In honor of December 21st and the coming of winter - more Jack Frost. I really was planning for Between worlds to be a one-time foray in Rise of the Guardian fandom, but what the heck.
I originally intended to just write about the way he balanced on his staff, but the words ran away with me.
P.S.: I really, really wanted an image of Jack crouching on his staff after he threw a snowball at Cupcake - but I never found it. But I did find a wonderful picture by Wolfmore on deviantart, and, with permission, I used it for cover art. Thank you, Wolfmore!
There is a light breeze and Jack's staff sways with it, tipping precariously – and Jack laughs, like crystal chimes, and with the slightest shift of his weight the staff rotates back like an obedient mount, the winter child at its top all casual equilibrium and balance.
There's something extraordinary about Jack's poise – Bunny doesn't think he's ever met anyone more graceful during his long life, except that Jack's not graceful, because the word implies something lofty, affected, and Jack is anything but – he's sure-footed. Confident. Jack always knows where each step will be, and where it will lead him to.
He flows on the ground the way he does in the skies, smoother than glass and lighter than a snowflake.
Jack rides the wind like it has a mind of its own and he can read it, and that is enough to give Bunny the creeping heebie-jeebies, because no matter what anyone says, rabbits are meant to stay on the ground. Or beneath it. But certainly not anywhere up in the clouds.
Jack walks like he's dancing, and each step feels a little like falling and a little like flying.
It's in the way he balances like it's impossible, like nothing can, like gravity has no hold over him, but then Jack Frost is not really of this world – he can stand still as an ice statue on wire-thin branches, crouch on that impossibly thin crook of his, his toes curled around some invisible hold, undetectable by anyone else, and he glides over the ice in a way that's both arrogant and heartbreaking.
It's in the way he leans at angles which make Bunny's head spin, and his staff – his support his legs his wings- never so much as shivers and Jack never falls.
And Bunny can only hope it's because he's just that good; he really, really tries not to think that maybe it's because he's never had anyone to catch him.
