Alaia Skyhawk: And here's yet more Sandy and Jack!
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.
And a shout-out to VanRah on Deviantart, for letting me use their awesome picture of Jack Frost as the new cover for this story! Seriously, go check out their page!
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Chapter 36: A Dream of What Once Was
The two of them flew southwards from Russia, over the Himalayas, over the jungles of India and past the Tooth Palace. Onwards until they reached the Indian Ocean, and turned south-west to where more than a thousand little islands clustered in two long chains of atolls through a shallow swathe of sea.
At the very southern tip of that chain, upon the last of the sea-ridge that held up those islands, was a final isle that was protected by magic. Hidden from the world, even from the people living on that chain of islands, unless you knew exactly what to look for and where.
Jack stared in wonder as he and Sandy descended towards the Dreamsand Isle, whose golden swirling trails glittered in the sunlight. In the lagoons those trails formed, mermaids leaped and frolicked and sang, and they waved and smiled at the two immortals that passed overhead. And at the pair's destination, the point where all the trails of the island came together at the far end, was a dainty castle of sand which didn't so much look as if it were built upon the dunes, but had rather grown out of them.
Sandy landed first, holding out his arms in welcome to his home as Jack also set down. It was only then that the Spirit of Winter realised that the island wasn't made of sand, but rather the very thing that had inspired the form of Sandy's dreamsand.
Jack gasped as his bare feet touched it, and he felt the tingle of magic up through his soles. He then stooped down to pick up a handful, and let it trickled through his fingers.
"This whole place is made of stardust?"
Sandy nodded, and waved for Jack to follow him inside the little sandcastle. Jack's head almost touched the ceiling inside, but then the whole place was built for someone of the Sandman's short stature. It was once the door was closed, and he'd had the chance to look around the mostly empty main chamber, that the next thing he saw was the ball of dreamsand that subsequently knocked him out.
Sandy chuckled as he caught Jack with a cloud of dreamsand, and shaped it into a comfortable bed for him before settling onto a cloud of his own. He then closed his eyes, sighed, and let himself fall into slumber.
For Jack, in the moment after he was struck, he was stood in what he guessed was a dream. It was a forest, much like the one in his valley, and it was dusted with snow. He was just about to begin exploring, when something seemed to grab and pull him from that realm. And then he was some place entirely new and completely different, looking out across rolling green hills with grass and flowers that glittered with magic, towards a magnificent city of white crystal spires. Above him was a sky unlike any other he'd ever seen, blue like daytime near the horizon, before becoming deep indigo above where it was studded with uncountable stars and three moons.
He let out a breath of awe.
"Whoa... Where am I?"
"Inside my Dreamscape."
Jack turned around sharply, to where Sandy had stood unseen behind him. He then blinked.
"Wait, you just talked! You never talk, you only made the exception when you swore me in, because it was a very important occasion."
Sandy smiled, and shrugged.
"I don't talk in the waking world, so that I never risk waking children from their dreams. But this isn't the waking world, and the only person who is here to hear me, is you. I thought it might be best to give you your first lesson, without forcing you to try and understand my instructions had I mimed them."
Jack was staring.
"So this is a dream? Your dream?"
Sandy floated up so that he was at Jack's eye-level, and came forward to look out across this unearthly realm.
"All people have an inner realm, a Dreamscape that represents them and their origins. Yours is a forest, like the one where you grew up, and it is dusted with snow in representation of your status as the Spirit of Winter. This is my Dreamscape, and it too shows the place where I spent my childhood years."
Jack also looked, and started to frown.
"But this looks like nowhere on Earth."
"That's because it isn't anywhere on Earth."
Jack's choked splutter rang through the air, and he stared at Sandy.
"You're not from Earth?"
Sandy started to smile wryly.
"You already knew that Pitch, and Mother Nature, and the Man in the Moon were not of the Earth. Does it truly surprise you to find that I too am from another place in the cosmos? And indeed, there are two others besides us four. Bunnymund, who is the last of the Pookas, a race who roamed among the many worlds and who helped shape life on them when otherwise it would have struggled. And then there is he who serves as Tsar Luna's messenger and bodyguard, Nightlight. Nightlight held Pitch trapped and motionless for uncountable millennia, after his attack on Tsar Luna and the crash of the Nightmare Galleon, until fate conspired to free both of them from that state. Pitch has only been at large and loose on the Earth for a little over two centuries, even though some of the Fearlings have roamed it since before the Human Race were in their infancy. It was when mankind began to dream, and to know nightmares, that I arrived."
Jack was speechless at his friend's revelation, until his eyes widened in realisation.
"The falling star, that became your island. You were on that star when it fell?"
"Inside it, actually, but it amounts to the same thing." Sandy sighed. "I slumbered, waiting in that star, for aeons before finally the Man in the Moon summoned it to your world. Ever since the fall of the Golden Age."
