Alaia Skyhawk: Gah, I was in such a rush to put up chapter 1, that I messed up the title. I've fixed it, and the story title is actually "Secret of Frost and Moon". Sorry about that, lol :P
Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians, the Guardians of Childhood, or any related characters etc. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes.
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Chapter 2: Answers, without Answers
His screamed question echoed into empty forest, and the Moon stared down at him in silence. Even the winds had died down, creating an eerie scene of utter stillness.
Jack didn't move, refusing to until he got an answer. He'd died, and now he was somehow back from the dead! Confused, angry, and admittedly... frightened. But still he refused to move, to stop staring at the silent and mocking Moon, until a whisper of movement at the cover of his eye made him flinch.
He turned his head to look, but saw nothing but trees. Then it came again at the corner of his other eye, and in moments he was on his feet with his gaze searching the forest around the pond.
"Who's there?"
He almost felt like mocking himself after he said it. If someone was there, they weren't going to hear him. No one back in the village had, so why should it be different here?
A woman's voice whispered behind him, so close it could have been at his shoulder.
"It is different, because you and I are of a kind. I see you, I hear you, and I can answer at least some of your questions."
Jack spun round, but again found only empty air.
"Who are you? Where are you?"
She spoke again, but remained unseen. Close, and yet hidden from his sight.
"I am Mother Nature, and I am all around you. What form I could take to stand before you, is unimportant. I am here to explain that which you need to know, and nothing more."
Jack's tension began to lessen, although he still clenched his staff tightly. It was amazing to think how he already clung to his strange new powers, when in a situation where he feared he might have to defend himself.
"Then tell me, why am I like this? Why me? What am I even supposed to do?"
Something stepped into the moonlight at the edge of the lake, but beyond the blurred glimpse of a woman's face, the figure was like mist. So transluscent, so indistinct, that he could see the forest through her. She was hiding herself from him, he could tell.
She regarded him solemnly, her eyes a faint glitter upon the misty image of her face.
"To answer your first question, you are now a being of spirit. Someone chosen upon their death, to rise again and serve a higher purpose. Specifically, you are the Spirit of Winter, which means you would normally answer to me."
Jack frowned.
"So you're the one who chose me?"
She shook her head.
"No... I created the Spirits of Spring, Summer, and Autumn a very long time ago, but my counterpart, the Man in the Moon, asked that he be permitted to chose who would be the Spirit of Winter. For Winter's snow reflects the silver light of the moon, and casts that radiance through even the darkest of nights. And so, that makes you his 'child', not mine. Even if your duties, for now, will be given to you only by me."
Jack began to advance towards her, but stopped when he met a wall of the same force that had prevented him entering the home of his family. That discovery made him scowl.
"You kept me away from them!"
"For their sake, as well as yours." She came further out onto the pond, still impossible to discern, still just a gauzy shape to his eyes. She hid herself well, in gossamer and starlight, and reached out to cup the side of his face with a hand. Despite all his anger, he couldn't move away. "To them, you died this day. Your parents will never see you again, for only the innocence of a child can become belief, and mortals must believe in your existence in order to see you. So while your mother and father are now lost to you, your sister remains a chance to be seen... But." She lowered her hand. "Emily saw you die today. Her heart will remain closed until she has fully grieved. If you try to approach her now, will only scare her and her parents. You must give her time."
Jack once again stared in bewilderment, utterly lost and close to broken.
"How long? How long will I have to wait?"
Mother Nature smiled, or at least he thought she did.
"You may approach her after next winter's first snow upon this valley. Until then, you will practice, and learn, and carry out that which is now your role. Since I created the other Spirits of the Seasons, I have been the one to shepherd winter between the north and the south of this world with the cycle of each year, but now that is your task. Worry not about finding where to go, the Winds will take you where you need to be. You need only ask them. But be warned, you may linger here until early spring and return in late autumn, but do not remain here for summer. You are new, and you are not strong enough for that yet. Summer's warmth will only hurt you, and you would be away from South's winter if you stayed here... And with that, I bid you farewell for now, Jack Frost. We shall speak again only when time and task require it."
