PRISMATIC

Jack swooped down towards the ground, the wind setting him down lightly on the crisp green grass. It was summer, and warmer than he necessarily preferred, but the storm that had just finished passing through had left the air cool enough that the errant beams of sun peeking through the variegated purple clouds didn't bother him. He had decided to take advantage of the uncommon afternoon cool to visit his favorite Burgess believers, since he hadn't been able to see them in a while because of the hot snap that had hovered over the little town for the last several weeks.

He turned his head toward the house, scanning for his two favorite kids, when his name being shouted happily came as a split second precursor to a tiny human impacting his legs in a jarring hug, hard enough to knock him back a step.

Jack grinned down at the shaggy blond mass of hair that was all he could see and bent down to scoop her up into a proper hug. "Hey, Sophs! Man, have you gotten bigger since I last saw you? I think you have," he said in a funny voice, making the little girl giggle.

"Jack!" Jamie's voice cried in excitement. Jack turned to see the ten year old running towards them, and had only a moment to brace himself for another enthusiastic hug.

He awkwardly returned it as best he could with Sophie in his arms, his heart warming from their haphazardly exuberant affection. "Hey there, Jamie! How have you guys been?"

"We've been great! We've gone swimming almost every day because Mom said the heat was unbearable, and we went to the park, and there's no school so I didn't have to do homework!"

Sophie bounced in Jack's arms. "Fun! Fun!"

Jack grinned, but Jamie's next words dimmed the expression. "It was fun, but I missed you. It felt like you were gone forever."

Jack's smile morphed into a sort of grimace. "Yeah, sorry about that, kiddo. I don't do well in heat."

"Really?" Jamie's face fell, then turned worried. "You're okay right now though, right?"

As it always seemed to around the Bennetts, Jack's heart filled with warmth as he smiled reassuringly. "Yeah, I'm fine! I just would have been a little hot in the crazy temps you guys had the past couple weeks."

Jamie nodded. Before he had the chance to say anything else, Sophie squirmed in Jack's hold and patted his face clumsily to get his attention. "Rainbow!" she said brightly, her hair tickling Jack's face.

"Rainbow?" Jack asked, smiling again as he brushed back the little girl's choppy bangs.

"Oh, yeah, she's right! We saw a rainbow today!" Jamie exclaimed eagerly. "Mom said it was because of the storm and the sun!"

Jack grinned and shifted Sophie on his hip. "She's right! The sunlight has all of the colors in it, and the rain bends the light and splits all the colors, making the rainbow. So you only get one if it's raining and sunny at the same time." Sophie giggled and squirmed again, causing Jack to wince as he scooted her again so her knee didn't dig into his side.

Jamie's mouth hung open, revealing another tooth gap that Jack grinned fondly at. (Tooth had called him to her palace to tell him about that delivery from one of her baby teeth while he was avoiding the Burgess heat. She'd been zipping around in excitement by the time he got there, iridescent feathers standing up and eyes sparkling as she beamed with affection.) "That's so cool!"

"Yeah, isn't it? All the little raindrops each act as a prism, and altogether they make the rainbow."

"What's a prism?" Jamie asked, trotting alongside Jack as the white haired teen headed toward the backyard.

"It's something that bends light," Jack replied, thinking for a minute how to explain it simply. "All of the different colors in the sunlight travel at slightly different speeds, so they each get bent a little apart from each other and come out split. A prism is just something clear, like raindrops or ice, that isn't flat and bends light when it goes through it."

"Wow!" Jamie exclaimed, bouncing in place like Sophie in his excitement. "So glass can split light?"

"Yeah, glass refracts light," Jack said, laughing at Jamie's excitement. He was with the kid- rainbows were pretty darn cool.

"What about ice? Ice is clear, can it re-fract light too?" Jamie queried eagerly.

"Yeah, ice can too!" Jack answered cheerfully. "I spent a few weeks one sunnier winter perfecting some different shapes of ice prisms."

"Why?" Jamie asked curiously.

Jack kept his expression happy, hiding the twinge the innocent question gave him. That particular winter had come after a rather bad time for him. He had wandered into a slightly warmer late autumn area for a day, wanting to escape his own snow for a little. The sun had shone through the cold evening rain clouds, creating a stunning double rainbow with colors so vivid they had broken Jack out of his melancholy, if only until it faded. It had gotten him thinking about the colors that sometimes reflected from his snow, and he had grown a determination to create his own rainbow. After all, his ice was only frozen water, wasn't it?

He still remembered the happiness that had flooded him the first time he finally made a prism that worked. All of the ice shattered in frustration had been worth it in that moment, to see the sun-cast rainbow gleaming on his snow. He had kept at it, perfecting prisms of different shapes, the colors of his creations allowing him to enjoy the sun even on his worse days, instead of feeling it's mockery.

Some days, those little rainbow prisms had been the only thing that got him through.

Of course, he wasn't going to put any of that on Jamie- it was the closing of a time he wasn't particularly proud of, and didn't bear dwelling on now. He had people who could share the joy of rainbows with him.

So he just shrugged, still wearing a half smile, and gave the simpler answer. "I was bored."

He looked down when Sophie wriggled cheerfully in his arms. "Rainbow colors!" she giggled. "They're pretty!"

Jack's smile grew real again as he had an idea. "You like rainbows, Sophie girl?"

Sophie nodded vigorously, her shaggy hair flinging in her face.

Jack laughed and brushed it back again. "How would you like one you can keep?"

Sophie's green eyes went wide, and she nodded even harder, undoing Jack's work in her excitement.

Jack laughed again and set her down next to Jamie before crouching down beside them and closing his eyes in focus. He held out his hand and concentrated, reaching back in his mind and magic for his out-of-practice skill, determined to get it perfect for the kids who had helped brighten the colors in his life again.

