ABOUT REVIEWS: Thank you thank you THANK YOU to everybody that reviewed! Seriously, you have no idea how much it means to me, and keeps me writing. Oh my word, I love you guys.

ABOUT THE DRAFT: Hi, guys! Sorry the draft is taking so long—and thank you SO MUCH for bearing with me! I'm confident that, when I FINALLY get it done and posted, that you'll be able to see why it's taking so long. (The basic plot is the same, but in terms of new jokes, structure, material, etc, it will be roughly the equivalent of my posting 15 new chapters worth of stuff all at once.)

GIVING CREDIT: This is the first chapter where I start to introduce the idea of Pitch Black being characterized as a "Fallen Guardian." This idea is taken from fantastic author Furyian's oneshot "Role Reversal," and is used with permission (I also recommend the oneshot!). We'll be getting back to this idea and expanding on it a LOT more later... don't hold your breath, because there's a LOT more story to get through before then, but I'm pretty sure you'll NEVER watch ROTG in the same way again. ;)

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47: SAND

Trekking hundreds of miles across the Arabian Desert's stretch of the Silk Road, Abdullah al-Khalil would bring to medieval Europe many precious and valuable objects to be traded and sold. However, a successful merchant, the stout, good-natured little man was aware that the objects themselves were not what he was selling. No—what he was truly selling was the mystique, the fantasy, that the items held; the tales of the faraway kingdoms from whence the fascinatingly foreign objects came.

In his mortal life, the Sandman had been a merchant of dreams.

When the desert winds had kicked up on that fateful night, swirling and howling as they lifted the mountains of dust into the air, he and his companions had agreed to kill their camels, removing their innards and crawling inside, to survive. Their tents were simply not strong enough for the size of the storm and the strength of the whirlwinds. However, it soon became apparent to the little band of merchants that they could not all return home from this particular round: there was not enough room for all of them to fit inside the animals.

The leader of the caravan, Abdullah's brother, had declared that they would cast lots to decide who would be sacrificed. The future Sandman, however, would not hear of it. Before anyone could say otherwise, he had then turned and broken into a full sprint away from his companions, running head-on into the storm, and thus guaranteeing their best chance at safety.

Even centuries after being raised—his rich, middle-eastern skin and pigmentation greatly paled from death, his body dehydrated and mortal legs crushed from the arid pressure—he was still shaking the sand from his now-golden, dried-out hair.

In addition to his power to inspire dreams, which had been placed upon Abdullah by the Man in the Moon, the First Guardian (not counting the Fallen One, of course) was given the gift of sight—rather, the ability to see the future, in bits and pieces. This probably explained a great portion of his fondness for the mischievous Spirit of Winter. The Sandman—who could always see him coming—was the one person in the entire world that Jack Frost couldn't prank. But, in watching the newly-official Guardian of Fun pranking others over the years, the former merchant had acquired a delightfully endless source of entertainment.

But, like every person that had ever received such a gift, it had come with a curse. Eternally silent, his vocal cords irreparably damaged by the dust that had suffocated him, the Sandman lived every moment possessing the gift of exquisite foresight and knowledge, coupled with the inability to communicate it to others. Such a curse was endlessly frustrating.

It wasn't that he was incapable of communication—if he really wanted to, he could have simply spelled everything, letter by letter, in the air. The problem was getting anyone to listen. No matter how wise or good or important the message was, people, he had found over the years, were far more willing to listen to a voice that arranged meaningless words in pretty ways than to listen to one that spoke truth, but was incapable of such elegant speech.

Even with the other Guardians, the Sandman had almost entirely given up on trying to catch their attention. Like when they'd legitimately gotten worried that Jack had initially refused the calling of Fifth Guardian. Or, when they'd held a funeral for him, despite the fact that he was perfectly capable to dissolving himself into sand for a few days when he needed to heal an injury, and had tried to tell them so in the past.

Like, how none of the other Guardians seemed to realize that the Man in the Moon was a woman.

