Secret of Frost and Moon

Constels

Alaia Skyhawk: Here's the next chapter guys. And contrary to how it starts out, the party etc won't be the main part of this chapter. I've done too many parties recently, and I don't want things to get repetitive. I can always cover the party in Moments of Frost and Moon, if someone asks for it once I start taking requests for that ;)

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 123: Constels

This time when Jack awoke, to the cold embrace of the pile of snow into which his sleeping self had been placed and the chimes of his perpetual clock, a small part of him wondered if it had all been a dream. His visit to Lumeris, and everything that had happened there, but the whimsy of his sleeping mind. At this moment it felt as though he'd never been away, and that perhaps those events were too good to be true. Yet it was the simplest yet most profound of the things he'd discovered there that proved it no flight of fancy.

'Listening' to Ether, to the sounds of Earth's Winter and the parts of its Spring that he could make out. Touching those parts, to be sure he truly sensed them, before then and only then sitting up to break through his covering of snow.

Jack glided up out of his 'bed' and whisked it smooth as he always did, letting out a small sigh of contentment as he then proceeded to the room's sole chair and the small ice mirror set by it. He used the mirror for a quick glance at Santoff Claussen, seeing there the beginnings of party preparations. A folded note had also been left on the table where the mirror stood, which he picked up and read.

A Welcome Home party has been planned by Ombric, Katherine, and your fellow Guardians for tomorrow afternoon, Siberian time. However a formal dinner will take place in my Sanctuary this evening, by Burgess time, to introduce Tsar Lunar's new assistant to myself, my father, and to Earth's other Spirits of the Seasons. As I know your clock will have woken you, I would like you to know that you are invited. Although if you are too tired or busy to attend, then that is fine. The meal will be over before midday reaches Santoff Claussen, and you may wish to take Seyd with you and introduce him to the other Guardians.

Regards

Emily Jane

Jack raised his eyebrows at the message, mulling it over to himself.

"Formal dinner then a party. Sure, I can do both."

He put the note back on the table and set off for his Hall of Mirrors to do the first of his daily duties. He'd have time for that and for a few laps around the world for some face-to-face re-aquaintance with Earth's weather.

~(-)~

In the Sanctuary of Nature, things were rather less 'routine' on this particular day. Indeed, they'd been outside of routine during the entire six weeks of Jack's absence from the planet. Early Southern Winter was now in progress, and while the Lieutenants of Winter had handled things just fine they had still required some discrete monitoring and a small amount of guidance on what weather needed to be shaped.

Mother Nature sighed softly to herself, a small part of her relieved that Jack had now returned. In all the decades since he and his fellow Spirits of the Seasons had begun working in tandem for the Seasonal Transitions, she herself had needed to pay little heed to the weather in general. Instead she'd been freed to focus fully on the Balance of Nature itself, and on her own projects such as the artificial habitats she'd used to keep certain animals and other creatures from going extinct. Suddenly having to pay attention to Winter again, had been rather jarring.

"It's strange how easy it is not to fully appreciate what someone does for you, until they're not there anymore."

Her quiet words drew the attention of the man in the next room of the cottage. Her father coming to peer through the doorway.