*yawns* Oh my, one fifteen, how(not so very) strange! Well, here is yet another chapter you all. My fingers have now acquired a dull, constant ache in the from all of this recent typing, but it's worth it, because I have people who like this story, so I have will to keep posting.
Anyways, I have no brain power to say anything else, so on to reviews.
Maryboberrie- You ask for more? Here shall it be…
chocykitty- Um, thanks? I'm not entirely sure what it is you said, but I'm choosing to take it as something good.
sassysaw- I continued writing Also, sorry I haven't emailed you back yet. I planned to today, but time slipped away like that bar of soar you tried to grab in the bathtub when you were little, but just couldn't. Um, sorry, I'm a bit delirious right now…
Lokirka- Thank you for clearing that up for me *enormity of compliment sinks in* OH MY GOD, I'M YOUR FREAKING OTP. Many thanks are rained down upon you
FFC3- Well, officer, I'm glad to have suited your fancy.
MoonGirl1155- Thanks. And, yes, I try to write longer chapters(though this one doesn't quite met my norm), because I like to read long chapters and my goal as an author is to write what I look for in a good story. So far, I'm pretty pleased with this particular one…
Fluffythorne- Yes, I love sarcasm. I wish it came as a font. Pretty much the whole story would be written in it. You brought up s good point, Jack is spending a tad too much time with her. Thank you for pointing that out, amends were made. And yes, I was happy with the nightmare, but certain aspects of it are needed for the future of the plot, so close attention needed to have been paid to it. Lightheartedness? Check. Questionable sanity… sad, but true. I don't know, but this update certainly isn't helping that case any.
psychochirrpingmisstress- Did I spell that right? Anyways, thanks so much. I hate cheesy romance stories that throw cannon characters right into a relationship with an OC/other cannon, with no buildup. I strive to write what I want to see in a story, as mentioned above. Apparently, it's working. Thanks you for considering me an amazing writer, it makes my day to see things like that.
KikaKatTIOI- Yes, there had been too much heavy tension, I decided I needed to lighten up he mood of the story some.
Willow's worn boots squeaked a bit on the smooth ice as she struggled to gain her footing. Every time she teetered, Jack's hand unconsciously tightened on his staff.
"My god, Jack, I have never had this much trouble staying upright. It's quite a bit slicker that I'm used to." Her voice warbled a bit as she jerked to keep from falling.
"Sorry, it's just how it forms."He winced when her feet finally gave way, her petite body skidding on the ice. She shot him a glare, blowing her hair from her eyes with an irritated puff of her lips.
Chuckling, he floated above her.
"C'mon, let me help you." He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. He locked his fingers around her tiny wrists, drifting slowly backwards as he tugged her along. Her eyes stayed on the ice as the weathered leather of her boots still slid erratically.
"Don't look at the ground, you'll never learn that way." She looked up as he instructed, but she couldn't help but glance down every time her feet slid.
"Sorry, it's reflex." she murmured.
"I know, but you'll stop once you get used to it." He started moving faster and her hands gripping his wrists, too, when she almost fell.
"Willow, you have to loosen up. You're not going to do any better if you're stiff as a rock." At his words, the tension began to slowly drain from her hands and he could no longer feel the tendons in her wrist through her thick jacket.
She began to push along herself a bit, and she began steadying almost immediately. She still wobbled around quite a bit, but she was no longer in danger of falling again.
She began picking up speed herself, the strokes growing smoother and smoother. Jack's hands began to loosen from her wrists, and, though she didn't realize it, so did hers. Her fingers trailed away and Jack was a good few feet in front of her before she realized he was no longer keeping her upright.
"Wait, what are you… hey, I think I got it!" Her arms were extended out for balance, but she was now moving, for the most part, easily across the pond. "I couldn't do this, even when the pond wasn't slicker than baby oil!" she called.
"Exactly. You never know until you try." His face rested against his staff, the end of it sunken into the thick quilt of snow.
Her watch emitted a shrill chime and she scrambled to stop. Finally still, she jerked back her sleeve to see its face.
