Alaia Skyhawk: Time for some more fun and fluff :)
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 14: Familial Joy
He glided over the surface of the pond, leaving a trail of ripples on the water's surface as he passed. Birdsong echoed through the surrounding forest, and the winds were warm.
Jack sighed, keeping his powers reigned in tight so as not to freeze anything or coat it with frost. As a consequence even the frost on his clothing had thawed, resulting in only his white hair, pale complexion, and the hint of frost on his staff marking him as the Spirit of Winter. And the reason he was taking the effort to be restrained?
It was two weeks until Southern Winter was due to start, meaning he was still hanging around near the village when for that region it was two weeks until summer was due to start. Ariko had been bad enough to deal with the past few weeks, but Achieng would be a complete nightmare by comparison if he was still here when she did her preliminary flyover a week before she brought Northern Summer.
Jack smirked to himself at that, knowing he wasn't going to be hanging around more than another day or so... It was just the waiting that was getting to him right now.
His thoughts were disrupted by an errant gust of wind, one that carried the unmistakable scent of flowers. And with that, Jack sighed and turned to face where the Spirit of Spring had landed on the shore of the pond.
He greeted her in a pleasant tone, as if she'd not confronted him almost every other day for the past month.
"Greetings, Ariko, Spirit of Spring. What can I do to help you this fine day?"
Jack suppressed a new smirk. Ok, so maybe his pleasant tone had also held a note of considerable sarcasm.
Ariko rose up into the air, her long black hair and the folds of her kimono, fluttering in the breeze. She then came over in such as way as to give the impression she'd stomped over instead of gliding gracefully, before jabbing a finger at his face so quickly as to almost make him lean back away from it.
He didn't, he'd gotten used to this now, and so ignored the fingertip that was being held an inch from his nose as she yelled at him in her rather dainty way.
"You need to leave, Frost, now. You're not supposed to be here at this time of year."
Jack smiled sweetly, before drifting backwards to sit on the rock in the middle of the pond. Once there, he then splashed his bare feet in the water.
"Why not? It isn't against the rules for me to enjoy some warmer weather for a change, and it's not like I've frozen anything either. I've made sure not to." He let his false smile fade, now rather sick of her persistence and also in no mood to deal with her anymore. "Besides... This is my pond, my home, and I don't have to leave here until a week before winter is due in the South. So I'd appreciate it if you would mind your own business!"
Ariko pointed towards the village, glaring at him.
"And what about them? With their little shrine to 'Jack Frost' in the middle of the village square!"
Jack scowled, picturing the little peak-roofed niche that had been built at the base of the storm-pole. It wasn't even that fancy, just a box with two sloped boards on top. It contained a little clay plaque that Emily had made, with a rough drawing of a cloaked figure with a shepherd's-crook staff on it.
He pushed his irritation aside, and kept his voice composed and indifferent.
"So? I like to play with the village children during winter, and they happened to mention my name to their parents. When the children started telling stories about how I made sure they were safe when they played in the woods, and that when ice appeared to hang down the pole, it was a warning about a bad blizzard coming, they came to the rest of the conclusions on their own. Although, admittedly, my sister gave things a nudge. She may be seventeen now, but she still believes in me and can still see me."
Ariko was glaring daggers at him, little flower-petals materialising in the air around her to be stirred by the wind. They were supposed to demonstrate the degree of her anger, but in truth all they did was make her slight, childlike frame resemble a doll. She was just under five feet tall, very slender, and that diminutive size combined with the petals made it even harder to take her seriously.
"You just don't understand it, do you? You are the Spirit of Winter! And you and the rest of us aren't meant to be seen!"
Jack regarded her flatly. Oh how he was going to love knocking her down a peg.
