Chapter Twelve-Story Time
When Jack woke up his head was swimming. There was a stabbing, throbbing pain radiating through him but there was nothing he absolutely needed to do that day, so he focused on what he was trying to think about and ignored the pain.
They think the Boogeyman is their friend. He's nice now, even though he wasn't before. They saw me in a dream, happy and laughing having been convinced of that. I can't just ignore this. My gut says that maybe there's something going on here. He forced himself to think about the dream. Suddenly that conversation came crashing down on him and he rolled over to wretch into the basket that had been by his bed for a few nights now.
"Jackie?" Anna's worried voice cut through the haze.
"Yeah Anna?" He asked, trying not to look like he was dying.
"Are you okay Jackie?" She asked, scooting off her bed and running up to him, eyes wide.
"I'll be alright Anna, it's just a headache." He explained softly. She remembered what Pitch had told her and grinned.
"It's okay Jackie, it's just 'cause a that dream. If you don't think 'bout you feel better again." She offered sleepily, pulling herself up to sit on his bed.
"That so?" He asked with a grin. As it turned out she was right, and that was a little scary.
"Mmmhmm. Pitch told us 'bout it last night. He came to say hi." She offered.
"Now when did he do that?" He asked.
"After dinner." She offered as she curled up beside him to try to return to the wonderful dreams she had been having. Sandy opened an eye and grinned before rolling back over, unconcerned. He knew Jack would be okay, his new friend had said so.
When Jack finally rolled out of bed a few hours later it was to the sounds of chuckling and a very rambunctious set of boys in the living room. He yawned and stretched, poking Anna until she woke up giggling and scooping a no longer sick Sandy up out of his bed to go make breakfast. Once everyone got thoroughly sticky with pancake syrup Jamie came knocking excitedly on his door, his mom giggling behind him.
"Jamie!" Nick and Anna yelled, excited to see what was quickly becoming their favorite friend.
"Hey guys, did Pitch come see you too?" he asked quietly. They all nodded. Evidently Aster and Nick had been his first stop of the night.
"So how are we gonna get him to tell us stories?" Nick asked.
"Ask." Jamie supplied simply. "A whole lot might have changed about him, but he still loves to tell stories."
"So…when?" Aster asked.
"Well…after he's up fully." Jamie suggested.
"Good thinkin'." Aster nodded.
They decided to occupy themselves with a couple card games until they felt that Jack was up for story time. Back in the kitchen he and Jamie's mom were sipping coffee and talking about the next semester's schedule changes.
"I think it'll work much better this semester. I've given myself more time with them. Plus I'm thinking about trying to work on campus somewhere so I can be close to them. Maybe even at the daycare." He said excitedly.
"That's a wonderful idea Jack! I'll put in a good word for you if you'd like." She offered.
"That'd be nice, thanks. I just need to let my boss know I'm considering it so they can replace me if I get the job." He reasoned. "I need to apply and make sure my chances are good and I need to be sure there's not a paycheck in there that I'm gonna miss." He fretted.
"Jack, I'll help you out, you know that right?" She asked with a smile, hand on his shoulder.
"You've been so amazing already, I should really know better than to assume you won't by now." He ran a hand through his hair with a sigh. "It just feels wrong. You barely know me, or you did, and it's like you're giving us all this for nothing and-" She stopped him mid-thought.
"Jack. Sweetie, you've done enough by yourself." She observed. He sighed, not even bothering with the pretending that he didn't get it. He did. He knew what she was talking about and he just chuckled at himself and smiled at her.
"One day you'll pound that into my head." He teased.
"That's the plan." She prodded through a chuckle and into her mug.
Pitch was hovering outside, unseen by anyone, and hoping silently that Jack never got that far. He wanted the boy back to normal because being the spirit of Winter and guardian of Fun had to be better than working paycheck to paycheck in a pathetic scrambling attempt to get a degree and keep his siblings alive.
Jack and Jessica watched the kids play every game imaginable and when they were pulled in they managed to forget about the world for a while. When they were about to get lunch they collapsed into piles around the adults and begged for a story.