Some of the things he saw, the snippets, were so beautiful and fascinating to him that he would do everything in his power to make them come to pass earlier, rather than later. The problem, however, was that he only had the snippets of the future to work with, to piece together what would occur. For an example, a particularly incredible future for the humans was in the world of transportation—elaborate, elegant flying machines, built from metal, that would carry them through the air! When playing with his sand, he often would make one of these machines, fashioning himself the silly, wonderful little goggles that those humans wore… but, he could only know who he needed to give this dream to, this inspiration, as soon as he could figure out how the invention of such a marvelous thing would take place.

What on earth was a kitty hawk?

Well… no matter. Just another frustrating puzzle, that one. Having the ability to see the future had more than its fair share of perks, and not the least of these was the joy that Abdullah (better known as "Sandy") gained from sharing this gift with others in the form of dreams.

Passing effortlessly through the glass of Queen Elsa's balcony doors, the First Guardian appeared on the other side, swirling his sandy body back together and looking around. The Snow Queen's art gallery was truly stunning—it was not the only reason he'd come into the castle, of course, but it wasn't a downside, either. When he had a bit of free time from his rounds (for as long as the Boogeyman was kept at bay, most children only needed about one "inspired" dream per week to keep their minds in the proper state), he would need to remember to come back here to inspect it more carefully. Which wouldn't be a problem. After all, sand was dynamic. Fully capable of bursting his deceptively portly body apart into millions of golden granules, and then swirling it back together, there weren't many enclosures that could actually keep the Sandman out.

Just another perk, of being him. Unlike Jack and Nicolas, Abdullah's body had been partially destroyed by his death, leaving his legs so damaged that, like his vocal cords, they couldn't be replaced. But, this was no problem for Sandy. The stubby golden legs and feet that he'd fashioned for himself were hardly any less convenient than the Spirit of Winter's gangly limbs, because the Sandman—like the Spirit of Winter—could fly. The difference was that Abdullah usually preferred floating to standing, because, well, why not? Jack Frost, of course, had been able to keep his body basically intact, because he had drowned. And North, having frozen to death after falling asleep at his telescope, was the same.

Only the future Guardian of Wonder—a true astronomer at heart—would be so committed to the pursuit of knowledge that he would literally die, trying to figure out the source of the Northern Lights.

Seeing the icy bed at the end of the hallway formed by Queen Elsa's art gallery, he floated over towards it, seeing the Youngest Guardian lying there, silently sinking into a pile of snow and clutching his staff to his chest. From giving Elsa such a lovely dream on the previous evening, the Sandman knew that Jack Frost still owed him a favor. But, the First Guardian hadn't returned to this castle to collect on what he was owed. He simply wanted to know what was going on, in his snowy friend's heart. To be completely frank—as Jack's best friend—he wanted to know if a brother was in need of a wingman.

And Abdullah knew jeeeeeeeust how to tell.

Pulling in a deep breath, the Sandman smiled, holding out his arms. When hit with a ball of hastily-formed dreamsand, a person would dream of whatever was on their mind, in their subconscious, at the given moment. In contrast, the dreams that he thought out and pieced together would only hold on a given person if it truly represented something that they had contemplated or desired—others would be rejected. Unlike nightmares (those perverse imitations!), these dreams were not guaranteed to be accepted by their dreamers. Nightmares were manipulative. Forcing themselves upon their victims, they were deigned to torture the mind. The Sandman's dreams, however, were designed to invigorate it.

When a dream did take, it would then also brighten or fade, and spread or collapse. The formula was simple: the brighter the sand, the more intense the desire or interest, on the part of the dreamer.

Time to see what the Guardian of Fun was thinking about the most right now.

The Sandman swirled his tiny hand through the air, a shimmering golden substance materializing in the air and beginning to condense above Jack's head. Ah, yes. One thing really did stand out. If there was truly a single worry or desire that was consuming a given person's mind, the sand would form itself to this thought above the subject's head. If it was a memory, rather than an abstract idea or hope, it would form with more detail, being pulled from the subconscious itself, and in this case, it appeared that the sand was taking the form of such…

The Sandman silently clapped his hands, floating in the air with anticipation. He was going to see one of Jack's actual memories? This would be very telling, because OH, YOU NAUGHTY LITTLE—!

