Their first meeting was long ago, back when Jack Frost was still a young spirit, long before he would become the guardian he is today. Indeed, the winter spirit had barely learned to control his flight when he first met Rain.
It had been a summer night. Jack was sitting idly in a tree, seemingly pondering his own existence. He was practically a newborn despite his appearance being that of a teenager's. As such, he had much to contemplate. Gazing through the branches of the trees overhead, he gazed at the full moon, whose glow blanketed the night in a cool light. There was much that he did not know, but one thing he did know was that he owed his existence to the Moon. So he made a point of staring at the bright orb in the sky, as if the Moon might tell him more tonight.
He never did.
With a sigh of resignation, Jack dropped out of the tree and hovered down until he reached the ground. He walked for some time until he came upon his little lake. Stepping onto the water, which turned to ice beneath his feet, it wasn't long before the entire lake was frozen in the middle of the summer. He grinned at the strange power he possessed.
Not everyone would be so amused, however.
He felt a drop of water hit his head, then two, then ten, until they became too many to count. Raindrops pattered against the ice, signaling the arrival of someone he would soon become very acquainted with.
"Stop that."
Jack raised his head, looking about for the source of the voice. After a short time, he found it, or him, rather. The voice belonged to what appeared to be a young man. He wore a simple cotton shirt and brown trousers not unlike Jack's own. The only real difference was that this person's clothes were drenched, despite the rain having started not moments before. His short hair, which Jack supposed might have been brown, was made darker - almost black - by the rainwater that plastered his hair to his forehead. All in all, he didn't look much different from the usual settler.
At first, Jack didn't think the man was addressing him. He'd learned very quickly that no one responded to him or even noticed his existence. But upon looking around, he saw that there was no one else there but him.
"Boy."
That got his attention. "I'm not a boy," he said.
"You're not a man," replied the new figure.
"Wait, you can hear me?"
The stranger simply said, "Of course."
"But no one can see me. Wait, hold on." Jack flew towards the man, stopping at an arm's length away from him. Raising a hand, he tentatively prodded at the person's shoulder, as if afraid that his touch might slip through him entirely.
The man was quick to smack his hand away. "Stop that," he said with a scowl.
"I don't go through you," Jack said with a gasp, looking at him as if he were something unusual. And he was. This person was the first who could hear and see him, the first person he could touch without his hand passing through him.
"How... old are you?" the man asked slowly.
Jack blinked. Age was a foreign subject to him, especially since he did not know how time passed. What were days, weeks, months, and years? He was oblivious to such measurements of time. The moon brought him to life... not long ago. That was all he knew.
The boy's lack of an answer was an answer in itself. Nodding, the man said, "Alright. You're new at this. I should have expected as such." Looking at the ice beneath the boy's feet, he said, "It would seem winter has a new vessel."
"Vessel?"
The man waved a hand and shook his head. "Never mind. What is your name, boy?"
"Jack Frost," he answered immediately, for that was the one thing he did know. "The Moon told me so," he added as if it were of great importance. And perhaps it was.
At the mention of the Moon, the man narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.
"What's your name?" the winter spirit asked.
He paused as if deciding whether or not to tell him, then said simply, "Rain."
Jack didn't seem to think it an odd name. Aside from his own, it was the only name he knew.
Rain seemed agitated about something, and once again said, "Stop that."
"What?"
"That," Rain repeated, pointing down at the frozen lake.
"Oh," said Frost in sudden realization, looking down at his feet where he stood on the thick sheet of ice. Flicking his eyes back up to look at the man again, he asked, "Why?"
"It's summer. Now is not the time for ice."
Jack didn't like the sound of that. "When will be the time for ice?"
"In winter."
"When is that?"
"Some time away."
Jack especially didn't like the sound of that. "I want the time for ice to be now," he said rather childishly.
The other spirit shrugged as if to say, Not my problem.
"So long as there remains a single leaf on the trees, you mustn't freeze anything. It goes against the natural order," Rain told him. With that, he departed, taking his rainclouds with him.
It was at that moment Jack decided he didn't like Rain.
"Stop that."
It was late summer now, practically autumn. Jack was running through a field, leaving frozen patches of ground in his wake. Rain was not amused.
"Why? This is fun!" said the winter spirit, running his hands through cornstalks as he ran, leaving them covered in a very thin sheet of ice.
Gesturing to the nearby town, Rain told him, "You've doomed these people."
A frown overtaking his once joyful features, Jack asked, "How?"
"An early frost will harm their crops."
Not unlike a small child, the winter spirit didn't understand the severity of that, as was made very apparent when he asked, "So?"
"So they won't have anything to eat."
"So?"
"So they'll starve and die."
Jack furrowed a brow. He, being the young and naïve spirit he was, couldn't comprehend what death was. All he knew was that this other spirit was trying to put a stop to his fun, and he didn't like that.
"Go away, Rain! Don't you have somewhere else to be?"
"Frost, was it? I go wherever the Wind takes me, and right now the Wind has brought me here."
"The Wind?" Jack questioned with a frown. He was familiar with the spirit, if it was a spirit. It didn't possess a physical body; at least, not that he was aware of. Whatever it was, it was the first friend that he had made. He'd quickly learned to seek the Wind's assistance when it came to flying any sort of distance, and the Wind had always been happy to help.
To learn that the Wind also transported this spirit about felt like betrayal.
"Yes," Rain answered. "Did you really think you were the only spirit who was carried on the Wind?"
Well, of course Jack would like to think he was special in that regard. This did beg a question, however. "How many other spirits are there?" he asked.
