Chapter Text
Everyone knew that winter liked to cling to the land. It liked to cover new growth and delicate flowers with an inch of snow. It liked to ice over ponds full of young life. It liked to keep the fields hard-packed and unplowable until the very last moment. It liked to outstay its welcome and nip at pale skin being exposed to the strengthening sun for the first time in months.
As much as winter liked to linger, Jack Frost did not.
In all the time he had been a winter spirit – more winters than he could count, these days – he seldom took the time to visit the same place twice. Sure, ‘he’ would visit, bringing blustering storms and howling winds and unrelenting cold every year, right on schedule. But Jack Frost did not linger. Jack Frost did not burden himself with getting to know the people of the villages he swept across. He did not mourn the lives lost every year to his bone-chilling cold and ice and snow, just as so few had mourned the loss of him from those same conditions – or at least, who he used to be.
So Jack Frost kept the world at arm’s length, staying hidden behind the clouds and wind, doing his job without a word. Legends did spread, of course, of who Jack Frost could’ve been, in a different life: the patron of a playful winter’s day, full of light sparkling off fresh snow and laugher. A guardian of fun and joy and childhood wonder. Jack did not bother correcting the stories he heard in passing, knowing the version of Jack Frost the tales were telling were much kinder than the truth.
The truth being that Jack Frost was nothing more than a winter spirit – as cold and heartless as the season he ushered in each year.
Jack did not linger, but there were places he could not seem to stay away from, places he was inexplicably drawn to. One place, really.
There was an ancient wood on a forgotten island in a northern sea. The trees were wider around than Jack and his staff could reach and towered to the heavens, providing a blanket of quiet across the wood. The inhabitants of the village on the far side of the island, perched on a high cliff overlooking the cold sea, did not visit the wood. The stench of magic permeated the ancient wood, from the roots below the ground to the chilled air floating through the canopy.
Jack found himself roaming this ancient wood every few winters. It was easy to drown out his own magic in a place like that – the forest overpowered him, or at least dulled his winter enough that he could forget, just for a little while. It never changed, as long as Jack had been coming.
That was, until he arrived.
When Jack entered the forest, bringing the first signs of winter for the season on his heels, he could immediately sense that something was different. The magic of the forest still wrapped around him in greeting, like shrugging on an old worn cloak. It did not seem alarmed, and so Jack did not worry.
The magic pushed him towards one side of the wood, closest to the village. It was there, still deep in the wood and out of sight of the rest of the world, that he found a beginnings of a cabin, nestled in a small natural clearing. The foundation had been set, but the walls remained unfinished. There was no roof in sight.
Upon stepping into the clearing, the magic draped around his shoulders eased, as if he had found what it wanted him to see. Jack strolled into the clearing fully, steps silent on the forest floor, unworried and casual. He kept his staff held loosely in one hand, swinging at his side.
The cabin, though obviously in the middle of construction, was empty. Jack easily jumped up to perch along the top of an unfinished wall to observe the interior of the structure: a roll of cloth shoved against one wall, a pile of ax heads in need of sharpening, a large stack of something hidden under an oiled cloth that Jack assumed to be firewood.
Jack chuckled to himself at the state of the cabin. The first snowflakes of the season were beginning to drift past his nose, spurred by his presence. “I hope they’ve got a warm place in town for winter, because this isn’t it.”
He did not expect a reply – why would he? No one had seen Jack Frost in the flesh for longer than he could care to remember. So when an answering growl filled the clearing, Jack leapt into the air in surprise, letting his staff clatter noisily down the unfinished wall.
Jack whirled in the air, eyes going to the middle of the small clearing, where a jet-black wolf was staring him down, teeth bared.
Eyes greener than what could possibly be natural for a wolf watched Jack’s every move as he straightened from his midair crouch and tilted his head.
“You can see me?” Jack asked. He sighed to himself, muttering, “I’m talking to a dog now. All time low much?”
Incredibly, the wolf simply tensed further, slipping lower into a defensive posture before dipping its great head once in a clear nod.
