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VI
Brush it aside, you have to brush it aside... brush it aside...
Her tiny unfeeling hands kept doing their job, almost mechanically, all their inner warmth long gone.
The tiny fairy was now only half awake, and the quietness of slumber was a sweet, albeit dangerous, temptation. Who knew if she might ever wake up again?
So she remained there, crouched on her knees, trying to fulfill the demanding task of sweeping of as much of the ice incrusted on her frozen plumage as she could manage.
It would be unsafe to have all that snow melting into her skin, drenching her feathers or freezing all over again even deeper within her plumage. And if her body had survived preserved on a hibernating state now, she would certainly suffer from hypothermia later.
As it was, Jack had insisted she remained in the lair, safe from the low temperatures of the night. Besides, there was not much little Toothiana could do to help him out there, and, he added with a barely hidden alarm, he certainly would not dare to be the one to meticulously clean her body from the solidified water. A little slip, a meaningless distraction, and he would freeze her over even more. No, he had declared, much to Tooth's shameful dislike: his twitchy hands would stay as far away as possible from the Guardian's precious form.
With that settled and the jittery Ice Prince long gone, little Toothiana had started by cleaning up the most vital parts.
Her head was now totally safe from the bitter attack of ice, only some tiny snowflakes currently remained sprinkling the tip of her eyelashes. The torso was the present task, though the chilly snow had long absorbed all the fairy's natural heat, making her tiny hands shake and tremble, dark blotches of bluish-purple coloring the fidgety fingertips. Even in her petit form, she wouldn't hold on much longer.
Minifairies don't die. When something fatally injuring happens to them, they simply return to where they came from: the Fairy Queen herself. But now, with Toothiana's conscience out of her original body, she might never know what she will be returning to.
Would she get lost, in that emptiness of nothing, in that limbo between consciences, once her soul left her atual form? If this body died and her soul was forced to leave it, would she be able of finding her way back?
It were this kind of thoughts and wonderings that filled the minifairy's brain in this time of crisis, the quietness of the moment allowing her mind, for the first time in that night, to start thinking how to go back. Yes, that was surely the tricky part...
Back in her old days, in the time the mountains hadn't even yet formed, Toothiana was able of converting herself into dozens of tiny copies, simply in the blink of an eye, and recover her original form a second later.
But creating individuals, each with their own personality, and still maintaining her original form has Tooth Fairy, was quite harder.
Those minifairies she bred now, those who were born from parts of her plumage, were made to last, not to blend and dissolve into a bigger form in the time you take to blink your eyes. Those minifairies only came back to her once their physical body cannot sustain life any longer.
Albeit unknown to the major public, there is an area of the Tooth Palace whose ground is covered in tiny iridescent feathers. Anyone who happened to find the hidden room came to think that it was there that the Queen changed her plumage. Such conclusions couldn't be more far away from the truth. The Tooth Fairy never lost feathers naturally.
And still, you might wonder, how are all the feathers kept within a room? Won't lots of them be lost all around the world? Why would she care enough to go look for them?
Well, is not by chance that she is, in fact, The Guardian of Memories...
...
..
.
Jack came in to find everything just as he had left it, inside the protected lair. But when the Winter Spirit got close enough to the lifeless fairy, logs clattering in the frozen soil, it was almost with a heart failure that he saw the passed away minifairy laid above her body.
He quickly forgot any promises not to ever touch her again, and swiftly grasped the petit form in his trembling hands.
Looking back now, it was truly a miracle that a torrent of ice hadn't left his palms, while he stroked the petit body with a maddening mix of infuriating caution and violent despair.
And when those foggy irises of pink stared back at him through the darkness, he almost sobbed.
On his knees, doubled over with the tips of his bangs grazing the ground, the young Guardian held sleepy Toothiana close to his chest, rocking back and forth as if trying to calm down a child. What he didn't notice, was that the child was him...
Then, but not after the millionth time reassuring from the fairy that she was absolutely fine, that she had only fell asleep, the boy proceeded on lightning up the fire. It was a tricky process, made even harder by the fact that those logs and branches were practically frozen, and that the Winter Spirit had never needed to light up a fire in his 300 years. Every little piece of knowledge on such survival techniques, were merely supplied by the memories of his previous life.