They were both looking at the distant city now, and Jack took a step towards it as if to reach out and touch it.
"So this is what you home was like, during the Golden Age? It's beautiful."
Sandy smiled sadly.
"It was... That city you see was the Capital of the Lunar Kingdom, which was ruled by the Man in the Moon's parents, the Lunanoffs. The Universe was magnificent place, led by the Constellations. Families possessed of astounding magic, which rendered them immortal, but which they passed from generation to generation rather than covet and cling to selfishly. They could gift a touch of that power to others, creating the Major and Lesser Immortals who served the people and worlds under the Constellations' care, as protectors and guides. They were very wise, and the Golden Age was born and flourished under their care... But in one way, they were also very foolish, and their biggest mistake was one that I took part in."
Jack looked at him, frowning in confusion.
"What do you mean?"
Sandy's shoulder slumped, and his expression became one of regret.
"When I was a child, I discovered I possessed a most unusual gift. When I slept, I never ever had nightmares, because when I slept I always knew when Fearlings and Dream Pirates were near and would wake before they could reach me. When the Lunanoffs learnt of my gift, they brought me to live in their palace. This was before their son was born. They were saddened that the Fearlings and Dream Pirates continued to blight the otherwise bright lives, of all the people of all the worlds under the Constellations. They and their peers wanted to catch them, and imprison them forever, but it can be very hard to find dark things in the dark gaps between stars."
Jack's eyes widened in understanding.
"You helped them catch them all... It was because of you, that they were able to imprison them."
Sandy bowed his head in shame.
"I did, and I did it with great joy and pride. Yet, in our joint ignorance of the mistake we were making, we doomed the Golden Age to fall. Inside their prison, the Fearlings devoured the Dream Pirates and transformed them into more of their own. Far from weakening them, by imprisoning them we only acknowledged our fear of them, embraced it, and that made them powerful beyond imagining. And then Tsar and Tsarina Lunanoff placed their greatest general, Kosmotis Pitchiner, to guard the only door in or out of that prison... You already know the rest."
At the sight of Sandy's pain, Jack reached out and pulled the Guardian of Dreams into a hug.
"Don't blame yourself. What happened, happened, and nothing can change it. But what we can do, is make sure that the same mistake is never made here on this world. We'll deal with the Fearlings, not by imprisoning them, but by stripping them of their power. We'll make it so that no one is afraid of them ever again."
Sandy smiled, returning the hug in gratitude before easing himself free.
"You are right. Regretting the past, will not help us shape the beginnings of a new Golden Age."
Jack grinned, but then he tilted his head.
"But wait, if you can sense when Fearlings are near when you're sleeping, then why don't you just track down Pitch?"
Sandy's expression became wry.
"I gave up that ability, when I accepted immortality from the Lunanoffs at the fall of the Golden Age. Instead I asked that it be transformed into a power to gift dreams, that could then be used to protect people from the Fearlings' malice. I was then put within a shooting star, to sleep and wait until the time came that I would be needed." He took a deep breath, and rubbed his hands together in a business-like manner. "But, enough of stories about my past, it's time you and I got to work on your power. That's what I brought you in here for, after all."
He waved a hand, causing a series of floating rings to appear in the air, and sent a stream of dreamsand weaving among them in demonstration. "This is what you need to set up back at your sanctuary, something like this, so you can practice in directing frostdust through the air and around things. As you get better at it, you can increase the number of rings. Once you've reached the point when the your range is bigger than your sanctuary, you can practice in Antarctica, but only during daylight. The reflected light on the ice and the snow, is too bright anywhere near the surface for Fearlings to linger and possibly spot what you're doing. Don't take risks, and practice at night."
Jack grimaced.
"Which means that for five months of the year, during the Polar Night, I won't be able to practice outside at all."
Sandy tapped him on the arm, warningly.
"I know that will be frustrating, but we cannot take risks. Which means that you cannot use your frostdust anywhere but Burgess, either, and try to use your power only with your snow if you can help it. There's no sense in chancing it, when you will be there only during Northern Winters anyway."
Jack stood there, frowning and stiff at the thought of the restrictions, before he sighed in resignation.
"Fine, I understand... Let's give this a go."
He held a hand out, creating a small cloud of frostdust and attempting to send it through the rings as Sandy had done. He didn't question how it was possible for him to use his powers here in his friend's Dreamscape, the answer would probably be something that made complete sense to Sandy and utter nonsense to him. And it soon became apparent that the same could be said of him directing his frostdust in the manner Sandy did dreamsand.
Because while the method was entirely instinctive and natural to Sandy, it was utterly incomprehensible to Jack. Frostdust didn't behave like dreamsand. It didn't 'home in' on children, even when he used his snowflakes he had to think where and what children to make them land on. Doing that for hundreds of thousands of children was going to be impossible.
