Jack, not Jackson

Chapter 20: Can Ice Sink?

Jack Frost: POV.

I went back to the shack after I sent the letter and made the owl a nest on a pine tree just down the hill. The little light gray Pygmy owl, who I had decided to name Himadri, had preferred to stay outside.

She had been captive and kept inside. Forced to work in all weather for as long as she had been flying so she relished the chance to spend the night under the moon. Free to sit.

I watched her for a bit there, in the moonlight, before going inside the run down shack to try and rest, though I had done very little sleeping  in the last few thousand years or so. I was exhausted, but Insomnia was my only constant companion throughout the years.

No.. I did not sleep that night. Not unless zoning out and staring blankly at a broken down wall in a derelict shack on the top of a hill while I thought of all the people that Calum had reminded me of counted as sleeping.

In between the flashes of smiles, sunshine, and laughter from my memories were screams, commands and fire. Sounds of battles and visions of blood. I was sinking and I knew it.

Because this had happened before. Thousands of times before.

If I didn't pull it together, this hut was probably doomed to destruction.
I tried breathing. And pacing. And putting my head between my knees. I tried making my mind go blank, which usually worked, but it was past that stage this time.

I could feel it starting to burn. There would have been tears running down my face if they hadn't frozen before they got the chance. My heart stuttered, wishing it had stopped like a normal heart should have by now.

It was as tired as the rest of me.

  My hands were shaking and I wove them though my white hair, trying to get them to stop. Anything to just stop shaking. My heart couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to race or stutter so was making a rather awful attempt at both.

Frost was creeping up the walls and across the floor where my staff lay. The old shack creaked and groaned on protest to the change in temperature. My mind was finally empty of everything as I tried to think what to do. What had stopped the panic attacks before?

Nothing. Nothing had stopped it before. I realized. Then, in a much clearer voice then anything else happening in my head, I heard. "The owl. If this shack blows, she might get hit."

I had to get out.

My vision swam in and out of focus as I left the shack and stumbled my way down the hill, propping myself up on my now very frozen staff. The heat in my chest felt just as intense as the lava had way back at Mount St. Helens.

I tried freezing it but it didn't help. My hearing was fading in and out just like my vision but I could sometimes hear myself muttering "just a panic attack, just a panic attack. Calm down." On beat with each lurching step I took.

I didn't know where I was going until I got there. The moon blotted out behind dark foreboding branches and ancient trees grumbling in a language lost to time. I was in the forest. I did not stop. Once inside, the Forest seemed to sense my urgency and opened a path to me.

It lead me to a clearing and the moon. Big, and full, and milky white high above with thousands of stars and a few wisps of clouds. I felt calmer but my heart was still trying to outrace cheetahs.

The trees at the edge of the clearing began to whisper in the breeze. I couldn't make out what it was saying. The old forest had just begun to teach me how to speak its language and whatever it was saying was too complex.

I could make out a few words. Home and shelter. Lonely and anguish. Cold and gentle. Ruination and memories.
I stopped listening after that.

I didn't remember falling. But I was on my knees with my staff beside me. I was too tired and shaky from the adrenaline to consider moving, so I sat. Then I slumped sideways and rolled until I was looking at the stars.

I closed my eyes and listened to the whispers of the trees. And for the first time in centuries. I slept.