It was well past midnight and the town of Burgess had long quieted. The Sandman had long since worked his magic over the many households, sparking dreams in the mind of every child. No one had yet tread the freshly fallen snow and the only source of light seemed to come from the narrow street lights lined along the shops and homes. Clouds covered the stars and grayed the sky, a rather morbid sight to the lone winter sprite now crossing the iced roofs with a confident step. He enjoyed the town when it was like this. True, it was the children that kept him coming back, especially the Bennetts. but silence had turned into a rare thing over the last few centuries.

"Enjoying a quiet night. Now I really feel three centuries old." Jack thought, carelessly forming icicles as he strolled. He had promised Bunny to clear the frost by Easter, and the light snow he had spread would be gone by of the guardians and an adolescent besides, thinking about his age was a peculiar thing. But many peculiar things entered his mind when he was alone. It had been a year since the start of his guardianship, and he would be lying if he said the station had become routine. It was a role that had yet to completely fit him and all he could do was offer clouds shifted slightly, allowing for a small patch of yellow stars to slightly illuminate the peripheral darkness. That was when he noticed the strange foot prints leading outside of town, strange if only for their lack of frequency. They dotted the ground instead of forming a cohesive path. Jack had seen the pattern before, and hesitated following it."Oh, no." he sighed. Gray feathers and broken glass made a congruous path, and now he had no choice but to follow. He sped along the trial, and as he left town, a small figure perched at the thawing lake came into had been two years since they had crossed paths. As he approached he could tell she had become more skeletal since their last meeting, and paler as well. Her feet were dipped into the frozen water and she fiddled with something in her hands. She turned quickly, pleased to see the young sprite.

"Jack! It's been too long. How are you?" She said all this with a ghost of a laugh on her breath and rose quickly, putting whatever she had been studying back in her satchel. "What are you doing in Pennsylvania, it's almost March?"She wanted to throw her arms around him, pull him close, breath in his chilled, sweet aroma, but she knew that would mean he would have to feel her arms around him and smell her disgusting scent of dead wood and decay. She carried the smell of the house with her everywhere, and it suit her about as well as summer time suited the winter sprite she longed to hold now.

"Not quite spring yet, Mira." He said as he began to walk around her. "Though I did make a deal with the Kangaroo to clear out before Easter."She turned quickly, not wanting him to see the damage.

"I haven't seen you in awhile. What have you been up to?" he asked in a strange tone. It reminded Mira of a father who knew his offspring has done something wrong, but was unsure just what. She hated it when he took on the fraternal role, it made her stomach turn inside out.

"I went to Sweden for awhile. Summer. Stayed there until spring. And then I thought I would stop by Rochester, New York Rochester." she said, trying to keep talking to prevent any interjection from her floating companion. Before she could ramble about weather and planned excursions, a familiar crunch stopped her from continuing. She couldn't feel the pain of stepping on broken glass, but that sound was about to her undo her. She raised her foot and sure enough, a rather long shard of glass was embedded in her heel.

She sighed loudly. "Alright, I can explain that." She said, pulling it out and fiddling with it in her hand. Before she could fabricate anything coherent, Jack was already behind her with his hands placed lightly on her shoulders, sending a chill through her that had nothing to do with temperature. Pieces of dirty glass decorated her back, and a film of ice had begun to form on the uneven she could do now was wait to hear the questions about to come."Here, hold this for a second." Jack handed his staff to her, and she obliged silently. She felt his hands work the glass out, like picking fruit off a tree.

"Relax your shoulders a bit."

"Nothing happened, really."

"Didn't ask you if anything did."

"You want to know, though. Right?"

" Well, I don't pick glass out of your back everyday."

It was silent as he picked the last few glass pieces out. She turned around and saw his hands filled with clear shapes of frosted shards."Give me those." She said softly, emptying his palms. "You'll hurt yourself."It was Mira's turn to be paternal. He may have been immortal, but he could still feel pain. The staff was still cradled between her arm and side, so she could only assume how ridiculous she looked.

"What are you going to do with all that?" he asked.

"I don't know." She said, clumsily slipping the shards into her satchel. She collected a few that fell in the snow, but dropped Jack's staff in the knelt to pick it up, coming down to her level. It was rare she got to see him this close. He hadn't changed in an entire century, and she cursed herself for staring at him. She rose up quickly, holding her satchel tightly."Well, nice to see you again, Jack. But…well, I should probably get going. " she said, not wanting to leave at all.

"Where are you going?" the sprite asked.

"Rhode Island, I think. Haven't been there in decades." She said. "I want to see if Marilyn's still around. I told you about her, right? Yeah, see if she's still in that big house by the ocean." Marjorie was ninety-two years old when Mira saw her last. She never left the big house by the sea. No one believed her that a pale woman with rotten wings in a torn green dress lived in her attic. The doctors put her on a myriad of medication to remove her "hallucinations". She told Mira stories of when she lived in New Jersey, how she met her husband, how many kids they had (three, if Mira remembered correctly), how her husband died in the trenches, how her children stopped talking to her, and how she outlived all her friends. She knew her friend was gone and had been gone for awhile.

"How are they holding up?"She knew he was talking about her grisly attachments. They had only become more grotesque, and she couldn't bear to let him see.

"Fine." She lied.

He approached her again, not believing her in the slightest. She turned ."Jack, I won't be gone long, just a day or so. Will you be here?" she asked. She heard her own desperation and noticed both her hands were clamped over his right. His surprise faded into an emotion she couldn't quite decipher. She wanted to let go of his hands, but she was afraid she would fall over if she let go."Yeah, I will. Promise." Almost all her weight was on his hand now, but he still had no difficulty keeping her up.A smile spread across her face. "Really, you mean that?" she asked, black and purple fringing her vision, making it look as if Jack was in a peculiar picture frame."Mira…"She sighed, feeling her chest deflate. "Good. I need to tell you about Bruce. He was a character, I'll tell you that. A writer, too. He does punch holes in walls, though. " She didn't know how much escaped her lips before her vision went black and the ground slipped from under her feet.