- Invitation Status
- Posting Speed
- 1-3 posts per week
- Writing Levels
- Prestige
- Douche
- Preferred Character Gender
- Male
- Genres
- High Fantasy, Modern Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Yaoi, Political Intrigue, Supernatural, Post-Apocalyptic
Fair bit of warning, this story may serve to trigger a lot of things. There is non-con and torture of the most disturbing variety, so, if you are squeamish, it may not be the story for you. However, if you like lots of angst and the thrill of reading a story that does not promise a happy ending, then you will be in for a treat, I hope.
This story also involves M/M and non-con sexual scenes. If you are not comfortable with reading these kinds of things, turn away now or forever hold your peace.
The sun's light washed across fields of rippling grass. The brass disc was set on a canvas of gentlest blue. Its light danced on the world below it to the music of the wind as it blew through the trees. The ground was firm and covered with green. The dew was fresh and it glittered in the morning light. The day was beautiful as any, yet its shoulders carried melancholy heavier than mountains.
One young man felt the bright sun on his back. He felt its warmth and the comfort it brought to many people. He felt the cool caress of the wind and the pleasant rustling of the leaves as the breeze meandered through the nearby foliage, yet the day's beauty was lost on him. His world was in the sweat on his brow; in the ache in his arms; in the shovels of dirt that he tossed into the ditch in front of him.
Frost, the young man mused. Jack Frost, his parents had called him. Frost like the breaths that had passed his lips. Frost like the intricate latticework of ice that laid on the ground when they'd found him. Frost like the white that blossomed in the cracks of treebark, in the boughs of trees, and on the blades of grass. His parents, they told him, had always wanted a child. The gods they'd thought had abandoned them, it seemed, had answered their supplications.
Yet Jack had never truly felt entirely at home in their quaint farmstead. He'd never quite felt like he belonged. He'd loved the two very dearly, but he always wondered what his life was like before they'd found him. He always wondered if his true parents had died, if they'd lost him, or truly, if they'd abandoned him. Many times he'd asked the farmer and his husband, but neither of them genuinely knew.
All that the two farmers -- outsiders like Jack himself -- knew was that they'd found him out by the woods one day during the first frost of autumn. It was as though by some divine providence that they'd heard the faint cries of the child. Jack, he'd been told, was certainly worse for wear and looked to be on the brink of death. They'd taken him in, clothed him, fed him, warmed him and bathed the dirt and grime off of him. They'd considered him their own flesh and blood, and rightly so. He'd grow up to be like them in his proclivities. He'd grow up to be like them -- exiled and ostracised by society at large for wanting the love of another man.
Thud. Jack straightened as he tossed another shovelful of dirt on the casket in the ground. Dirt and pebbles rained down on the rough-hewn wood. They scratched the casket and thudded on it, making it sound as though whoever lay within was struggling to get out. Jack knew better. Thud. The last of the only family he'd known since he could remember, dead. He couldn't help the tears that spilled from his eyes, the quiver that danced upon his lower lip. Thud. Alone now, and probably until his own death, Jack felt truly terrified of what lay ahead.
Jack tossed the shovel to the side when the grisly deed was done. Its old, heavy blade was caked with soil and moist with dew. He'd cleaned it earlier, before he began to dig the grave. Jack felt obliged enough to his father that he didn't want to dig his final resting place with a shovel that had only yesterday been used to scoop up horse shit. He fell to his knees. The soil shifted around him and a sigh escaped his lips. With his fingers he shaped a small hole in the dirt and fished an acorn from his pocket. He dropped the seed into it and almost reverently closed the earth over it.
The young man glanced to his side. An oak sapling rose from the ground there. His fathers had been inseparable in life. Jack felt that they deserved to be inseparable in death as well. The trees would grow. Their roots would reach down and drink of his fathers' essences. Their branches would reach for the skies and entwine with each other. These oak trees would be together even when Jack was himself dead.
Jack knelt in the soft earth. He did not care if his breeches got dirty. Life at a farm was dirty business to begin with. He looked at the tiny mound of earth he'd formed above the acorn in front of him. He glanced at the sapling that grew on his other father's grave. He fancied the thought that somehow the plants represented the love they'd shared with each other. How their love had grown and blossomed from something so tiny and fragile in a world that wanted nothing more than to quash it into something tall, firm and strong.
Jack wanted that. He wanted that kind of love, but his fathers had always told him that almost everyone frowns upon it. When their old painter friend had died and stopped coming out to the farm, the two had almost entirely withdrawn from the world. His father Nyko stopped going to town, merely trading with nearby farms for needed supplies. "The world out there--" they would often tell him with this palpable look of despair and weariness in their eyes "--hates people like us."
Jack's dad would push a bony finger at his chest. "So keep it in here, Jack" he would say. In the corner Nyko would shake his head and look out the window. Jack often caught him expelling air from his lungs in a long drawn-out sigh. "Don't show them what you are. Because they will kill you for it." Jack had not noticed it then, but Nyko always turned away from Jack after saying those words. He was wiping the tears from his eyes and hiding the fury and sadness that were in them.
Whenever they talked about the outside world, Jack could hear fear in his fathers' voices. They'd lived long lives. They'd lived hard lives. It was a wonder they'd ever survived out on the farm. From what they'd told him, Jack knew that they had lived out on the farm since they were twenty, having never lived outside of their hometown before that. They'd taken care of themselves. They used the plants in the nearby woods for medicine. They ate of the fields they toiled in.
While hisparents were happy, and Jack knew deep in his heart that they were, there always seemed to be dark clouds hanging over them. Remnants of a not-so-happy past that still haunted them to the day. Nyko would never agree to visit the barn. Kyle refused to handle the horses. They made do, but Jack always wondered why. When he was young he would every so often hear Kyle wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. Nyko soothed him, and for some reason, the words lulled Jack to sleep too.
It wasn't until he was much older that Jack realized that his parents, the men he'd idolized since he was just learning to milk a cow, weren't as strong as they liked to show him. He began to notice it when Kyle would tremble whenever he handled a knife. He saw it in the way Nyko would warily look into the house before entering. They were broken people, he realized. Much like himself. But they completed each other. They fixed each other. They helped each other remain whole.
Jack wanted that. Jack envied that bond that they possessed. But if his parents were right, and they'd never lied to him, he'd probably never find that. He knelt on the ground. His shoulders shook. Tears rolled down his face. He sniffed. He was alone now. He was probably going to be alone until the end of his days. He already missed his fathers. He wanted them to be back. He didn't want to be alone.
Jack saw the farmstead derelict, the oak trees outside strong and tall, but the house itself was broken down. The shutters were gone. Grass shot through the floorboards. All manner of flora and fauna had wound itself into the place. Inside was a pile of bones. Him. Where he'd fallen of either sickness, weariness, or old age and not been able to get back up. He imagined a weary traveler stumbling upon the home. What if that was the man meant to love him, only, far too late?
The sun was directly overhead by the time Jack was able to rise. He'd cried all he could. The tears wouldn't come anymore. He felt alone. He felt empty. But if anything, he knew he couldn't just stop. Life on the farm had never been easy, much less luxurious. It was hard work. And if anything, it required constant effort. If he was to eke out a living on his own, he would have to work for it. Life on the farm never stopped, he mused.
Jack placed his fingers to his lips and whistled a high-pitched four-note tune. Almost instantly he felt a small head bump against his calf. Jack got down on his haunches. The snowy ball of fur reared up and licked his face, leaving a trail of dog slobber down his cheek. "Hey Glaise. Didn't realize you were there." Jack smiled tenderly at his dog. His last remaining companion on the farm. "We've got work to do today, boy." The dog yipped at him but refused to leave his side. Glaise's tail did not wag quite as exuberantly as it normally did either. The dog probably sensed his master's pain and wanted to help.
"Alright. Alright--" Jack straightened "--let's get today's work over with." The dog ran around his legs and barked up at him before shooting off towards the barn. The young man glanced at his parents' graves and sighed before jogging after Glaise.