"Oh crap! I was supposed to be at work a half-hour ago!" Her feet began slipping as they had before as she tried to rush to the edge. She didn't get far, though, before her feet left the ice and they began weaving in an intricate pattern through the trees, to the point she swore they would hit one every other second.
In a matter of minutes, she could see the back of the building through the overgrowth behind it. She was jogging the moment her feet touched the ground.
"Thanks, Jack!" she called over her shoulder.
He waited until the bell on the door sounded, before rising above the trees once again.
(*)
"Wait, how old is she?" Jamie's question was immediately followed by another snowball. The wad of ice flew by Jack's ear as one of his own sailed toward the brown-haired adolescent.
"Seventeen. She said that she was turning eighteen in three months, and then she could finally move out." Jack's torrent of snowballs ceased as he dropped to the ground. "She says she just has to hold on for three more months, but, honestly, I don't think she'll last that long."
"Why doesn't she do anything? What that woman is doing to her is wrong on so many levels, it needs a new level!"
"I know, I said pretty much the same thing, but she doesn't want to get stuck in foster care, even if it's only three months. She said she doesn't want to end up as just another State Ward." he sighed, planting the end of his staff in the snow as he leaned against it.
Jamie sighed too, not sure what else to say. "Well, at least you saw her when you did. Taking that kind of hit can seriously mess with someone's mind. I'm impressed she's put up with it as long as she has, and not run away or something."
"You're not the only one. After she got hit, her eyes got this… I don't know, look. Like she had just given up on life. I ended up cleaning up her face, because I knew she wouldn't care enough to bother. Then I called Sandy, to help her get some decent sleep." he swatted at the snow with the curved end of his staff, the snow hitting someone's back to effectively begin another snowball fight.
"You know, as introverted as she is, I bet she's actually overjoyed that you're looking out for her. I doubt she'd ever admit it, but I think you are exactly what she needed. Someone who will stick up for her when no one else ever did. Growing up the way she did, or at least the way it sounds like she did, is rough and lonely. It's a shock she turned out as stable as she did." The bluntness of Jamie's words surprised Jack, but they were all true.
"I try to keep her mind off of it as much as I can. You know that huge hill at the edge of town?" He nodded. "Well, I took her there and did what I did to you when you were sledding through town. Sorry about the tooth." He grinned semi-sheepishly as Jamie's eyes widened in realization.
"Wait, you mean… the ice… you're the one who sent me flying through town like some kind of maniac and knocked my tooth out?!" he accused.
"Maybe…"
"Jack!"
"Hey, you had fun!" he offered in defense.
"Yes, until a couch slammed into my face and ripped one of my teeth out of my head!" At that, Jamie scooped up another handful of snow, flinging it at the white haired boy, who dodged it easily.
"Oh, so that's how you're gonna be?"
(*)
"Morning, Joe."Willow's voice was brighter than usual, though guilty because of her tardiness.
"Morning. Any reason you're over a half-hour late, Ms. Bronwyn?" he asked, not sounding particularly annoyed, but not too happy, either.
"Um…" She wracked her brain trying to come up with something believable. It wasn't as if people went on an insane rollercoaster if ice via a Winter Spirit that shouldn't exist on a typical early-morning stroll. "I overslept, sir." Lame, yes, but what else did she do this early?
He gave her a long look, that said I don't buy that and you know it, but I'm going with it, because this isn't something you usually do.
"Just don't let it happen again." he sighed, knowing that he wouldn't be able to reprimand her, not really. "There hasn't been much of anyone in here, anyway, and Mia hasn't come yet."
"Thank you for letting me know, sir."
He nodded once, disappearing into the back.
Clipping her name tag to her jacket, still chilled from the ice-coaster, then the winds, she slipped her hands into her pocket. Feeling her numbed fingers brush something, she pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, realizing it was the drawing of Jack she had pulled from her sketchbook.
Her fingers traced the soft graphite lines with a feather-light touch, not wanting to smudge them. Pulling out a mechanical pencil, she began darkening some of the lines, the outlines springing from the page. She was just about to start the shadows, when images of her dream began swirling through her head.