"That's not what Mother Nature said, and you could go ask her if you don't believe me." He grinned, bracing his elbows on his knees. "She doesn't mind me having some 'minor Legend Immortal' influence here in my home village. So long as I fulfil my duties as the Spirit of Winter, she doesn't care what I do with the rest of my time." He waved at her cheerfully. "So I guess I should just say 'goodbye for now'. If you're so set on us Spirits being in certain places at certain times of the year, then doesn't that mean you hanging around here to yell at me, will make you late for sprucing up the Spring Sanctuary with fresh blossom?"
More petals formed around her, and a hint of fog began to mix with them when clenched fists were added to her posture of anger and disapproval.
"Frost! You have to be the most immature person I have ever met. Why you were chosen to be the Spirit of Winter, I have no idea what Mother Nature was thinking!"
"Maybe she got sick of how boring and stuffy, you and the others are."
The little Japanese girl's jaw hung open in shock at his remark, before the very air around her began to tremble with her rage. But before she could lash out or even yell at him some more, petals and fog vanished from the air around her, due to the surprise of a freshly conjured snowball hitting her square in the middle of the face.
Jack watched the blue glitter of 'fun and joy' dissipate around her eyes and sink in. He then he watched as she wiped the snow from her face, with her expression torn between the desire to angrily throw something in return, and the sudden childish urge to start giggling.
When that urge caused the corner of her mouth to start to turn upwards in a smile, and she looked like she was about to choke on un-requested laughter, she flushed pink in embarrassment and flew away on a gust of wind.
Jack waited until she was out of sight, before collapsing sideways on his rock and laugh until his sides ached. Let her try figure out what had made her want to laugh, he knew she wouldn't. Whatever abilities she might have had, other than the ones related to her season, she was so stuck-in-a-rut with her mindset she'd probably never discovered them.
Of course, a part of him did wonder if she had any other abilities at all. A part that wondered if he were somehow different, and special. After all, Mother Nature had said that she'd chosen the Spirits of Spring, Summer, and Autumn... But also that she had not chosen him. He'd been chosen by the Man in the Moon.
He went quiet and frowned to himself. To even think that seemed a bit arrogant to him, almost like what could become the start of a bad habit. One that could lead to him being as 'high and mighty' as Ariko and the others.
He grimaced to himself and pushed the thought aside. Even if he was chosen to be different, it didn't matter. He had an official job to do, and he'd do it... He smiled to himself. He also had his unofficial 'job' of protecting the village and making the children laugh and smile. He didn't need anything else.
He turned his head to gaze towards the settlement, his expression becoming one of tension and worry. He'd come out here because he'd been practically pacing back and forth in mid-air, thinking that perhaps some distance would make it easier. But he wanted to go back now, to be there, even if it made him anxious to the point of beating his head off the nearest tree to deal with it.
Jack floated up from his rock, a silent request to the winds speeding him over to the village. He then landed out the back of Emily and Albert's cabin, and went to lean against the wall beside the man himself.
Albert glanced at him, eyebrows raised.
"I thought you couldn't stand waiting here... where you could hear everything."
There was a muffled cry from within, and both of them winced. Jack then sighed, remembering the last time he'd done this... Stood outside the family cabin with his father, listening and waiting as his mother brought Emily into the world... But this was different, because now it was Emily having a baby. His little sister was about to become a mother.
Jack slid down to sit at the base of the wall, and cradled his staff across his lap.
"It's just as bad waiting over there, to be honest. At the pond, I was waiting while unable to hear what was happening, which meant I was left wondering what was going on. Ariko distracted me for a while, but then she left."
Albert frowned.
"The Spirit of Spring? Why was she there?"
Jack snorted in derision.
"Yelling at me for hanging around here so long. I put her in her place, informing her that I have Mother Nature's permission to be wherever I please so long as my duties get done as well." He chuckled. "I then threw one of my special snowballs at her. She looked like she didn't know whether to giggle or scream at me, and flew off."
Albert chuckled as well.
"I almost feel sorry for her... You must be so bewildering."
Their smiles turned to winces, as Emily groaned and yelped in pain once again. Any further conversation stalled, and the two men remained outside continuing the wait.