---
Cold. So so cold. So... so hungry.
Elian could barely stay on his feet. He could barely keep moving. Where the beauty of the day was lost on Jack because of grief, it was lost on Elian because of sheer terror. He'd been chased out of another town. He'd not stayed there for very long, but he'd actually begun to make friends with some of the boys. Though the town was poor and had very little in the way of food, he had felt relatively comfortable there. Despite the fact that he knew he would have to leave there quickly, he had become comfortable. He should have known better. He was an outcast. A reject. A monster.
The blond stumbled on an exposed root. He cried out in pain. Searing lances of agony shot up from the soles of his feet. They were battered, he knew it, but he had to keep going. He laughed a bitter laugh at the irony of the entire situation. His mother had told him that if he never stopped running around the palace and the first snow caught him that running would be what he would do for the rest of his life. Elian had never believed her, continuing to run through the halls with his brother. Little did he know she was right.
As he struggled to get up, hissing as he gingerly placed his feet back to the dirt, his platinum-blond hair shimmered in the daylight. Elian considered himself cursed through and through. Even his hair was cause for hatred from the common folk. He'd been chased out of towns simply for having hair a colour like his.
Some villages had been kinder, but he'd quickly learned that the fact he was different was enough for people that had learned to love him to throw him out if only to avoid bringing the wroth of other villagers upon themselves. Some towns he'd been let in only to find that it was not much safer than the outside world. In one town he'd been taken ragged, exhausted and hungry enough to eat an ox into a tavern's cellar where he was made to play the lute for the sexual deviants there.
Elian could remember their grimy faces. Could remember the feeling of their lustful gazes boring into him. He could smell the stink of the cellar. The smell was rancid. It was as though the men there were animals. No, he remembered thinking, they were worse than animals. He recalled that no matter how he'd screwed up his playing, they'd cheered for him.
Elian closed his eyes and shuddered, drawing his arms closer to his body. He ended up walking into a tree and falling again. He whimpered. A pathetic sound, considering his state. He remembered the rough calloused hands of those men. How they'd roamed all over his body, ripped the clothes off of him -- used him. He'd been too tired to fight them off. Instead, he lay there, fucked and touched in every conceivable way, absorbing what meager heat he could from their bodies.
At some point in the night Elian had lashed out with his ice, freezing all the men where they stood. He killed them. Every last one. He'd felt dirty. Used. Upstairs when the owner of the tavern tried to stop him, he froze her too. He was hungry. Desperate. He broke into the kitchen, lashing out with his ice at the poor boy that had come at him asking if he was alright. The one soul that had cared for him in that town, dead by his own hands.
Elian pushed himself up, bracing himself against the tree for support. Where his hands touched the trunk, curling spirals of frost spread over the bark. Pain shot up his legs again as he took a step forward. Elian caught himself on the next tree and watched, transfixed and resentful of the frost that curled from his fingers. The intricate latticework had quickly become a symbol of the cold power inside him that was the cause of all his suffering.
The blond hated it. He hated himself. He hated that the world had made him hate himself. The look on that boy's face haunted him to this day. He'd been scared for his life. The boy had just been concerned for him, but he lashed out. He'd often laid awake at night grieving for that one boy. Knowing that the lad had been, if anything, just as afraid as he was. Knowing that the lad had just wanted to help.
That look halfway between concern and fear was burned into his mind. He couldn't shake it. He couldn't remove the image of the frost that covered the boy's skin, much like the frost that covered the trees he touched. He was a monster. A thing that caused only death. Destruction. He was a creature to be feared. To be hated. To be spited.
Elian wanted to be loved, but he didn't think he deserved it. Not after everything he'd done. Yet, for some reason, he still wanted to go on, still wanted to live. He didn't deserve that either. Trackers from the last town were hot on his heels, but he had lost them over the night, it seemed. He stumbled forward, afraid and eager to put more distance between himself and his pursuers.
It was a few pained minutes later that Elian heard the gentle gurgling of a stream. He sighed in relief. The pain in his feet receded for a short while. Elian needed to rest, no matter how much he wanted to get away from the townspeople. He sat down by the bank when he got to the stream. It was a beautiful little stream with smooth rocks on its bed and a silvery shine in the morning light. It was cool and seemed clean.
Elian sat on damp earth and eased his feet into the current. They felt marginally better as soon as the water begun to lap at them. The blond closed his eyes and threw back his head. The water stung his feet, but it also soothed them. From where his hands supported his weight, frost snaked into the surrounding area. Elian sat there for a good five minutes, simply allowing his feet to rest when suddenly a twig broke nearby.
The noise startled him. It was just a squirrel. At this point, though, Elian was so afraid for his life that the squirrel didn't live long enough to apologize for the disturbance. Ice shot out from his palms and froze the squirrel dead just as it jumped into the underbrush. Elian realized he'd grown complacent so he carefully made his way upstream, walking along the stream's bed.
The blond almost fell on his face when he heard shouting not far behind him. Had they caught up to him? He fervently prayed to whatever gods that had not yet abandoned him that his pursuers hadn't. Though, for injuring their favoured one to almost the brink of death, Elian wouldn't be surprised if they turned a deaf ear to his pleas. He trudged along the stream, clutching himself as he felt the air around him grow colder.
Elian closed his eyes, shivering. As he did an image rose to the forefront of his consciousness unbidden. He recalled the time when he'd been forced to work at a brothel. He'd been as tired and hungry and injured as he was now when he'd arrived at that town. Luckily for him the brothel owner saw profit in his looks and gave him food and the skimpiest clothing he could find. His feet had been taken care of cleaned, tinctured and bandaged.
What else happened in that town was too painful to remember. Elian shook his head. He didn't want to remember any of it. Any of it. That town had been one that was far too painful to leave. He shivered and continued trudging along. He kept his ears open, but it seemed his pursuers had gone elsewhere now. He slumped forward when he was certain he was, at least temporarily, in the clear.
It wasn't long until Elian stumbled into a clearing. A spring-fed pond sparkled in the daylight. Elian felt a feeling of serenity wash over him for the first time in two long weeks. He had to rest. He knew that now. There was no hope for him if he kept trying to press on. His feet were in too bad a condition. He could feel the weariness in his bones.
There were boulders near the pond. One of them leaned against a tree and provided what Elian hoped was an adequate shelter from the elements. He looked around quickly, checking for any traps and listening for any voices before he went under the rock and decided to take a nap. He had to rest. He had to. It wasn't long before the blond was sleeping soundly under the boulder.
---
"Shh. Quiet, Glaise" The overly-energetic dog toned down its excitement. This was one of the best parts about living on the farm. Jack's heart was still heavy in his chest, but he knew he couldn't afford to dwell too much on the despair. He was going to have some fun if it was the end of him. He needed to take his mind off of his parents' deaths. He needed to take his mind off of the fact that he was now alone in the world with none to cherish or love save his dog Glaise.
His parents had given him free reign, when he was old enough, to scare away any intruders. There was someone in the woods nearby, and Jack did not like that. In fact, he was in some sense afraid of what they would do if they found the farm. He didn't want townspeople coming by and disturbing his way of life, or killing him when they found out what he was--what his parents had been.
Jack moved silently through the thick underbrush. Glaise followed behind him, miraculously quiet. Though, at second glance, the dog was simply trying its best not to get snagged on the multitude of low-hanging twigs and branches and bushes. There were definitely people treading nearby, where Jack didn't want them. One of his squirrel traps hung nearby tripped but empty. He swore silently. The men would know that there were other people in the area. Glaise yipped at him.
The young man motioned at Glaise to be quiet. Jack could hear the muted murmur of conversation. He moved towards the source, careful to not reveal his location. He took extra care not to get the pack on his back snagged in the thicket. "Now, Glaise, just like we practiced. Be quiet until I tell you to attack." The dog wagged its tail and lay on the ground in understanding. "Okay." Jack continued moving towards the source of the voices. Glaise followed behind him, belly just slightly above the ground.