The Sandman's eyes bulged as the image of the scantily-clad young woman and the dresser burst apart, the dreamsand disintegrating again. How on earth had Jack conjured up that picture with such detail?! Was that truly a memory, not a fantasy?

When the Sandman had been teasing him about what dream to give Elsa on the previous night… joking. 'Twas a JOKE.

Silent as always, Abdullah raised his eyebrows at Jack as he cracked his knuckles. Time to give that poor girl some clothing.

Hmm…

Catching glimpse of the blue ballgown hanging at the end of the hallway, the Sandman floated up into the air, flying over to it and picking up the edge of the icy capelet, turning it over in his hands. Elsa's dress was definitely a feminine cut, but there was nothing poufy or ostentatious about it. Rather, it was smooth, sleek, and elegant—yes, the intricate swirls of frost glimmered in the moonlight, but the sparkle of the ice was without question a subtle one, as opposed to a glaring touch.

Simple lines, but complicated designs. The Snow Queen wasn't hiding her femininity, but she wasn't exactly going out of her way to make it the focal point of her style, either. Everything about the style of the dress reflected a young woman with an air of powerful sophistication, and just a hint of artistic rebellion.

Ah, but of course.

Dropping the edge of the sparkling capelet and letting it float back to the floor, the Sandman backed away from the icy gown, beginning to swirl his hands in the air. As the golden substance began to condense, a tiny shape of a young woman spiraling into existence, he squinted his eyes in concentration, glancing back to the dress for reference as he built the dream.

Given what she had to deal with, it made perfect sense that Queen Elsa would elect for a sleeker style, simple a-lines and cuts that reflected a more powerful femininity, rather than a classically "romantic" one. It wasn't that she was without vulnerability, of course—it was just that she had, by necessity, learned to hide it from the men around her that tried to steal her power. That she would give Jack a chance at all, given what Sandy had seen of her past experience with male gender, was a mark that there was a powerful streak of romance inside of her, no matter how deeply buried and hidden away it might be.

After pulling the long capelet out of the sand, Abdullah brushed his palm over the top of the sand-Elsa's head, quickly moving his fingers back and forth as he twisted the dream's hair into a braid. After a brief pause, biting his lip in thought, the Sandman shook his head, reaching up to the golden young woman again.

Yeeeeeeah, Jack would probably like it better down…

Silently snapping his hand back, the sand-Elsa's hair fell out of the braid, billowing apart and romantically floating down to settle across her shoulders. Sandy smirked, taking a step back in the air as he looked at his creation. Oh, yes. THAT was certain to get Jack drooling. As the loving (and often slightly obnoxious) older brother figure that Abdullah was to the Spirit of Winter, he intended to make this dream as heartbreakingly, salivatingly, hilariously difficult to resist as possible.

If any of them had actually said anything, Jack would have passionately denied it, blushing furiously and threatening to ice them in the face. But, from his increasingly gender-selective pranking, it was painfully obvious to the other male Guardians that the Spirit of Winter possessed what was—to him—a bit of a rather embarrassing weakness.

Jack Frost had a serious soft spot for girls.

It wasn't that Jack liked women, as much as it was that Jack. LIKED. Women. Much more than he would ever willingly admit. This was probably why he was still so fiercely protective of the now-sisterly Toothina (just like he was of all of the fairies) even after his humiliatingly desperate attempt at a relationship with her had so utterly failed. As for his interest in Elsa, it wasn't exactly a surprise to Abdullah that the Spirit of Winter was sticking around Arendelle. After all, from what he could see, Queen Elsa was a witty, intelligent, passionate, and very kind young woman—and, as for Jack, she could see him. With that alone, the Youngest Guardian was probably doomed to have fallen for her anyway. Add ice powers, a shy little smile, and then throw a few snowflakes into her hair, and Jack Frost was a goner.

And, if Elsa had touched him—oh, boy.

