising, wasn't broken. He shook himself, dislodging the snow from his shoulders, and swung his leg over the tree branch so he was no longer straddling it.
The boy glared down at his sandals as if it was all their fault. "Why? Why did you try to break my face? What have I ever done to you to cause you to act in this way?"
Clearly the sandals were sentient. Either that or Jack was dealing with a raving lunatic.
"Are you okay?" He asked, because even though this guy had snuck up on him, mocked him and nearly knocked him off the control tower, Jack wanted to make sure he wasn't too badly banged up.
To Jack's surprise, the boy clearly heard him as he looked up in his direction. He blinked, double blinked and then proclaimed (for there was really no other word for it):
"You! The boy the white hair! Why is it you mock me in my misfortune? I believe the art of throwing snow is meant to create goodwill, not animosity!"
Well, Jack...really didn't know how to respond to that.
"Hello, my name's Jack; you're not hurt, are you?" Jack tried a more specific question, in the hope of avoiding any more accusations. Maybe this strange fellow had hit his head a bit too hard on the tree, hence why he was speaking like some sort of king.
Maybe he was a king. King of flying sandals or something.
The boy/strange fellow/king of flying sandals was opened his mouth to retort - hopefully on a language that resembled a more modern form of English rather than resembling the one Jack used to speak during his mortality - but never got to speak. Because at that moment a boy and a girl emerged so out of nowhere Jack couldn't help but later wonder if they were Pitch's long-lost cousins.
Jack could not compute anything else about them for almost a good minute after seeing what they were riding on. Because it wasn't flying sandals.
"Paelen!" The girl cried, somewhere between concerned and frustrated "What are you doing? We only have a few hours before someone notices we're missing!"
"That boy threw me into this tree and mocked me!" the king of winged sandals complained, pointing at Jack and overall sounding like a three-year-old girl who'd just had her dolly stolen from her.
The now five pairs of eyes staring at him snapped Jack out of his stupor, so finally we can have some descriptive narration.
The girl - a pretty, youthful brunette - was wearing a tunic, very much like the boy who'd just assaulted Jack with a snowball, along with a pair of trousers and seated on the back of a humongous white stallion with golden hooves and a threatening look in its eyes directed purely at Jack. Did he forget to mention the stallion had wings nearly twice the size of Jack himself? Oh well, you know that now.
However, by comparison, the boy seated on the winged boar (no joke) to her right was considerably normal. He appeared to be wearing at least four different jackets and had huge gloves, two pairs of wooly trousers and a big thick scarf around his neck and the lower half of his face. However what Jack could see were two dark eyes beneath a wave of black hair that were giving him wary and defensive looks in the extreme.
But all these strange people (and their creepy flying animals) were looking at him. And that surprise was the only thing keeping Jack from ruining his trousers.
"Paelen!" the girl cried yet again, tearing her gaze from Jack, but up-close the spirit of winter could tell the cry was defiantly one of anger and a little bit of embarrassment. "Please tell me you weren't bothering this nice person!"
She gestured in Jack's direction, but her gaze remain fixed firmly on this boy. This 'Paelen'.
"I was not!" 'Paelen' held up his hands in surrender "I just threw a snowball at him!"
"Paelen!" This time the girl looked horrified.
"You and Joel throw snowballs at me constantly, Emily!" Paelen complained "He needed to cheer up, so I assisted him!"
The other boy grumbled, now also removing his gaze from Jack. "The only thing you assisted in was getting yourself into more trouble with Jupiter."
Jack frowned even more so than before. He'd heard if Jupiter: the biggest planet in the solar system. How could this boy - Paelen - get in trouble with a planet? Was this planet like the Man in the Moon - a being from another world that looked down upon the Earth? But then how would these humans know about it, even with their strange pets and flying shoes?
"Well, you can apologise before we go" the girl - 'Emily' according to Paelen - pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration "Then we really need to get to London."
Jack was even more confused now. London? That was in the other side of the globe! A few minutes' trip for Jack, but probably a heck of a lot more for these people. Just how lost were they?
"Yeah, Benjamin Whatisname is waiting for us" the boy who wasn't called Paelen added, though the tone of his voice suggested he wasn't particularly fond of this Benjamin character or the idea of picking him up from London.
