Chapter 2: Talking to a Friend

The quiet music of Luna's alarm clock stirred her out of her Jack-infested dreams the next morning. She smiled to herself as a strange feeling came over her. Had she just had the most vivid and wonderful dream of her life? No, she thought. It must have been real. She hopped down from her upper bunk, turned off her alarm, and strode over to the window. As she pulled the curtain away to look out toward the woods, her heart leaped. Even more snow had fallen overnight, which could mean only one thing. She practically skipped as she turned on the little television which sat upon her dresser and clicked to the news. Jack had stayed true to his word. When the name of Luna's school flashed across the screen with the word CLOSED printed beneath it, she chuckled to herself.

After laying in bed for another half an hour to try and get some extra sleep (with no success), Luna got up and made some breakfast. She sat on the living room floor with her large, black dog, Phoebe, while she ate. Her mother was watching the morning news, and Luna had to repress her smile as the weatherman gave his report ("This second snowfall really snuck up on us last night, didn't it? Back to you, Carol."). When her mother set out for work, Luna looked at the clock. Six forty-seven. She still had quite a long time to wait, so she decided to pull out a lovely book she had been reading lately, and joyfully got lost within its pages.

…..

When at last the clock read eleven-fifty, Luna pulled on her coat and said goodbye to Phoebe. While her older sister, Angie, was still in her room upstairs, Luna slipped out the back door and up the same path she had taken the day before. Upon reaching her destination, Luna had to wait only a few short moments before Jack came swooping down from above to greet her.

"What do you want to do today?" he asked, as eager as a little child to play in the snow. After some consideration, Luna answered.

"We could always build a family for the snowman we made yesterday. He looks sort of lonely."

"Sounds great!" Jack exclaimed.

The two of them started to build a snow wife and a snow child to keep their snowman company when they weren't there. Luna had a lot of questions for Jack regarding how long he had been frequenting her town, why she had never seen him before, and what he liked to do for fun.

"Well... it's kind of a long story," Jack said. He was truly unsure of how to begin telling Luna about the events of his life. As she was still a new friend, he didn't feel that he needed to tell her every detail about himself and his story. However, he wanted to tell her. Jack had noticed that there was something... peculiar... about Luna from the moment he had met her. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but it seemed as though she was someone who would understand.

"I have all day," Luna said. "But don't feel like you have to answer anything. We can just build." She smiled as she continued to pack snow together for the snow wife's head.

"It's okay. I think you'll find it interesting," Jack said. "I'll skip the first three hundred years or so for the sake of convenience. Not much happened during that time." As he said this, Luna raised her eyebrows as though she was impressed, but did not look up from her work.

"All right," she said. "So when did things start happening?"

"Well..." Jack began, helping Luna to lift the head onto the snow wife's body. "I guess things really started about two years ago. Up until then, I was pretty much... well, alone." Luna stopped to look at him when he said this.

"Oh. I'm so sorry," she said. The sincerity behind her voice was almost too strong for Jack. Though he didn't like to admit it, he was sensitive. Little moments of true honesty and sympathy still gave him a weird feeling sometimes, probably because he had gone so long without experiencing them.

"It's okay," he said. "Went by in a flash!" He quickly waved away the melancholy feeling of the moment. "But anyway, about two years ago, I was called on by the Guardians." When he said this, Luna cocked her head in a questioning manner. "Of course, you know the Guardians of Childhood. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, and the Tooth Fairy."

"Wh-?" Luna let out a small, scoffing gasp. Jack's heart dropped into his stomach for a split second as the thought occurred to him that perhaps Luna did not believe in the others. But his spirits rose when Luna spoke again. "You know them?"

Jack laughed at the twinkle in Luna's eyes. He recognized it from when Jamie and the other children had met the Guardians for the first time. It made Jack feel a thousand times better.

"Yeah! See, the Guardians are lead by MiM, the Man in the Moon. He chose all of them. And then, he chose me. We're the Guardians of children, their happiness, and their belief in magic."

"That is amazing!" Luna exclaimed. She put a hand to her forehead, clearly elated to learn all of this. Jack laughed again.

"It is! But the reason I was chosen was because of this guy named Pitch Black – the Boogeyman. He had this plan, you see, to destroy the world's belief in the Guardians. If that happens, we disappear." As Jack spoke, Luna's large eyes stayed wide and alert to every word he said. He related the entire ordeal to her, acting out certain moments when it was needed. He told her all about the battles they fought, how Jamie and his friends had saved them, and how he had discovered his Center and accepted his new role as a Guardian. It was funny; he had not meant to tell her so much. He had planned on only telling her the essentials of what had happened, but he couldn't stop once he had started. It occurred to him that this was probably because he had never really talked about it before. All of the other Guardians had been there to see it themselves, and he didn't want to frighten Jamie with the gritty details of the story. For some reason, it felt so good to tell the story in full. Luna listened intently, and Jack couldn't have been more appreciative. He felt some kind of strange connection to her that he couldn't explain, but it was a welcome feeling to have made such a fast friend.

