WARNING: NIGHTMARES ARE PROHIBITED FROM READING THIS FANFICTION
The night came too slowly. The shadows stretched like taffy against the floorboards until the world outside was swallowed with darkness. I paced the living room, turning on the light for my mom and closing the balcony curtains. I cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes, and did whatever I could to keep myself busy before the sun went down. By the time the last yellow rays of light slipped below the skyscrapers, I had worked myself to the idea that maybe I was too tired to go with Jack.
No. No. I needed answers. My inner being screamed for them, to know what was going on. Mom, still at her painting, kissed me absently on the top of my head when I told her that I was off.
"Sweet dreams, honey," she said as I closed the door. Locking it, and sliding the curtain over my window, I stripped out of my house-clothes and layered my leggings under two pairs of sweatpants. This time, I picked out a gray hoodie that fit over my Star Wars one (note to self: wash SW hoodie soon). I was winding my scarf around my neck when a shadow jumped across the far wall.
I swiped around, fingers clutching the beads around my neck. A wisp of snow white hair peeked out from between the curtain. A dink, dink-dink, echoed through my room, and I pushed the curtains aside. Jack hovered outside of my window. Pulling his staff away from the glass, he back up so I could push open the window.
"Are you ready?" He asked.
My heart was racing; I could hear it in my ears, feel it pounding against my ribcage. But I nodded, and stepped up onto the ledge. Jack flew closer to me and wrapped and arm around my lower back. Slowly, he floated away from the windowsill until I flew with him, clasping to his hoodie with one hand and holding onto him tightly with the other. I tried not to notice how cold he was, how the little warmth he gave me was sort of frightening.
"Hold on tight. Wind!"
And we went soaring, so fast that my breath caught in my chest. I clung tighter to Jack as we went up and up, our faces pushing against the chill of the night. Not daring to look down, I only imagined how small the ground became as we rushed past the shroud of smoggy clouds.
Then we were floating with the stars.
So many stars…they twinkled above us, while the clouds rolled away beneath us. I clung tighter to Jack, my eyes finding so many constellations, so many beautiful white gems that scattered the dark sky like sand on the beach. The moon loomed overhead, full and merry and bright, lighting us up in the night.
A split of green and blue danced across the sky, flickering and wavering like the flame of a candle. Jack looked grim suddenly, observing the dancing light. Then he held tighter to me and ordered Wind to carry us onward. We raced against the Northern Lights. I couldn't tell where we were. There was only sky around us, clouds that wisped and rolled and tumbled under our stomachs as we shot across the night sky.
Soon, though, I began to notice the sudden drop in temperature. I clung to Jack, whose grip tightened around me but offered little warmth. He gritted his teeth, holding his staff out in front of him. We picked up speed, racing the Lights until they ended at a mountain peak. Jack stalled, then angled us downward. Chilly water sprayed our faces as we rushed past the cloud line and emerged above a beautiful while oasis.
The Lights met at what would pass as another snow-capped mountain, but as we flew closer I could spot the indent in the cliff side, where there seemed to be a door. We went barreling towards it, and I hid my face in Jack's chest just as the doors opened and warmth rushed over us.
"C'mon," Jack chuckled, settling onto red carpeted floorboards. "You should learn to trust me sometimes."
I looked up at him, his red tipped nose almost touching mine. My gaze wavered, and I glanced at his lips. But Jack pulled away, his face suddenly a stony mask, and rested against his staff.
"JACK!" Bellowed a voice, thick with a Russian accent. I swiveled around, surveying the scoping magnitude of the toy factory that surrounded me. Towering yetis worked with figurines and toy cars, tops, dolls, robots, anything and everything a child could wish for Christmas. In the middle of the room stood a giant golden globe, millions of tiny lights twinkling like stardust against the gleaming continents. But the one who shouted Jack's name pushed through.
An immense man stood before us, dressed in a bright red tunic and dark slacks tucked into fur trimmed boots. His beard fell straight and cleanly to his waist, and his sleeves were rolled back, revealing Naughty on his right arm and Nice on his left.
