An: I know it's been a while since I've updated anything. I've been a bit bogged down the last couple of months, hopefully I can start uploading some stuff with a bit of regularity now, if a bit slower than I used to.
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Jack stands atop an icy mountain top that stands amidst the Northern Sea, cloak snapping around him in the wind, hands held before him, tiny balls of white fluff spilling forth from his hands in a building tide.
The winds will take them across the sea and cover every inlet and every island, every tiny spur of land.
Nothing will escape his notice as he scatters them to the four winds, like dandelion seeds they fill the air until they are everywhere and still they come, more pouring from his hands in a torrent of white.
He watches as they spread, carried aloft on the wind and the churning waters bellow.
They will be his eyes and ears. Wherever there is snow they will follow.
He can't be everywhere but they can, and where they can't the winds will carry him.
Now for the fun bit, breaking into Santa's workshop.
Breaking into North's workshop might be a bit overstating things. There's not much breaking or entering.
After three months of more of the same North knows to expect him, and over his visits he's made a game of trying to slip past the Workshop's defences. It keeps the Yeti's on their toes and gives him something to work on in his spare time.
Progress on his 'castle' has slowed to a halt, and his efforts crafting mirrors are proving unproductive.
Grumbling to himself about his latest failure he headed north carried by the wind, spreading the deluge of snow forecasted for the area as he went, mixed amongst it more sprites, balls of fluff drifting in his wake, mixed amongst the powdery snow that falls above the waves as he made his way across the Atlantic.
It's wasn't that he didn't trust those who had, no matter how reluctantly, acknowledged him as having some actually authority by, very tenuously, giving him their cooperation; the tentative few whose motives he actually trusted. Winter spirits could be an awfully shifty lot.
But his presence was patchy in places far more than he would like, and his sprites tended to be more reliable.
Jack was ever thankful that whether they acknowledged him as being higher on the totem pole than them or not most of the other winter aligned spirits could be trusted to take care of their own little corners.
The snow drifting below him gradually turns to rain, and then fog, and then rain again as he follows the Atlantic northwards, once more moving into the frigid North Sea after his brief detour south, tiny fishing vessels bobbing bellow, crewmen fighting against the turbulent winds and howling rain.
Even during war people must eat it seems, and for all the wind and rain the fish are out in large numbers today.
By the time he reached Arctic waters the rain had given way to the faint stirrings of what in a few hours was sure to be a howling blizzard. Luckily this time the only ones who would be there to notice it would be the penguins who were used to the harsh conditions.
Finding The Workshop was always a bit of a tricky business from the air since most of it was built into a cliff side, and what little was visible of it was mostly buried under icy crusts and snow.
The slowly building blizzard didn't exactly help either. He might be The Spirit of Winter, Master of Ice and Snow but that didn't mean he can see through it!
Finally managing to find it without crashing himself into a wall of rock, of which he narrowly missed many, Jack was glad enough that he hadn't got lost or unknowingly ran into a wall that he simply entered the main cluster of buildings through one of the many doors rather than sneaking through one of the service tunnels or through the air ducts of one of the other adjoining building clusters until he reached his destination.
Silently Jack gave himself another reminder to memorise the place's exact location until he was good enough that he could find it with his eyes closed and his arms tied behind his back.
A quick glance at the large globe that dominated the centre of the building as he entered told him all he needed to know about global belief situation; it really was a useful contraption. Maybe he should get one for himself, though he'd have to find a way to miniaturize it somehow.
Jack could admit to himself that there was really not much point to him being at the pole. If North had anything important to share there wasn't anything stoping him from notifying them on his own. Given some of the mutterings he's overheard from Toothiana North might not even wait for something to matter before he gave a call.
Maybe he could talk Fang-Hua into taking switching off with him later. The Tooth Fairy's and The Sandman's information was about a hundred times more up to date and accurate than North's.
He hasn't seen the Tooth Fairy in awhile either. The war kept him busy these days.
It kind of upset the balance of things when people were dying all over the place, or randomly gaining or losing belief in ever increasingly random intervals as hope, desperation, and despair warred within them just as surely as the world's nations did over the planet's surface.
Nature was all about balance; and there was also the fact you kind of had to be a heartless bastard to not care when everybody around you was dying and suffering.
Not that they could do much even if you were someone with believers, or a calling that lent itself to that sort of thing.
That was the problem with global warfare; it was a bit too big.
And even the really heartless spirits, of which there was a few, didn't like losing their only conversation partners, or watching their countries be sacked; even if in the case of conversation partners it was half the time just so they had someone to condescend to, or else yell at who could actually hear them, or experience the hundreds of other ways to be rude that some had perfected seemingly for the sole use of driving each other mad. Some of them were rather miserable characters.
Toothiana though, there was just something about her.
He enjoys poking at her a little too much, and the reactions he gets are always worth it. Something in him compels him to rile her.
Her enraged responses never fail to bring out a sort of pleased feeling within him whenever he catches a glimpse of that fierce warrior queen he's heard so much about shinning through. That inner fire of hers ensnares him.
For all his teasing and prodding he really did respect the Tooth Fairy. Directing so many fairies couldn't be easy. Jack doesn't think that others see teeth the way they do, and he's sure Toothiana must see even more than he does.
He doesn't think some of the other's appreciate just how much time and energy goes along with the prestige inherent in some of the roles of those at the top.
He knows how draining it is trying to organize and direct his sprites; he can't imagine the amount of thought that needs to go into organizing and maintaining something as complicated and never ending as the collection of the world's teeth.
"Jack!" All thoughts of the Tooth Fairy are swept aside as a loud voice calling his name reaches his ear. Jack has to fight a grimace as North made his entrance, brushing through the crowd of Elves and Yetis, arms out in welcome.
"Ah Jack Frost, have been wandering when you would come." North bellows, exuberant as always, before clapping Jack on the back hard enough his knees almost buckle.
With an inward grown Jack resigns himself to several hours of being shown new toy designs and discussing the pros and cons of using different shades of the colour blue for the dresses of little girl's dolls, and being asked whether he thinks red or green is a more appropriate colour for little toy robots as North gestures him on.
"Come, come, I have new toy for you to look at."
"Promise me we're actually going to talk about the actual reason I'm here this time." Jack likes North a lot but the man can be overbearing and a little too enthusiastic, especially when it comes to his toys.
Ever the host North proffers waves his words aside before proffering him a bottle of something he snatches from a passing elf which Jack graciously declines. Moon knows these visits are just a formality at this point but North has a habit of getting lost in explaining whatever new invention or innovation he's come up with.
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An: About Jack wearing a cloak, keep in mind this is long before they were around and so hoodies are a no go until they're invented, and even then it's not like he's not going to have a collected a bunch of different outfits over the years.