Songs) 1. Chase the Light by TSFH 2. Possibility by Lykke Li
Not even a few weeks after that, Pitch cornered me on a cloudy day as I was skimming over the mountains of Argentina. It was a holiday season for them and I was excited to cast some excitement down the slopes into the valleys. Excitement and its negative counterpart, worry, are both vibrational. They shake. Mountains are the best places to cast it because it echoes far and wide. It's kind of like the earth is singing a marigold orange song. But as he approached the notes fell flatter. I corrected them and tried my best to cordon off some of his wandering fear which always emanated around him.
"I don't appreciate your attempts to contain me Mimic, darling. It's making me claustrophobic."
I cocked my eye head and raised an eyebrow, "You live underground. I don't appreciate you messing up my work even if it's just how things are around you. Besides it doesn't take much energy to do."
He feigned looking hurt, "are you saying I don't warrant your full energy?"
"Why are you here, Mr. Black?"
"Do I need a reason to visit a young spirit who I've taken under my wing?" his voice dripped sugar.
"Yes." I stated the obvious, "and that is a bit of an exaggeration."
"Hardly, my dear. I have taught you a great many things haven't I?"
"Some things." was all that I would admit to. I'd taught myself a fair bit and I wasn't gonna let him take credit for that. There were more than enough times he'd been less than forthcoming, "Now why are you here?"
"Between friends, I came to see if you would be open to doing me a favor."
Two things in that sentence made me very suspicious. The word "friend" and the word "favor." Friendship was not how I would describe our dynamic. He was the only person even close to being anything to me, but friends? No. I was pretty sure that Pitch only liked me as far as he could throw me and now he wanted to throw me. A very small part of me wondered if I was being overly suspicious. If he wanted to be friends, and since I was constantly aware of how alone I was, playing ball may not be so bad. I hadn't considered wanting a friend in the last decade. I had faced rebirth as if being alone was a understood eventuality. I'd resigned myself to it.
"What kind of favor?" I asked, careful not to sound like I was committed one way or the other.
"As you know all I can project and feed on is fear. You my dear can cast anything and feed on anything. Because of that you can...reach a larger audience per se."
"What larger audience do you want me to reach? And why?"
"I'll tell you soon. As for the why, it has to do with the balance of the world."
The balance of the world. The balance…
Pitch and I had talked about balance before. Usually about how every spirit had a role to play in it. If spirits did not fulfill their duties, not only was it painful for them, but the world as a whole suffered. Travelling all over the world as often as I did one could see all the energies balancing each other. The happiness generally cancelled out the sad, the sun matched the cloudy days.
"I'm glad you're willing to consider it." Pitch kept speaking, "You'll see me again soon. When I have more information."
And like that he vanished into a shadow on the mountainside. Soon could be a lot of things for someone as old as Pitch. I filed our little conversation away. It seemed important, but I also didn't think it would be coming to get me in the next few weeks.
I was wrong. Pitch didn't return to elaborate on his favor, but I began to notice things. The balance was off. It started as small things. Patches of worry, colored like an aging pumpkin would pop up and go away. A few were normal. Everyone's got worries. But these were whole communities, and in places where it wasn't normal. And it persisted. Worry isn't supposed to be long lasting. It's supposed to come and go as you learn to tackle increasingly difficult challenges in life. Normally it's a healthy motivator. It was starting to make me feel dizzy and off-kilter.
I started investigating the patches and using my powers to try and mitigate them. It was less me keeping emotional balance, but using people's emotions as well as my own to try and keep balance everywhere! In the Congo it wasn't raining during the rainy season, so I took calm from a hospital in a nearby city to move water from a lake several miles away to make a brief shower. There were increased earthquakes and volcanic activity all round the Pacific Ring of Fire. I brought the intensity down on the fire and quakes but I had get myself halfway across the world filled to the brim with anger and worry to spread it out thinly enough to not give any one person too much. But things were only getting worse. And as things got worse, the worse I felt. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't fly because summoning happiness was too difficult. I resorted to using my bracelets to hook myself on the top of a commercial plane and cast as they flew over various regions. After three months of this it was getting to be exhausting. After casts it would be hard to breathe, and I'd have to sleep but any sleep was restless and hard. It was wearing me down bit by bit and it was getting hard to separate myself from the emotional energy waves I was moving around.