“Huh. Weird. Can I, uh… I’m going to take that back now. Good doggy.”
Jack didn’t wait to see the reaction of the black wolf before he shot to the dirt and closed his hand around the staff, immediately then kicking off the ground again to hover near the top of the cabin. He was glad he did so when the wolf lunged, jaws snapping as snarls ripped from its throat. It leapt into the air after Jack, closing its teeth around nothing when Jack rose too high.
Jack laughed, not caring that he was taunting this creature that could clearly understand him. He used his staff-free hand to form a ball of snow, then deftly lobbed it at the wolf. It went cross-eyed at the impact, the snowball striking right between its toxic green eyes. It shook its head a few times, dislodging the snow clinging there, then lunged into the air after Jack again. Jack simply floated a bit higher and sent another snowball down, laughing still.
They continued back and forth like that for another minute: Jack floating lower and lower, baiting the wolf into jumping, then sending it down with a face full of snow and ice. The growls had grown deafening in the small clearing by the time the man arrived.
Jack did not hear his arrival over the snarls of the wolf. But, the way the man ran up to the creature, smoothing a hand over the black fur of its neck, definitely caught his attention. In the back of his head, Jack finally registered the size of the beast: the seemingly grown man’s shoulders were level with the top of the wolf’s head. Jack couldn’t claim much knowledge about wolves, but the little he did possess assured him that this was not the normal size, color, nor demeanor of a normal forest wolf.
The wolf quieted down as the man stroked its fur, but it never took its eyes off of Jack. Jack stuck his tongue out at the beast, which set off another round of snarls, though they did not last long this time.
Jack held his breath on instinct as the man’s eyes followed the wolf’s, scanning the top of the cabin where they skipped harmlessly over Jack. For some reason, Jack’s shoulders dropped a hair in disappointment.
This confused him more than the wolf. Jack Frost was not seen. Jack Frost did not interact with humans. Jack Frost did not feel curious at the sight of green eyes the exact same shade as the wolf at their owner’s side.
Jack Frost did not linger.
The man began speaking to the wolf – the first living thing to acknowledge Jack’s existence in his waking memory – as Jack simply stood and shot directly up, away from the cabin and the wolf and the man, back into the first signs of winter bearing down on the forgotten island.
He had done his job for the island, he reasoned. With the first snowfall ushered in by his hand, true winter would soon descend, and the man in the forest with the unfinished cabin and the wolf would either return to the village or perish in the cold. It was of no bother to Jack. That was the way of winter. That was the way of Jack Frost.
-
Jack did not return to the island that year. When spring began knocking, he flew high overhead and sent down one last snow, then retreated.
It was always winter somewhere. There was always something to do. The southern portion of the world was entering their cold months just as the north was leaving, which meant a long migratory trip for Jack Frost, one he would mirror again in autumn. This was how life – if one could call it that – went for Jack, year by year, season by season.
When it was time for winter again in the north, Jack let himself follow the pull back to that old wood on the forgotten island in a northern sea. The magic of the wood felt different again – stronger, more alive, more playful than it had before. Jack relaxed the shoulders he hadn’t known were tense as his feet touched the forest floor. He breathed in deep, enjoying the earthy scent of fall, of leaves turning into nutrients to leech into the soil, of the last glimpses of a warm breeze turning cold.
He let the magic push him forward again, and he knew he would end up back in that tiny clearing. He expected to find the cabin from the year before either unfinished and abandoned, or as the makeshift grave for two more of winter’s victims. However, as he entered the clearing – this time high in the air, just in case – he found neither was true.
The cabin was finished, walls high and strong, chimney pumping smoke into the sky. There were a few outbuildings added, with paths of carefully laid stone snaking between them. Curled in the open doorway to the main cabin was the great black wolf, somehow looking even larger than it had the year before. The second Jack crossed the invisible border into the clearing, the wolf’s eyes were locked on him. Jack could hear the low grumble of a growl starting in its chest, though it did not rise.
“Hello, beastie,” Jack drawled, making sure he was still high above the ground. “Remember me?”