"Hi, North," Jack said in a monotone voice, though a friendly smiled played out on his lips. Santa – North – hardly glanced at Jack, his dark blue eyes landing on me.
"Is this…?"
I waited for Jack to introduce me, but he gave me a coy look. So I straightened my back, even though I felt like I need to sit, and said, "Mimzy Bird,"
A long, awkward pause erupted within the workshop. Even the yetis stopped their toy making to look at me with grunts and oofs. North gripped my hand, enveloping it in his giant one, and shook my whole arm.
"It is you! Pleasure, what a pleasure it is to finally meet you, Mimzy!" North gave a pert nod to the yetis, and they grunt-shouted their own hellos before returning to work. "Would you like cookie?"
A tiny elf dressed in red ran forward, a tray of multiple cookies held above his bell-tipped head.
"I–"
"Of course you would!" He took a random snowman cookie and placed it in my hand. "And what is cookie without some milk, eh?" Another little elf brought a glass goblet of milk and lifted it up to me. Jack chuckled somewhere behind us, but the giant arm that lead me towards a clear golden platform restricted me from turning around.
North set me down in a hulking red chair that utterly dwarfed me, setting the goblet of milk in my hand. Then he backed away, Jack floating into view behind him. Yetis peeked out from behind their yeti-sized desks; elves skirted across the floor to get a better view of little ol' me. I sat there awkwardly, and unbitten cookie in my hand and the goblet making my arm shake with the effort of not dropping it.
Jack was giving me a look. He glanced from the cookie, to me, cookie, me. Oh, I mouthed, and played it off by bringing the frosted snowman to my mouth. "Mmmm…." I murmured, and grinned, even though it tasted like play-dough. The yetis and little elves cheered, and North nodded like he approved of my false enjoyment. When the crowd dispersed, I felt something damp tickling my ear.
A giant pink nose touched mine and I screeched as Bunnymund rose up beside me. An elf saved my dropped milk, puffing with the effort of holding the goblet up. Bunnymund sniffed at me, his whiskers brushing my forehead.
"This is the girl?" His voice was thick with and Aussie accent. Two straps crossed his furry white chest and two boomerangs poked out from his shoulders. He was absolutely nothing like I had imagined the Easter Bunny to be.
"Yes!" North motioned to me enthusiastically. "This is her!"
"She's nothin' but a wee ankle biter!" Bunny stepped back and sat on his haunches. A long, fuzzy ear twitched, and I resisted the urge to touch them.
"Ah, Sandy!" I turned my attention back to North, who now stood with a floating, round little yellow man by his side. The Sand Man was dwarfed by North, and not nearly as intimidating. He had the air of a child ready to play. Sandy floated near me, offering his little hand. An exclamation point appeared above his head when I shook it, and then a question mark when he looked back at North.
"That is her! Misty!"
"Mimzy," I whispered the correction as Sandy floated back beside North. The big hulk of a man looked around curiously.
"Where is Toothiana?"
"Here!" A woman buzzed behind me, flying around my chair to look at me head on. "Oh my goodness," suddenly she was fluttering beside Bunnymund, her hummingbird wings buzzing above her. "Is this her? Oh, she's so cute," she was fluttering in front of me again, gazing at me with giant eyes as colorful at the feathers that layered her body. Little copies of her buzzed around me, one in particular coming rather close.
"Baby Tooth!" The little fairy waved and returned to the Tooth Fairy's side. Now they all stared at me, wide eyed, as if I was supposed to do something.
Jack was the first to break the awkward tension, floating up beside the chair. "Guys, give her some room." They obeyed, backing up only a few feet from the suffocating circle they were in. Then he looked at me, eyebrows up. "You good?" I took a deep breath, observing the colorful people around me. People that I stopped believing in when I was little, but after Jack's explanation in the park, sparked back to life. I knew in my heart that they were real, but a part of my brain refused to accept it.
Finally, setting the unfinished cookie on my lap, I said, "Jack told me I could get some answers from you guys."