I was in Switzerland, trying to deal with a spot of panic that had popped up. I scoured news stands, spied on TVs and listened all around town trying to identify the source. I followed the trail of the panic all over but it was just shaking in the ground and all over. There was no spot that was the most panicked. It was just everywhere. Out of options I got myself up the mountainside hoping a high ground view would offer better sight of the town. When even that gave no new perspective I decided to just try and siphon it off as it was and hope for the best. Waist deep in and with no other options I got to work.
"You."
I was still in deep with the emotional energy, so very carefully I turned to meet the eyes of one Jack Frost. His tall, lanky frame made even taller by the fact that he didn't sink into the soft powder which coated the peaks of every mountain for a hundred miles in every direction. Upon seeing my eyes if not my entire body, which must have been positively radioactive orange from moving all the panic, he raised his staff ever so slightly. Not a real threat. But not a gesture of goodwill either.
"Don't come any closer." I whispered out, breathing deep to keep control. I had gathered all the panic, but I hadn't stored it and pressed it down deep inside me yet. I hadn't yet begun to spin my own emotions to cast over the village. I could feel the panic pushing back against my skin, and my mind. It hummed, and wasn't easily contained. "I'm-" but the energy hit me like a wave of nausea and I couldn't finish the sentence.
"Why? Is something wrong?" he lowered his staff and began to move towards me face confused and maybe a little bit scared. He was scared of me, of what I might do. After last time, could I blame him?
I shook my head just enough for him to see and I put my hands out to tell him to stop coming closer. If he got panicked and got too close before I contained the rest, I just might crack. I could feel myself reaching the edge of control, but didn't know what would happen if I lost control. I didn't want to find out. He recoiled back and raised his staff again.
"No, I'm not going to hurt you." I was still trying to compress the panic down away from the surface of my mind. A quarter of it down, half of it, three quarters…
"Then...tell me what you're doing." Jack said, "Explain it to me."
"I will when I'm finished!" I said exasperated, hand clutching my chest as I pushed the last of the panic down. But to my shock, Jack reached out to put a hand on my shoulder. The only times I'd ever been touched since rebirth were sparring sessions with Pitch, who emanated pure fear, and the Baker Yeti in the North Pole who had been feeling only slight calm. To see someone's emotions, to stand hear them and sense them is one thing, but to be touched is totally different. Jack touched me and Jack's confusion was suddenly hardlined into my brain where it struck the suppressed panic before I could shut the door on it.
It all burst forth and broke free of my control. Instead of being in my body under my control the panic devoured my own emotion, devoured me. I could feel it thrumming into my limbs. Looking down at my hands and arms I saw veins of radioactive orange spreading down towards my finger tip. Quick as I could I grabbed my mirror and saw that similar veins were bleeding out from my eyes and mouth. I didn't know what was about to happen but my grip on consciousness was loosening as the panic to possess me. It's the only way I can describe it. It was possessing me.
In the few seconds before it all broke loose, I grasped Jack's hand on my shoulder and breathed out, "Run."
He took to the air, the wind whipping my hood down and hair back. This time I didn't completely black out. The world went fuzzy and I couldn't control my body, but my arm and limbs flung outward and the panic exploded like a concussive charge out into the snow. I had the barest hope that the snow had taken the shock but a second crack from below made my heart drop and in the sky above I felt Jack's alarm. The first time I'd broken a few windows. This time I'd caused an avalanche.
The snow around me began to pull downwards. I felt drained, I didn't have enough juice to fly. My body felt like it had gone through a tumble cycle on a washing machine but in that moment I knew that this was just not acceptable. My body was going to have to tough it out a bit longer while I fixed the mess I created. I roped myself to a tree with one of my bracelets and shut my eyes. I dug and dug and scraped every last bit of any emotion that the panic hadn't managed to override. After confirming with my mirror that I had the tiniest of rainbows in my eyes I released the tree and sprinted towards a bluff, taking a flying leap over the side.