The glare the wolf leveled at him was answer enough.
“What are you, then?” he continued, floating closer, further into the clearing. “I’ve tried to talk to wolves this year, y’know, but none of them talk back.”
The wolf rolled its eyes and stretched its paws out, eyes closing as it yawned. Its teeth were pure white and massive, even from as high up as Jack was.
“Are you fae?” The wolf snorted, shaking its head. “A spirit?” The wolf glared at him again. “Well, you’re not a normal wolf, that’s for sure. Wolves are supposed to be majestic animals, right? You look more like a pet than a majestic anything.”
The wolf was on its feet and snapping at Jack’s ankles before he could blink. Jack cursed and shot back up, not realizing how low he had dipped.
“Not cool,” he yelled.
The wolf gave a low rumble that sounded like laughter as Jack narrowed his eyes.
“Toothless? What is it, bud?”
Jack startled, nearly dropping his staff – that was the second time he had done that here: what was it about this place?
A man came out of the cabin, brandishing a short sword. His eyes swept the clearing in a methodical way, then did the same to the tree line. When he found nothing, the man let the sword drop and turned to the wolf. “What’s got your tail in a twist, huh?” He reached out and rubbed the wolf’s head, between its fluffy ears, and Jack finally processed what the man had said.
“Toothless?” he repeated, a grin starting to spread across his face. “Your name is Toothless?!”
The wolf – Toothless – was growling again, baring a mouth that was very much full of teeth at Jack, who was laughing in earnest now.
“You are just a pet, aren’t you, Toothless,” he taunted. The man had taken a surprised step back when Toothless began growling again, but had come forward to rest a hand on his shoulders again. Like the year before, the man followed the wolf’s gaze up, his eyes skipping over Jack.
This time though, Jack took the time to actually observe the man.
He looked older than Jack’s perpetual 18, but only barely. He had shaggy brown hair littered with small braids, each having a tiny something tied at the end, too faint for Jack to make out fully. He wore a mix of leather and cloth, with guards around his arms and shoulders and buckles crisscrossing his chest and a place for his sword at his belt, beside a variety of pouches. Curiously, while his right leg ended in a large furry boot, his left stopped just below his knee, leather buckles and iron taking the place of his lower leg. Jack watched as the man subtly shifted his weight off of the leg, supporting himself with Toothless’ neck.
His face was littered with a smattering of freckles heavy enough for Jack to see from the air, and a few shiny white scars. His eyes were bright green – the exact same shade as Toothless’ eyes – and were deep set under thick brows, which were now furrowed as he searched for the disturbance. He was handsome, Jack admitted, in a rugged sort of way. He teetered on the edge of tastefully tousled and unkempt, but he wore it well. Jack could tell there were broad shoulders and strong thighs hidden beneath the leathers, and his hand was sure around the sword.
Eventually, Toothless settled down, seeing that Jack was not antagonizing him further. With a huff of annoyance, the wolf trotted back to the front of the cabin, where he circled a patch of dirt once, twice, before flopping down, tucking his tail across his nose. His vivid eyes fixed on Jack again once he was settled, the warning in them clear.
“O-kay then,” the man muttered, watching the wolf settle. “You are a strange creature; did you know that?”
With another wary glance around the clearing, the man sheathed the sword at his side and went back into the cabin. He walked with the slightest limp, but it seemed to Jack that he could still get around just fine.
Jack was about to toss another retort to the wolf named Toothless and be on his way again when the magic of the forest nudged him, urging him towards the cabin again. Jack frowned, looking out into the wood. “What? I’ve seen the wolf. He’s weird, I know.”
The nudge came again, almost disrupting the wind that Jack stood on as it pushed him towards the cabin.
“Okay, okay,” he muttered, adjusting the grip on his staff. “Can you at least make it so that Gums over here won’t eat me?”
Toothless bared his teeth again, half lifting his head, but did not get up when Jack drifted closer. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the wolf as he passed within a few feet of him, backing through the doorway to the cabin. If he was fully corporeal and didn’t have to concentrate so hard on interacting with objects, Jack would’ve slammed the door in the wolf’s face. As it was, he simply rose back up to the ceiling, crossing his legs as he hovered.
