One would never have believed that the people sitting around the long table were considered Guardians, Immortals, protectors of children or the righteous or important duties that made the world go around. In fact, you wouldn't have believed many of them were over the age of 3, let alone 300. And there had been a lot more than North had expected.
When the bold and kind-hearted man had agreed to host the semi-centennial meeting of the Immortals, he had all but forgotten just how many jobs were watched over outside of the Guardians. The answer was, quite a few. Cupid sat beside Tooth, flashing a rather dashing smile as he leant back, a hand brushing through his golden hair as he recounted some funny tale or another and Tooth tried not to swoon. North cast his knowing gaze only a few feet along the table, expecting to see Jack's pale hand curl in jealousy of either Cupid's popularity, or the way he had Tooth beaming dreamily, but the lad was preoccupied with a certain leprechaun who had had more than a little wine and was cheerfully but forcefully grabbing the wintery-lad's sleeve so he was forced to listen to his god-awful jokes or risk pulling away and seeming rude.
North almost missed Bunnymund as he looked up from his dinner and surveyed the room, until he noticed the pooka with his grey head face-down on the table, ears pressed flat to his skull, trying to silence the insistent chatter of a certain groundhog beside him, which was accompanied by the constant shifting sound of Sandy's sand-pictures and the mad and the wicked cackling of Lector, his jack-o-lantern mask's mouth spewing light-motes and laughter. And all the way up and down the table, faeries and waifs and figures of all shape, size and species chattered and drank and ate, or sat and simply enjoyed (or tried to enjoy) the atmosphere. Rank did not matter here; a job no matter how big or small was appreciated. North paused, and even his own kindly and loving eyes had to take a moment to not critically regard the figure who sat at one end of the table, his chair pulled a little apart from everyone else.
Death had not come to the last banquet, and it surprised North that he had come to this one. The spectre was shrouded in a cloak of some indefinable and mercurial fabric that seemed to reflect no light and moved with him, so that unless he chose to protrude them, his arms seemed nonexistent, along with any shape to his body. His dry and cracked skeleton mask had been pulled back a fraction, enough that his mouth was clear for eating, and the skin underneath was featureless, shiny and black, and a mouthful of white, thin, sharp and almost clumsy teeth came into view every time he tentatively opened his mouth for a bite of his meal.
Even North's overwhelming pity for the lonely-looking figure, hunched in a youthful way that made him seem younger than himself, could not override a sense of dread and fear that rose in his spine whenever he laid eyes on Death.
Little did North know, as he turned back to his meal and heartily returned a bantering joke with a person to his left, that a shiver up the spine would soon be the least of everyone's worries.