Finishing the last touches on the sand version of the Snow Queen, her long hair loose down her back as her golden capelet gently billowed behind her, the Sandman grinned, gently guiding the sand-Elsa to walk through the air towards the icy bed.

Here we go. And—!

Jack gasped in his sleep as his subconscious seized upon the dream, the tiny sand-Elsa glowing brighter as she gracefully swept her hands upwards, golden snowflakes bursting out over her head as the vision expanded. Jack's face cracked into a smile, and he clutched the staff closer into his chest, letting out a long sigh. And—oh, for goodness sakes.

The Guardian of Fun was blushing in his sleep.

The Sandman chuckled silently to himself, raising a single eyebrow at his old friend with a smirk. Well, well, well, Jacky-boy. Somebody's got a crush, eh?

Taking a step back as Jack's dream glowed and expanded, the Sandman floated up to the window in the ice. Time to see if the lady's feelings were mutual with the Fifth Guardian's… if they weren't, at least, weren't yet, it meant that the Spirit of Winter was in need of a wingman.

Heaven knows, he would need one. As his best friend knew better than anyone, Jack didn't have much of a filter, and if he hadn't gotten himself slapped already, he would soon. Having been a teenage boy for over three hundred years, the Spirit of Winter was aware of literally every sexual innuendo in the book, and was nothing if not desperate for a girlfriend. However, the amount of actual experience that Jack Frost had had with women for the past three hundred years was… zero. Unless one counted that pitiful attempt at romance with the Tooth Fairy from the previous spring, in which case it plummeted into the negatives.

That was nothing short of painful, for the other Guardians to watch.

The wall of ice dividing the doorframe, Sandy floated upwards, golden spirals of sand slowly swirling around him as he passed through the tiny window. Yes: there she was, quietly sleeping in her bed, on the opposite side of the room. In their sleep, curled up and breathing steadily, these two really did look like children to him…

As finished swirling his body back together—there was no rush, really—Sandy noticed the dresser, pausing in the air. Looking back to the wall of ice, he suddenly realized it was a doorframe, the open door between the art gallery and the bedroom swung open, into the lady's room as—wait.

The image of the young woman in Jack's subconscious. The dreamsand. She had been pictured with a dresser. And that dresser—the angles were—it—

Oh.

Oh.

The realization hitting him, Abdullah clapped his hand over his mouth, restraining from a snort. Looking back to the wall of ice as he put two and two together, picturing the encounter, blood rushed to his face as he silently buckled over into hysterical, gasping snorts of horrified delight.

Oh, Jack, you poor boy. You poor, idiot boy…

Ooooooooh, that must have been MORTIFYING. Abdullah held his stomach as he tried to take deep breaths, his face red from laughing as he floated in the air, looking back and forth between the doorframe and the dresser.

How many times has North told you to knock?

Shaking his head again, the Sandman rolled his eyes as he floated across the room to the lady's bed. His face still red, he continued to silently chuckle under his breath. Oh, Jack. Only Jack…

Queen Elsa was breathing softly, gripping the covers as she lay in her bed, her blonde hair thrown carelessly around her on the pillow. To anyone else, she might have appeared serene and peaceful, but the Sandman knew the physical appearance of troubled sleep. Well… first, he needed to see what was on her mind. After that, he could design her a dream.

Good evening, your majesty, the Sandman thought, beginning to sweep his hand through the air. My name is Abdullah al-Khalil. It is an honor.

As the dreamsand began to condense, he snuck a glance back towards the art gallery.

Please excuse my friend: The Imbecile.

The sand was beginning to take shape now, slowly twisting in the air above the young woman's head. Raising his eyebrows, Sandy leaned in closer, as—

QuillCrocusCrownSnowflakeVaseBookHorseMapStaffCradleGlovesSnowmanCorset POW!

And the images exploded, the golden sand disintegrating into the air as quickly as it had formed. Frozen with shock, the Sandman stood, eyes bulging, at the young queen's bedside.

Uh… alright, then.

After a few moments, Sandy shook his head, beginning to roll his hands in the air as he stared at the young queen's face, noticing the anxious little crease in her brow. Suddenly, he understood why Jack's future with this young lady was so unclear.

