AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter is dedicated to nothing neW undeR thE sunN, CreativeSpirit28 and Super-Dash. Super-Dash was logged on as a guest so I'll reply to their review here.

Thank you so much for your review! I'm seriously glad that you liked the last chapter, and I really hope you like this one too! You actually provided the idea for the beginning of this chapter; I hadn't even thought of it! And yay! Cookie! *NOM.*

A special thanks to bookangel1624 and Deathly-Hunger-Jackson who, along with Super-Dash, reviewed the last chapter and really gave me encouragement; thank you guys so much!

Thank you also to my friend Holly who has been reading all these chapters and giving me feedback on them. Thanks a bunch Holly; you be awesomeness and stuff!

Hope you guys like this chapter! It's mostly filler, but I hope you still like it! Please read and review!

DISCLAIMER: Rise of the Guardians is owned by Dreamworks. I own my OC Annabelle.

Chapter 10 – The Sandman

Jack must have only woken up a few minutes before me. It was him scuffling about that woke me up. He'd opened the curtains and was now in the small bathroom that was joined onto his room; I could hear the water running.

I sat up slowly and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, vaguely wondering if Sandy had visited us last night. I blushed again at what he might have thought if he'd seen me and Jack curled up together.

A smile pricked at the corners of my mouth as I remembered what had happened last night. Jack had…kissed me. I couldn't stop smiling when I thought about it. I know he'd kissed me before, but this time it had been different. Mainly because I'd actually kissed him back this time and not just sat there like a complete idiot.

As I stretched to wake myself up properly Jack walked back though. He smiled when he saw I was awake.

"Morning," he said.

I smiled back. "Morning."

Before either of us could say anything else there was a loud banging at the door, and Bunny's panicked voice rang out loudly.

"Jack! Get your icy butt out here right now! Anna's gone!"

I facepalmed. I should've known if either Bunny or Tooth had seen my empty room they'd have overreacted. Jack rolled his eyes and went to open the door. Bunny kept knocking at thin air for a few moments before he realised the door was now open and Jack was leaning against the doorframe looking anything but worried.

"Morning Kangaroo," he smiled.

Bunny looked like he was going to rip his head off. "This is no time for jokes!" he yelled. "We have no idea where Anna is and…"

That was when he noticed me sitting on Jack's bed. I waved and grinned.

"Morning drama-queen!" I chuckled.

Bunny groaned and slumped against the corridor wall. "So you ain't kidnapped?"

I looked down at myself. "Not last time I checked."

"And you didn't run off looking for Jacobi yourself?" he continued.

"…I'm here now, aren't I?" I answer after a few moments of silence.

Bunny didn't seem to notice my pause, and he sighed. "I'll go tell the elves to call off the search party," he said, muttering as he walked off.

He stopped suddenly before walking backwards back to the door and looking back in.

"What're you doing in there anyway?" he asked, before starting to chuckle without even giving either of us a chance to answer.

"Fun night Jacky?" he grinned, punching Jack on the shoulder.

This time it was me and Jack who looked like we were going to rip his bunny ears off. Jack slammed the door in his face as he continued to laugh.

"The platform in front of the globe in ten minutes!" he called through the door in between chuckles. "North's called a meeting!"

Jack flopped face down on the bed next to me. "If he starts spreading rumours then I'm not going to be responsible for my actions," he muttered into the blanket on the bed.

I rolled him over and he blinked up at me.

"Don't worry," I told him. "Easter's just around the corner. Bunny's gonna be too busy to gossip."

"I hope you're right," he sighed before standing up. "We'd better get to that meeting."

He held his hand out to me, smiling again. I smiled back and took it, and he pulled me up. We walked to the meeting like that, hand in hand.

"So what, we've just got to carry on like nothing happened? That doesn't seem right."

Tooth sighed. "We're not carrying on like nothing happened. We're just doing what needs to be done. The truth is Anna, there're more kids these days than there ever has been. You have the robins, I have the fairies and North has the yetis. Mund has nobody to help him."

I shook my head as I picked up another egg and dropped it into the basket I was carrying. "I'm not saying we shouldn't help Bunny out. I'm just saying that it seems like nobody's taking the threat of the pixies seriously."

Tooth coaxed a few eggs out from under a bush. "I know that it doesn't seem fair, but Easter has to come first. Plus, if the pixies are anything like how they were last time then they're probably gonna try to wreck it. It makes more sense if we're all here."

I nodded in defeat. "I guess you're right…hey! Come back here!" I yelled before chasing after an egg that had ran off.

North had told us all that we were to help Bunnymund with painting the Easter eggs. Tooth and I were catching them (or at least attempting to) and Jack and Sandy were helping Bunny with the actual painting. North wasn't here, saying he would try to monitor the pixies' whereabouts from the workshop. I whispered to him before we left about the cave in the mountains and then took off down one of Bunny's holes in the ground which lead to his warren before he could ask any questions. We'd been here a few hours already and we seemed to be getting into the swing of things.

Of course, as I'm sure you can guess, that didn't last too long.

