Sleep Tight: Chapter 1

The boy laughed.

It was a soft, quiet, content chuckle, filled with mischievousness and boundless love of fun. Anyone who heard it could not help but smile along. When he laughed, the world seemed to perk up and laugh with him.

His bright blue eyes—a stunning color with a pattern based around the pupil of a lighter, more electric blue that closely resembled a snowflake—were admiring his work, scanning it over for any potential errors. He knew he wouldn’t find any. He just liked to stop and take a good look at his creations now and again for his own enjoyment.

I think that’ll do it, he thought to himself as he watched a new arm of white frost swirl into existence on the window before him, sprouting from the place where he had placed the pale tip of his right index finger just moments before. He chuckled again. The frost border, with all of its icy components, was just to his liking.

But now what was he supposed to do? The window had saved him from his boredom. Time to move onto something else. Maybe a trip into the city. There were always the water pipes to freeze over, even in this day and age.

And no matter how many hundreds of centuries go by, he reasoned as he floated away from the window, preparing to leave, the kids are always up for a good snowball fight.

He pulled up the hood of his blue cotton jacket, covering his spiky snow-white hair. Details of spindly frost surrounded the rim of the hood. It could also be found stretching out along his chest and up to his shoulders in a spectacular semicircle, as well as stretching up his arms to his elbows from the hoodie’s cuffs.  It glistened slightly in the late afternoon sun.

The wind holding him up began to gain strength as he gripped tighter onto the long wooden staff that he kept with him at all times. It ended in a sweeping hook, much like a shepherd’s staff, and bluish ice spread out upon it from wherever his hand was holding it. The tattered edges of his brown pants—which were held down snugly to his calves with strands of a lighter brown material—danced slightly with the wind, his feet left exposed to the elements.

But that’s how he liked it. Shoes meant so many things. To him, perhaps the biggest meaning, the biggest feeling evoked by shoes were that one was trapped, cooped up. And that was something he couldn’t handle.

Besides, that’s how he had come to be in this new life of his. And how he had spent the vast majority of his days in his past one. Barefooted. A free, fun-loving spirit.

A spirit of Winter.

With a final glance at his artwork, the boy flew off at an incredible speed, thinking about how thick the ice on the water pipes were going to be and the record-breaking snowman he was going to build with the kids. He closed his eyes as the wind rushed past his face, his laughter echoing through the sky.

Just as the city came into view, he felt a prickle on the back of his neck.

He knew this sensation.

He stopped mid-air, the cloud line just above his head. He pulled the hood off so he could see better, turning in the direction that he felt he was supposed to be turning.

Just off in the distance, lines of beautiful blue-green aurora borealis streamed across the sky in waves, much like radio waves sending out a signal. They were visible even in the daytime sky. They were coming from the north.

Guess those pipes and that snowman’ll have to wait, he thought, his shoulders slumping slightly in disappointment.

He really didn’t want to go. The past couple of times, it had been a false alarms. Once, it had just been North testing out the system, making sure the boy, the newest member at the time—and even to this day—could sense and see the summon as he was supposed to. They boy wasn’t too pleased about that. He had just plotted the perfect snow day and was about to start it up.

Nevertheless, his duty was his duty. He had taken an oath. One that he would never break, one that defined who he was and held so dear to his heart. The children of the world relied on him, and he couldn’t let them down. He couldn’t risk the chance. He changed course, his new destination being the source of the lights.

And so Jack Frost flew off to the North Pole to meet with the other Guardians of Childhood.