"Lad's a fucking cocksucker too, I heard." There were four men, two of them armed with curved blades, the others carried lengths of rope and chains. The other three men nodded in assent to the one that Jack could only assume to be their leader. "Remind me again why we're going after this fucking fag?" Jack felt a stab of fear in his chest. Were they actually coming after him? Who had told them? Were there any others? He decided to follow them, unseen, to eavesdrop.
"'E killed my wife, you idiot!" One of the people carrying the rope knocked the guy on the head with his elbow. "I want revenge, and to rid the world of that abomination too." Jack was relieved. They weren't after him, and probably wouldn't go after him if he didn't bother them, but they were on his land now and he didn't want them there. Not to mention, he felt an odd sense of solidarity with this stranger they were hunting despite having never met him. He realized that there were few enough of people like himself in the world that they should help each other whenever they could.
Jack retreated back into the underbrush, keeping close watch on the voices as they moved into the distance. He quickly donned the menacing cloak he'd sown from squirrel and wolf pelts that he carried in his pack and motioned for Glaise to follow him. The men were standing in a small clearing when he found them again. They were examining something on the ground. Jack thought this would be the perfect time to scare them off. He looked up at the sun and got his bearings. He had to make sure he would scare them off away from the farm.
The young man got into position and Glaise wagged his tail in anticipation. They were about to have some fun, and hopefully, they were also about to save a life. Jack just wanted them off his land, but deep inside, he hoped against all hope that he would help drive them off the scent of whatever they were hunting. Jack whistled four notes loud enough for the four men to hear. It was a menacing melody and it signalled Glaise to begin howling at the top of his lungs. The young man fastened the cowl of the cloak to shadow his face and picked up the small balls of sheep stomach filled with red paste and maggots that he had prepared for just such an occasion. He launched them at the men as he ran out of the treeline screeching like a maniac.
The stomachs burst as they landed on the ground spraying the men with what looked like blood, sinew and maggots and they all froze for a second, terrified. He took out one more of the stomachs and hurled it right at the men. It burst against the chest of the man standing right in front of him and it was enough to set of a string of curses and muffled screaming as the men scrambled to get away. "Plague Hurler! Plague Hurler!" they yelled as they ran into the woods away from sight and earshot. When their voices had dwindled enough to a satisfactory distance, Glaise burst out of the bushes and ran up to Jack licking some of the red paste off of his face.
"Glaise! That's disgusting!" Jack said. He whooped with laughter. One of the men had left his curved blade behind. Jack picked it up and hefted it. It was pretty good make. He betted he could use it around the farm somehow. He wrapped the weapon in the fur cloak and stowed it away in his pack where he'd left it behind in the trees.
"Plague Hurler? What are those?" There were odd things people believed in, Jack mused. The men must have been from another area entirely. He'd never heard about Plague Hurlers from his parents who were about as native to the area as one could be. They were superstitious, Jack's fathers. He was certain he would have heard something about Plague Hurlers if the local populace believed in them. He shook his head, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.
"Ack. I'm disgusting, aren't I Glaise?" The dog cocked its head to the side. "Nah. You wouldn't know. You eat your own shit sometimes!" Jack laughed at his own joke. Glaise just yipped at him and moved in to lick his face again. "Don't you dare!" The dog whined and sat on its haunches. "Alright. Well let's get to the stream and get cleaned up." Jack picked up the pack and hefted it onto his shoulders. He strolled into the clearing and followed the sun to the stream that he knew ran nearby.
He had been walking along for a few minutes, covered in watery paste and dead maggots, when he noticed something off about the forest around him. Bark was stripped off of tree trunks. Twigs were broken all about him. Glaise started barking, nudging Jack's calf and pulling at his trousers. He looked down and saw bloodied leaves on the ground. A bolt of fear shot up Jack's spine. He hoped the blood was just from a maimed deer, probably caught by one of the preying creatures of the forest. He was not entirely familiar with the treatment of injury, but having lived and worked on a farm for his entire life, he'd learned how to clean and dress and soothe wounds. Any more serious injuries though, he was not exactly familiar with.
Jack gritted his teeth and walked faster, a new determination burning in the pit of his stomach where a knot of apprehension also seemed to be wound. The air went from a warm balmy temperature to an entirely foreign chill. The coldness was unnatural, particularly for the time of year. Despite the strangeness of the cold air in the middle of spring, something deep inside him urged him on. The day had begun with enough death as it was. He prayed to the gods that his parents had believed in that it wouldn't end with another. He stayed on the path even as Glaise ran ahead of him, following the tangy metallic scent of the blood.
The gentle gurgling of the streem filtered through the trees. Behind it followed a chilly breeze that raised Jack's hackles. He couldn't help but jump to the side in shock when all of a sudden, a tree that had been hidden from his sight entered his view. It was covered in spiralling tendrils of frost up and down its trunk. "What is this?" His question went unanswered. Glaise forged on, running when Jack stopped to examine the tree. The man looked up at his dog and noticed that trees all along the path were frosted over. "Glaise! Wait!" Jack threw caution to the wind and ran after Glaise. He was both eager and at the same time apprehensive of what he was going to find. He wanted to get to the bottom of the enigma that was winter where it had no reason to be.
*
The sun had set. Searching downstream had proven fruitless. The trail of frost and blood had abruptly stopped at the stream bank where it was already beginning to melt. There was no white or crimson on the other side. Nor was there any sign of whatever it was that they had been following elsewhere in the forest. Their quarry had probably taken to walking along the streambed.
It took Jack a long time to decide which way to go. At this point, the frost had long since settled his mind that whatever had been bleeding was no deer. Deer had no dominion over the powers of Winter, nor did any of the arcane creatures that his parents had told him about. Whatever it was did not belong in this land. Dread coiled in his heart the moment he decided to go downstream. What if he was wrong? What if the injured creature had gone upstream? Would his wrong decision have cost something's life?
He decided that his search would prove fruitless in the pitch dark of the night. The moon was waxing, but its light was not nearly enough to see properly through the forest. Heart heavy with inexplicable concern, Jack returned to the farm. In the near-absolute darkness, Jack stumbled around the farmhouse, looking for one of their oil lanterns in order to continue his search well into the night if he had to. "Fuck!" There was a loud clatter against a nearby wall. Jack hopped on one foot. The other throbbed in pain.
Jack finally managed to stumble his way into the kitchen where he found the lamp. It took a little more fumbling to find the flint and steel that they had nearby, but once he found it, it was fairly easy to set light to the lamp. Once its flame was flickering merrily inside the glass cage, Jack went around the farmhouse, lighting candles and lamps to shed some light on the dark of the night.
Jack noted that he would need to go and buy more oil from the neighbours soon. He considered learning how to make his own, but he realized he neither had the resources or the equipment necessary to do so. If he wanted to try, he would first have to find a good place to catch lampfish as the locals called them. He'd had some as a kid, during a harder time when some of the crops failed, but they were absolutely tasteless and greasy. He shook his head. He had to remain focused on the task at hand.
There was a portrait of his fathers hanging above the fireplace that had not seen months of use. He turned to it, lamp in hand, its flame flickering ever so calmly in the glass cage. "Am I doing the right thing?" There was a part of him that rebelled against looking for whatever had made the frost, whatever the other men had been following. After all, they'd mentioned murder. What if he was going after a killer? If he was then he'd soon be joining his fathers in some torturous hell that the local religion told them awaited people like them. "You always said that people like us have to stick together because everyone else wants us dead... I wish you were here."
Jack wiped the tear that beaded in the corner of his eye away. He steeled his resolve. Whatever happened, he was going to try and help. The men hadn't seemed pleasant at all to begin with, talking of all manner of depraved things they would do to the "fag" before killing him in revenge. It sickened him, the perverse fantasies of the self-proclaimed bringers of justice that he'd scared off not too long ago. With his lamp at his right, he walked into the woods, determined to find out what really was happening. He'd bid Glaise to stay behind. The faithful companion had complained but ultimately gave in to its master's wishes.