A wee bit conflicted, aren't we? Sandy thought to himself, raising his eyebrows as he looked back to the ball of sand floating before him in the air. Well, let's just remove a few of those... distractions…

The tiny sand-version of Jack Frost was an easy one to form—after all, going for over three hundred years without changing his hair, clothing, or physical mannerisms, there weren't many questions about how to build the dream. Drawing his pointer finger downwards through the air, Sandy finished the delicate, golden shepherd's crook, flicking it towards the scrawny, golden young man. The boy caught it, snatching it up and flinging it over his wrist with a silent laugh, and Abdullah smiled as the sand-Jack flipped backwards into the air, darting over the young woman's bed.

As the dream took, Sandy watched the sleeping Elsa pull in a shaky, ragged breath, then letting it out and sinking down again with a tiny sigh. As the muscles in her face relaxed, her tight grip on the covers releasing, the Sandman raised his eyebrows. The young woman hadn't jolted, or at all tensed up, when he'd made Jack fly into her dream. By contrast, she didn't look nervous at all, but—relieved.

How interesting.

He really calms you down, doesn't he? Abdullah thought, backing up in the air as the sand-Jack grew brighter.

But, as he pondered this new epiphany, it occurred to him that it shouldn't have been surprising at all. The sandy version of the gangly, white-haired boy had once taken a very different physical form—rather, a form designed by the little princess's perception of what she thought he would look like—but Sandman was aware that this as far from the first time that the girl born with ice powers had dreamed of Jack Frost.

Not that the Guardian of Dreams would ever dare betray such a secret. After all, Sandy's duty wasn't just to inspire children's dreams, but to protect them from ever being revealed. In his domain—in that of the mind—children were free to play and grow, to escape from the world of reality, and this only possible because their dreams were secret.

Perhaps this was the source of the Sandman's power. North could teach good children to open their eyes to the beauty of the world, Bunnymund could inspire courage for the future, Toothina could remind them of the things that mattered most, and Jack could lift the harsh burdens of reality, through the often-undervalued release of innocent play. But only the Sandman could help children by inspiring them from inside their own minds.

And, adults, as the case may be. He turned around, seeing a shimmering behind him, to realize that the sand-Elsa on the other side of the wall of ice was glowing even brighter, snowflakes and spirals of glittering sand expanding through the window as Jack's dream around the elegant young woman grew.

The Sandman silently chuckled under his breath. Oh, Jack. You little Romeo, you.

But Jack's dream was being matched. Looking back to the sleeping young queen, now smiling shyly as she shifted in the covers, Sandy realized that the sand-Jack was glowing brighter as well, flipping into the air and swinging his shepherd's crook to the side, a burst of golden sand-snowflakes spiraling out into the air above her bed.

Abdullah shook his head, grinning knowingly as he floated into the center of the room, hovering in the air between the two independent, but nevertheless passionately expanding, dreams. They had both taken to their subjects—neither Jack nor Elsa had demonstrated any visible signs of hesitation, to the form of the other joining them inside their minds. Jack's subconscious had, of course, immediately seized upon the idea of the icy young beauty's existence, and as for Queen Elsa (despite all her distractions and worries), the instant that Jack Frost had showed up in her dreams—a place where she wasn't burdened with all of her usual anxieties, where her subconscious could truly run free—well.

That didn't take much convincing.

Rolling his tiny hands in the air, Abdullah concentrated, carefully forming a hill of sand. Pulling it upwards into a craggy mountain, he floated around it, moving into the air and brushing a set of golden storm clouds over Queen Elsa's ceiling. Flicking his fingers, the Sandman squinted in concentration, sending hundreds of tiny flecks of gold softly falling onto the model mountaintop like snow.

Perfect.

A self-satisfied hint of a smirk on his lips, Sandy floated back away from the mountain, the tiny sand-snowstorm he'd created in the middle of the young woman's bedroom. Between the excitement of the storm clouds (for the boy) and the blank canvas of the snow-covered mountain (for the lady), such a sand-expansion should be irresistible to both dreams. Aaaand, apparently, the dream subjects had already noticed it.

