Secret of Frost and Moon

To See the Other Side

Alaia Skyhawk:

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 129:

He glided on the winds, she wallowed. He swirled and looped through the air, while she stumbled and staggered. She tried to listen to the winds as he instructed, but as yet they had no 'voices'. What few traces of personality among them limited to a handful of breezes amid the greater whole of blank and unspeaking gusts. She'd already been taught about the winds, about how only through time and interaction would all this world's winds learn to 'speak' and 'think', but dealing with that present lack of communication was another matter.

And it didn't help that Jack clearly didn't have any issues at all with that lack.

Jack stayed near her, but didn't hold onto her. All he did was keep the winds' activities to a level that wouldn't overwhelm her, meaning Elsa was lurching around much as he'd done during his first few flights with his far more experienced winds. But the height was also starting to bother her, he could see that, enough to mean she was too rigid to ride the winds properly. And guessing she was afraid of falling to her death, Jack decided on a point blank lesson.

"Hey, Elsa."

She spared a single momentary glance at him.

"What?"

"You ever skydived?"

Her puzzled words reached him, the same moment as he made his move.

"Skydi-? Ahhhh!"

He yanked the air out from under her, and kept pulling it beyond her grasp every time she reached for it. She didn't know yet how to use her will to hover without the winds' aid, so naturally she dropped from the sky like a rock. Screaming all the way down until she hit the ground with a very audible thump.

Jack landed with casual grace near her and leaned on his staff.

"So, what did you just learn about being an immortal?"

Elsa, still somewhat stunned from terror, managed to muster up a not inconsiderable amount of anger.

"Just what were you thinking? Are you so crazy as to think dropping someone from the sky is a good idea?!"

Jack remained nonchalant.

"Are you dead? Or are you even more than slightly bruised?"

That made her pause and glance at herself, then up at the sky, then herself once more. Yes she was a little sore, but beyond that the impact had only knocked the wind out of her. And even that had been superficial, because she hadn't felt deprived of air at all and now remembered being told in one of her lessons about immortals not actually needing to breathe.

Her voice was very very quiet.

"No, I'm not."

Jack pulled her to her feet again, and pointed at the sky once more.

"Now that you know you can't die from falling, let's get back up there."

It was after dawn before they returned to the castle, with a rather windswept-looking Elsa arriving very late for breakfast with Anna, Tsarina Anser, and the others. Jack was just behind her, still as nonchalant as he'd been in the face of her disapproval as last night. This time though it was being directed at him by the now Queen Anna.

"And where did you take my sister last night? She wasn't even there for the end of the party! No one had any idea where you both were!" She pointed at Elsa. "And why does my sister look like she's been out in a gale?!"