She vanished like mist, before giving him the chance to utter even a single word more, and once again he was alone. Stood upon the frozen pond, with only the silent moon for company.
He turned his head to look in the direction of the village, considered returning to it, but then tightened his grip upon his staff and turned his back. Grim and determined to make the best of the situation he now found himself in, as shakily he called out in tentative request.
"Wind... Take me to where winter needs me to be."
The wind which had been absent in the presence of Mother Nature, rushed down across the pond and lifted him high up into the sky, as high as the clouds. Up there he then tumbled in its grasp with the awkward flight of a fledgeling bird, and his eyes widened with awe at the sight of the land spread out from horison to horison before him. Graced with snow and lit by moonlight, sweeping past beneath him as the winds carried him towards the distant mountains to the north.
The wind hadn't seemed to be in a particular rush, when Jack eventually became accustomed enough to being tossed around like a snowflake that he actually dozed off. It was only when he was slammed into a snowbank on the side of a mountain, that he woke up to the oddest feeling and stood up with a start.
As if it were something he had done every day of his life, Jack climbed up out of the hole he'd made in the steeply-stacked powder and stood upon a surface that wouldn't have supported even a mouse without starting to slide. The odd feeling kept him there, motionless, as he tried to figure out what it meant. There were clouds in the sky here, and he was so high up the mountains that he could see the sun starting to rise far to the east. That light began to warm, ever so slightly, the rock which remained unburried by snow. That warmth began to spread, and even the surface of the snow warmed slightly. Enough, he knew, to partially melt the surface snow, which would re-freeze from the cold beneath to create a hard crust over soft powder. One that a gut instinct told him would be covered by a layer of wetter, heavier snow within the next few hours.
That gut instinct also told him that heavy, packed snow put over loose powdery snow, would take only the smallest of triggers to set off an avalanche.
Jack tilted his head suddenly, as the winds circled close and seemed to whisper to him. The avalanche here would happen on its own, the mountain was steep enough, but in other places close to roads that people had built, the mountains clung to their snow much more stubbornly. People were noisy, that noise could set those avalanches off if they were below and careless, and that would get them burried and killed.
Jack nodded to himself, somehow understanding what the wind was trying to tell him. As the Spirit of Winter, one of his jobs would be to find the most dangerous untriggered avalanches and set them off when no one was below to get hurt by them. But even as he realised that, he heard the wind whisper again, to tell him that he wouldn't be expected to find them all. There were too many mountains, and people were beginning to spread too far across the lands of the world to watch over them all. People would still die in winters, from snow and ice and cold, but that was just the way of things. That was the way nature worked. The way that he had died was proof of that.
Jack sighed at the stab of pain that thought caused, and with an action as absent as his clamber out of the snow, he leapt lightly and floated upwards until with surprise he realised he wasn't riding a gust of wind. It was as if, with thought alone, he could drift on air like the snowflake he'd earlier likened himself to. He didn't need wind to fly, but it did make him go much much faster.
He couldn't help it, the smile of mischief that crept onto his face as with a whoop of exhilleration he flung himself skyways and dared the winds to a race. They answered, carrying him so fast down the far side of the mountain that a plume of powdery snow was whipped up by their joint passage.
Jack played with the wind for a while after that, until the sun neared zenith and the odd feeling impinged on his awareness again. There was a bad avalanche place nearby, and it prodded at the edge of his awareness like an aching bruise. It didn't take long for him to find it, and even less for him to set it off once he'd assured himself there was nothing below. And the manner in which he did it?
Mother Nature would have just nudged it and gone on her way, but not Jack Frost. No, Jack chose to dive into the trecherous snowback as if it were the pond back home in summer. That impact setting in motion a massive casade of snow, which he rode with glee and became burried in once it reached the bottom.
And if it took him almost an hour to figure out how to use his powers to dig himself out, he didn't mind... It had been too much fun for him to care about that.
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Alaia Skyhawk: Yeah, Jack is admittedly blanking out worries about his sister, by focusing his mind on other things. But then his ability to turn aside worry and fear by using fun, is why the Moon chose him :)
And also, I deliberately haven't described what Mother Nature looks like. I'll leave that to you all to imagine, so in that way I won't clash with the books when she does show up in those :)