Chapter One: New Beginnings, New Concerns

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For Jack Frost, the once self-proclaimed "King of the Chill," it was still a bit difficult to wrap his mind around his experience with the Big Thaw. He wasn't complaining, really—he hadn't felt this great in centuries, and he had that little girl Lucy to thank for it! But it was still a tremendous change, and as he had discovered, it was taking some time to adjust properly and get used to the new him.

One thing that had made the adjustment easier over the past few months was how people had started to change their views of him. This was due in large part to Scott Calvin, the current Santa-in-residence at the North Pole. While Jack appreciated this gradual shift in everyone's attitude, he also felt plagued with guilt. Scott had always offered him more chances than he deserved, had always tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, and had always regretted doing it after Jack took things too far.

But knowing that Scott was still willing to show kindness to the winter legend, after the whole fiasco with damaging the workshop and trying to rip Scott's family apart? Sometimes Jack wished everyone, including Scott, would treat him like garage and cast him out to some remote corner of the magical lands, never again to return. He certainly deserved it!

Jack's conscience had finally cleared, and his core—once dark and icy—was now warm and bright. Sometimes, it felt like he had woken up from a long and terrible dream…as if his former self was just a blur of vague, unpleasant visions. He didn't like to dwell a lot on the old him, though. It could take him down an all-too-familiar rabbit hole, and he wasn't brave enough to confront what lay in there. Not yet. Maybe one of these days, just maybe…

To his surprise, even the members of the Council of Legendary Figures had started to look at him in a different light. He had expected them to take away his powers and vote him out of his Council seat at the end of December, a few days after Christmas. The principle members had met to discuss, among other concerns, what would ultimately be his fate. He remembered that some of the proposals were harsh, particularly from Easter Bunny and Cupid. They even hurt his feelings a bit!

But in a shocking move, Mother Nature had struck down each of their ideas and instead offered a solution of her own. Jack would keep his powers—thank the gods! However, he also had to stay at the North Pole for at least a year and amend things with Scott. Jack was required to do various tasks in the workshop and the Pole in general, including supervision and hands-on work on the toy floor, helping to compile the Naughty and Nice lists, and caring for the reindeer and their stables. Jack and Scott had both agreed to the arrangement without hesitation.

And so, Jack had lived at the North Pole ever since! He attended to his duties and enjoyed the amount of responsibility he now had. He never imagined he would feel such a sense of purpose as he did here, in this wonderful and merry place.

If only Jack could have imagined how the Big Thaw would keep changing his life, what this new beginning still had in store for him…

April 22, 2007 / North Pole / 1500 hours (3:00PM)

The reindeer stables smelled, bad. As soon as Jack stepped inside, the strong odor seemed to hit him in waves. He started gagging loudly. He had to clap a hand to his nose and mouth to keep moving forward.

"Someone needs to go easy on the peppers!" he complained in a muffled voice. He walked toward Comet's pen, where the odor was quickly intensifying. "How much have the elves been feeding you, anyway?"

Comet garbled back a reply that sounded like, "I don't know," before rudely passing gas. Chet and Blitzen started giggling in the next pens over.

Jack took a large step backward. "And apparently they still haven't taught you manners, either," he mumbled, rolling his eyes.

He lowered his hand, took a deep breath (instantly regretting that move, by the way), and held it in while he looked for a broom. As he started sweeping up the old hay and stray bits of food on the floor, he heard footsteps approaching from behind him. He turned around and was greeted with the sight of Bernard, the Head Elf.

"Hey, Frost," he said. His tone carried that perpetual hint of annoyance that Jack so dearly loved. "Santa needs you in his office."

Jack set the broom down and brushed some small pieces of hay off of his white suit. He had become quite partial to the color now. He was even thinking of creating his own fashion line of snazzy suits (a work in progress, but it was coming along nicely so far).

"Is it urgent, or is this something that can wait, Beanpole?" asked Jack. "You have to give me a chance to freeze dry these gorgeous locks a bit. I can't run around looking like a bum, you know!"

A smirk tugged at his lips as he saw the elf stiffen and scowl at his remarks. He couldn't help but get under Bernard's skin a little—it made what few interactions they had interesting and fun. The two of them had never really gotten along too well, but they had learned to tolerate each other's presence.

Jack had a somewhat better relationship with Bernard's fiancée, Elle Connelly. But he also felt guilty around her, too, because of the reckless choices he had made in an effort to help her out. He had seen how unhappy Elle became without her family, how much effort she put into the role of Number Two Elf, and how she wanted to make everything work out romantically with Bernard. But the stress of juggling all of this had started catching up to her.

So, Jack took matters into his own hands—he stole one of Father Time's "timey wimey" pocket watches and tried to set things right. But that, of course, blew up in everyone's faces. Meddling with time never seemed to have a good outcome in Jack's experience. So he carried around that hard lump of remorse with him, hoping that he and Elle could leave those memories behind and never, ever speak of them. (Which wasn't too hard, considering that time magic tended to make most people's minds a bit fuzzy on the details afterward.)

Bernard spoke up. "Well, are you coming? Or are we just going to keep standing here while the reindeer stench kills us?" As he said this he passed a hand over his nose casually, as if trying not to make it obvious that the smell was bothering him a lot.

"Well, there's certainly nothing keeping me here," said Jack. He swept his arm toward the door, like an entertainer introducing the next act at a circus. "Lead on, merry minion. Allons-y!"

Bernard let out a long-suffering sigh and vanished in a shimmer of gold sparks. Jack soon followed, leaving a burst of blue sparks and snowflakes in his wake.

As soon as the two of them appeared in Scott's office, Jack noticed something unusual. The room was noticeably silent, as heavy as tree branches after a snowfall. In front of him Scott sat at his desk, his head bent low, speaking almost inaudibly to Elle. She was pointing to something on a laptop screen. The vibes coming off of them were gloomy and anxious.

