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"What does it feel like?"
Jack stilled atop his makeshift perch, the staff’s wood groaning in the following silence.
There's a million ways he could answer that question. About as many as there are snowflakes on any given, frozen day. And each one would be just as unique. Complicated, even, fractals of ideas absorbing and reflecting light in minute ways that the eye can barely catch. But the wide-eyed kid in front of him doesn't expect anything like that.
"Well... I can feel a lot more than some people might think. The wind. That’s a pretty important one, anyway. The ground under my feet, the changes in temperature—don't tell the others, but the heat actually gets to me more than I'd like."
He pushed a few snowflakes out into the air, and the July heat proved his point.
"Can't really taste things well. Though I suspect that's a me problem, since North doesn't have any issues with the ol' cookies and milk ritual."
Jamie giggled. He scribbled a bit more in the ever-present journal he kept; Jack caught a glimpse of a few snowflakes decorating the margins.
After a few minutes of quiet, he asked the question Jack knew to expect. That he never wanted to return to, and yet clung to him like a phantom skin of his old new life. For a fraction of time, he felt chilled to the bone.
"What did it feel like when... when no one believed in you?"
He faltered, maybe a wince was actually visible on his face. Jamie immediately backpedaled.
"Sorry. That wasn't really an okay thing to ask, was it? I wasn't thinking, I'm—"
"Fine. You're fine, kid."
The kid still bit his lip like he always did when he felt guilty, or embarrassed. Did Jack have any tells? He didn't think so, but he also never thought he'd be able to sit and carry out an everyday conversation with… well, the living. “Mortals,” if they could be called that. Eh, that sounded too high and mighty for someone not too different from himself.
“I would have asked the same thing if I were in your place,” he offered.
Because he would have. Except he would have been reckless about it, not gentle and genuine like Jamie.
“Really?” He finally met Jack's eyes.
“Really. Ask away.”
The kid frowned long and hard at his journal. Its cover continually managed to gather doodles and embellishments pressed in more lightly than the thick markered-in name. He suddenly began turning pages as quickly as he could possibly manage, and a couple times a distinct tearing sound interrupted his quiet search. He ignored it in favor of finding a single page.
“So… you said that no one could see you. Or touch you. So did they really just pass through you?”
"Pretty much." He smirked as he said it, enough confidence to erase Jamie's concern. "But it feels different, too. Now that's one of the most difficult sensations to explain.”
Trailing one finger along the fence, he forced a thicker trail of frost to wind back and forth. A ripple on the solid wood.
“You know how when you touch water and it's on the cool side, your hand sort of tingles and you can feel the slight pressure of the water surrounding you?”
An eager nod.
“I think it felt sort of like that, but in reverse. I was the water and everyone else moved through me; maybe the effects of my presence were noticeable sometimes, but it didn't stop me from being invisible or intangible.”
Jamie didn’t wait for him to finish speaking to begin furiously writing down every word. The kid absentmindedly half-muttered an exclamation of “Cool!” before his face crumpled into panic and then sheepish amusement. He covered the sound with a few harsh coughs.
“You alright there?” Jack asked, laying the concern on thick. Just maybe the lightly furrowed brow would cover the crinkle of his eyes. “That sounded like a pretty bad cough.
The boy hurriedly reassured him otherwise, eyes still locked to his own thoroughly chronicled notes.
“Good, good. We wouldn’t want you catching a… cold, now would we?”
This time Jamie didn’t even have time to respond before a sharp cackle echoed through the yard. Sheens of ice spread across the ground and split apart the rapidly dying grass, only a few sparkles of frost reaching beyond where the Guardian drifted.
“Very funny.”
Jack agreed by way of sending a phantom snowball his friend’s way, a cluster of icy flecks that shifted into vapor before it could quite reach its target.
“I doubt I could catch one right now, not the usual kind. You weren’t kidding about the temperature making a difference.” Jamie stuck out his tongue as another burst of snowflakes failed against the sun’s heat.
Jack scrunched his face into a mock frown. “Hey now, that better have been a taste of some really early snowflakes you were going for. Because if not…” He shook his staff vaguely into the air, but the gesture really angled more towards the ridiculously clear sky.
For a micro-eternity, or in other words and according to Jamie, a week, the sky over the town had failed to produce more than a few bare wisps of cloud. Without any breeze to carry them, these had hung in place until they had melted away just like ice. Sure, Jack could call on the wind, or a friend if he really wanted to leave for someplace else. But he didn’t want to. There was more to life than nerve-wringing mischief and snowball fights, after all. Apparently.
“I’m thinking of using interviews for my book,” Jamie said suddenly. “For accuracy. And because then it will sound like it has more variety, it won’t just be my voice behind it.”
“Neat.” The pretense of breeze suspended Jack long enough to land neatly behind him for a closer look. “Be sure to let me know when the Easter Kangaroo gets a turn. I’ll be there for moral support.”