"Alright, alright. What do you want to hear about?" he asked them.
"The Guardians." Jamie offered. Jack got a mental image and a slight throbbing in his head. As he convinced himself that it was his imagination and the story Jamie had told when they moved in working, the headache went away and slowly progressed and receded as he spoke.
"Alright, The Guardians Of Childhood it is." He rubbed his hands together in preparation, getting them invested. "Now these are all the people you think about when you think of the legendary people we can't see all the time." His voice hushed, captivating them even though they knew about these people, they loved hearing Jack tell stories and he knew how to keep them invested. He took them on a journey through the Guardian's lives.
"The Sand Man, better known to his friends as Sandy, was doing his thing. He's a little bit on the short side, but he never did mind that. He was completely golden, made of the dreams he disbursed to the children of the world. He was trying to remember what day it was, because when you follow the nighttime part of the world for a living you tend to forget, and realized it was the Guardian's meeting night. As he sent out the last of the dreams for that night he headed off to the North Pole, where they met every month to talk about how they were doing with the kids and catch up as friends.
Sandy was actually the first one to arrive in the meeting room this time, which was odd for him as he was so busy, but he settled down in a chair by a fireplace to wait. It was Santa's living room and it was huge, to account for all the people that had to come and go from the pole. He himself wasn't really called Santa that often, especially among his friends. His name was Nicolai Saint North, and they just called him North for short. He was the Guardian of Wonder.
He was very tall, with the long white beard and hair you'd expect, but he wasn't chubby and quiet like the stories say. No, North was huge, in muscle and admittedly a little flab that mostly came from his natural build, and he was Russian. Sometimes he would mess up English phrases which was where Ho Ho Ho came from, it was just a mistake he made, and it's pretty accurate to the way he actually laughs. It's loud, and ringing, and he uses his whole body when he speaks. His laugh shakes his shoulders and will really scare you if you aren't paying attention.
He was the next one to arrive in the meeting room, stopping his work carving out toys a bit early to make sure everyone was there and that he didn't miss the meeting.
'Sandy! Early today, what brings you here on time this month?' He teased. Sandy raised an eyebrow at him and golden symbols started to flash above his head. That's how Sandy talks, see he uses his sand to make symbols because he can't speak. He doesn't mind that either, don't worry. In his line of work being mute is more helpful than you might think.
He started to tease North about growing out his beard and they picked at each other in friendly banter for a bit before the Tooth Fary came. She was brightly colored in blue, green, and gold with pink on her eyes, like permanent make up. Her huge, purple eyes were bright with excitement over the last couple baby-teeth that had come in, and she almost flew into the wall when she came in. She guarded Memories and the lessons we learn from them.
'Woah, Tooth! Watch out!' North caught the poor woman before she could bowl herself over on a chair. With his arm hooked around her waist she finally snapped out of the haze that collecting all the teeth from all the children in the world sometimes got her into.
'Oh, sorry. I hope I didn't break anything! Are we still waiting on some?' She asked.
'Only Bunny.' He offered. She turned to see Sandy waving at her happily.
'Oh, hi Sandy! So why is Bunny the last one this time, usually it's you.' She teased. Sandy rolled his eyes with a little playful smile. They weren't being mean and he knew it. He made a symbol to show her hitting a billboard. She laughed and her feathers puffed out.
'Well I almost did.' She admitted sheepishly.
It was about then that a little hole in the ground opened and produced the Easter Bunny. He's no ordinary bunny either kids, he was larger than life, like his friends. He wasn't what you'd expect. He was about seven feet tall, and he was Australian. He carried boomerangs in holsters on his back, and something tells me he wouldn't appreciate being called cute either. He was the Guardian of Hope.
They were talking about everything they were doing that month when-"
He was just about to jump into the actual plot when Jamie caught his attention and derailed him.
"But what about Jack Frost?" He asked. "He's a guardian too." He insisted.
"Well not yet he's not. This happened before they knew about him, before he was even born." Jack told them, getting around adding a character with his name. It was odd and he really didn't feel like telling a story using his own name. He would bust out laughing he just knew it.