A large group of eggs which had already been painted ran back out into the clearing where we were working. They all seemed to be panicking. Bunny groaned, yelling, "Not this again!" before a swarm of pixies appeared seemingly out of nowhere and started to mess with the eggs.

Bunny pulled his boomerang out and started hurling it at the menaces. He then pulled out a few of his egg grenades threw them, creating a smoke-screen for me, Jack, Tooth and Sandy to attack from.

Tooth was punching and kicking away at the pixies. She may look innocent enough but I swear she's got a black belt in every martial art there is, or it certainly looked like it! Sandy was creating all sorts of weapons out of his sand and firing, shooting, slamming and swinging them at the tiny grey creatures, sending them flying back into the walls of the warren. Bunny was still hacking away at them with his boomerang. But the strange thing was, each of them seemed to only have a small group of pixies to deal with.

The majority of the pixies were honing in on me and Jack.

We did our best to fight them off, but we both knew the truth: we were much more powerful after we'd swapped powers. As soon as we got a chance to do so, we did. The number of pixies dwindled rather quickly after that, and soon they all fled from the warren.

Jack, Tooth, Sandy and I landed back on the ground next to Bunny. Thankfully most of the eggs were fine, and not too much of the warren had been messed with. Bunny, Tooth and Sandy were all staring at me and Jack.

"I don't think I'm ever going to get used to seeing you guys swap," Tooth remarked, and Bunny and Sandy nodded in agreement.

Jack and I grinned at each other and threw our staffs back, changing back to normal instantly.

"I don't think we're gonna get used to it either," Jack admitted, and I nodded in agreement.

Bunny bent down to pick up and armful of the eggs that had scattered. Once the pixies had gone they had all huddled round him for comfort.

"Aw, even Bunny has a soft side," I teased.

He rolled his eyes at me before walking back to where the boys had been painting.

"Come on everyone! Back to work!" he called.

Sandy, Tooth, Jack and I followed him back to start our jobs again.

Although we knew that the pixies were probably going to start causing a lot more trouble, none of us expected the scale of the attacks to be what they were. They were messing us about pretty much every other day, from continuing to mess up Bunny's work for Easter to repeatedly attempting to wreck Tooth and the fairies' job of taking children's baby teeth to taunting and teasing the elves and yetis on the occasions that they managed to sneak into the workshop without North noticing.

The weird thing was that every time the pixies attacked any of the other guardians bar me and Jack, they would only stay long enough to make a nuisance of themselves before disappearing. If they showed up and either Jack or I were there, they made more of an attempt to actually harm us, but still left pretty quickly. However, if Jack and I were both there they wouldn't stop attacking us, and usually only us regardless of if any of the other guardians were there, until we swapped powers. Almost as soon as we did that, they fled. And every time this happened, if they did stay to fight, we seemed to be taking longer to defeat them each time. It didn't feel like the pixies were getting stronger though…it felt like we were getting weaker somehow.

I was lying in bed back in the tree hideout a few weeks after the warren had been attacked. I couldn't sleep; my brain felt too full of gunk. The pixies had been trying to mess up everything recently. Easter had came and went, and luckily we managed to help Bunny pull it off pretty much without a hitch, but that didn't mean the pixies hadn't tried to screw it up.

I was exhausted from running around for what felt like 24/7 for the past few weeks, but my brain was refusing to shut down. I sighed and stood up, shaking my wings out. I walked through to the main room, stretching. I heard a fluttering sound and at first I thought it was one of the pixies come to make trouble, but when I turned the corner I saw that it was Cheddar pecking at some dried fruit I'd given the birds for their dinner that night.

When he heard my footsteps he quickly whipped around to see who I was. Ever since Jacobi and the pixies had invaded our home all the robins had been on high alert and had been very jumpy, especially the younger ones. Cheddar realised it was me and relaxed before flying over to me. I held out my hand and he landed on it.

"Couldn't sleep?" I asked him, and he shook his head. "Me neither," I sighed.

I looked over at the tunnel that led up to the forest above us. There was a single beam of moonlight shining down from it. Maybe a fly about in the fresh air would clear my mind.

"I'm gonna go fly outside for a bit," I told Cheddar. "If anyone asks tell them I'll be back in a bit, yeah?"

Cheddar nodded.

"If I'm not back in and hour then have Rudi go find Jack, okay?"

He nodded again. I smiled and pecked a small kiss on his head. He chirped happily before flying back off to his dried fruit. I positioned myself under the tunnel and, waving to Cheddar, shot myself up the tunnel towards the source of the beam of moonlight. After aiming myself out of the hole in the tree and slaloming through the trees, I burst into the clean, crisp spring night air. I cracked my shoulders and grinned before starting to wiz around going in no particular direction.

Once I felt like I had gotten rid of all my excess energy (which admittedly took a while) I plopped myself down on a branch near the top of a tree, breathing heavily. With my legs dangling over the edge, I leaned my back against the trunk and stared up at the full moon.

