Chapter Text
I could not be seen. I could not be heard. I was merely the whisper on someone’s back, a snowflake landing on a nose, only to melt away. No one could sense anything more, my face and features all obscured by the fog of unbelief.
I didn’t exist.
I stayed up North for a long time, trying to remember anything, trying to be alive. The Old Man didn’t say anything, his glistening face watching me every night as I wandered the forest longing for the peaceful sleep I couldn’t clearly remember. I learned of the others as the years passed, some of them even coming to greet me as a new spirit, but I forced them away with ice and cold and wind, my only companion. Even Father Christmas, whose territory I trespassed in, could not enter the icy cavern of my own creation. They all finally left me alone.
But that ancient winter at the edge of the world was cold, colder than any before. Even I, the heart of the winter, could not withstand it forever, and I was left shivering and waiting for a death that would never come. But that night, Father Christmas came for me. He picked up my staff of ice and my cold body and brought me to his home for a short while, where there was fire to warm even the spirit of winter. That night I wept on the hearth as Father Christmas waited outside the door with his elves and a small cup of hot cocoa. He knew better than to try and melt my iced-over heart, and left me to come when I was ready. I was thankful, but I could not forgive him for that, so the next morning by the time he came to greet me I had long since harnessed the wind away to warmer edges of the world.
They often forget that I am not just the spirit of the fun of winter, but also its harshest moments. I roar, shattering glass, will, and spirit, living in the coldness of my own heart. I later forgot those days and learned to focus on my fun and liveliness, but back then all I could do was rattle the houses of those who would never admit that I existed. I tore through, blizzards raging and devouring everything and anything that I could, finally resting near the glaciers when summer came to melt my work to nothing. It was hard work, for naught, and I lived in despair that deepened every winter, even as I fought for a reason to live this way.
In those days, the Guardians finally realized the danger that I had become, and asked the Old Man for answers. I am not the oldest of them, but my power was dangerous, and the heart of Winter rested in my own heart. I was too frozen to notice its claws on my soul, and even as I tore through the lands, the Guardians worked to thaw me. Eventually, the Old Man sent them together, and we fought long and hard, although we have all forgotten since then.
Once again, Father Christmas was the one to add the last snowflake to overthrow my mind, and I collapsed, frosted all the way to the tips of my toes. Father Christmas overruled the others who wanted me to be locked away like the other dangerous monster spirits, and instead took me again to his workshop, where I slowly thawed. He and the Old Man worked together and made everyone, even the Guardians and I, forget those harshest days of the winter war, and instead gave me memories of that childlike beauty within my winter. Winter would of course live on, but I was slowly but surely freed from that frozen heart as I fought to embrace that warm winter they had revealed to me, and I tried creating and having fun with my powers, diminishing them but freeing myself in the process. I was no longer the Winter, I became Jack Frost, Winter’s fun-loving mischievous child who started snowball fights and gave just enough snow to make even the most serious child smile.
No one remembered those days except the Old Man, and the small corners of myself that remained iced over, hidden from even my own minds’ eye.
But the Old Man has warned us of a new danger, a new spirit about to rise up in our midst. She does not need belief to make her grow, she carries her own kind of power that can rival even the belief of children. The rest of the Guardians call her the Summer Spirit. I call her sister.
This new spirit has been dwelling in the deserts, but now she has grown beyond those powers into a greater danger. This was Mary, the Queen of the May, with powers growing beyond her control.
Once again I am forced to remember that Old Man Winter’s heart and embrace it, to find my sister and once again return the world to its natural order, the cycle that we live within.
I just hope I can find my way back.