This time Jack would go upstream. Downstream had not borne any fruit. He would see do all he could to shed light on the mystery that faced him or die trying. He breathed a deep breath and prepared himself for the long night ahead. Such was his fervour that it never even crossed his mind that upstream was the pond that he would often sit by on nights or days that his thoughts and his heart simply could not be settled around the farm.
---
Elian awoke to shivers and frost clinging to the boulder that provided him what little shelter it could. His feet ached and little motions of them offered little comfort, only searing pain. The sun had gone down long ago, it seemed and pale moonlight shone into the clearing. The young man's bleary eyes widened in astonishment at the beauty of the small pond. Though the water was placid, it shimmered in the moonlight. In the grass by the pond, delicate blue flowers swayed in the slight breeze, their petals faintly glowing in the light of the pale waxing moon.
The blond could faintly hear the chirping of crickets and the singing of nightbirds carrying across the rippling pond and the gurgling stream. The trees themselves seemed to have a life of their own. The branches at the edge of the clearing danced ever so slightly to the whim of the gentle wind. The shadows they cast on the trunks of the trees where the moonlight could not touch them were mesmerizing. Beyond the first trees, the foliage was thick enough for very little light to be let through, but in the clearing, the full splendour of the growing moon shone bright.
Elian's breath caught in his throat. There were precious few places like these left in the world, and most were far apart from each other. For a moment, the pain in his feet and completely spent legs was faded to a faint buzz in the back of his mind as he took in the wonder of this small secluded place he had found. There were no angry men, no hostile shouts to disturb its tranquil. Elian had made sure to listen. No, there was nothing but the serene sounds of the stream as it flowed along at an amicable speed, the creatures of the forest, and the rustling of leaves in the wind. Such pity he'd not found such a place before. He'd never have left, food be damned.
His pursuers were dead to him. No sign of them at all. No lamplight nor gruff voices to shatter the peace of the clearing. Elian decided the men were probably camped and asleep somewhere now, and since he was not going to be able to walk at that moment, he might as well bathe in the pond. He stripped off his clothes, gingerly avoiding his feet. He clutched the cloths to his chest and began the arduous crawl to the pond. Fortunately for him it was not so difficult, and the ground was clear of little rocks that would otherwise be painful. He set his garments to the side of the pond and righted himself, first placing his feet in the cool water.
Much to Elian's surprise, the water was warmer than he'd imagined. Though whether it was because the pond was warm or because he was so cold that even cool water felt warm to him, he could not tell. He'd long since lost any accurate sense of temperature he'd once possessed. The water calmed the pain that was lancing through his feet, and Elian was finally able to stand. He considered plunging into the pond, throwing all caution to the wind. The frost that shot out of his hand was quick to remind him of what had happened the last time he'd bathed so carelessly. A moonflower nearby froze completely and shattered in a cloud of tiny frost crystals and larger pieces of frozen petal.
Elian mustered what little strength he had left and raised his right foot. When he placed it back down it was on a platform of ice that had materialized over the surface of the water. The cold was soothing. It numbed the pain in his feet. He could walk decently on ice. He wished that the ground was as forthcoming as bodies of water, but it wasn't. Ice was difficult to conjure into flat sheets that wouldn't pierce his feet when he walked onto them on the ground. Making ice was also an exertion that he'd quickly learned wasn't worth going through when there were people pursuing him. It took vital energy away from being able to run and keep himself away from those who would be his captors.
Right. Left. Right. Left. As Elian's feet left the platforms of ice, they broke apart into little pieces that sparkled in the moonlight before they drifted away and melted back into the waters from whence they came. When he stood in the middle of the pond, he willed the ice to fan out more, giving him room to stand without fearing falling over. He looked up at the moon, naked as the day he'd been born. "Goddess..." he whispered. He laughed bitterly, knowing that the gods had long since abandoned him. "Goddess I've not seen you in a long time..."
"Would you spare me no help?"
Only silence answered his plea.
---
Flame sputtered in the lamp that swung from Jack's hand, thankful for the glass that protected it from the wind that would snuff it out of existence. It was but a few seconds ago that Jack had noticed little flecks of frost drifting along with the stream. They were the first indication in some time that the young man was on the right track. Whatever it was that he was looking for seemed to be wreathed in frost, or was followed by it. Needless to say he had slowed down his pace and done his best to move quietly as he could.
It was only as he passed a large rock by the side of the stream overgrown with the roots of the tree perched on a bank of dirt above it that Jack realized where he was headed. His pond. His place of thinking and quiet. He looked in vain to the skies, trying to catch glimpse of the stars that shone there, of the countless ancestral spirits he'd been told were watching. "Is this by providence of the gods?" he whispered to himself as he crept along, silent as he could. The damp earth of the riverbank only served to help keep his footfalls muffled.
As Jack neared the clearing he could hear none of the usual singing of the night songbirds, but he could hear a different and, for the time of year, entirely foreign sound. Over the stream and through the trees, the sound of cracking and creaking ice punctuated the night every so often. The noise was fairly louder than the chirping of crickets, and so carried clearly through the crisp night air. He crept even closer to the opening of the clearing into where the stream flowed.
The sight that greeted Jack left him slack-jawed and, admittedly, drooling. There, standing on a platform of shifting ice stood the most beautiful creature that the poor farmlad had ever seen. Jack quickly blew out the lamp at his side, concerned that the other man might see him and accuse him of being a faggot. Needless to say, he could not take his eyes off of the sight before him.
He -- Jack could see the impressive tackle that was on the man -- was of alabaster skin that glowed with a pale silkiness. The creature was bathed in the light of a moon that was brighter than it had any right to be even when it was full. The blond was surrounded by a halo of moonlight. The sight was truly magical.
Jack gulped as his eyes roamed down from the platinum locks that adorned the other man's head down to his narrow shoulders. His eyes followed the curve of the man's back and the slender taper of his torso to his waist. There was beauty there, but Jack knew that the other man's thinness could not be healthy. It almost reeked of starvation. Still, his eyes could not help themselves but roam further down, over the twin mounds of creamy flesh and the seam that ran between them. Down to strong thighs and... calves all cut up by twigs and bushes. Fortunately for the farmlad, the ice shielded his eyes from the grotesquerie that was the creature's battered feet.
The creature seemed healthy enough that Jack thought himself a bit foolish for getting in such a fuss over a person whom he thought was about to die. Even so, he could not bring bitter thoughts into the forefront of his consciousness. He was absolutely captivated. Thoughts of coupling with the other man crept unbidden into Jack's mind and he felt his manhood swell in his breeches. He felt blood surge to his cheeks and warmth fill his face and his ears.
Just as Jack thought the apparition before him could be no more magical, he noticed for the first time what it was actually doing. It was bathing in a way that was completely foreign to the farmlad, but equally elegant and magical and awe-inspiring. Orbs of water drifted up from the pond. Their surfaces were covered by spiralling fractals of frost that kept them contained before the ice melted and the water poured over the creature. He'd never seen such a sight before, and Jack had to hold back a gasp.
One after another spheres of water were lifted from the pond and rapidly wrapped in beautiful latticeworks of frost only to melt and cascade over beautiful almost-white hair and marble-like skin. The water glittered in the moonlight as it was raised and as it rained down. It glittered even as it flowed down the other man's body in rivulets that followed every seam and curve in an almost lascivious fashion. As droplets of water left the creature's body, they froze and bounced off of the platform of ice back into the lake with the faintest of clinks like glass against glass.
As if it wasn't enough that in the centre of the lake stood such marvellous beauty, moonflies flew about him in a dazzling display of twinkling blue lights. They danced in a circle that in turn danced in towards him and out away from him. The Blue Maids that glowed faintly in the light of the moon swayed to the rhythm of the wind as well. Even the moonlight itself seemed to sparkle and give the creature bathing innocently in the middle of Jack's pond an almost ethereal quality. "By the gods. Have I found one of the fair folk?" Jack whispered to himself, adjusting his half-hard member in his pants.
