Work Text:
Nicholas St. North sat in his tent, pouring over a map spread on a low table. With careful strokes, he marked what he had seen on the day’s journey, but as he did so, his frown of concentration turned to one of anger. The map—the map was not big enough for all the things he had seen! And now, looking at it again, the place he had marked for his camp was far too close to his previous camp. He had ridden slowly, to be sure, but he had still traveled all day! What was more, he had forded two broad rivers, neither of which were marked on the map. But he had checked his position by the stars, and the stars did not lie. And he had bought the map from an ordinary, honest man—he could tell now, and he was at least never wrong in this, when men were honest—so ordinary he hadn’t noticed a tall man standing directly in front of him in his shop. Nicholas cursed. It was all connected, wasn’t it? The more he travelled, the more he saw, the more inaccurate the map became. The more he saw, the less he was seen—unless he did a great deed, usually something everyone said was impossible. And even then, he was more spoken of than spoken to, as if in completing the impossible task he had become more impossible himself.
He set down his pen, closed his jar of ink, and sat up. His head brushed the top of his tent and he cursed again. He couldn’t remember when that had started. Ah, but what did it matter, anyway? His clothes always fit, and he barely heeded the winter cold anymore. Especially now, the biting wind would be better for his mood than this stuffy, too-small tent.
He flung the flap open and filled his lungs deeply, staring up at the stars. When he exhaled, his breath steamed around his face, clouding his vision for a moment. When he could see again, a slender, pale figure stood before him. It was a young woman, with eyes a bright blue even lit only by starlight. Her hair flowed freely in the wind, exactly white as snow, never obscuring her face. Her skin was scarcely darker, and it was hard to see where her dress began. Dress—no, she had a gown, a gown of lace, and the lace made of snowflakes. It flowed around her, lighter than the wisps of clouds blowing by overhead. She smiled as she looked at him, her expression frank, curious, and pleased.
It was an expression Nicholas had seen before on the faces of certain girls at the close of certain spring festivals he had been to in more ordinary days, and it had always been to the good. He was pleased at once to have such a beauty as this look at him so, though he had not faced a thousand impossible things to not be wary of this one. This was no country festival, she was no ordinary woman, and it certainly wasn’t springtime.
He tensed when he saw her expression grow unaccountably sad—was she going to try to destroy him though she felt sorry about it? He’d encountered a few creatures like that before.
Yet she made no move to attack. Instead, she only said, “I wish you could see me.” She smiled a little, then. “We could have had a lot of fun…if you could have lived through it.” She looked away briefly at this last, but soon enough was observing Nicholas again.
Well then. Nicholas put his hands on his hips and looked directly into her eyes. “But I can see you,” he said.
“What! How? No, I don’t care about how, look, my name’s Jack Frost, yes even though I’m a girl that’s my name and don’t panic, I’m going to step forward now, I need you to look at my face and I need you to memorize it, can you draw? I’ve only seen you make maps so far but you could surely get my likeness, and I need you to tell people that I’m real, I need you to…” she grabbed his hand and trailed off. “You’re really warm and it doesn’t hurt,” she said wonderingly. She looked up into his eyes. “We have the same color eyes. What’s your name?”
“My name is Nicholas St. North,” he said, rather more quietly than usual. Her touch was cool, but not icy, and it did not hurt him, either. “Some have called me the Wonder-Worker.”
Jack raised her eyebrows and smiled. “So that’s how. Someone else seeing me is the most wondrous thing I could imagine. I’ve heard of you, you know. But I…” her smile changed to more of a smirk. “I didn’t think you were real.”
“It has become more and more difficult for me to know that, myself, lately,” Nicholas admits. “Sometimes others will look right through me, and I do not know why. I would say it was a curse, but I have broken every curse I have found.”
“Am I under one? Could you break it?”
Nicholas was silent for a moment. “You feel like you are under the opposite of a curse, to me,” he said. “You are under a blessing, maybe?”
Jack laughed bitterly. “Are you serious? It’s a horrible one, then. Isn’t it horrible to you when people can’t tell that you’re there?”
Nicholas nodded. “Especially because I have noticed it getting worse.”
Jack shrugs, though she still holds his hand. “It was all at once for me. Or I guess it was. I’ve been this way as long as I can remember. No people see me. It’s lonely, and I—I know I’m not meant to be alone. I control the snow, but I can’t help but want warmth—even though it usually hurts me.”
“But I do not?” Nicholas raised their hands. “It seems as though I have melted the edge of your sleeve.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “It couldn’t happen unless I wanted it to, I think. And no, your warmth…it’s good. I’m not too cold for you?”
“No. I rarely notice the cold these days.”
“Then why the coat?”
“Fashion,” Nicholas said with a grin, and she smiled back.
“It suits you,” she said, looking him up and down. “Oh, I mean—” She made a face. “You probably heard what I said earlier, didn’t you? And that was before I had even touched you.”
“If you still wish to share my tent and my warmth, I will be glad of it,” Nicholas said. “And if the tent is too small and collapses on us, we will certainly not forget that both of us were real enough to make that happen.”
Jack laughed and a few sparkling snowflakes fell around her. “Don’t you think that’s a little foolish? I’m a snow spirit, as far as I can tell.”
“Maybe, but you are a lovely one, and a lonely one, and the only one I have met who is unseen without wishing it, as I am. With that in common, I would like to make sure you think well of me once no one else can see me.”
Jack nodded. “I suppose thinking you are a brave handsome fool entranced by my beauty is thinking well enough of you?”
“Of course, it is all true!”
“And I’d like to know you’ll think of me well, too. But you have to stop being serious now, all right?” She squeezed his hand. “Why don’t you make a terrible joke using your nickname, or something?”
Nicholas placed his hand on her back and felt the snow melt away around his palm as he led her towards the tent, “You mean I should say something about it not being just a nickname? This I would rather show.”
“That’s more like it,” said Jack.