"Benedict" Emily corrected "His name's Benedict."
The boy shrugged. "I knew it began with a B."
"It must, or they would have had to name him Agent C instead!" Paelen sounded like he was joking about something, but Jack couldn't find any humour in it. Nor could the boy riding the boar, but Emily giggled slightly.
"Here, put this on" she requested, holding a bright red jacket out to Paelen.
This earned her a frown. "Why do I need that? I do not need it."
"I know" Emily nodded "I don't either, but we need to keep up appearances. It would be strange of them to see us and then Joel. Here."
She held the coat out towards Paelen more, leaning to the right dangerously to do so. For a few seconds, Jack was terrified she was going to fall from the stallion's back and he considered calling upon the wind to make sure she didn't, but nobody else seemed bothered by her balancing equestrian stunt as if they were more than used to it.
Paelen held up both hands in surrender. "No thank you, Emily. Perhaps I shall wear it when we reach London, but for now I am very much satisfied without having to adorn it."
Emily sighed and gave in, sinking back down onto the winged horse's back properly again and allowing Jack to release a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.
"I'll have it then" the other boy - most likely the Joel the others had been refuring to - grunted, looking like he wanted to be a million other places than here right now.
"Will it fit?" Emily asked, holding the coat out towards him. Joel looked down at his many layers and sighed, shaking his head and shivering for good measure. Emily shrugged and slipped it on over her own body, though it was apparent she wasn't in need of it.
"You need trousers too" Emily added.
"Those horrendous things too?" Paelen groaned, looking completely crestfallen "They are most acutely uncomfortable after wearing tunics for as long as I have been."
"All of us are wearing them, Paelen" Emily explained, gently as possible "Me, Joel and you."
Jack idly fingered the rim of his own deerhide trousers he'd had since he first rose from the ice, held in place by a simple black belt he'd nicked from a laundromat in South Dakota a few decades ago. He couldn't remember a day he hadn't worn them or something very similar in the case of his mortal days, and he wondered what it would be like to only wear a dress (tunic, he hastily corrected himself) like Paelen. It must be very strange.
"Oh, hello, sorry about that!" Jack looked up as Emily spoke to him for the first time, speaking almost as if she'd forgotten he was there. "Was he bothering you?"
Jack's breath hitched. So it was true - they could all see him. "You can...see me?"
"Well, duh" Joel grumbled, having returned to glaring at Jack the second Emily spoke to him. The winged horse looked like it was giving him hackies too, and Jack swallowed nervously.
"Shouldn't we?" Emily frowned, her head turning to the side slightly as if she was trying to figure out an intricate puzzle.
The winged boar gave off a loud, feral squeal, and Jack nearly bolted from the area when Paelen chipped in, almost as if in reply. "I do not think so, I have never seen magic that can make people invisible."
"Real magic" Joel added, still assessing Jack critically with his eyes.
"I-I've never met people your age who can see me" Jack explained, still slightly in shock and fear of these people who were so unlike anyone Jack had met in his whole extended life.
"Don't tell me we're too young" Joel pretty much growled, and Jack had to work very hard not to send back a cocky retort. Honestly, this guy was so much like Bunny it was barely funny.
"I'm Jack Frost" the winter spirit informed them, waiting for them to blow him off and leave him alone again (inwardly he weighed the options of whether that would be a good thing or not). But surprisingly, he got a very different reaction.
"Eh?" Paelen frowned, dropping his formality for a brief second before correcting himself with a: "Whom?"
The winged animals glanced at each other, as if trying to determind if the other knew something they didn't.
"Oh" was all Emily said, not looking startled at all. Finally Joel just shrugged - or at least that's was Jack interpreted the slight moving of clothing to mean.
"Y-You believe...in me?" Jack was taken aback - they just seemed so cool about it!
Joel shook his head with a sigh. "When you live with a bunch of gods on top of a mountain barely anyone believes exists alongside a powerful Xan who spent the majority of her life with violent New Yorkers, plus a petty thief with levitating shoes, you get used to believing in just about everything. Jack Frost included."
"I am not a thief!" Paelen insisted, shaking his fist with a glare that was clearly genuine. Jack knew that glare: this guy had been called a thief many, many times and didn't apprictiate his friend accusing him of being one either. Then his expression changed to confusion as he asked them very seriously: "Who is Jack Frost?"