By the end of the lesson, Jack had only managed to get his frostdust through the first two rings before it broke up into clouds of particles and slipped from his control. His frustration was understandable, and Sandy did his best to reassure him that they'd solve the problem of getting it to children once he could at least get it near them.
It was clear it was going to take Jack time, and quite a lot of it, before he'd mastered this form of his power. Mother Nature and the Man in the Moon had been right to insist on secrecy. At the very least, it was probably going to be decades before Jack was at the stage he could wield his power on a large enough scale to be effective. A hard fact for the Spirit of Winter to accept, given the ease with which he could bring winter to half the world in a few hours if need be.
But, as a compromise that did cheer Jack up, Sandy promised to carry a pouch of frostdust with him. To mix with dreams for the most needy of Feared Children each cycle of night.
Months passed, with Jack visiting the Dreamsand Isle once a month for a training session. Sandy had made a new room under his sandcastle, where an Ice Mirror to the Winter Sanctuary was housed. He ceased to enter the sanctuary any other way from that point onwards, lest the frequency of his visits draw unwanted attention.
But he knew the secrecy was starting to grate on the youngest Guardian.
But then, three years after the first lesson, Jack arrived through the mirror wearing a mischievous grin. And when Sandy regarded him in puzzlement, Jack shook in silent laughter and made a pair of shapes with frostdust above his head.
It was a clock and a question-mark, the same images Sandy used to ask 'am I late?'
When Sandy blinked in surprise, Jack began to chuckle out loud this time, and the Guardian of Fun explained.
"I was thinking that, you're the only one who speaks the way you do. Even the other Guardians have to guess to understand you, you can't just go and talk to them the way I chat and spend time with my Lieutenants. That must be lonely, right?" His smile widened. "So I thought that, maybe, I could learn to speak the same way. It's all good practice for shaping my frostdust, and if we come up with a proper language of symbols we can both use, you'll have someone you can talk to who can understand you properly... Me."
Sandy was still staring, with wide eyes that then began to glisten with tears. Moments later Jack was on the receiving end of a hug, and he chuckled again.
"It was Cernunnos' idea actually. Seems he and the rest of my Lieutenants have been working with each other to come up with a solution to my frostdust problems. I may never be as good at directing my dust the way you send out your sand, but I don't need to be, because I already have ways to get around it... With my Hall of Mirrors, I only need to get my range up to a couple of hundred miles at most, and from there I can take advantage of frostdust's apparent like of exploding into clouds of powder."
He pulled a bit of a breeze through the air, blew a little frostdust into its path, and the wind picked them it and carried it. "Wind... If I mix frostdust into the lower air-currents of the world, the winds will carry it to every place that air can get, including inside buildings... I don't need to target single children because, like a setting off a snowfall over a region, I can target them all at once."
Sandy began to grin in enthusiasm, shaking Jack's hand in congratulations. Ever so glad to see frustration being replaced by optimism. He hated to see Jack feeling down, it just didn't suit the Guardian of Fun at all.
As if noticing that unspoken thought, Jack then winced in self-depreciation.
"That still doesn't mean I'm not a big failure with frostdust streams right now. Since last month, I've only managed to get my range up to half-a-mile with two streams. More streams than that, and they explode in my face. I had a dozen Winter Sprites with me when I last tried three... They got doused with frostdust, and didn't stop giggling from it for four hours."
Sandy laughed silently at that, and then with a mischievous grin of his own, he made a 'shush' gesture and raised his eyebrows in query.
Jack grinned in return, understanding, before he scrunched up his face in concentration and wrote, letter-by-letter, the words 'talking game!' in glowing blue-white powder above his head.
They were going to have a lot of fun over the times ahead, coming up with the only language in the world that Toothiana wouldn't know. And for Sandy, a chance for chatter and gossip was opening up before him, something he thought to be the most wonderful gift that Jack could give him.
Because who really needs spoken words, to express a friendship like theirs?
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Alaia Skyhawk: And so we learn more about Sandy (stuff from the books, and a couple of things I've added/tweaked as headcanon). I wanted to have him be able to talk to Jack about his past, but didn't want to keep having him break his own 'no speaking' rule. So I thought, "he can't wake people up if he's talking inside his own dreams. So, inside there, he'd have no reason not to talk". Thus the Dreamscape scene was born.
And yep, Jack will be using his 'Spirit of Winter' skills, to patch up the holes in his abilities with frostdust. He's letting his Lieutenants help him with ideas now, unlike before. But expect to see him continue to 'yo-yo' back and forth between frustration and acceptance from here on. Because the better he gets with frostdust, the more he's going to resent having to remain a secret and heavily restricted Guardian. Poor guy :S