Hey, look! Another chapter! Thanks to everyone who's reviewing, it motivates me to write more.


Jack was more comfortable at night, under the protective gaze of the Moon, than during the day in the harsh sunlight. Even if the Moon would not speak with him anymore., there was still something reassuring about his presence in the sky, large and bright. It had calmed his fears when he woke in the dark many months ago and even now, when he looked up, he did not feel quite as lonely. The Moon looked back, he knew.

It was sad that the only ones aware of his existence were a large glowing sphere in the sky and animals that did not rationalize the world around them enough to not believe in him. None of them answered when he spoke to them. Sometime, the silence was deafening.

The days were filled with the laughter of children. Jack could not deny that he was drawn to them. He joined in their games and conversations, even if they could neither see or hear him. He had learn to keep his comments to simple statements that required no answers. That way, he could pretend that they heard.

But the bright light made it hard to ignore when one looked his way without seeing him. In the dark, he could pretend that the shadows hid him. He was there, he was real, but it was just too dark for them to spot him, with his dark cloak and hair that blended in with the snow. In the daylight, though, he had to admit he was invisible to them. He might as well be a ghost.

And so, even the deafening silence of the night was more tolerable than the too-revealing light of the day. He spent his night painting everything with frost for the children to discover in the morning, smiling as he imagined their delighted faces when they saw his delicate frozen masterpieces.

He just needed to fill the silence. He spoke to the Moon often. He told him everything. His fears, his doubts and what joys he found. He told him what the children did during the day, while his gaze was turned away. More than anything, he asked questions. One question, in particular. The most simple one, yet the one that he desperately needed answered.

"Why?"

The Moon never answered. He tried to speak with the animals, too, but they ran away more often than not. He was strange, cold and unnatural. The ducks that swam upon his lake in the spring had grown used to him, but they fled south once the winter came. The other animals tolerated his presence as long as he stayed still and silent, but they took fright if he reminded them of his presence. Jack did not want to stay still and silent.

He talked to himself a lot. Thinking out loud. Sometime even having a small conversation with himself. But he grew bored quickly. He had nothing to say that he did not already know.

As frost bloomed under his fingers on one of the village's rare windows, he could hear laughter coming from inside. Even this late at night, this place was not yet empty. Men gathered here around mugs of bitter tasting amber liquid, loudly telling each others about their day, their wife and their children in colorful language they would not use around said wives and children. Jack did not know how they could drink that stuff. He sneaked in once for a taste and ended up spitting it on the floor. But it certainly seemed to make them happy.

Through the dirty windows, he saw one of the men climb on a table as the others encouraged him. Jack pressed his nose to the glass, curious. His cold breath coated it in frost, blocking his sight entirely. He sighed in frustration.

The man's voice rose above the others as he started to sing. Men cheered and clapped their hands as more voices joined in the apparently well-known song. Jack could not really hear the words, slurred as they were and sung off-key by multiple people not quite in tuned with each others, but he was fascinated.

There did not seems to be any purpose to the singing other than to make sound. No need to find words to say, they were already there. He had often heard the children sing strange little rhymes that he didn't think they actually understood but no one cared. It was as if they did it for no other purpose than to fill the silence.

The singing inside stopped abruptly in a chorus of laughter as the man lost his balance and fell off the table. Jack withdrew from the window, deep in thought. He slowly walked back to his little lake, in no real hurry. He could recall some of the children's song enough to recite them. It had just never occurred to him to do so. Not until a song shattered the silence of the night.

With no one but the Moon to listen, he hesitantly started to sing. It could barely be called that, unused as he was to carrying a tune. The melody was simple, but it was harder than he had expected. It didn't matter. There was no one to judge him. Only the Moon, and he had already shared so many secrets with him, he could share is horrible singing as well. He would get better. He had plenty of time and nothing to do with it

Starting over with more enthusiasm, he sang as loudly as he could. Sounds of panicked animals answered him. He kept singing, repeating the rhymes until he forgot everything else. For once, the silence of the night did not weight on him.


Some of you seemed interested when I mentioned doing a HTTYD fanfic, so you might want to know that I did write a very short one. I have a longer one on my might-do list, as well as a few more chapters of this. I'm currently procrastinating on doing the stuff on my to-do list.

I started to actually write again. I write everyday, even if it's just to rant about my day. I don't know yet what this mean for this story, whether or not I'll start updating it regularly again. I guess it'll depend on how much I have to rant about (then again, I had actually finished writing my daily 750 words before I even got started on this chapter and I still wrote it).