Jack watched, entranced and unable to take his eyes away from the awe-inspiring sight in front of him for fear that if he so much as turned his head slightly, that it would vanish before he knew it. He felt his heart beating quickly in his chest, and he could hear the blood rushing through his head.
Fear held him back, but his heart told him that it wanted nothing more than to get closer to the beautiful, mesmerizing, and truly strange creature that was there.
This story also involves M/M and non-con sexual scenes. If you are not comfortable with reading these kinds of things, turn away now or forever hold your peace.
The sun's light washed across fields of rippling grass. The brass disc was set on a canvas of gentlest blue. Its light danced on the world below it to the music of the wind as it blew through the trees. The ground was firm and covered with green. The dew was fresh and it glittered in the morning light. The day was beautiful as any, yet its shoulders carried melancholy heavier than mountains.
One young man felt the bright sun on his back. He felt its warmth and the comfort it brought to many people. He felt the cool caress of the wind and the pleasant rustling of the leaves as the breeze meandered through the nearby foliage, yet the day's beauty was lost on him. His world was in the sweat on his brow; in the ache in his arms; in the shovels of dirt that he tossed into the ditch in front of him.
Frost, the young man mused. Jack Frost, his parents had called him. Frost like the breaths that had passed his lips. Frost like the intricate latticework of ice that laid on the ground when they'd found him. Frost like the white that blossomed in the cracks of treebark, in the boughs of trees, and on the blades of grass. His parents, they told him, had always wanted a child. The gods they'd thought had abandoned them, it seemed, had answered their supplications.
Yet Jack had never truly felt entirely at home in their quaint farmstead. He'd never quite felt like he belonged. He'd loved the two very dearly, but he always wondered what his life was like before they'd found him. He always wondered if his true parents had died, if they'd lost him, or truly, if they'd abandoned him. Many times he'd asked the farmer and his husband, but neither of them genuinely knew.
All that the two farmers -- outsiders like Jack himself -- knew was that they'd found him out by the woods one day during the first frost of autumn. It was as though by some divine providence that they'd heard the faint cries of the child. Jack, he'd been told, was certainly worse for wear and looked to be on the brink of death. They'd taken him in, clothed him, fed him, warmed him and bathed the dirt and grime off of him. They'd considered him their own flesh and blood, and rightly so. He'd grow up to be like them in his proclivities. He'd grow up to be like them -- exiled and ostracised by society at large for wanting the love of another man.
Thud. Jack straightened as he tossed another shovelful of dirt on the casket in the ground. Dirt and pebbles rained down on the rough-hewn wood. They scratched the casket and thudded on it, making it sound as though whoever lay within was struggling to get out. Jack knew better. Thud. The last of the only family he'd known since he could remember, dead. He couldn't help the tears that spilled from his eyes, the quiver that danced upon his lower lip. Thud. Alone now, and probably until his own death, Jack felt truly terrified of what lay ahead.
Jack tossed the shovel to the side when the grisly deed was done. Its old, heavy blade was caked with soil and moist with dew. He'd cleaned it earlier, before he began to dig the grave. Jack felt obliged enough to his father that he didn't want to dig his final resting place with a shovel that had only yesterday been used to scoop up horse shit. He fell to his knees. The soil shifted around him and a sigh escaped his lips. With his fingers he shaped a small hole in the dirt and fished an acorn from his pocket. He dropped the seed into it and almost reverently closed the earth over it.
The young man glanced to his side. An oak sapling rose from the ground there. His fathers had been inseparable in life. Jack felt that they deserved to be inseparable in death as well. The trees would grow. Their roots would reach down and drink of his fathers' essences. Their branches would reach for the skies and entwine with each other. These oak trees would be together even when Jack was himself dead.
Jack knelt in the soft earth. He did not care if his breeches got dirty. Life at a farm was dirty business to begin with. He looked at the tiny mound of earth he'd formed above the acorn in front of him. He glanced at the sapling that grew on his other father's grave. He fancied the thought that somehow the plants represented the love they'd shared with each other. How their love had grown and blossomed from something so tiny and fragile in a world that wanted nothing more than to quash it into something tall, firm and strong.
Jack wanted that. He wanted that kind of love, but his fathers had always told him that almost everyone frowns upon it. When their old painter friend had died and stopped coming out to the farm, the two had almost entirely withdrawn from the world. His father Nyko stopped going to town, merely trading with nearby farms for needed supplies. "The world out there--" they would often tell him with this palpable look of despair and weariness in their eyes "--hates people like us."
Jack's dad would push a bony finger at his chest. "So keep it in here, Jack" he would say. In the corner Nyko would shake his head and look out the window. Jack often caught him expelling air from his lungs in a long drawn-out sigh. "Don't show them what you are. Because they will kill you for it." Jack had not noticed it then, but Nyko always turned away from Jack after saying those words. He was wiping the tears from his eyes and hiding the fury and sadness that were in them.
Whenever they talked about the outside world, Jack could hear fear in his fathers' voices. They'd lived long lives. They'd lived hard lives. It was a wonder they'd ever survived out on the farm. From what they'd told him, Jack knew that they had lived out on the farm since they were twenty, having never lived outside of their hometown before that. They'd taken care of themselves. They used the plants in the nearby woods for medicine. They ate of the fields they toiled in.
While hisparents were happy, and Jack knew deep in his heart that they were, there always seemed to be dark clouds hanging over them. Remnants of a not-so-happy past that still haunted them to the day. Nyko would never agree to visit the barn. Kyle refused to handle the horses. They made do, but Jack always wondered why. When he was young he would every so often hear Kyle wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. Nyko soothed him, and for some reason, the words lulled Jack to sleep too.
It wasn't until he was much older that Jack realized that his parents, the men he'd idolized since he was just learning to milk a cow, weren't as strong as they liked to show him. He began to notice it when Kyle would tremble whenever he handled a knife. He saw it in the way Nyko would warily look into the house before entering. They were broken people, he realized. Much like himself. But they completed each other. They fixed each other. They helped each other remain whole.
Jack wanted that. Jack envied that bond that they possessed. But if his parents were right, and they'd never lied to him, he'd probably never find that. He knelt on the ground. His shoulders shook. Tears rolled down his face. He sniffed. He was alone now. He was probably going to be alone until the end of his days. He already missed his fathers. He wanted them to be back. He didn't want to be alone.
Jack saw the farmstead derelict, the oak trees outside strong and tall, but the house itself was broken down. The shutters were gone. Grass shot through the floorboards. All manner of flora and fauna had wound itself into the place. Inside was a pile of bones. Him. Where he'd fallen of either sickness, weariness, or old age and not been able to get back up. He imagined a weary traveler stumbling upon the home. What if that was the man meant to love him, only, far too late?
The sun was directly overhead by the time Jack was able to rise. He'd cried all he could. The tears wouldn't come anymore. He felt alone. He felt empty. But if anything, he knew he couldn't just stop. Life on the farm had never been easy, much less luxurious. It was hard work. And if anything, it required constant effort. If he was to eke out a living on his own, he would have to work for it. Life on the farm never stopped, he mused.
Jack placed his fingers to his lips and whistled a high-pitched four-note tune. Almost instantly he felt a small head bump against his calf. Jack got down on his haunches. The snowy ball of fur reared up and licked his face, leaving a trail of dog slobber down his cheek. "Hey Glaise. Didn't realize you were there." Jack smiled tenderly at his dog. His last remaining companion on the farm. "We've got work to do today, boy." The dog yipped at him but refused to leave his side. Glaise's tail did not wag quite as exuberantly as it normally did either. The dog probably sensed his master's pain and wanted to help.
"Alright. Alright--" Jack straightened "--let's get today's work over with." The dog ran around his legs and barked up at him before shooting off towards the barn. The young man glanced at his parents' graves and sighed before jogging after Glaise.
---
Cold. So so cold. So... so hungry.
Elian could barely stay on his feet. He could barely keep moving. Where the beauty of the day was lost on Jack because of grief, it was lost on Elian because of sheer terror. He'd been chased out of another town. He'd not stayed there for very long, but he'd actually begun to make friends with some of the boys. Though the town was poor and had very little in the way of food, he had felt relatively comfortable there. Despite the fact that he knew he would have to leave there quickly, he had become comfortable. He should have known better. He was an outcast. A reject. A monster.