Eyes flicked from me to Jack, almost accusingly. Even Jack looked down at me as if I had done something wrong.
"What?" I asked as their voices rose into an argument.
"Maybe she's not one after all," Bunny put in. Sandy shook his head, made the "no way" motion with his hands and his thoughts appeared in golden pictures above his head. I didn't know if he was agreeing with Bunnymund or standing up for me.
And what are they talking about? "Not the one." Not one what?
Toothiana whispered to her fairies. To North, she said, "Can we answer her questions?"
"No," North's commanding voice hushed the room. The group glanced from him to me, unsure of where to look. North's small blue eyes rested on me, but they were not angry; they were childlike and amused, and his rosy cheeks did nothing to help in his seriousness. I waited patiently, though I shifted in my seat. Finally, North stepped forward and Jack took a respective step aside.
"Mimzy," he said quietly, his eyes, now very serious, looked down on me un-accusingly. "What is your center?"
A collective intake of breath could be heard from the Guardians, all except North and Jack. Bunny's ears twitched.
"You don't mean that she… that…" Bunny stopped with a look from North.
Toothiana seemed to beam. She clasped her hands and chittered to her fairies. Sandy only went on smiling at me, while I sat uncomfortably in the giant Santa-sized armchair. The three other Guardians continued to talk among themselves, their voices low enough for me not to hear. I didn't understand what North was asking, so I looked up at him curiously.
He sighed, and said, motioning to the balcony of the workshop. "Come, walk with me."
I'd rather not, was my inner response, but I stood, handing my cookie to an elf (who gobbled it up happily) and followed North. I looked back over my shoulder to see the Guardians' eyes following us, Jack's in particular looking very sad. I'd never seen him look so sad.
North led me around the balcony, a giant arm around my shoulder. He nodded to some of his yetis, smiling, but with a hurried look on his face. We came almost all
the way around the balcony when North stopped in front of a door with the glass that made the things behind it disproportional and hard to see. North opened the door and motioned for me to go inside first.
It was his private workshop. Ice, carved by the little chiseling tools that rested here and there, rose up from his desk as a roller coaster, a little cart going round and round up and down on the tracks. Ice ballerinas, dolls, little trucks, danced around us on their own. A silvery-clear plane whizzed by me, it propeller buzzing around my head. I heard the door click shut, and I turned to see North leaning up against it expectantly.
I swallowed hard. Walk off with a strange, very big man and get lost in a strange, very big toy shop. Good move, Mim.
"Let me ask you again," North moved from the door and over to his desk. "What is your center, Mimzy Bird?" He pronounced my last name like board, and it took me a second to see the doll in his hand. It was the kind that you keep opening, unveiling smaller version of the doll until it gets to the smallest one.
"I'm… I don't know what you're talking about?" I glanced back at the door. North grabbed my hand gently, and gave me his giant doll set.
"On the outside, you see big strong man, yea?" He nodded at the doll, and I opened it to see a kinder version than the one holding swords in his grasp. "But I am also honest and rosy cheeked," I opened the next, and he was holding little animals. "I am also kind and gentle, but at my center," I held the smallest doll in the middle of my palm. Dramatically big eyes were painted on the little baby.
"You… have really big eyes?" I ran my thumb over the smooth paint. North took it from me and held it between his thumb and forefinger.
"Yes, big eyes to see wonder and beauty in every little thing," he picked up a mini sculpture of an ice horse. "So I ask you, Mimzy Bird, what is your center?"
I stood there, staring at the little doll in his grasp. With all this wonder, with all the magic around me, it was hard to focus. What was my center? What was the one thing I cared about most, cared about more than anything? Most importantly, what was my gift?
After a moment, I said softly, "My family… my Mom, my best friend… I'd do anything for them."
North paused, and set the ice horse on his desk. A very sad look passed swiftly across his face before being replaced with his usual rosy cheerfulness. He set a hand on my shoulder, and smiled. "That, Mimzy, is the best center of all."