"Him" Joel nodded his head towards Jack "Lord of winter and all that."
"Lord of winter?" That just seemed to make Paelen even more confused. He murmured something in the direction of his sandals and flew within a few inches of Jack, causing the discussion's topic to jump off of his tree branch perch for the sake of his personal space. "If you are a lord, how is it you never visit Olympus?"
Jack doubled blinked, trying to understand what he'd just been asked. "Oly-what?"
"Olympus" Paelen corrected, not looking very pleased at Jack's reply. Meanwhile, Joel muttered something to Emily that sounded like:
"Well, we finally know why we don't get snow up there."
"You seem very surprised" Paelen commented at Jack's still-confused look.
"Well, I'm more surprised you're flying, actually" Jack informed him "Did The Man In The Moon give you those sandals? I've not heard of any humans that can fly."
Paelen actually squawked and recoiled, almost hitting Joel as he did so. "How dare you accuse me of being human!"
Joel snorted and Emily frowned, but Paelen was on a roll.
"I am an Olympian of the great city of Olympus! I am Paelen the Magnificent–" this statement was punctuated by a regal bow "–saviour of both Olympus and Earth on more than one occasion; and I am escorting Emily of the Xan and Joel the Not-Magnificent—"
"Jealous jerk" Joel muttered at this, barely audible over Paelen honest-to-god tirade.
"–alongside my brothers Pegasus and Chrysaor to the fine city of London to rescue a man who has claimed to be named both Benedict and Agent B, who she claims is a dear of hers even though the last I saw of said man he was a power-hungry, blood-thirsty masochist just like all of his—"
The rant was stopped when Joel apparently had enough of the thinly-veiled insults and slapped a hand over Paelen's mouth.
"Don't mind him, he tends to talk in paragraphs" Joel informed Jack.
"What, me?!" Paelen looked aghast as if it had been an insult (which it probably was), a cheeky grin shinning through though. Jack decided he liked this guy - he reminded him a bit of himself. "You forget Joel! I am a brave dragon-fighting hero!"
"Oh will you get over that!" Joel complained, smacking his own forehead but the thickness of the boy's gloves made Jack believe it couldn't have possibly had the desired effect. "You don't even remember it! And besides, you were also a withered old man who spent all day sleeping and complaining about arthritis!"
Jack wasn't exactly sure what this conversation was about, but as he perched himself on a branch and leant against the trunk of its tree, he couldn't help but grin at the amusement. It was like his own private show!
Just then, the boar Joel had been riding chose to squeal. Automatically Paelen's grin was wiped from the face of the Earth and he complained firmly: "You will not!"
The boar squealed again a twinkle in his eye. The winged horse was also snorting with what sounded like amusement whilst Paelen's ears went red though probably not from the cold. Jack felt it was almost as if the animals and Paelen was somehow communicating - a bit like North and his yetis.
"Chrysaor, no!" Paelen complained, flitting about in what looked like distress whilst waving his arms about rather dramatically "I thought we agreed never to speak of that again!" Then he glared at the winged horse. "And you are not assisting!"
It looked like Jack's question wasn't going to be answered anytime soon.
"I'm sorry but we really must be going" Emily finally put an end to the pantomime "It was nice to meet you Mr Frost. Are you related to a Mr Robert Frost by any chance? He writes some wonderful poetry."
Jack didn't even have time to process that before Emily started talking again.
"Never mind, we'll leave you to it. C'mon boys - London, remember!"
Emily and her scary horse promptly lifted off of the ground and began weaving through the trees, slowly gaining altitude until they could safely clear the trees. Joel and Paelen immediately set off after her, Paelen mumbling about stupid humans with their mouths and some choice words that didn't sound English at all as he left, the little wings on his sandals beating overtime to deal with his distracted noncooperation.
For a long time Jack could only stand there on the branch, staff loosely gripped in one hand, eyes staring why the strange, strange people had been standing. The wind, finally realising he was too shell-shocked to move of his own accord, gave him a pat on the shoulder and lifted him up out of the trees, blowing him gently back towards Kenai.
Still, Jack's eyes remained unfocused, staring ahead until he caught sight of his staff before him.
"Flying sandals" he muttered "Sandals of all things."