The blond stumbled on an exposed root. He cried out in pain. Searing lances of agony shot up from the soles of his feet. They were battered, he knew it, but he had to keep going. He laughed a bitter laugh at the irony of the entire situation. His mother had told him that if he never stopped running around the palace and the first snow caught him that running would be what he would do for the rest of his life. Elian had never believed her, continuing to run through the halls with his brother. Little did he know she was right.
As he struggled to get up, hissing as he gingerly placed his feet back to the dirt, his platinum-blond hair shimmered in the daylight. Elian considered himself cursed through and through. Even his hair was cause for hatred from the common folk. He'd been chased out of towns simply for having hair a colour like his.
Some villages had been kinder, but he'd quickly learned that the fact he was different was enough for people that had learned to love him to throw him out if only to avoid bringing the wroth of other villagers upon themselves. Some towns he'd been let in only to find that it was not much safer than the outside world. In one town he'd been taken ragged, exhausted and hungry enough to eat an ox into a tavern's cellar where he was made to play the lute for the sexual deviants there.
Elian could remember their grimy faces. Could remember the feeling of their lustful gazes boring into him. He could smell the stink of the cellar. The smell was rancid. It was as though the men there were animals. No, he remembered thinking, they were worse than animals. He recalled that no matter how he'd screwed up his playing, they'd cheered for him.
Elian closed his eyes and shuddered, drawing his arms closer to his body. He ended up walking into a tree and falling again. He whimpered. A pathetic sound, considering his state. He remembered the rough calloused hands of those men. How they'd roamed all over his body, ripped the clothes off of him -- used him. He'd been too tired to fight them off. Instead, he lay there, fucked and touched in every conceivable way, absorbing what meager heat he could from their bodies.
At some point in the night Elian had lashed out with his ice, freezing all the men where they stood. He killed them. Every last one. He'd felt dirty. Used. Upstairs when the owner of the tavern tried to stop him, he froze her too. He was hungry. Desperate. He broke into the kitchen, lashing out with his ice at the poor boy that had come at him asking if he was alright. The one soul that had cared for him in that town, dead by his own hands.
Elian pushed himself up, bracing himself against the tree for support. Where his hands touched the trunk, curling spirals of frost spread over the bark. Pain shot up his legs again as he took a step forward. Elian caught himself on the next tree and watched, transfixed and resentful of the frost that curled from his fingers. The intricate latticework had quickly become a symbol of the cold power inside him that was the cause of all his suffering.
The blond hated it. He hated himself. He hated that the world had made him hate himself. The look on that boy's face haunted him to this day. He'd been scared for his life. The boy had just been concerned for him, but he lashed out. He'd often laid awake at night grieving for that one boy. Knowing that the lad had been, if anything, just as afraid as he was. Knowing that the lad had just wanted to help.
That look halfway between concern and fear was burned into his mind. He couldn't shake it. He couldn't remove the image of the frost that covered the boy's skin, much like the frost that covered the trees he touched. He was a monster. A thing that caused only death. Destruction. He was a creature to be feared. To be hated. To be spited.
Elian wanted to be loved, but he didn't think he deserved it. Not after everything he'd done. Yet, for some reason, he still wanted to go on, still wanted to live. He didn't deserve that either. Trackers from the last town were hot on his heels, but he had lost them over the night, it seemed. He stumbled forward, afraid and eager to put more distance between himself and his pursuers.
It was a few pained minutes later that Elian heard the gentle gurgling of a stream. He sighed in relief. The pain in his feet receded for a short while. Elian needed to rest, no matter how much he wanted to get away from the townspeople. He sat down by the bank when he got to the stream. It was a beautiful little stream with smooth rocks on its bed and a silvery shine in the morning light. It was cool and seemed clean.
Elian sat on damp earth and eased his feet into the current. They felt marginally better as soon as the water begun to lap at them. The blond closed his eyes and threw back his head. The water stung his feet, but it also soothed them. From where his hands supported his weight, frost snaked into the surrounding area. Elian sat there for a good five minutes, simply allowing his feet to rest when suddenly a twig broke nearby.
The noise startled him. It was just a squirrel. At this point, though, Elian was so afraid for his life that the squirrel didn't live long enough to apologize for the disturbance. Ice shot out from his palms and froze the squirrel dead just as it jumped into the underbrush. Elian realized he'd grown complacent so he carefully made his way upstream, walking along the stream's bed.
The blond almost fell on his face when he heard shouting not far behind him. Had they caught up to him? He fervently prayed to whatever gods that had not yet abandoned him that his pursuers hadn't. Though, for injuring their favoured one to almost the brink of death, Elian wouldn't be surprised if they turned a deaf ear to his pleas. He trudged along the stream, clutching himself as he felt the air around him grow colder.
Elian closed his eyes, shivering. As he did an image rose to the forefront of his consciousness unbidden. He recalled the time when he'd been forced to work at a brothel. He'd been as tired and hungry and injured as he was now when he'd arrived at that town. Luckily for him the brothel owner saw profit in his looks and gave him food and the skimpiest clothing he could find. His feet had been taken care of cleaned, tinctured and bandaged.
What else happened in that town was too painful to remember. Elian shook his head. He didn't want to remember any of it. Any of it. That town had been one that was far too painful to leave. He shivered and continued trudging along. He kept his ears open, but it seemed his pursuers had gone elsewhere now. He slumped forward when he was certain he was, at least temporarily, in the clear.
It wasn't long until Elian stumbled into a clearing. A spring-fed pond sparkled in the daylight. Elian felt a feeling of serenity wash over him for the first time in two long weeks. He had to rest. He knew that now. There was no hope for him if he kept trying to press on. His feet were in too bad a condition. He could feel the weariness in his bones.
There were boulders near the pond. One of them leaned against a tree and provided what Elian hoped was an adequate shelter from the elements. He looked around quickly, checking for any traps and listening for any voices before he went under the rock and decided to take a nap. He had to rest. He had to. It wasn't long before the blond was sleeping soundly under the boulder.
---
"Shh. Quiet, Glaise" The overly-energetic dog toned down its excitement. This was one of the best parts about living on the farm. Jack's heart was still heavy in his chest, but he knew he couldn't afford to dwell too much on the despair. He was going to have some fun if it was the end of him. He needed to take his mind off of his parents' deaths. He needed to take his mind off of the fact that he was now alone in the world with none to cherish or love save his dog Glaise.
His parents had given him free reign, when he was old enough, to scare away any intruders. There was someone in the woods nearby, and Jack did not like that. In fact, he was in some sense afraid of what they would do if they found the farm. He didn't want townspeople coming by and disturbing his way of life, or killing him when they found out what he was--what his parents had been.
Jack moved silently through the thick underbrush. Glaise followed behind him, miraculously quiet. Though, at second glance, the dog was simply trying its best not to get snagged on the multitude of low-hanging twigs and branches and bushes. There were definitely people treading nearby, where Jack didn't want them. One of his squirrel traps hung nearby tripped but empty. He swore silently. The men would know that there were other people in the area. Glaise yipped at him.
The young man motioned at Glaise to be quiet. Jack could hear the muted murmur of conversation. He moved towards the source, careful to not reveal his location. He took extra care not to get the pack on his back snagged in the thicket. "Now, Glaise, just like we practiced. Be quiet until I tell you to attack." The dog wagged its tail and lay on the ground in understanding. "Okay." Jack continued moving towards the source of the voices. Glaise followed behind him, belly just slightly above the ground.
"Lad's a fucking cocksucker too, I heard." There were four men, two of them armed with curved blades, the others carried lengths of rope and chains. The other three men nodded in assent to the one that Jack could only assume to be their leader. "Remind me again why we're going after this fucking fag?" Jack felt a stab of fear in his chest. Were they actually coming after him? Who had told them? Were there any others? He decided to follow them, unseen, to eavesdrop.
