A/n: Welp I'm just gonna warn you there's some pretty whimsical shit ahead. And a semi-OC... kind of supposed to be MIM? Idek. :P
-Chapter 2: Father Winter's Gift-
Father Winter lived in a palace on the clouds, rolling with them across the sky, and casting a vast shadow o'er the passing lands and seas below. His children could always find their ever-drifting home, for he wove an enchanted string into their hearts when he made them, and tied the other ends to his own.
Jack was his youngest, sewn together from snow and mist, and seamed with silver frost. Each winter child's center was filled with a different celestial element, such as hope, wonder, or dreams. Into Jack, the ancient maker planted joy, carefully picked from lush meadows of laughter.
The youthful sprite, no more than three hundred years in age, glided through the cloud kingdom's tall, trim gates with a secret smile on his pale lips. He turned to other weather spirits with a grin and a quick, bright laugh as he sped by, his blue cape flurrying in their disgruntled faces. They whispered and shook their blanched heads at the fledgling sprite. In recent weeks, he was scarcely seen outside the dominion of Mankind.
Tousled locks of silver hair sprang and fell as he dropped from the wind's gentle grasp, and he sprinted upon bare white feet along thick tiles of ice, up the staircase by the west dining hall to the throne-room. But his path met a sudden barrier, and Jack crashed into a firm, warm mass.
"What the—" a husky voice hollered above Jack's head, and a pair of rough hands pushed him back. He stumbled awkwardly for balance on the slick steps, and blinked up at a manlike figure, tall and strapping, with thick black inks streaked across bare bronze skin. "Crikey, Jack! Watch yourself, would yeh?"
Jack just grinned, brushing down creases from his white tunic. "Whoops," he chuckled, and leapt around the disgruntled spirit of spring.
The spring sprites were made from earth and wood, with flower-petal eyes and thick fur about their heads. Aster was broader than most, marked by the dark patterns over his arms and back as an Elder. This was not to say he was old, for he had only a century or so over the youngest winter sprite. His marks spoke to a status earned, not inherited – by being the most cross and uptight sprite there ever was, Jack would say.
Aster squinted suspiciously at the other spirit as he dashed past without a single quip or trick. "What's got you so keyed up?" he asked after him.
Jack swiveled around to face Aster, pausing mid-step. "I'm going to ask him!" he said with breathless delight. "I'm getting my wish today!"
Father Winter granted a single wish to every sprite, even those not made of his frozen hands. Most waited at least a millennium before choosing, though some impatient youths asked for their promised birthright early on. They asked for a new face, thicker limbs, sharper wit, or greater mastery over their weather magic. And once their wish was spent, there was no undoing it.
The spring sprite raised a brow at the jubilant winter sprite.
"Oh? And I suppose you'll be asking to be taller? Or maybe less thick-headed, but then that might actually be useful."
Jack shook his head. "I..." he started, nearly bubbling over with excitement, for once not bothering to tease back Aster back. "I want to be a human!"
The bronze spirit stared, sure at first that it must be another of his jests. But Jack just smiled with such honest glee, and Aster's bewildered glance turned to a scowl.
"You what?" he blurted. "Human? Are you bloody mad?"
The other sprite rolled his eyes childishly. "What?" he said with an irritated shrug, as though he couldn't imagine a possible downside to his wish.
"You'll break his heart if you ask for that!" Aster exclaimed, stepping up towards the slender young sprite. "And he'll never give it to you. So do yourself and him a favor and don't say a bloody thing about wanting to be human, right?"
The winter sprite frowned, and started to retort, but a full, rumbling voice spoke before he could.
"Is that what you want, Jack?"
Jack turned, and the elderly god himself gazed down at him from the top of the staircase. He was begot of Mother Earth and Father Time, at the dawn of all life. His beard was long and his face creased with incredible age, but his power was deathless.
Father Winter stood far above the sprites' heads, and his hair floated as though carried by a breeze, while his white robes seemed to fall round him like tailored smog. His pale eyes aglow like soft moonbeams, the god beckoned his youngest son closer.
"...Aye," the winter sprite replied quietly, approaching his creator with a deferent tilt of his body towards the ground.
His father shook his great head, smiling sadly.
"You must know I cannot grant you this."
Jack moved forward and opened his mouth to protest, but the god continued.
"What you ask of me," his unearthly voice said lowly, "is to give you death." Father Winter gazed down at his child with fatigue and vague amusement, as if he were a weeping infant. "And I will not."
The winter sprite glowered, running up the last of the steps between them, though Aster tried to stop him.
"You promised anything!" he insisted. "I've thought it through – I have! It's what I want and you said I could have it. You said-"
"What I said," the god cut in sharply, clear eyes sparking with irritated light, "is you may have anything that I can give. But this I cannot give you."
"Yes you can!" Jack shouted. The spring sprite grabbed his arm to ease him away from the god, before he could further dishonor him. But the winter sprite shook him off. "You just won't."
Father Winter's entire being darkened, like a storm looming among the clouds. Lightening-like flashes burst in his old eyes, and a mist fell upon the stairwell.
"You know nothing of Man," the god bellowed. Jack fell back against Aster, both gripping the cool thin railing to keep their ground in the winds of Father Winter's angry breath. "You expect me to grant you suffering? You expect me to let you fall from immortality? To take back what I gave you when you were still little more than a chill in the air?"
He sighed, and the ancient divinity calmed, returning to his natural pale tones, and lifting the mists. The sprites steadied, Aster pushing Jack off of him. "You cannot know, Jack," the god said so softly, "the misery of Man. You are beyond that. When I made you, I gave happiness itself life, a name, and my love... how can you ask me to undo your very nature, and curse you with the woes of humanity?"
Jack's blue eyes fell to the chipped floor below his feet, brows knitting.
"But father," he spoke up, lifting his sullen face. "If you keep me here... I won't be happy. And that will undo me."
Father Winter sighed again, pressing his fingers to his weary brow.
"Wait another three or four centuries. Then perhaps-"
"But that's too late!" Jack cried.
The god trained his moon-like eyes on his child, and realization slowly filled them. "Why is it you want to be human, Jack?" he asked, brows drawing together.
Jack Frost wet his lips, and sent his agitated gaze this way and that.
"Well," he started, smoothing down his windswept locks. "I've found this mortal..."
"Oh bloody hell," Aster grumbled behind him, rubbing a palm over his lightly whiskered face.
Father Winter merely stared. "And you have fallen for this mortal?" he guessed.
Jack chuckled and nodded. "He's..." he paused, wondering how he could begin to describe the young horseman. "He's so beautiful."
The god considered his love-struck creation. Now his playful heart lay on the line, and the father would do all in his power not to let it break. "You don't know that he'll return your regard," he pointed out calmly. "If I sent you to him, he might turn you back. And what then, Jack?"
Jack's eyes were wide with sudden doubt, but his lips were tight with conviction. "Then at least I'd know," said the sprite after a beat. "You have to let me try at least."
Father Winter closed his eyes. Then he nodded, and they were open and gleaming.
"I will give you until spring," the god slowly began. "You will be human but – if by the first sign of winter's end, this mortal never shows you love to match your own, you return to our realm. Only if you win his heart will you stay."
Jack gaped at his father, then let out a gasping laugh, bright and tuneful as a minstrel's fife. He dashed forward and threw himself against the god's white robes, holding tight as he could against the ethereal fabric.
Father Winter kissed his youngest child's brow, and with that last touch, all fell to black around the winter sprite, and he was falling.
-To be continued-
A/n: Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel p I cannot do accents. ^^ Yeeeeurp~