"Jamie, it's not nice to interrupt." His mom shot him a gentle warning look that had Jack chuckling.
"Sorry." He mumbled shyly.
"Oh don't worry about it, this is an interactive story!" Jack saved him from the dreaded mom-stare of death and doom.
"Alright, go on sweetie." She gave Jack's arm a pat and handed him a mug of the cocoa she had made during the course of the introduction.
"Okay, where was I?" He asked, pretending to forget where he left off.
"Meeting!" Anna offered.
"Well yeah, you're right. They had meetings every month where they'd talk about what had happened through the year and this time everyone was having a really similar problem. It came to their attention that everyone had been seeing weird things." He offered vaguely enough to prompt questions.
"What was it, Jack?" Nick asked excitedly. "What were they seeing?"
"Well, first Tooth said that she had seen her faries come back with paint all over them and none of them seemed to know how it had gotten there. She figured some kids were being messy but it was always pastel paints and it wasn't always from the same town, or house. She thought that was just weird enough to mention and North chimed in saying that he had noticed that some of the letters he was getting had paints on them too." He let that sink in for a second. Even Jamie's mom was interested at this point.
"So, what happened with Sandy, what did he see?" Aster asked.
"Well, he started to get paints on his sand when it would come back to him after giving a good dream." He explained, giving them a chance to put it together. "Then Bunny thought of something.
'Mates, what did the paints look like? What did they smell like?' He asked them excitedly.
'Well, they were just pastel colors, like yellow and blue and green.' Tooth explained. Sandy and North both nodded in agreement. Bunny's ears flipped back and flattened to his head as he realized what those paints must have been, but he decided he needed to be a little more certain.
'Alright, but the smell, what was that like?' he asked again.
'Didn't really smell like anything, maybe a little fresh grass but that is it.' North supplied. They all nodded again and Bunny stood up.
'Hold on, let me check something.' He qualified as he hopped down through a hole he made by tapping his foot." Jack had them all leaning forward, what would happen?!
"So what did he find?!" Jamie pulled him out of his dramatic pause.
"All his paints were missing!" He threw his hands up. "He couldn't find them at all! He was super worried too, because he needed them for his eggs for Easter, and to color his dye river which he used to dye his eggs with or to use under his designs. They all looked for his paints all day long and when they found them they couldn't believe their eyes." He scrambled in his brain for the ending of the story because he honestly hadn't thought that far ahead. Usually he would work them out later for his own curiosity but they were generally asleep by now. "There were elves, running around with Bunny's cans of paint and tossing them into portals." He let them ask what they wanted to know.
"Were they playing a prank?" Jamie asked, having seen these elves and wanting to know what Jack thought of them.
"Oh no, they were just having fun. They aren't the elves you'd think of from the stories we're told. They're much less part of the toy-making process than you would think. They really are more like pets." He offered, not wanting to outright say that they were stupid. That would have been mean. He didn't know where his twisted version of these tales were coming from, but he saw them as animals, not really part of things.
"But who makes the toys?" Nick asked, enthralled. Jamie was trying so hard not to crack up when he remembered who he was sitting with. Santa was asking about his own home. He almost couldn't handle it.
"Well he has friends, the Yeti, they make the toys." He offered.
After about another hour of telling them about this world that he thought he had fabricated they broke for lunch. Pitch had caught most of this and when they broke to make/order/decide on lunch Pitch caught Jamie's eye through the window. Jamie shot him a quick thumbs-up and Pitch nodded with a huge grin, letting him know he understood why he was about to die laughing. He tried Sandy's trick, making a little clock that Jamie took to mean he had to go, he'd be back and he nodded.
They finished deciding on the food they'd have (pizza) and Jack settled down to tell the stories. A part of him kept nagging at him that it was real, but he pushed it down, how silly would that be?
Alright done, I did it, another chapter. Please let me know what you think and while I'm thinking about it, Merry Christmaquanzica! (I know not everyone does Christmas) and a happy New Year! Thanks for reading and I love me some reviews! Y'all are wonderful people.
Also, the reviews are making my day!