He heard two gasps of excitement and awe, and opened his eyes with a smile.

In his hand was a glistening, faceted icy teardrop. He squeezed his hand shut around it for a moment, a blue glow shining through his fingers, and then opened it again as the light faded, leaving the crystalline prism sparkling in the sunshine.

"Here you go," he said, setting it gently in Sophie's tiny hand. He felt his smile grow at the pairs of eyes fixed on the prism and big with awe. "Hold it up in the sunshine," he prompted.

Sophie lifted her hand into the light and gasped in delight, Jamie's reverent "Whoa," coming not a second after.

"There," Jack said, watching the sun send a dozen tiny rainbows dancing across the grass and the faces of the two wondering children. "I made it so it won't melt," he added.

"Rainbows!" Sophie cried happily, duly preoccupied.

"Yeah," Jack smiled, soft but bright, like the rainbows' colors. "You can put it on a string and hang it in your window, and the sun will make you rainbows."

Sophie flung her arms around Jack's neck in an exuberant hug. "Thank you!"

Jack's heart melted, and he wrapped his arm around the little girl's warm back. "Of course, kiddo. Jamie, you want one?" he added, looking over Sophie's blond mass of hair to Jamie's awed face.

"Yeah!" Jamie cried, his face lighting up.

Jack felt his smile widen more than he had thought possible (although he was testing that limit a lot lately) as he held out his hand and closed his eyes once again.

This was what he loved. Making kids smile. The Bennett children had brought so much color to his life, and now he couldn't be happier to give them some of their own.

***0***

Alison Bennett hummed quietly to herself as she played tetris with the fridge to put away the groceries she'd just bought. She was in a good mood; the rainbow earlier had been beautiful, her kids' excitement about it had been adorable, and the storm had finally broken the blasted heat wave they'd been suffering with, washing the air with a fresh, pleasant coolness.

A thump from upstairs drew her attention as she closed the vegetable drawer. Another one followed, along with a scraping noise.

Mrs. Bennett pursed her lips in fond exasperation and made her way up the stairs to investigate.

The sounds were coming from Sophie's room. Mrs. Bennett opened the door to see her daughter wobbling precariously where she stood on her nightstand, which had been clumsily positioned in front of the window.

"Sophie! What are you doing?" Mrs. Bennett scolded, crossing the room to lift the toddler down from the nightstand.

Sophie held up a small faceted crystal in the shape of a teardrop that hung from a roughly tied string and waved it happily in her mother's face. "Hanging my rainbow prijim!"

"Prism?" Mrs. Bennett corrected, looking confusedly at the little crystal that she certainly hadn't bought for Sophie.

The little girl nodded. "Jack made it! It makes rainbows in the sun!" she announced, bouncing cheerfully.

Made it? Mrs. Bennett felt her face form a frown. "Jack Frost?" she asked, unable to think of another Jack that her children talked about besides their imaginary hero.

Sophie nodded again, flinging her hair in her face. "Can you hang it?" she asked, holding out the teardrop.

Mrs. Bennett nodded absently, her mind wondering about how quickly a simple expression had become her children's favorite fantasy. "Sure, honey," she said, holding her hand out for Sophie to put the crystal in. As preoccupied as she was, she very nearly dropped it in shock as soon as the crystal touched her skin.

The glass was ice cold. Not just cool like the grass still wet from the rain, but cold, like holding snow.

What on earth?

Distractedly, she wrapped the string around the window lock, Sophie bouncing in her peripheral vision as her eyes stayed glued to the glass teardrop. She knew her children had vivid imaginations, but she was growing concerned with how often they seemed to talk about Jack Frost. She didn't necessarily think she needed to worry about them taking their game too far, but an imaginary person can't create tangible things.

And Sophie had gotten that prism from someone.

Mrs. Bennett mentally resolved to keep a closer eye on her kids for the next few weeks. She had started giving them more freedom now that Jamie was ten, and she trusted her neighbors, but she was highly disconcerted to wonder if her children were spending time with someone she'd never met, or even seen. It also made her feel a rather inadequate mother- to not know if her kids had been hanging out with a creeper, and she hadn't investigated simply because she thought it was a game.

No more. She was going to watch them much more carefully from now on. They could play in the yard for a week or so, where she could see them from the windows, instead of going into the woods. She would ask Jamie about this Jack Frost again- she had asked before, in fond indulgence to his game, why she couldn't see this ice boy with a staff, and her son had answered that it was because she didn't really believe in him.

Well, of course she didn't. Not as a mythical bringer of snow days who had magic. But as a real person who may be spending a prodigious amount of time with her children without her knowledge?

She would see about that.

A/N: Heheh… I am late. Sorry! Vacation and procrastination and then a very good heartwrenching book attacked me. But I'm back!

I am so very excited about this one- I get to talk about colors (colors are my highs, honestly) and further my subplot that I'm so giddy about! I feel like it's pretty obvious what it is by now- anyone got any guesses?

I did do a teeny bit of research to make sure I wasn't scientifically screwing stuff up, and that ice really could act as a prism. Here are the two articles I used if anyone is actually interested: "Make Your Own Prism" by Steve Spangler Science (Clarifying that ice can refract light) and "Prisms" by The Wonder of Physics (Explaining how prisms work). The website wouldn't let me include the links.

My wonderful mother read through some of my stories during vacation, so I am going back and fixing some typos/mistakes she pointed out in previous chapters (thanks Mom)! As always, feel free to point out any I missed in this one.

Thank you so much to Demi Clayton, Sparklepool101, IvyOutlawOfTheNight, and Aphrodite433 for reviewing! You guys made me so happy! And thank you to everyone who's followed/favorited! Hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and see you in the next one!

Elen out.