The Man in the Moon had never spoken to me since the day he told me my name. Sometimes I wanted to scream at him to talk back to me. Sometimes I was fine with just having a one-way conversation with him. Today was one of those times.

"I seriously don't know what goes through your mind sometimes," I told him. "You could have let us know about the whole Destined Spirits thing. Or at least let North know. You seem to talk to him more than any of the rest of us."

I looked down to the forest floor. "You really confuse me sometimes," I sighed. "Why can't you just explain why you're doing stuff sometimes? Why can't you make it easier for the rest of us?"

Of course he remained silent. I groaned and rested my head back against the trunk of the tree. A golden sparkle caught my eye and I turned to look. I smiled when I realised what it was before taking off towards the stream of golden sand headed towards the village.

I slowly flew over it, dipping my hand in. Some small sprays of sand flew out and turned into butterflies which flitted around my head. I laughed, and just as I did Sandy flew into view on his little plane made of sand. He waved to me before flying over.

"Hey Sandy!" I called.

After Sandy had checked that all the dreams were heading in the right direction, we both landed on the forest floor. I had something I wanted to ask him that I'd been wondering recently.

"Sandy? I was wondering…do you remember your life before you were a spirit?"

He looked up at me, surprised, a question mark hovering over his head.

I shrugged. "I'd just been wondering recently, that's all."

He looked thoughtful for a moment before forming a model of a small child out of sand. He looked about eight or nine, but quite short for his age. Due to the colour of the sand I couldn't tell what colour his hair and eyes were though.

"Was that you?" I asked, and he nodded. I frowned. "What…you know…what happened?"

He frowned as well, as if he was trying to figure out a way of showing me. A light bulb turned on over his head (literally) before he pretended to fall asleep and created a thought bubble over his head with sand before opening his eyes to check I got the message.

I nodded. "You make me fall asleep and you show me what happened in a dream?" I clarified, and he nodded.

I immediately sat down on the ground before curling over on my side. I nodded to Sandy before closing my eyes. I felt something softly drop over my eyes before I instantly fell asleep.

A young boy was sitting in a very clean and almost empty room. The only objects there were a small single bed, a chest of drawers and the chair next to the bed that the child was sitting on. Another young boy was lying in the bed playing snap with the other child.

The child in the bed was clearly sickly. He had very pale skin and quite messy short brown hair. His bright green eyes looked full of life though.

The other child was very quiet. Whereas when the boy in bed won a game he would shout 'Snap!' When the other boy won he just took the cards without saying a word. He had sandy coloured hair and bright blue eyes.

After a few minutes of playing their game in relative silence, the boy in the bed piped up.

"You know what my biggest dream is Sandy?" he asked the other boy.

The quiet boy, Sandy, looked up at his friend but didn't say anything. He just had a quizzical look on his face.

He sickly boy looked out the window. "I want to go catch butterflies in the forest one last time. Like dad and I used to do before my legs stopped working."

Sandy followed his gaze out the window before turning back to his friend with a determined look on his face. He laid a hand over his before nodding once at him. The other boy seemed to understand and his face lit up.

"Thank you Sandy!" he cried before throwing his arms round his friend's neck.

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Sandy was now in the middle of the forest next to his village. He had a small net in one hand and a glass jar in the other. He had the same determined look on his face that he'd had back at his friend's house. Suddenly, a small white butterfly caught his eye and he ran after it, catching it easily in his net. He gently eased it into the jar before screwing the lid back on.

He caught a few more white butterflies before he came across a very colourful one. This one seemed to be causing him a few more problems; it looked like he was finding it harder to catch than the others. The butterfly came to a tree before flying straight up to the top of it. Sandy clenched his fists before holding the net between his teeth and the jar under one arm. He slowly began to climb the tree.

He reached the top of the tree and spotted the butterfly resting on a leaf. He rested the jar on a branch and brought the net back behind his head getting ready to swing.

The butterfly flew away.

He swung too hard.

He lost his balance.

The jar fell and smashed on the ground.

My eyes flew open. Sandy was standing next to me with a sheepish look on his face. I sat up slowly, looking down, trying to get my head around what I'd just seen.

"So…you died trying to fulfil your friend's dream?" I clarified, and he nodded.

"What was wrong with your friend?" I asked. "Was he paralysed or something?"

Sandy nodded again and then gestured from his waist to his feet.

"Paralysed from the waist down…" I murmured, before looking back up at Sandy. "You were a really good friend to him Sandy."

He blushed modestly, before his face changed to look concerned.

"I'm fine," I reassured him.

He shook his head and created a pixie above his head in sand.

"Oh…that…" I sighed. "We're managing okay. Jack and I just feel…we feel like we're getting weaker. It's really weird."

He really did look concerned now. I smiled to reassure him.

"I'm sure we just need some rest. Now that Easter's over hopefully the pixies'll settle down a bit," I said.

He nodded slowly but he didn't look convinced. I stood up, stretching.

"I'd better go," I told him. "I need to get back to the robins before they start wondering where I've gone."

Sandy nodded understandingly and we both said goodnight before he headed back to the village and I flew back to the tree.