Title: Of The Moon
Summary: If you had asked Toothiana yesterday how she would have imagined a bear's voice to sound, it would not be like this one's. It would be deep, and gravelly, and rough. It would sound like a roar between words. This bear's voice sounds like laughter./ / Or, Jack Frost is a bear. Toothiana is a princess bound to him for a year. East of the Sun, West of the Moon retelling.
Notes: hey, remember when the first few chapters were updated within days of each other? Haha. Also, in case you were confused, this is the order of Tooth's sisters (this is also more for me than you, but...)
Radha - eldest - age: around 22
Kunjani - deceased - age: around 21 (at time of death)
Toothiana - age: around 19
Pia - introduced w/name this chapter - age: around 18
unnamed - twin - age: around 16
unnamed - twin - age: around 16
unnamed - age: around 14
Tiya - youngest - age: 12 (will be 13 in next chapter)
I don't know if I will name any more sisters - but that's just so if I do I can come back and be like oh okay this is where I places BLAH BLAH.
Two weeks later, as dawn lights the snow up with pinks and oranges, Toothiana mounts Jack's back.
On her back she carries a bag much smaller than the one she brought, as all but a few of her clothes are at home. The bag simply holds a sky blue dress that lightens to white as it goes down to the floor. Though it is not warm enough to wear out into the cold, it is the dress that most reminds Tooth of her new home.
When she set out on the task to find a scarf to give Tiya, she could find none that were right. And when the dress had caught the corner of her eye…
Well, she feels slightly bad about taking a dress when she had asked Jack for a scarf. But Jack had told her, ages ago, that anything in the closet was hers. It wouldn't hurt anything, she had told herself.
Jack starts off into his run, and if not for the pack on her back and the excitement bubbling in her stomach today would be a perfectly normal day.
She has gotten used to this, sitting on Jack's back and riding the wind, but it is no less exciting. Her days at the castle – she wonders when she had stopped calling it home – had been filled with sewing and balls and banquets and other duties a princess is supposed to fill. And towards the end, fear.
Her days spent at Jack's ice palace have been filled with excitement and wonder and joy. She has known every nook and cranny at Punjam Hy Loo's castle since she was five years old, but even after having been at Jack's castle for months she still gets lost or turned around or chances upon a new room.
Still, even though she will miss her days with Jack for the short week she is gone, she is nearly bouncing on his back as he lopes towards her family's castle.
"You're excited?" he shouts to her, most likely having felt her nervous bouncing.
She doesn't know if he hears her laugh as he continues to run.
When the blurs of color have gotten to be mainly green, Jack slows down.
He is still running, but at a pace where she can see the landscape go by. She recognizes the plants of her homeland, and before she knows it she is astride her bear outside of the city gates.
"I will see you in a week." He reminds her as she slides off his back.
She smiles up at him, and nods. "A week."
Then, hugging his large furry neck, she says good bye and walks up to the gates.
The gates to the city are closed and locked, and Toothiana realizes that it must still be so early that they are not open. She grasps the large knocker and lifts it as high as she can, the bang resonating through the trees.
"The city will not be open for another hour." A guard calls down.
"I am Princess Toothiana here for my sister's birthday. Surely you can make an exception?" she didn't look forward to waiting here for an hour.
A helmet covered head peeks out through a window in the tower above the gate, followed by an audible gasp that Tooth heard even though she was feet below.
As the head disappears the gate begins to open, and before it has even opened all the way a guard runs and tackles Tooth.
She immediately thrashes about trying to fight off the person on top of her, until a familiar voice shouts, "Tooth! It's me."
She stops. "P-pia?"
The person on top of her pulls off her helmet, revealing none other than her younger sister. "Pia! But what are you doing as a guard? You were so proud to be in the third regiment!"
Her sister's face sombers unexpectedly, and Tooth's stomach drops. "You weren't hurt or any-!"
"No-no!" Pia assures her, "No. What with- what with Kunjani, and then you leaving… Mother and father wanted to take…precautions."
With her sister's words, everything Toothiana had been running away from comes flooding back to her. Her sister, killed by a man who had killed hundreds more. Jack, whom she had traded off a year in a place she had no idea of with a bear, for that very man's death. Her family, who had suffered the loss of not one but two daughters and sisters. And the Hunter, a man she had bargained dead.
A tear rolls down her face as she held her sister closer.
"I'm so sorry." Tooth tells her as the tears stream down her face. "Because of me, you lost your position. I was so selfish. The Hunter probably would have wound up dead regardless of Jack – the bear – or not. I just wanted to leave. I'm so sorry." She freezes in her apologies, a new worry sparking in the back of her mind.
"H-he is dead, right?" she asks Pia.
Tooth can feel Pia nodding against her shoulder. "He was found in the woods the same day you left. He-he had claw slits in his body."
Tooth shudders slightly at that, knowing that it had been Jack who had killed him.
She wonders if her family had thought that that was what Jack had done to her – taken her off to some far away forest and used his sharp claws and teeth to kill her.
"But!" Pia says, brightening up. "You're home! Everyone will be so excited to see you. We hadn't expected you back for – for a year. Or- um." Tooth hears the unsaid 'or never', but she shrugs it off. "They'll all be so happy. Especially Tiya! She hasn't been nearly as excited about her birthday as she should be, and we all knew it was because you weren't here. But now you are! She'll be so happy, she'll burst!"
Toothiana laughs at her sister's newfound excitement, feeling suddenly at home while lying on the ground in her Pia's arms.