Another hour passed by, then two, and still neither of them left their vigil. And then came the most glorious of sounds, the cry of a baby newly born into the world.
The two of them darted round to the front of the house, where the village midwife had opened the door. Albert went in, but Jack remained outside. It would be too awkward to sneak in while she was there, and then sneak out again, so as much as it irked him he perched on the edge of the roof and waited.
Albert came out again ten minutes later, wearing a smile that went from ear-to-ear in joy as he called out loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.
"I have a son! Thomas Jackson Bennett!"
Several villagers came over, resulting in much back-patting and congratulations for the new father. Meanwhile Jack sat blinking for a moment in surprise at the name, before a smile of equal joy lit his expression. He should have known Emily would insist on Jackson.
Sighing in bliss at this moment, he rose up into the air above the village, to look at where the road wended its way towards the river and the crossing point there. So much had changed, even his sister was changing, becoming a mother, and all of a sudden the concept of time, as he would have to view it, came crashing down upon him.
Jack's expression turned to a frown. Emily was seventeen, and out here if she was lucky she would live to see sixty-five, maybe seventy. Their parents were already nearing that age, their mother was fifty-four, and their father was four years older than her. The harsh life in these lands, even with the Spirit of Winter's protection, would not let them see many more years. He'd seen the age in them last winter, when a persistent cough had spread through the village. It had lingered on in his father far longer than anyone else, and his mother had been left struggling for breath for weeks.
Jack shoved those thoughts away, even going so far as to hit himself with one of his own special snowflakes. They only had a mild effect when used on himself, but it was enough to banish the ache in his heart and set that painful reality to the back of his mind. Not forgotten, but not where it could spoil this occasion.
He dropped back down to the roof of the cabin and waited for the midwife to finish her work and leave. When that happened, Albert made sure to leave the cabin door open as he thanked the midwife, allowing Jack to slip in.
Inside the cabin, Emily was sat propped up in the bed with a bundle in her arms. She smiled when she saw him enter, and tiredly waved a hand for him to come over.
"Come see your nephew." Jack came over and sat on the chair beside the bed, and while Albert closed the door, Emily passed her son to her brother. "Thomas, this is your Uncle Jack."
Jack almost went rigid in nerves when he found himself holding the infant in his bundle of blankets. But then his gaze drifted to the little boy's face, and a tiny hand poked out from the edge of the coverings. Without thinking, he offered a cool finger to that grasp, and smiled in wonder when tiny fingers closed around it.
"He's beautiful."
He now passed Thomas to Albert, who was wearing the same blissful smile of joy as Emily. And when Jack left the house an hour later, after bidding his farewells, he flew south carrying those precious memories with him.
Within half-an-hour he was at the Winter Sanctuary, to wait the final few days until Southern Winter would start. It was during that time that he built a new wing to extend his modest ice palace, turning the interior into a spacious hall with a ceiling that glittered with refracted light. It was in there that he spun a pedestal of ice up from the floor, and upon it crafted a perfect sculpture of Emily and Albert holding their infant son.
Jack set a dome of perfectly clear ice over the sculpture, then set his forehead to that surface. He had no explanation for what he was trying to do, but instinct guided him. That and his desire to preserve that perfect memory forever.
When he opened his eyes and lifted his face away from the dome, the sculpture within was no longer simple white ice. Instead it was tinted with the exact colours from his memory, muted only a little by the medium in which they were cast, creating an everlasting image of that precious moment.
Jack smiled, knowing this would likely be the first of many sculptures to fill this hall. So that even when years and passed, and Emily was gone, he could come here to see her smile again. He would fill this hall with his most joyful moments, so that whenever he should feel burdened by loneliness, he could remind himself of what mattered.
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Alaia Skyhawk: And Jack is now an uncle! If you're wondering how he gave colour to the sculpture, I worked based of the fact that water and ice can refract light and split it into a spectrum (the way rain makes rainbows). What Jack's power did, was change the crystals within each part of the sculpture, so that they would refract the light in a certain way, creating the illusion of colour :)