Jack was already ahead of me. I could see his staff glowing as he directed most of the snow down paths that lead away from the ski slopes and the village below. I still hadn't been able to so much as move an ice cube or make an ice cube since my days on the beach, so I'd have to use what I had. I chipped away at my freedom to get myself onto a tall tree near the base of the mountain. On the north side of the mountain, a river cut through the valley. I used my anger to melt as much of the snow as I could before it diverted to the West and South. When my anger ran out I switched to confusion and my need to control, then focus, then motivation, then strength. I churched through every shred and with the last of my energy I just pushed a tree over to block the last running section of snow. It didn't make it within 5 miles of the village. Jack had done a majority of it I'm sure, but I won't have it though that I didn't do my best to help. It didn't stop the guilt from setting in. The kind that makes you wanna melt through the floor. Or in my case being phasing into the ground. Looking down I huffed and pulled myself back onto the ground, regaining my composure. I didn't turn around when he landed behind me. I had already pulled up my hood. I wanted to run but I couldn't even if I wanted to. I was exhausted. And I thought any pain or punishment he decides to dish out I'm just gonna have to deal with it. But that thought was quickly enough replaced by I was trying to do something good. And he and his assumptions messed it up! Whatever this is, I will NOT take it lying down. I can admit when I screw up, but I'm better than groveling.
I turned to face him, face set like stone.
"What now?" I asked.
"I'm gonna be honest, I'm really not sure." Jack said staff set casually against his shoulder. At least he wasn't pointing it at me.
"I'm sorry for causing trouble...again." I sighed, "I was trying to help."
"Help with what?" he sat down. I didn't.
"There was a panic in the village, I was trying to get rid of it when you arrived."
"Like people panicking?" he cocked his head to the side, not getting it.
"Not exactly," I said slowly, trying to think about how to put into words, "it's more like panic as an independent thing was all over the town."
"Like a spirit?"
"No simpler than that. Just a feeling like…"
"Like the panic I felt when I touched you?"
"That literally was the panic you felt when you touched me." At this point tiredness got the better of me and I sat down as well. I could see the wheels turning in his head.
"You absorbed the panic of an entire town?"
"You make snow that covers full regions."
"But that's energy going out, not energy going it, if you know what I mean."
"Yeah, well the panic would have to go somewhere. I was gonna dissipate it onto some ocean somewhere once I got it contained enough to travel. I was in the middle of...packaging it...so to speak and then you got all jumpy and touched me. It was the straw that broke the camel's back."
"So you're an emotion spirit, then?"
"So far as I can tell."
"You really don't know?"
I was getting really tired of feeling stupid, "So far as I can tell," I repeated, "I'm a lot of things." In my mind I added and yet nothing.
"I can believe that, seeing what you did back there."
"Hmm. So, are you gonna tell on me?" I looked at him right in the eyes. Not to manipulate the feelings there, but just to connect on some level.
"I'll probably have to. The Guardians have been investigating some...stuff.""
"Stuff? C'mon," I said. Subtle was clearly not Jack's strong suit.
"Listen, things have been weird lately. We're just trying to figure it out."
"I've noticed and I've been trying to figure it out too. I've been doing something about it!" I wasn't sure how wise it was to admit to that. But a bold move but just have been what I needed.
"You've been seen around a lot of the trouble spots."
"Seen?" I practically laughed, "Seen by who?"
"Tooth fairies, Bunny caught your scent once or twice."
I stopped laughing, "Oh. Just seen by them."
"Hey, I know that feeling. It's not fun."
My patience was beginning to wear thin and after the past year I wasn't completely above letting it show this one time. "Oh really? I know how everyone around me feels. All the time. And right now it doesn't feel like that."
"Well believe me I do."
"You've got other people to believe in you," I said standing up and dusting off, "I'm going to take some more convincing. Thanks for helping me clean up the avalanche I caused. I'm sorry for causing it."
"I'm sorry for interfering in your work and maybe helping you cause it. What is your work exactly, if you don't mind my asking?"
I nodded in response to his apology, "I don't have work. I don't have anything. Not like you at least. I'm just a spirit trying to do something-something good at the very least."
With that the wind came and picked him up as he unfolded his legs and swept off into the sky. I exhaled a sigh of exhaustion. There was a mountain meadow calling my name somewhere. I needed to sleep. I was so tired I must not have seen the watcher shadow hiding under a rock nearby.