"'E killed my wife, you idiot!" One of the people carrying the rope knocked the guy on the head with his elbow. "I want revenge, and to rid the world of that abomination too." Jack was relieved. They weren't after him, and probably wouldn't go after him if he didn't bother them, but they were on his land now and he didn't want them there. Not to mention, he felt an odd sense of solidarity with this stranger they were hunting despite having never met him. He realized that there were few enough of people like himself in the world that they should help each other whenever they could.
Jack retreated back into the underbrush, keeping close watch on the voices as they moved into the distance. He quickly donned the menacing cloak he'd sown from squirrel and wolf pelts that he carried in his pack and motioned for Glaise to follow him. The men were standing in a small clearing when he found them again. They were examining something on the ground. Jack thought this would be the perfect time to scare them off. He looked up at the sun and got his bearings. He had to make sure he would scare them off away from the farm.
The young man got into position and Glaise wagged his tail in anticipation. They were about to have some fun, and hopefully, they were also about to save a life. Jack just wanted them off his land, but deep inside, he hoped against all hope that he would help drive them off the scent of whatever they were hunting. Jack whistled four notes loud enough for the four men to hear. It was a menacing melody and it signalled Glaise to begin howling at the top of his lungs. The young man fastened the cowl of the cloak to shadow his face and picked up the small balls of sheep stomach filled with red paste and maggots that he had prepared for just such an occasion. He launched them at the men as he ran out of the treeline screeching like a maniac.
The stomachs burst as they landed on the ground spraying the men with what looked like blood, sinew and maggots and they all froze for a second, terrified. He took out one more of the stomachs and hurled it right at the men. It burst against the chest of the man standing right in front of him and it was enough to set of a string of curses and muffled screaming as the men scrambled to get away. "Plague Hurler! Plague Hurler!" they yelled as they ran into the woods away from sight and earshot. When their voices had dwindled enough to a satisfactory distance, Glaise burst out of the bushes and ran up to Jack licking some of the red paste off of his face.
"Glaise! That's disgusting!" Jack said. He whooped with laughter. One of the men had left his curved blade behind. Jack picked it up and hefted it. It was pretty good make. He betted he could use it around the farm somehow. He wrapped the weapon in the fur cloak and stowed it away in his pack where he'd left it behind in the trees.
"Plague Hurler? What are those?" There were odd things people believed in, Jack mused. The men must have been from another area entirely. He'd never heard about Plague Hurlers from his parents who were about as native to the area as one could be. They were superstitious, Jack's fathers. He was certain he would have heard something about Plague Hurlers if the local populace believed in them. He shook his head, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.
"Ack. I'm disgusting, aren't I Glaise?" The dog cocked its head to the side. "Nah. You wouldn't know. You eat your own shit sometimes!" Jack laughed at his own joke. Glaise just yipped at him and moved in to lick his face again. "Don't you dare!" The dog whined and sat on its haunches. "Alright. Well let's get to the stream and get cleaned up." Jack picked up the pack and hefted it onto his shoulders. He strolled into the clearing and followed the sun to the stream that he knew ran nearby.
He had been walking along for a few minutes, covered in watery paste and dead maggots, when he noticed something off about the forest around him. Bark was stripped off of tree trunks. Twigs were broken all about him. Glaise started barking, nudging Jack's calf and pulling at his trousers. He looked down and saw bloodied leaves on the ground. A bolt of fear shot up Jack's spine. He hoped the blood was just from a maimed deer, probably caught by one of the preying creatures of the forest. He was not entirely familiar with the treatment of injury, but having lived and worked on a farm for his entire life, he'd learned how to clean and dress and soothe wounds. Any more serious injuries though, he was not exactly familiar with.
Jack gritted his teeth and walked faster, a new determination burning in the pit of his stomach where a knot of apprehension also seemed to be wound. The air went from a warm balmy temperature to an entirely foreign chill. The coldness was unnatural, particularly for the time of year. Despite the strangeness of the cold air in the middle of spring, something deep inside him urged him on. The day had begun with enough death as it was. He prayed to the gods that his parents had believed in that it wouldn't end with another. He stayed on the path even as Glaise ran ahead of him, following the tangy metallic scent of the blood.
The gentle gurgling of the streem filtered through the trees. Behind it followed a chilly breeze that raised Jack's hackles. He couldn't help but jump to the side in shock when all of a sudden, a tree that had been hidden from his sight entered his view. It was covered in spiralling tendrils of frost up and down its trunk. "What is this?" His question went unanswered. Glaise forged on, running when Jack stopped to examine the tree. The man looked up at his dog and noticed that trees all along the path were frosted over. "Glaise! Wait!" Jack threw caution to the wind and ran after Glaise. He was both eager and at the same time apprehensive of what he was going to find. He wanted to get to the bottom of the enigma that was winter where it had no reason to be.
*
The sun had set. Searching downstream had proven fruitless. The trail of frost and blood had abruptly stopped at the stream bank where it was already beginning to melt. There was no white or crimson on the other side. Nor was there any sign of whatever it was that they had been following elsewhere in the forest. Their quarry had probably taken to walking along the streambed.
It took Jack a long time to decide which way to go. At this point, the frost had long since settled his mind that whatever had been bleeding was no deer. Deer had no dominion over the powers of Winter, nor did any of the arcane creatures that his parents had told him about. Whatever it was did not belong in this land. Dread coiled in his heart the moment he decided to go downstream. What if he was wrong? What if the injured creature had gone upstream? Would his wrong decision have cost something's life?
He decided that his search would prove fruitless in the pitch dark of the night. The moon was waxing, but its light was not nearly enough to see properly through the forest. Heart heavy with inexplicable concern, Jack returned to the farm. In the near-absolute darkness, Jack stumbled around the farmhouse, looking for one of their oil lanterns in order to continue his search well into the night if he had to. "Fuck!" There was a loud clatter against a nearby wall. Jack hopped on one foot. The other throbbed in pain.
Jack finally managed to stumble his way into the kitchen where he found the lamp. It took a little more fumbling to find the flint and steel that they had nearby, but once he found it, it was fairly easy to set light to the lamp. Once its flame was flickering merrily inside the glass cage, Jack went around the farmhouse, lighting candles and lamps to shed some light on the dark of the night.
Jack noted that he would need to go and buy more oil from the neighbours soon. He considered learning how to make his own, but he realized he neither had the resources or the equipment necessary to do so. If he wanted to try, he would first have to find a good place to catch lampfish as the locals called them. He'd had some as a kid, during a harder time when some of the crops failed, but they were absolutely tasteless and greasy. He shook his head. He had to remain focused on the task at hand.
There was a portrait of his fathers hanging above the fireplace that had not seen months of use. He turned to it, lamp in hand, its flame flickering ever so calmly in the glass cage. "Am I doing the right thing?" There was a part of him that rebelled against looking for whatever had made the frost, whatever the other men had been following. After all, they'd mentioned murder. What if he was going after a killer? If he was then he'd soon be joining his fathers in some torturous hell that the local religion told them awaited people like them. "You always said that people like us have to stick together because everyone else wants us dead... I wish you were here."
Jack wiped the tear that beaded in the corner of his eye away. He steeled his resolve. Whatever happened, he was going to try and help. The men hadn't seemed pleasant at all to begin with, talking of all manner of depraved things they would do to the "fag" before killing him in revenge. It sickened him, the perverse fantasies of the self-proclaimed bringers of justice that he'd scared off not too long ago. With his lamp at his right, he walked into the woods, determined to find out what really was happening. He'd bid Glaise to stay behind. The faithful companion had complained but ultimately gave in to its master's wishes.
This time Jack would go upstream. Downstream had not borne any fruit. He would see do all he could to shed light on the mystery that faced him or die trying. He breathed a deep breath and prepared himself for the long night ahead. Such was his fervour that it never even crossed his mind that upstream was the pond that he would often sit by on nights or days that his thoughts and his heart simply could not be settled around the farm.
