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“Awe, he’s asleep.” Tooth cooed, noticing Jack Frost, their newest and youngest recruit to date, had fallen silent somewhere over Canada. At first, she didn’t think about it, as they were hashing over their latest encounter with Pitch and how close of a call they had. For how active the teen seemed, she didn’t really find it strange for him to stop contributing to the conversation; more like he was shy and decided to just listen. As they touched down back at the Pole, Tooth finally looked around, to notice that the boy had curled up on the top tier, leaning against the side wall and his staff in a near-death grasp.
Sandy nodded, having noticed over an hour ago, and put a finger to his lips. He’d sprinkled the boy with dream sand, but it was still easy to wake him. He was honestly amazed that the jostling of the sleigh hadn’t already awoken the child; a true testament to how tired he was.
“Here, I’ll get the blighter.” Bunny volunteered, waving off North so that he could deal with the reindeer. Sliding paws under his knees and shoulders, he lifted the boy, nearly tossing him by accident. Like one would nearly toss an empty milk container that was expected to be full. “Wha’ the?” Bunny blinked, looking down at the scraggly teen. “Tooth, come here and hol’ out yer arms for me, will ya?”
Giving the anthropomorphic rabbit an odd look, she did as she was asked, and promptly got an armful of Frost. “Wha-oh!” Tooth gasped and looked up at Bunny, whom nodded in agreement.
“Lighter’n a butterfly, I recon.” Bunny nodded to himself and took Jack back into his arms, mostly on his left so that he could brace himself as he hopped out of the sleigh. The boy fit easily against his chest, despite his height. “Oi, North, where do you want me to put ‘im?”
Unhooking the last of his reindeer and handing her off to the stable yeti, North gestured for him to follow. “Come, will put boy in unused guest room for now.”
“Yargle Vakugla.” The stable yeti muttered, absently patting the huge reindeer’s neck, and as such didn’t notice North’s furrow-browed look.
“No, we will not leave in snow bank. He is guest now.” And with that, he promptly led the way into Santoff Claussen proper and up into the residential wing. At the end of a long darkened hallway, North opened the door and ushered the others in. “Boy will like, no?” It was a massive room, much bigger than any of their usual guest rooms, but obviously abandoned for a number of years. Tooth zipped up and around, giggling as she recognized aspects of the room that was the original observatory, once holding North’s first globe, before he expanded some two hundred years ago to his current workshop and globe room. Immediately, North set about getting a fire started in the hearth while Sandy flagged down a yeti and requested fresh sheets to the four-poster bed tucked away in an alcove.
The room itself was round, and at least ten meters across, and half again as tall with a domed glass ceiling, enchanted in a way that snow never stuck to the outside, and heat never escaped, so that observers would stay warm and comfortable while staring at the stars. Around the room, there were nearly a dozen large timberwood pillars set against the wall, more decoration than structure and retained their organic rounded shape. Tooth assumed that it reminded North of his first real home, but she had never asked.
Soon enough, the yeti that Sandy had flagged down returned with not only new sheets (a lovely sky blue and white), but two other yeti carrying a new mattress that hadn’t been sitting around the past fifty years and matching curtains for the four poster. In a matter of minutes, the alcove looked quite welcoming in blue and white, even though the rest of the room could still do with some cleaning. North wasn’t worried, the Yeti could give the room a proper scrub-down tomorrow when the boy awoke.
It took all of them to get Jack into the bed proper. First it was Tooth and her nimble fingers to gently pry the shepherd’s staff from stiff-but-relaxed fingers and prop it between one of the four posters, the side table and the wall. Next North took his turn, and between him and Bunny, managed to wrestle the show limpet in between the sheets and properly tuck him in for the first time in over three hundred years. Sandy put the figurative cherry on top by sprinkling the boy once again with dream sand. Jack sighed, curling on his side and groped at his pillow, pulling it to his chest as a giant plush, but ultimately accidently pulling his neck into an odd angle. The boy was flexible, but that looked just plain painful. Tooth quickly remedied the problem by tucking the second pillow under Jack’s head and turning it into a more comfortable position. She couldn’t help but to coo as she hovered, unabashedly staring from less than a foot away.
“Tooth!” North hissed, used to his fellow guardian’s antics, and lightly tugged her ankle, “Come, we let boy rest. We have much to discuss.”
“Hmm? Oh, yes.” Tooth nodded absently, turning to join the other three, but not before tucking a lock of hair behind Jack’s ear and straightening his blankets. “Let’s leave Sweet-tooth to his dreams then.” None of them mentioned the figures of Jack and a little girl skating and laughing, or the snowball fight that they had all participated in mere hours beforehand, rendered in golden sand. After a short scribbled note left on the nightstand next to a glass of ice water, North herded them all out and closed the double doors behind them.
Above, the moon glowed brightly, an air of joy as MiM watched his youngest child finally join the rest of his family.