The sand-Jack above Elsa's bed silently laughed, spinning around in the air and launching himself off of an invisible platform at the growing blizzard. Turning around, Sandy looked to the window in the wall of ice, seeing that the sand-Elsa, in Jack's expanding dream, had noticed the mountain as well, a tiny, golden staircase materializing in front of her through the window and into the next room. Not yet aware of each other's existence, the tiny sand couple came closer towards the mountain, the dreams glowing and expanding as the sand-Jack whipped his staff through the air, darting through the strengthening blizzard, and the sand-Elsa ran towards the mountainside, her arms extended in front of her as the long staircase blasted into existence in the silence.

The Sandman took a few steps back in the air, watching in awe as the sand glowed brighter and stronger. At this rate, the dreams would intercept within a minute. He had never seen subconscious passions seizing onto ideas like this. Not with this level of strength, that was.

But what would really be interesting would be seeing if the dreams combined, and—if they did so—if the mutual desire was strong enough to be maintained. When dreams overlapped, as they sometimes did with siblings sleeping in the same room, they could sometimes combine and interact. However, this only happened if both dreamers desired some form of a combination of their dreams. He had once seen this happen with adult subjects, when North and Bunnymund had been knocked out in the same room in the previous March.

On that occasion, both of these particular subject had been hit with dreamsand by accident, and both were tired and hungry from the unexpected night's work. Bunnymund's subconscious had shaped the sand into a cluster of carrots, and North, who was usually sustained through Christmas Eve by massive quantities of sugary cookies, had dreamed of candy canes. When the carrots and candy canes had overlapped, the dreams had combined easily, and to the Sandman, it was obvious why. Food was food, and both the Guardian of Wonder and the Guardian of Hope were in need of it at the time.

By this point, the sand-Jack had whipped the "storm clouds" into a golden, glowing blizzard across most of the surface of Elsa's ceiling, and the sand-Elsa, on the side of the little mountain, was eagerly stomping and pulling and dancing a sparkling "ice" castle into existence. Flurries of sand blasting through the air around her, Sandy watched in interest as his creations assumed the form of their subjects. Wow, he was good—and, apparently, the real Jack and Elsa knew each other well enough by this point that they were able to effectively, and accurately, mimic each other's personalities in their subconscious fantasies. Which said something about them, for only having known each other for three days.

All of a sudden, the boy in the golden blizzard noticed the activity on the side of the mountain.

Whirling around and darting through the air to investigate, the sand-Jack flew down, lighting onto the tiny balcony and pausing in front of the golden sand-Elsa in wonder. Abdullah floated up towards the dream, watching in anticipation as the tiny dream Elsa stared at the golden young man in front of her, her eyes wide as he extended his hand.

A pause.

Sandy held his breath. The sand-Elsa's face broke into a shy little smile. Abdullah leaned in closer, watching as she began to extend her hand towards the other dream…

POW!

The Sandman startled back in shock as a blinding explosion of light ripped through the room, the sand shooting out in all directions. Spirals and swirls of golden snowflakes flew into the air, the combined dream spinning and glowing across the bedroom.

Righting himself, the Sandman stared, his eyes bulging as the dreamsand curled and danced around him, glowing brilliantly in the darkness of the room. In the center of the dream, just inside the balcony of the golden ice castle, the tiny sand-versions of the two were waltzing through the silence.

In over seven centuries, the Guardian of Dreams had never—ever—seen two independent dreams combine like that.

His mouth hanging slightly agape, the Sandman's eyes were wide as he looked around himself in the room, awestruck at the sand slowly twisting in elaborate spirals as the tiny, golden couple silently waltzed through the air between the two sleeping ice children. Jack Frost had told him, on the previous night, that he and the Snow Queen of Arendelle were "just friends."

Yeah.

Friends.

Standing in the center of the spectacular dream, a sly little smile tugged at the edge of Sandy's mouth.

That's what he thought.