Good In Bad

Dolls That Talk

"...I try to give a sort of special life to all of my toys,no?" North let out his usual rumbling laugh. Jack chuckled, sitting idly on the windowsill. Guardian meetings were normal these days. The four elder guardians had taken a liking to having Jack around. They'd gotten used to his childish ways, so different from their adult professionalism. They looked out for him because of his youth, even for a guardian. And they knew of his pain. His loneliness all those years. His childhood lived on forever.

They could only imagine what it must be like to be a child forever. It made them feel bad about ignoring him at first, because they were supposed to protect children.

Maybe that was why Manny had chosen him...

But Jack Frost knew the truth now.

The Man in the Moon spoke to him. He could see i, feel it, without even having to be spoke to.

It was like...his sister.

He remembered more of his sweet sister, Annabelle every day. He remembered her eyes, her laughter, her hugs. This feeling he felt with the moon...he called it sister, because it always made him think of Annabelle.

And the Moon told him...Jack Frost...he was the boy in the moon.

Jack Frost was special. Even for...Jack Frost.

"North." As always, Bunny's voice brought Jack out of his thoughts. It was sort of like n alarm. When Bunny said something, he was always serious.

"I've been scouting the world, y'hear? Benn finding new kids with chocolate allergies...Tooth don't give me that look...I found something you should see." He pulled a sack out of his vest, and poured it's contents onto a table.

"Black sand?!" Tooth cried. Jack sat upright. He knew what this was.

He couldn't bring himself to tell the guardians about his...specialness.

Bunny nodded grimly. "Somehow, Pitch's nightmare sand is living on. And there's more. I was leaving eggs last Easter...didn't think much about it until I found this sand...but I saw something out of the ordinary. Some sort of...man. Man on a horse, stopping by children's houses and collecting a toy from each house. Had  hawk with him." Jack's eyes widened. He knew that man. He'd seen him before, riding the wind with his hawk. He had a cold about him, a cold sort of dark magic...

Shan Yu.

What to tell the guardians? Were Shan Yu and his people-more people Jack had seen and felt cold about, and he was the spirit of cold!-targeting children now? Should he say something to the guardians?

NO. Not for now. He'd find out more later.

And the he'd think about it.

That night, Jack sat on his branch by his lake, thinking hard. North had gone on and on about his toys making skills these days, the way each toy he made had LIFE to it, like it would spring to life ant start talking at any minute. He had told Jack that, for a while, toys did that. But there was only so much magic to go around.

Jack tried to think about that, but his thoughts kept turning to Shan Yu. What was going on?

First Pitch, and now this...this feeling of closeness with Shan YU.

That was what Jack hadn't told the guardians. That he knew these secrets. Being a boy of wind and sky and freedom of childhood, he knew. He saw things.

He saw villains.

He followed the moon rays, and saw many villains. A captain weeing on a ship, one hand replaced with a hook...he saw a woman underwater, cursed with sea-monster tentacles. He saw so many things, and yet, he'd no idea why the Moon showed him all this but not the guardians.

Why him?

Was thee something about him?

Jack had much to learn. But the Moon already knew it all.

A twinkle. A light.

The moon rays were shining gain.

Jack knew to follow them.

On his way, he thought. How could he tell the guardians? He could hardly explain it to himself! They'd laugh...or worse.

He settled against a tree at the end of the moon rays, and sighed. All this mystery. These feelings inside him.

Empathy. He knew what it was. Empathy for these characters who were clearly villains from the back grounds he'd seen in the moonlight.

Moon told him these things. Moon told him about characters in the world and their backgrounds, and Jack always felt close to them, like it was his own beautiful sister talking.

But why?

The moon rays were shining on something strange. Nothing.

It was just a limp ragdoll.

With a green suit, and  red feather in his hat.

There was a childish twinkle in it's eye...

Jack thought some more...about North's words...

Dolls that talk?

This one did look like it had been alive...once...