"You really are new to this. Let me guess, the Moon spat you out and didn't explain a thing to you? I'm not surprised."
Something akin to anger flared up in the winter spirit. While he didn't claim to know much about the Moon, he did know that he owed his existence to him, and he didn't like the other spirit speaking ill of him.
"Don't you talk like that about him!"
Rain raised a brow. "Oh? Perhaps you'll change your mind when you've gone a few centuries without knowing why you're here."
"What does it matter why I'm here?" Jack asked, leaning on his staff. "I'm here and I'm having fun. That's all that matters."
"Hmm. We'll see how long that lasts," said the rain bringer, taking flight and riding away on the Wind.
It didn't last long. Their next encounter was many years later, with Jack Frost sitting on the roof of a house, staring up at the Moon, imploring him to say something. It had been fun at first, frolicking around with no real goal in mind. But he was beginning to grow weary of walking the Earth with no purpose whatsoever. Why had the Moon put him here? There were countless questions he wanted answers to, but the Moon never spoke to him again, simply gazing down at him from the heavens with his ethereal light.
His "conversation" was interrupted by a dark cloud casting over the Moon, which was followed soon after by pouring rain. Jack's brow furrowed. He'd been around long enough to know who was responsible for that. Looking this way and that, he finally spotted the rain bringer, who was sitting on the edge of a stone well, tapping his dowsing rod against his leg.
"Hey!" called Jack over the patter of the rain. Gesturing with a thumb to the sky, he said, "We were having a conversation."
"Oh? Do you mean to say he was actually talking to you?"
Well, not exactly, was written plainly on the winter spirit's face.
Shaking his head, Rain told him simply, "You won't be getting any answers out of him. He prefers to let everyone else fester on their own down here."
"Including you?" Jack challenged, crossing his arms.
The spirit's mouth set into a fine line and he didn't respond.
"Oh, well I guess he doesn't talk to you either, then," the winter spirit said smugly, perching on a nearby roof.
"That's fine by me. I'm not particularly interested in anything he would have to say."
"And why is that?" Jack asked.
"The Moon cares little for anything on this Earth but the children who reside here," Rain told him, a slight hint of disgust in his tone.
"The children?" Jack whispered contemplatively, looking up to where the Moon was hidden behind the clouds. Were the children part of the reason he was here, then? He couldn't exactly interact with them, being invisible to them as he was, but he had frolicked amongst them as they played their games, unseen by all. If the Moon cared about the children, then Jack Frost found himself being inclined to feel the same way. He liked children. They had more fun than the adults, in his opinion.
Rain had risen to a stand now, his boots squelching in the puddles below. Flying down to stand in front of him, it was only now that Jack realized that the other spirit was barely any taller than he was. The fact made him smirk.
"That had better not be my height you're gawking at," said the man. "You're shorter, you know."
"You're older, though. You should be taller," was Jack's logic.
The bringer of rain merely shook his head as if he couldn't believe he was dealing with this idiot. He promptly left soon after, taking his rain with him. The dark clouds parted and the Moon shone brightly.
"Stop that!"
This time it was Jack saying it instead of Rain, but his words were directed at the other spirit. This made the rain bringer merely raise a brow, asking, "What?"
"That!" the winter spirit exclaimed, pointing at the sky where a streak of lightning cut through the night. Thunder boomed not seconds later, rattling the foundations of the nearby households and making one little girl who Jack had been following for some time hide her head under her pillow, a fearful squeak escaping her. Looking through the window of her bedroom to make sure she was alright, Jack then turned to glare at Rain, who stood with an unimpressed look on his face. "You're scaring her!"
"And?"
Anger flared up inside the winter spirit. How could this man completely disregard the torment he was putting not just this little girl, but many others like her in this town through?
"Make it stop!" Jack told him in the most commanding voice he could manage.
Rain didn't seem affected by his brusque tone. "No," he said in reply. "This land needs the rain."
"Then just make the lightning stop! And the thunder! There's no need for that!" Jack hollered over the roaring winds and pelting rain, as well as the occasional thunderclap.
Shaking his soaked head, Rain told him, "That's not how this works, Frost."
"I don't care how it works!" the winter spirit shouted. "You're scaring them! Make it stop!"
"You would have me bend the laws of nature just to prevent a few children from crying?" Rain spat.
"Yes," said the chaotic spirit, who cared little for the rules and order of things.
Inside the little girl's window, her mother had come to comfort her, wrapping her arms around her daughter as lightning flashed outside. Jack let out a relieved sigh. He still didn't condone the thunderstorm, but at least the girl's mother was seeing to her daughter's well-being. From the other side of the glass, Jack could hear the muffled words of the mother, who was encouraging her daughter to repeat them as well:
"Rain, Rain, go away. Come again some other day."
Evidently the rain bringer heard those words, too, for the storm only grew in intensity as his rage was projected into his storm. Icy rain pelting down on the both of them, soaking both spirits but neither of them caring, lightning stretched out across the sky, thunder following not a second later.
"Ungrateful brats," he seethed, the thunder seemingly in sync with his voice. "Without my rain you would shrivel up and die!" That last word was accompanied by the most terrible crack of thunder Jack had ever heard, lightning streaking across the sky.
"You've done enough!" Jack snarled. "Get out of here! You're not wanted!"
"That has been made very apparent!" Rain shouted, sticking around now more so out of spite than a need to hydrate the land. If the children didn't like him, well, he could return that sentiment easily. They would pay for their insolence, their complete disregard of the spirit who gave them the rainwater they needed to survive.
Jack shouted at the rain bringer the rest of that night. The storm never once let up.