This pulled another laugh from Jamie, but he shook his head, closing the journal until only those snowflake-ridden margins showed. “Sorry, but that would defeat the point. It has to be one-on-one, no distractions. Like how the reporters do it.”
Jack was vaguely familiar with reporters. They projected practiced smiles as they were projected to TVs around the country and world, declaring what they knew and what they thought they knew. To their credit, the bland job seemed to be a steady one. So long as they weren’t one of the ones assuring viewers of the upcoming weather, just before a mysterious cold snap set in.
Still, the lilt in Jamie’s voice said more than his method of gathering information.
“Sooo, should I expect to see you on TV sometime in the somewhat-near-future? Or is the interviewing more of a one time thing?”
“I think both. Or something in-between. I want to learn more about you guys, and I’ve been thinking more about what I want to be when I grow up.”
“Mmm.” Jack focused more intently as he pressed a palm into a clear patch of ground. A fractal pattern emerged and stuck there, and the kid beside him eagerly took up a pencil to copy that down as well. “So is professional ice-skating-derby coaching no longer on the table, or was historian of factual fiction more in the running?”
Jamie had the nerve to snort at both of those, nevermind that he had been the source of those and other creative job titles. He still always managed to bring in a practical aspect to each.
“Eh, I’ll get back to that one eventually.” He grinned, showing off where the gap in his mouth had been almost completely filled in again. Not for long, though, if that molar he wouldn’t stop prodding at indicated anything. “You’re not… upset, are you?”
Those big, brown eyes locked on Jack’s own and he tried not to get pulled under by familiarity. Just a coincidence. But what a coincidence, that the kid with the most faith of all would have eyes the same shape and shade as another who relied on Jack long ago.
“Upset that you won’t be getting thrown around the ice? Nope, I’ll get over it.”
He pushed the words out of a mouth that he could have sworn had suddenly dried, a throat closing the way for unneeded air. Maybe he could find an excuse to offer that as yet another observation of his Guardian state.
Those wide eyes rolled and Jamie huffed. “If I were the coach I wouldn’t be getting thrown around. And I don’t mean that, I mean about… the interviews.”
Jack kept his attention carefully on weaving intricate patterns along his staff, but he gestured for the boy to elaborate.
“It’s just, it’s good that people believe in you guys. Great, I mean. I know it’s important.”
“Mhmm.”
Wings and cotton balls floated into the blend of sharper crystalline shapes.
“But I don’t know if what I want to do will be the right way to do that. Even writing it without the interviews just feels…”
“Like no one will believe you?”
A torn up tennis shoe kicked at the damp patch of grass. “Not that, more like… they won’t be able to believe it for themselves. I know we don’t need to see to continue believing, but will anyone start to believe just by reading?”
“Eh, who knows?”
Jamie glanced up from his journal, clenched tightly between both hands. “What?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know the answer to that, and neither do you. And it’s even possible that someone like ol’ North doesn’t know.”
He reached and tapped the journal, pointedly meeting Jamie’s eyes again.
“But if you want my honest opinion, here’s how I see it: you won’t know unless you try. And if you don’t write about us, about all of it, no one will see it and wonder in the first place.”
The kid exhaled, wiping an arm across what could have been either sweat or tears. Or maybe traces of melted frost; Jack flinched at how many flakes had gathered around his hands and the surrounding air without either of them noticing. So much for the heat stifling all of that.
The Guardian watched the hunched shoulders stay in place.
“Something tells me that’s not the only thing you’re worried about.”
The boy nodded, hair dropping messily in front of his eyes, sticking to his forehead. Jack brushed it back with barely the flick of a wrist, the help of the thin wind. He didn’t even linger on the gesture, or Jamie’s forced smile.
The latter responded by mumbling into the journal and his sunburnt arms.
“What was that?”
“I’m worried about interviewing all of you. What if I do it wrong? What if not everyone’s okay with me sharing part of their story, or what Guardians are all about? I might mess up.”
The cackle that Jack let slip out rivaled his last, amusement and anxiety rushing out together. Even as gave in to the burst of mirth, he remembered to explain the source to a startled Jamie.
“Jamie, you’ve been interviewing me for the past hour, and asking questions that even Tooth would blush about daring to say.”
“Oh,” was all the kid could muster.
The Guardian’s laughter deepened into something softer and lower and so much closer to… human, to mortal, to back then. Back alongside hopeful eyes and round-faced, full-bodied laughs at jokes that kept cold and boredom at bay in different measures.
The well-worn notebook finally found its way to the ground, already bursting with answers. Jamie leaned back and closed his eyes to the bright sunlight. As he thumped to the ground, some of the grass still crackled.
“Thank you, Jack.”
“No problem. Glad I could help you… cool off.”
A clump of moist grass struck him square between the eyes, and the lighter laughter that echoed his own in the sweltering heat told him that they would both be alright.