The cabin was still fairly bare. There was a single table with a single chair to the left of the doorway, though it was hard to tell it was a table, with how much stuff was piled on it. Leaves and leaves of parchment covered in jet-black coal in a language Jack could not read – though Jack wasn’t sure if he could read any language, now that he thought about it. Pieces of metal and scraps of leather that looked like they might be match for the contraption on the man’s leg. Half empty vials of various things that Jack definitely didn’t recognize.
To the right of the door was a hearth and rudimentary kitchen, where again the worktable was covered in various junk, probably food-related, of which Jack also knew nothing about.
Further into the cabin were large stacks of shelves, both free-standing and lining the wall. Jack drifted closer to observe what was on all these shelves, finding books and plants and dried herbs and weapons and stone bowls and piles and piles of parchment and sticks of charcoal. There were also bundles of cloth and fur, presumably the man’s extra clothes, as he was not currently dressed for the rapidly approaching winter on Jack’s heels.
The last thing in the cabin was a bed, tucked in the corner on the same wall as the hearth. It was there that Jack found the man, flopped facedown, only half on the bed, muttering to himself. Despite himself, Jack drifted closer to catch the words. They were horribly muffled, but hanging upside-down in the air got him close enough to get the gist.
“-but who cares if hiccup can’t help it, who cares if hiccup was the one who to save the village from ruin, hiccup used magic, and all magic is bad and scary and unnatural,” he muttered, doing a different voice for a few words. “Let’s all just ignore the magic literally holding the village together, and the fact that Gothi has always been a witch, and the giant enchanted forest on the island. But hiccup, he’s the bad one. Yeah fucking right. The whole godsforsaken village was looking for any excuse to get rid of me for years, the least they could do it admit the real reason.”
Jack realized halfway through the monologue that the man was not talking about hiccups, but rather someone named Hiccup, which was somehow more dreadful of a name than Toothless. By the end, Jack was holding back laughter at the realization that the man in front of him was named Hiccup.
Hiccup and Toothless. Jack had never heard anything so absurd.
The rest of the ramblings were easy enough to decode. The man, Hiccup, was a witch, presumably from the village on the other side of the island, on the cliffs. They did not like Hiccup, nor his magic, and so they cast him out, explaining his presence here, in the enchanted forest.
“Are you really enchanted?” Jack asked out loud.
The answering nudge felt like a yes.
“Huh. Who knew.”
Jack left Hiccup there on the bed, still mumbling nonsense. His breathing had evened out, and Jack wondered if he could somehow be sleeping. He found he didn’t particularly care as he floated back to the cabin door and out into the clearing, hovering a few feet above the ground. Toothless had not moved, but had evidently closed his eyes, if the single eye that cracked open to train on Jack was any indication.
“Are you his familiar?” Jack asked the wolf.
The wolf opened its other eye and raised its head. He watched Jack for a few beats, then tilted his head from side to side. Not a yes, but not a no.
“Sort of, then,” Jack mused. “Some weird soul bond, or something? Am I close?” After another moment of hesitation, Toothless dipped his great head in a clear nod. “Well, if you’re his familiar – it's close enough, shut up – then why are you able to see me while he can’t? I thought witches and familiars shared abilities and magic and all that stuff.”
Toothless sighed and rested his head on his paws again in a clear do I look like I know? gesture.
Jack sighed too, falling backwards so that he was floating parallel to the ground, staring up through the thick canopy. The skies high above were a light grey, telling of the snowstorm to come. With Hiccup asleep inside the cabin and Toothless seeming to follow him outside of it, Jack quickly found himself bored and antsy.
With nothing more to do, Jack conjured a single snowball and sent it flying at the wolf, smacking him right between the eyes. Toothless yelped and jumped to his feet, a snarl building in his chest, but Jack Frost was already gone, weaving through the trees. The first snowfall of the year began blanketing the forest behind him.