~Chapter 7~

Ember was traveling from city to city making her usual rounds, distributing fear and frightening children. But she was also practicing using the pure dream sand, giving sweet dreams and happiness to sleeping children and adults. Sometimes she would even mix the two, creating a happy dream that ended badly or a bad dream that had a happy ending. The happy to bad dreams seemed even more torturing to people than just a straight up nightmare, crushing any hopes and replacing it with fear. It was truly evil, and even scaring for some. But mixing the two types of dreams took a little extra effort out of Ember, so she decided after giving another nightmare to go rest by the frozen lake in Burgess.

Right as she walked out of the shadows of the woods she was pelted by a snow ball, sending her face first into the fluffy snow beneath her. Laughing filled the air around her and she hid a smile under the snow. It was Jack Frost, and he seemed to be in a playful mood.

"Long time no see Ember." Jack chimed as Ember lifted her face out of the snow, meeting Jack's bright blue eyes. Ember smiled and laughed, working herself back to her feet and brushing off the snow from her dress.

"Your right, it's been a while." Ember smiled. It had been several weeks since she had last saw him, she missed having a cheerful conversation.

"care to join me for a walk?" Jack asked, leaning on his staff with a mischievous grin on his face. Ember returned the mischievous grin and started to walk the lakes edge with Jack.

The moon shown bright threw the cloudy night sky as Jack and Ember caught up, sharing laughs and many story's. But there was something that Jack had been dying to ask Ember for a while, and it was starting to eat him alive. So he waited for until there was a silence and asked Ember.

"I'm sorry Ember but I've got to ask... Did Pitch force you to become his daughter?" Jack quickly asked, brushing a hand threw his hair. Ember stopped walking instantly. "I don't mean to bring up any bad memory's, but I've just got to know."

Ember remembered a blurry image of her parents death, and how Pitch stopped the fearlings from killing her as well. How Pitch had offered Ember a family when he could have easily left her to die like anyone else would have.

"No." Ember mused, looking up at the blurry moon. She remembered how the moon had been clear on the night of her parents death. 'Why didn't he help my parents... why didn't he help me?' Ember wondered.

"Then...Then why did you let him blacken your soul? Why would you go with someone as evil as Pitch!" Jack stammered. 'There's no way anyone would so willingly follow a guy like Pitch and allow him to blacken there soul forever. He must of made her believe that she had a choice.' Jack pondered. There was something wrong behind this, and he needed to find out.

Ember glared up at Jack, she didn't know why she was so mad at his question. "Why do you want to know so badly Jack?" Ember turned to face him, making herself a bit taller so that she didn't feel so small compared to him. Jack backed up a little and hesitated.

"Because! There is no way a girl like you could possible want to be consumed by darkness and fear! From the first day I meet you Ember, you had a light in your eyes. But it was suppressed by darkness, hate, and fear. It's still suppressed, and it glows brighter and brighter whenever your out of the shadows, and when you laugh and have fun. I see it light up when your underneath the stars and the moon!

"There's no way a person with that kind of light in their eyes would allow themselves to be consumed by such a darkness. It makes me think that Pitch forced you to be his daughter, that he forces you make nightmares and bring fear to others. And as a Guardian I can't stand by and watch and innocent person be controlled and manipulated by such a thing as Pitch." Jack exclaimed. He couldn't stand to see the light in Ember suppressed much longer.

"Stop! Just stop Jack! You don't know what happened! You don't know what I've been through! Pitch was there when no one else was, and hes all I got. I choose to be with him. Goodbye Jack." Ember snapped. It took everything in her not to slap him, so she decided to disappear quickly. Before Jack could stop her from leaving Ember was on her dragon disappearing into the night.

'What did she mean by "he was all that I had"? I have to find out what happened to her...' Jack wondered as he shook his head and flew off into the cold night air.

Ember went back to work to try and get her mind off of what happened that night. It worked for the most part, but her mind kept seeming to wonder back to what Jack had said about the light in her eyes. She knew it was there, a bit of good suppressed by evil. It was the only way she could make the dream sand.

'Just because I have some good left in me doesn't mean Pitch would try and control me!' Ember fumed. She was beyond irritated at jack for coming up with such a foolish theory.

But something did take Ember's mind off of Jacks foolish theory for a while. While Ember was giving a young girl a nightmare she had knocked her pillow off her bed, exposing a tooth. Ember stood there stunned. It was a tooth! It was exactly what she needed to figure out her plan for destroying Toothina. So Ember quickly snatched it up and let it rest gently in her palm.

Ember sprinkled some nightmare sand over the tooth and waited to see if anything would happen. For a few moments nothing happened. But then the tooth started to rot and dissolve in Ember's palm, leaving behind a tiny pile of black dust. The girl in the bed started squirming in unease from having her memory's destroyed, never being able to look back on them again.

Suddenly their came a loud high pitched squeak from the window beside the young girls bed. It was one of Toothina's fairy's. Terror filled the fairy's eyes as she looked from Ember to the pile of rotting tooth in her hand. Ember quickly let the remains of the tooth fall to the floor and disappeared into the shadows as fast as she could.

Ember knew Toothina would be hearing about this soon, which would mean she would have to tell Pitch about it soon. But Ember wasn't worried about that at the moment. She was so excited that the nightmare sand had actually worked! Her plan would fall easily into place now.