---
Elian awoke to shivers and frost clinging to the boulder that provided him what little shelter it could. His feet ached and little motions of them offered little comfort, only searing pain. The sun had gone down long ago, it seemed and pale moonlight shone into the clearing. The young man's bleary eyes widened in astonishment at the beauty of the small pond. Though the water was placid, it shimmered in the moonlight. In the grass by the pond, delicate blue flowers swayed in the slight breeze, their petals faintly glowing in the light of the pale waxing moon.
The blond could faintly hear the chirping of crickets and the singing of nightbirds carrying across the rippling pond and the gurgling stream. The trees themselves seemed to have a life of their own. The branches at the edge of the clearing danced ever so slightly to the whim of the gentle wind. The shadows they cast on the trunks of the trees where the moonlight could not touch them were mesmerizing. Beyond the first trees, the foliage was thick enough for very little light to be let through, but in the clearing, the full splendour of the growing moon shone bright.
Elian's breath caught in his throat. There were precious few places like these left in the world, and most were far apart from each other. For a moment, the pain in his feet and completely spent legs was faded to a faint buzz in the back of his mind as he took in the wonder of this small secluded place he had found. There were no angry men, no hostile shouts to disturb its tranquil. Elian had made sure to listen. No, there was nothing but the serene sounds of the stream as it flowed along at an amicable speed, the creatures of the forest, and the rustling of leaves in the wind. Such pity he'd not found such a place before. He'd never have left, food be damned.
His pursuers were dead to him. No sign of them at all. No lamplight nor gruff voices to shatter the peace of the clearing. Elian decided the men were probably camped and asleep somewhere now, and since he was not going to be able to walk at that moment, he might as well bathe in the pond. He stripped off his clothes, gingerly avoiding his feet. He clutched the cloths to his chest and began the arduous crawl to the pond. Fortunately for him it was not so difficult, and the ground was clear of little rocks that would otherwise be painful. He set his garments to the side of the pond and righted himself, first placing his feet in the cool water.
Much to Elian's surprise, the water was warmer than he'd imagined. Though whether it was because the pond was warm or because he was so cold that even cool water felt warm to him, he could not tell. He'd long since lost any accurate sense of temperature he'd once possessed. The water calmed the pain that was lancing through his feet, and Elian was finally able to stand. He considered plunging into the pond, throwing all caution to the wind. The frost that shot out of his hand was quick to remind him of what had happened the last time he'd bathed so carelessly. A moonflower nearby froze completely and shattered in a cloud of tiny frost crystals and larger pieces of frozen petal.
Elian mustered what little strength he had left and raised his right foot. When he placed it back down it was on a platform of ice that had materialized over the surface of the water. The cold was soothing. It numbed the pain in his feet. He could walk decently on ice. He wished that the ground was as forthcoming as bodies of water, but it wasn't. Ice was difficult to conjure into flat sheets that wouldn't pierce his feet when he walked onto them on the ground. Making ice was also an exertion that he'd quickly learned wasn't worth going through when there were people pursuing him. It took vital energy away from being able to run and keep himself away from those who would be his captors.
Right. Left. Right. Left. As Elian's feet left the platforms of ice, they broke apart into little pieces that sparkled in the moonlight before they drifted away and melted back into the waters from whence they came. When he stood in the middle of the pond, he willed the ice to fan out more, giving him room to stand without fearing falling over. He looked up at the moon, naked as the day he'd been born. "Goddess..." he whispered. He laughed bitterly, knowing that the gods had long since abandoned him. "Goddess I've not seen you in a long time..."
"Would you spare me no help?"
Only silence answered his plea.
---
Flame sputtered in the lamp that swung from Jack's hand, thankful for the glass that protected it from the wind that would snuff it out of existence. It was but a few seconds ago that Jack had noticed little flecks of frost drifting along with the stream. They were the first indication in some time that the young man was on the right track. Whatever it was that he was looking for seemed to be wreathed in frost, or was followed by it. Needless to say he had slowed down his pace and done his best to move quietly as he could.
It was only as he passed a large rock by the side of the stream overgrown with the roots of the tree perched on a bank of dirt above it that Jack realized where he was headed. His pond. His place of thinking and quiet. He looked in vain to the skies, trying to catch glimpse of the stars that shone there, of the countless ancestral spirits he'd been told were watching. "Is this by providence of the gods?" he whispered to himself as he crept along, silent as he could. The damp earth of the riverbank only served to help keep his footfalls muffled.
As Jack neared the clearing he could hear none of the usual singing of the night songbirds, but he could hear a different and, for the time of year, entirely foreign sound. Over the stream and through the trees, the sound of cracking and creaking ice punctuated the night every so often. The noise was fairly louder than the chirping of crickets, and so carried clearly through the crisp night air. He crept even closer to the opening of the clearing into where the stream flowed.
The sight that greeted Jack left him slack-jawed and, admittedly, drooling. There, standing on a platform of shifting ice stood the most beautiful creature that the poor farmlad had ever seen. Jack quickly blew out the lamp at his side, concerned that the other man might see him and accuse him of being a faggot. Needless to say, he could not take his eyes off of the sight before him.
He -- Jack could see the impressive tackle that was on the man -- was of alabaster skin that glowed with a pale silkiness. The creature was bathed in the light of a moon that was brighter than it had any right to be even when it was full. The blond was surrounded by a halo of moonlight. The sight was truly magical.
Jack gulped as his eyes roamed down from the platinum locks that adorned the other man's head down to his narrow shoulders. His eyes followed the curve of the man's back and the slender taper of his torso to his waist. There was beauty there, but Jack knew that the other man's thinness could not be healthy. It almost reeked of starvation. Still, his eyes could not help themselves but roam further down, over the twin mounds of creamy flesh and the seam that ran between them. Down to strong thighs and... calves all cut up by twigs and bushes. Fortunately for the farmlad, the ice shielded his eyes from the grotesquerie that was the creature's battered feet.
The creature seemed healthy enough that Jack thought himself a bit foolish for getting in such a fuss over a person whom he thought was about to die. Even so, he could not bring bitter thoughts into the forefront of his consciousness. He was absolutely captivated. Thoughts of coupling with the other man crept unbidden into Jack's mind and he felt his manhood swell in his breeches. He felt blood surge to his cheeks and warmth fill his face and his ears.
Just as Jack thought the apparition before him could be no more magical, he noticed for the first time what it was actually doing. It was bathing in a way that was completely foreign to the farmlad, but equally elegant and magical and awe-inspiring. Orbs of water drifted up from the pond. Their surfaces were covered by spiralling fractals of frost that kept them contained before the ice melted and the water poured over the creature. He'd never seen such a sight before, and Jack had to hold back a gasp.
One after another spheres of water were lifted from the pond and rapidly wrapped in beautiful latticeworks of frost only to melt and cascade over beautiful almost-white hair and marble-like skin. The water glittered in the moonlight as it was raised and as it rained down. It glittered even as it flowed down the other man's body in rivulets that followed every seam and curve in an almost lascivious fashion. As droplets of water left the creature's body, they froze and bounced off of the platform of ice back into the lake with the faintest of clinks like glass against glass.
As if it wasn't enough that in the centre of the lake stood such marvellous beauty, moonflies flew about him in a dazzling display of twinkling blue lights. They danced in a circle that in turn danced in towards him and out away from him. The Blue Maids that glowed faintly in the light of the moon swayed to the rhythm of the wind as well. Even the moonlight itself seemed to sparkle and give the creature bathing innocently in the middle of Jack's pond an almost ethereal quality. "By the gods. Have I found one of the fair folk?" Jack whispered to himself, adjusting his half-hard member in his pants.
Jack watched, entranced and unable to take his eyes away from the awe-inspiring sight in front of him for fear that if he so much as turned his head slightly, that it would vanish before he knew it. He felt his heart beating quickly in his chest, and he could hear the blood rushing through his head.
Fear held him back, but his heart told him that it wanted nothing more than to get closer to the beautiful, mesmerizing, and truly strange creature that was there.