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The first time is a complete accident.
Jack doesn’t actually see the little girl fall through the ice. He hears a faint crack and a splashing sound in the distance, far enough away that anyone else might have ignored it and wandered away.
Jack though, Jack feels some deeply buried instinct pushing him to fly as fast as he can and to find the source. Something tightens in his chest, painful and uncomfortable, and the frost around his staff thickens in response.
He finally spots a jagged break in the ice and dives straight in.
Below the surface, a little girl, barely old enough to play alone outside, sinks slowly. Jack propels himself forward with a short, conjured burst of wind and grabs her hand, pulling her to the surface as fast as he can. Humans need air to live, he remembers, and he thinks the cold is bad for them too, he’s seen them bundled up in layers upon layers of clothes and rubbing their hands, even as he walks bare foot among them.
But Jack is still too new, too recently made, and his control, still too raw. As they hit the surface, frost starts crawling down her arm from his hand, beautiful patterns blossoming across her skin, racing under her coat, and cheerfully spreading. Frost turns into a thin layer of ice, which thickens at an alarming pace.
It takes Jack a few fatal seconds to realize this and the sudden, mounting agitation does nothing but hasten the process. Much too soon, the ice reaches her face.
And then… then is where it all starts.
Maybe the cold air momentarily brings the girl back to her senses, maybe her desire to live gives her that little extra boost of energy to wake up.
The girl opens her eyes…
And stares straight into his.
The ice encases her face, freezing her expression in a mask of shock.
Jack freezes too, unable to understand what is happening. The girl, now frozen stiff, still stares straight at him, and Jack can feel the weight of her gaze. A warm feeling bubbles up at his core, unfamiliar, but not unwelcome.
She saw him. Right then, in her final moments, she saw him. She saw him.
For the first time in his short life, Jack feels acknowledged. Jack exists.
“MARY!”
The hysterical cry brings him back to his senses and he jerks away from the little girl, guilt bubbling up at his center, the now-statue slowly tips over.
The girl, frozen solid and brittle, shatters on the cold, hard ground. The crying woman misses her by bare inches and collapses next to the pieces that had once been a girl.
‘Must have been her daughter.’ He thinks mournfully to himself. ‘Poor woman…’
‘She didn’t see me though.’ His subconscious adds, sullen, already missing the sensation that had filled him for a few endless seconds.
He silently flies away and neither the shattered girl, nor her shattered mother notice him.
He misses it already.
~*~*~
The second time is slightly more deliberate.
Jack can’t shake the wonderful feeling of being seen. Part of him demands more. But another part cautions him against how the recognition – the Belief, he’s now learned – was obtained last time.
As time passes, and still no one notices him, the first part grows louder and louder and louder… Soon, the second part is little more than a murmur in the back of his mind.
The second time is little more than an impulse, a split-second decision.
He comes across a young boy playing by himself by the riverside. As usual, Jack floats lightly in front of him, hoping against all hope that he will be seen. Jack tries some of his usual tricks, frosts the ground next to the boy, flurries the snow, calls in a light gust of wind, followed by a stronger one.
Nothing.
The boy does not even notice the newly frosted ground, grumbles at how the snow now covers his playing area, and barely reacts to the wind.
“He wouldn’t notice frost if it hit him in the face!” Jack grumbles. Then stops. “There’s an idea…”
Jack stares at the boy’s face for another few minutes and ponders the possibly extremely stupid idea that just crossed his mind.
He doesn’t need to freeze him as completely as he did the girl, all those months ago. Just enough that the boy can’t deny that there is something there, doing things.
His control has gotten better.
He floats back and forth, idly twirling his staff in his hands as he contemplates whether his control is good enough to do something like this with nothing but mild frostbite.
Meanwhile, the boy is still crouched, playing in the snow by his lonesome. There is no one to stop him. No one to interrupt or intervene like last time.
In the end, frustration and impatience win out and he decides that, yes, he can definitely do this without freezing the boy’s head off.
He lowers himself to the ground and lifts his staff, carefully directing it toward the boy’s nose and concentrates.
A light zap of power shoots out, straight on target. Small patterns of frost appear on his nose, melting as fast as they appear.
The boy flinches back at the sudden cold. Looks around in confusion. Shrugs to himself.
And goes right back to doing whatever he was doing on the ground.
Jack frowns at him. He can’t seriously be this thick, can he?
Jack aims his staff at the boy again, willing a stronger burst of frost from his crook. This time, the boy’s nose reddens with frostbite.
Same result.
In a burst of irritation, Jack reaches out to the boy shoulder, ready to shake some sense into him and realizing, too late, that he’ll just pass through and will, once again, feel that chill at his core.
But not this time. His hand comes into contact with the shoulder, solid and present, and the boy looks up –
And freezes solid.
This time, there is no crawling frost, no thickening ice, no blossoming patterns.
The boy is frozen solid but looks as if he has simply paused in his movement. Jack’s hand is still on his shoulder and he can feel the ice cold of the skin and the stone-like stillness.
But more than anything, he feels seen.
Frozen as he was, in the middle of looking up, the boy stares straight into his eyes, as the little girl had. And Jack loses himself in the feeling once again. That same warmth chases away the chill at his core.
He stays there, staring and being stared at, until nightfall. He only leaves when voices echo around him, calling out for, most likely, the boy. He flees into the night as screams of terror rise in his wake, body found.
There is still guilt there, deeper and much more well-deserved than the first time.
But, behind the self-recrimination and the promises of never again is the warmth of Belief. And Jack knows. These aren’t promises he will keep.
He eventually circles back to the same village – now a small town – many, many years later. The boy never unfroze, they say, not even at the pyre. They had to bury a slab of ice, they say. The boy was cursed, they whisper.
And Jack thinks, at the back of his mind, ‘Better a curse, than to not be believed at all.’
~*~*~
The third and every subsequent time are entirely intentional.
After finding out that the ice he produces is everlasting, an idea takes root. Jack practices. On trees, on animals, even on people, lost in the depths of the woods. He practices making the ice, and he practices unmaking it, hiding the evidence of his deeds.
He discovers, children’s belief is pure. An adult’s belief is tainted by the desire for proof, but children… when children believe, impossible things happen. He needs children’s belief.
And so, children disappear. Tales spread. Frozen corpses are found, unblemished, seemingly untouched but for a slight hint of frostbite at the tip of their nose.
Jack is ready.
If no one will believe in him, then he will make them believe.
Forever.
Be careful of Jack Frost nipping at your nose.