Even so, after some trials and with the help of the minifairy, which used her wings to give a little air for the timid flames to breathe, a satisfying blaze cracked within the now cozier lair.
First of all, the Ice Prince made Little Tooth nestle up right by the fire, making sure that she recovered her natural temperature, and maybe, just maybe, making those too-shameful-to-look-upon ice bitten fingers become good again.
Then, he got back to the little root-made nest and took the Guardian's original form, still terrifyingly limp in his embrace. He settled both of them near the blazing flames, lifeless body lovingly tucked up in his lap, arms all around her. And then he started again, rocking back and forth, as if he held a little baby and not an ancient Guardian.
Tooth only stared from her sat position, dumbfounded but to numb or tired to even care, as the boy whispered soothing words to the deathly cold body in his arms. He seemed to have lost it, once and for all.
And if it was not for the daze the little Guardian was into, herself, she would have cried, cried for the boy that stood broken before her. But the tiredness was too much, the night too long, too heavy, too cold... Who could blame him?
Then his eyes snapped back to her, to her tiny, astonished face, and she could only blink back at those watery eyes, filled with despair and frustration.
- Can you... – and his voice broke as he sobbed, hiccupping breathlessly like a little lost child. Tooth's vision became distorted with tears just as well. – Can... Can you come back... come back in?
His head tilted helplessly to the lifeless fairy in his lap, and Little Tooth felt her own core tremble.
The hurricane of emotions inside her consumed all the energy left within her own tiny dying body. Yes, even the form of minifairy has suffered from all this, and the night has taken its toll on her just as well. The time was running out, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
So she closed her eyes, making sure to glance the Winter Spirit one last time, so that it would be the last image to play within her mind, her heart and her soul.
And then, she nodded.
...
..
.
Jack kept Toothiana's body held tight to his chest, daring to dig his fingers deep within the soft plumage, so much was the despair.
The heat radiated from the raging flames was starting to get to him, head heavy and nauseous, but he would not move a millimeter. No, Tooth needed the warm, and he wouldn't even thing about letting go of her. Not ever.
He then stared deeply at her, at her living form, there, so tiny and fragile right before him, by the fire.
Briefly, like illuminated by an ephemeral flicker, he saw a whole ocean of sorrow and misery reflected in her orbs, as if she felt responsible for the boy's broken state. But it was quickly hidden behind her closing eyelids, and he couldn't know if it had been true or if he had just saw a reflection of himself.
And then she nodded.
When she opened her eyes again, there was a clarity in them that he hadn't seen for quite a while. Her tired wings started buzzing again, elevating slowly her petit form in the stagnant air.
She hovered towards him, with such a serenity in her face that the boy stopped breathing in expectation. Not once had she torn her eyes away from her own lifeless form during the entire flight, and only when she stopped right above the heart-shaped face, hovering quietly, did she look up at the boy.
And then, out of the blue, a calm, tender smile bloomed in her features.
The Winter Spirit was absolutely frozen in place, heart thumping so loudly that he thought she might hear it.
But that smile... that smile, seemed to sooth the despair within him, seemed to reassure him that everything would be alright.
Then, with one final deep breath, the minifairy took her eyes away from him and back to her hibernating form.
And before the boy could wonder anything, do anything, her tiny hand touched her original forehead, right in the center, palm open wide.
Not even a second passed and Jack was completely blinded by a bright flash of light, so bright that seemed to perforate its way into his soul, right through his icy blue eyes.
And when the boy was able of dissipating the fog out of his vision, distinguishing the still bright fire and the frozen walls of the lair, his glance travelled eagerly towards his lap, where a still lifeless fairy rested soundly.
But then...
There, in her perfectly smooth forehead, glistening in the warm glow of the fireplace, a tiny golden feather was peacefully set.
Okay, I'm really sorry for the delay, but by now you must be used to it :/ Either way, I just wanted to thank Flutterdash7 for her inspiring review, that made me want to update sooner.
I hope this chapter was intense (it intended to), and if you liked it, please review, you have no idea how good to get some feedback feels... :D
Lets just wait for the next chapter...