Secret of Frost and Moon

Meetings and Disdain

Alaia Skyhawk: Time for Jack to meet one of his fellow Seasonal Spirits :)

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.

~(-)~

Chapter 4: Meetings and Disdain

Jack glanced back at his sanctuary, before he headed out the tunnel to depart. The Winter Sprites were still playing on the ice-slides, still giggling and laughing among themselves, and he couldn't help but worry if they'd miss him. He'd have come back for them once the Nothern Winter started, but wasn't confident at this point that he'd be able to track them all down and bring them home once the season ended, even with the help of the winds. But, if the way they never tired of the slides was an indication, they probably wouldn't miss him too much. He could just expect to be flattened with hugs when he came back to the Sanctuary next Southern Autumn.

He stepped into the tunnel, the snowfall in the cavern ceasing the moment his presense left it, and then jumped into the air to fly the rest of the way down and out the passage. The sun was shining outside upon the glacier, and the winds welcomed him back into the open skies, before he asked them to take him northwards over lands which were now under the dominion of spring.

Feeling that season's gentle yet firm grasp on the land, Jack mulled to himself over something else he'd figured out. Mother Nature hadn't told him to stay south because it was neccessary, but to keep him from being tempted to approach his sister. It was obvious by this point that the Spirits of the Seasons didn't really need to do all that much work. If he were to total up the amount of time he'd spent on neccessary duties in the past ten months, and the amount he expected he'd have to do during the last two months of his first year at this, it only amounted to about four solid weeks' worth of hours. If it were the same for the other Spirits of the Seasons, and the winds whispered to him that it was, then each spirit worked at most for a month of time, leaving them with eleven months of time to do whatever they wanted.

Inwardly Jack wished he could have done his month of work in one go without sleeping, instead of dragging it out over six months, especially given that three of those six he'd only needed to go out to tend avalanches for one hour a week. During Northern winter he'd flown around tending things for up to four hours per day.

He sighed, soaring past the invisible line that divided the north of the world from the south of the world. He also resolved to see how much else Mother Nature had deliberately discouraged him from with her words. He wouldn't be surprised in the slighest if she'd lied about summer's warmth harming him.

As if to prove that point to himself, the winds diverted his path to a massive and frigid island north-west of England, which the gusting wind told him was called Greenland by people. Parts of Greenland had active volcanoes, whose heat rose far, far up into the sky. The wind carried Jack through those collumns of warmth, even taking him down closer to the volcanoes himself when he asked them to.

After flitting around the fiery manifestations of heat incarnate for an entire afternoon, Jack eventually settled on a rock within a stone's throw of a lava flow and the heat radiating from it. It was far hotter than a typical summer, and while admittedly he felt stifled, the faint haze of water-vapour condensing into mist around him was proof his powers were having no trouble keeping him as cold as he needed to be. He proved it further by walking close enough to the lava, that the chill radiating from him in defence against its heat caused its edge to turn black and solid.

Jack shook his head and took flight again, this time to return to his pond and the village. He really wasn't surprised that Mother Nature had told that one small lie. He would be the first to admit he'd never have left the village if not for her warning, and if he'd done that he wouldn't have found the Winter Sanctuary or the Winter Sprites. He wouldn't have learnt the several important lessons which had already woven themselves into his being... The most important one being that he was no longer human, and couldn't expect to live a normal human life. He could, perhaps, live on the fringes if he was sensible about it, but he also couldn't grow too attached. He had to maintain a certain distance, or he'd just hurt himself more in the long run.