Tiny lines changed position from where she cross-hatched instead of shaded, the moon now occupying the upper-right corner of the page. The fine lead was streaking in the depths of his feathery white hair, when the chime of the door sounded.
She glanced up to see Mia approaching the counter, sliding the drawing and pencil into her bag.
"Hello, Mia, how are you this morning?"
"Well, what side of the bed did you wake up on this morning? I haven't seen your eyes shine like that in ages." A smile played o her lips.
"Well, last night was one of my better nights, I'll admit." Her regular's smile shifted to a knowing smirk. "Not like that! I mean, it was just… less stressful than usual. A way to escape life's problems for a little while and ignore reality."
"Mhm, so what did you do?" she asked, the not-so-vague innuendo not eluding her.
"Put simply, I let loose and… essentially played in the ice and snow like a little kid." she admitted.
"So that's what the kids are calling it these days." Willow rolled her eyes.
"You're hopeless."
"So I've been told. I'll take a tall, the usual." Willow slid a foam cup from the stack, filling it to the brim with hazelnut coffee, fresh off the drip.
"Thanks, sweetie. I hope this good mood lasts."Willow's shoulders lifted as she braced her hands on the counter.
"So do I, but I have a pretty good idea that it will."
(*)
The pencil made a soft thump as it dropped back into her bag. Willow had spent most of the day working on the drawing, business being slow.
The last bits of shading had been finished, upon her decision to leave the shading with hatched and cross-hatched lines. Only the strands and tips of his hair held any kind of lines or shading, the light of the moon edged his figure. The tree branches were devoid of any snow or ice, because of her lack of ability to draw sunlight in it correctly, and she felt moonlight to be no exception.
She brushed the deep auburn strands from her face, her cheek barely stinging from where her fingers grazed it. The swelling was almost completely gone and it was no longer an angry red, though she still needed a bandage to keep out infection and it would be scabbed over for weeks.
She sighed and stared out the window, sun beginning to peek through the clouds, lighting up patches of snow a blinding white. Tiny flakes dotted the window, where the glass was cold enough that they didn't melt on contact.
Her watch chimed. One more hour.
She washed the graphite off of her hands, wiping them on a towel as she stared thoughtfully at the snow.
What was it like to be a Spirit, a Guardian? Was it lonely? Did it ever get tiring, creating snow for the world every day? What would it have felt like for no one to know you existed for three hundred years?
The last one she could relate to, though in a more realistic time frame. It was an ever present feeling of loneliness to spend most of your time being noticed by only the person whom hates you the most.
"Three months, Willow. Three months, and you're done being ignored." she murmured.
Three months felt awfully far away.
(*)
"Well, you could take her to the Warren. Bunny's whole thing is Hope, right?" Jamie suggested.
"Yeah, but you can only get to the Warren through the tunnels, and Bunny is hardly about to volunteer them." Jack replied.
"I don't know. I bet if you could stand to talk to him for five minutes without antagonizing him, and explain what's really going on, I bet he'd be a lot more willing that you think." the brown haired boy said.
"You're probably right, but that would be yet another person I'm telling her personal life to. I wasn't entirely comfortable with telling you, but I don't really have anyone else to talk to." Jack twirled his staff through his fingers, freezing the tops of the weeds that had somehow managed to grow through the snow.
"Well, you're going to have to figure out something pretty quick. She sounds pretty well ready to give up on life, after… that."
"I know. Ice can't distract her forever. Maybe I will try to talk to the Kangaroo. I doubt he'll listen, but if it keeps her from trying to kill herself, of something, it's worth a shot." Sprigs of grass stiffened at the staff's icy caress.
"For starters, you can stop calling him the Kangaroo, at least to his face. You know he hates that." he advised.
"I know, that's why I call him that. But go on."
"You have to tell him something. It won't be as simple as, "Oh, there's this girl who needs to go to the Warren, but I can't tell you why, because I don't want to put her personal life out there." No, he won't but that for a minute. You don't have to tell him everything, but enough that he understands the gist of the situation." he finished and Jack considered his words.