When he had finished his tale, Jack was so excited that he suggested Luna come with him to meet the children from his story. He had promised them he would drop in to play, and he was sure they wouldn't mind one extra person. Luna agreed, and Jack immediately flew up into the air and started to take off.

"Let's go!" he shouted with glee. Luna happily ran after him, but soon started to fall very behind. She was fast, but she could not keep up with her friend.

"Jack, wait up!" she called after him. Jack stopped in mid-air, and turned to look at her.

"Sorry!" he yelled back to her. "You're too slow!"

"It's not my fault I can't fly!" said Luna as she finally caught up with him. Jack seemed to ponder this statement for a moment.

"You know, you're right. We should fix that." Before Luna could even respond, Jack swooped down behind her and hooked his arms under her armpits, lifting her off of the ground. He took off into the sky, laughing. Luna let out a loud and funny squeal, while her legs flailed around madly, unaccustomed to being dangled in the air. She instinctively wrapped her arms around Jack's as tightly as she could in her awkward position. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung slightly ajar as they rose higher and higher. She was quite terrified at first, but as the wind whipped through her hair and kissed her cheeks, she began to look around in awe at all of the things below her that now looked so small. She laughed. Softly at first, almost a gasp. It then evolved into a wild eruption of laughter. Jack added his chuckles to Luna's, and together they filled the skies.

They soared high above the snow-covered pine trees and rooftops. Luna's mind flooded with a thousand different thoughts and feelings. A part of her knew that she should be afraid of falling from such a height, but she did not care. This was quite possibly the best moment of her entire life. Luna let out a long, loud scream of joy that echoed all around them.

Jack landed near the center of the town, behind a building so as not to be seen by passers-by. Jack pointed to a group of kids who were throwing snowballs at each other near the large, old statue at the heart of the town. They ran out to meet them, and Jack introduced Luna to all of his young friends. There was Jamie, Sophie, Pippa, Cupcake, Claude, Caleb, and Monty. They were all wonderfully nice children, and they immediately accepted Luna into their battle with pleasure.

They spent most of the day playing in the town square, attacking each other with snowballs and building forts out of snow. It was really the most fun Luna had had in quite a long time. She hated to hear the courthouse clock strike three, because that meant that her mother would be home soon, and that she would have to leave all of the fun. She pulled Jack aside and told him this.

"Well, we should probably get you home. I can take you." Jack said as the final strike chimed. Luna didn't want to go, but she agreed. She said goodbye to the neighborhood kids, and went behind the building again so that Jack could lift her up by her arms and fly her home. She directed Jack to her house, savoring every gust of cold wind that blew into her face. They landed in front of Luna's house, and Jack looked up at it, as if he were evaluating it.

"Nice house," he said. "It looks like the kind of house you would live in."

"Thanks," Luna said, although she was not quite sure what that meant.

"So... Do you want to meet up again sometime?" Jack asked, hoping she would say yes. "The kids really had fun."

"I'd like that," said Luna. "I had fun, too."

"Great! So... Saturday? We always play in the town square on Saturdays."

"That sounds perfect." Luna smiled. The two said their goodbyes and parted ways. Luna stepped into her house and closed the door, and Jack took off again to rejoin the kids in town. As he played with his friends, Jack felt a new energy rushing through his veins. He somehow felt lighter than he had before, and he couldn't have been happier with how the day had played out. Even as the kids got called home for dinner by their parents, Jack felt more hopeful and alive than usual. He returned to his favorite pond just outside of town, and he practically danced as he ran across the ice, creating beautiful patterns on the pond's surface and yelling joyously into the nighttime air.

…..

That night, Luna sat in a heap of blankets in her top bunk, a book laying open beside her and the brightest of smiles upon her lips. The only illumination came from the colored strings of lights she had hung about the room for the holidays, which made the room feel so cozy and festive that she could hardly imagine a more comfortable place to be. Though her body was tired and maybe even still a bit cold from the day's events, she was the happiest she had ever been before. She was a dreamer in the sincerest sense, and her discovery of a very real, magical world had made her heart feel like a child at Christmas. She was looking down at an open sketch book, pencil in hand. Almost without thinking, she had been sketching and doodling pictures of magic staffs and frosted trees and messy white hair all evening. With a contented sigh, she fell back against her pillow and slipped into a blissful and dreamy sleep.