This is neoneco, live from The Comfy Chair.

One day, a winter day, while they are playing in the snow, her mother arrives at their snow fort and orders her to stop shirking her duties.

She has duties? When has she ever had duties?

"You have always had responsibilities," her mother says. "You've just been ignoring them, in favor of Jack."

Jack gives her a concerned look. She knows he doesn't want her to get in trouble for him, and she touches his hair, pushing him back towards his snow on the ground.

What are these responsibilities of hers, then?

"What you've always done. Spreading the snow out, triggering avalanches, coercing the storms into the right areas." her mother explains, both sweetly and with a no nonsense voice. Which is unfortunate, since she can never go very long without, at least, a little nonsense.

She is reluctant to leave Jack while she herds storms, but her mother waves her off, and she flies out, for the first time in years, without him.

She knows that Jack waves until long after he can't see her presence in the trees.

When she sees them again, they are both on the ground, and Jack is speaking softly to her mother, leaning into her touch. Softly? Jack is never soft...

When he sees her, Jack launches himself away from her mother and straight at her. She is so stunned, she nearly dematerializes and passes through him.

He doesn't need more people to be passing right through him.

"I don't... I mean... Boogeyman..." he murmurs into her chest. "I was afraid you wouldn't come back..."

She gives her mother a look and gets one in return that she takes to mean, 'How was I to know he was just going to show up?'

Her mother is far too soft on that man, father or not.

She touches Jack and pulls him into the air, and she carries him home again.

She promises, to him and herself, to never leave again.

My personal headcannon for this chapter is that 'The Boogeyman' sees that his beautiful daughter is all alone and on the ground and happens to be looking after a young spirit, and he just can't resist the temptation of riling the two of them up.