"I'll give it a try. Thanks for the advice, my surprisingly knowledgeable friend, whom is three hundred years younger than me, yet still wiser."
"Assuming responsibility makes all the difference." He glanced down at his watch, realizing he was due at the library soon.
"I have to go, but the next time we talk, I expect to hear about your trip it the Warren!" His figure bobbed as he jogged to where his bike rested.
"Then it may be a while before we talk." he murmured, leaning against a tree, wondering who will be more difficult to convince, Bunny, or Willow.
(*)
"Wait, you want to take me, where, exactly?" Willow asked, wondering if she had heard him correctly. Wind rustled the dry brush, having not made it very far into the woods, before Jack stopped her to ask her to go to…
"I want to take you to the Easter Bunny's Warren."
"Care to tell me why?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I just thought you could use a break. A real one, not sliding around on ice." he shrugged.
She gave him a long look. "I don't know, it seem a little far-fetched. How far away is it, anyway?"
Of all the questions she could ask… "I don't actually know, we would be getting there through the Tunnels-"
"Tunnels? And now we're sliding through holes in the ground, too? If there was even an idea if a line left, you pretty much just sprinted across it." she said, her indirect no, being taken as a this seems insane, but I'll try it anyways, even though he knew what she really meant.
"Okay, well, Bunny's going to be showing up anytime now, so you might want to do something with that bag if you ever want to see it again…" Her eyes sprung to his face with an incredulous glare.
"Oh, hell to the no! I'm not about to be dropped through a hole in the ground and get thrown into some smelly old rabbit's den. Not a chance." Her stride lengthened with the pond now in sight.
"And if I told you that you might be a bit too late for that?"
She whirled around, about to give him another loud no, but became quickly distracted by the ground in front of her. Or, more specifically, the absence of ground in front of her. Her jaw dropped when an enormous rabbit stepped out of the hole, not fitting the cute-fuzzy Easter Bunny stereotype in the slightest.
"I take it this is the little sheila you were telling about earlier?" he said, the thick Australian accent confusing her further.
"Sheila? My name is Willow, not Sheila. And what do you mean, "talking about earlier"?" she asked, her fingers flicking air quotes.
"You'll see, but you may want to lose that bag if you expect to see it again." The enormous bunny gestured to the bag on her shoulder with one of his huge, furry paws.
"So, you're going to send me through some insane network of tunnels, to some rabbit's den, and I have no say so in the matter?"
"Pretty much."
She glared at Jack, before yanking the bag from her shoulder. She stomped over to her tree and held a clump of weeds flat with her foot as she stuffed it into the, apparently hollow, tree.
"Wait, that tree's hollow? So that's how you climbed it so fast!"
"No, I could have climbed it just as fast from the outside, but there isn't any snow on the inside of the tree to crunch when I step on it and give away where I am." she smirked.
"All right, enough with the chit-chat! Get ready, mate, you're in for the ride of your life." He tapped his foot to the ground twice, and another hole opened up beneath her feet. She let out a shriek, her dream in the forefront of her mind as panic clouded her thoughts. Her voice ricocheted off of the walls of the tunnel as she slid faster that imaginable, much faster than the ice track on the hill.
All of a sudden, a dot of green rushed up to meet her and she hit the ground with a thump. Grumbling, she picked herself up from the grass and dirt, swatting away what stuck to her clothes.
Wait, grass and dirt? In the middle of winter? Why was the air so warm?
She glanced to her sides to see gray rock stretching out, grass and small flowers dotting what little she could see. The rest was obscured by the mountain of fur in front of her.
A strangely soft smile was stretched across Bunny's face as he stepped to the side with a sweep of his furry arm.
"Welcome to the Warren"
Again, I apologize for its shortness, but it took entirely longer to write the last third of this that it should have, because of the typos I kept making, I kept stumbling over my own fingers and messing up, so let that be a lesson to y'all. Don't type in a half- conscious state, YOU WILL NEER FINISH.
Okay, I have to sleep now before I pass out on the keyboard and don't end up getting this posted. Night, guys, Lumi out.