Bernard cleared his throat. "Ahem."

Scott's and Elle's eyes shot up.

"Good, you're both here!" said Elle. She came around from behind the desk to shake their hands in greeting.

"We have a situation on our hands…and we don't even know what that situation is, exactly," she went on, frowning with concern. "We were hoping one of you could give us a different perspective on it, maybe think of something we haven't yet. Besides, whatever this is, we can't just ignore it and hope it fixes itself."

"I'm sorry, what?" blurted Jack. "What exactly are we talking about?"

Without responding, Elle grabbed the laptop that she and Scott had been looking at and turned it around on top of the desk. On the screen was a multi-angled view of the bustling town surrounding the workshop, called Elfsburg. There was one view that displayed the center of Elfsburg, which was just outside the workshop. A few of them showed footage of streets and store fronts in the area. Elle pointed to the view in the middle—it was a wide, distant shot of the Dome, the magical icy barrier that protected the North Pole.

"Ever since we installed that new security system, Curtis has been monitoring the cameras all around the Pole," Elle explained, still pointing. "Normally, there aren't any problems to worry about. But today…well, today Curtis saw something strange on one of the cameras. He let me use his laptop so I could show Scott. Do you see this?" she added, tapping the screen for emphasis.

Jack squinted and took a few steps closer. If his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, he could almost swear that he saw a dark smudge hovering on one side of the Dome. But the view was panned too far back to confirm that impression.

"What's this?" he asked, gesturing toward the hazy smudge. "Could you zoom in right around here, Elle?"

"Give me one sec." She turned to type something into the laptop. As she worked, the middle view expanded to fill the whole screen. After a few moments she had sharpened the image up and was zooming in on the Dome.

"There," said Elle. She stepped back to let Jack and Bernard take it in. "What do you two make of it?"

Jack stared at the screen. He knew what he was looking at now, but he didn't understand how it was possible. It looked like a storm system—dark gray clouds slowly billowing outward, with an occasional ripple of lightning shooting down. He glanced at Elle and Scott.

"A storm…at the North Pole," he said slowly. "Should we be concerned? I mean it's pretty unusual, but…"

Scott joined in. "Apparently, the team down at the Federal Bureau of Elf-vestigation has gotten in some weird data from that storm. They believe this is something we need to keep our eye on. If it doesn't clear up soon or it starts causing problems, then I think we'll need to call a Council meeting and figure things out from there. Can I trust you to keep quiet about this for a while, Jack, until we understand what's happening?"

Jack nodded. "Of course. No need to send the elves into a panic."

"Bernard?" Scott raised an eyebrow at the Head Elf. "Can I trust you?"

Bernard crossed his arms, his own eyebrows drawing inward in thought.

"Yes, sir," he said, after a pause. "But…if the FBE thinks this storm could prose any kind of risk to Elfsburg or the North Pole as a whole, shouldn't we—?"

But Scott cut him off. He said firmly, "I won't issue an Elf-Con alert until it's necessary. Like Jack said, we should make sure everything is under control and that no one starts panicking…"

Unfortunately, no one thought to mention this plan to Curtis.

As Scott, Jack, and the two Head Elves walked out onto the second floor of the workshop, they saw chaos breaking out everywhere. Toys flew in every direction, elves were running back and forth (occasionally tripping or crashing into each other), and panicked cries shattered the air every few intervals.

"Silver bells!" Scott exclaimed.

Below them, at the bottom of the staircase, stood Curtis. He was waving his arms and yelling into a megaphone, "THIS IS NOT A DRILL…REPEAT…NOT A DRILL! EVERYONE TAKE EVASIVE ACTIONS IMMEDIATELY!"

Bernard seemed to tense and coil up like a spring. There was no mistaking that look in his eyes—he was ready to lunge himself at Curtis and inflict the entire, unbridled force of his rage upon the young elf. He stomped his way down the stairs at terrifying speed. Everyone else tried to keep up, but they were secretly afraid Bernard might turn on them too.

By the time Jack and the others reached the main floor, Bernard had wrestled the megaphone out of Curtis' hands and was smacking the back of the elf's head with his beret. Jack had to push himself between them to stop Bernard's onslaught, shouting, "Chill out—I said chill OUT! For Rosehaven's sake…"

Once the Head Elf had composed himself somewhat, he called into the megaphone, "EVERYONE, PLEASE, CALM DOWN!"

Many of the elves around them quieted down or stopped in their frantic tracks. Several of them were still too busy fleeing to pay any notice, though.

Bernard continued, "THERE'S NO NEED TO GET CARRIED AWAY! AS OF RIGHT NOW, THE SITUATION WITH THE DOME IS UNDER CONTROL…"

At that moment, Judy burst through the workshop doors. Her eyes locked onto Scott and she came hurrying over, gasping for breath the whole way. She skidded to a halt in front of the group.

"Santa! Something...something's wrong...very wrong," she panted, leaning over for a moment to put her hands on her knees.

"What's going on, Judy?" Scott pressed her, as gently as possible. He couldn't quite conceal the distress that shone in his normally jovial, twinkling eyes.

Judy was still fighting for breath as she answered, "No time to...explain, sir. Just come and see for yourself...please!"

With that much of a clue as to what Judy had seen or heard, she quickly led Scott, Jack, Bernard, and Elle out of the workshop and onto Elfsburg's main square.

Notes:

HEY! :-D I am so excited to share this story again that I just had to put up the first chapter—surprise!

A few years ago I went totally AWOL, and I am SO, SO sorry if I caused anyone to worry about me or wonder what the heck happened. In somewhat of a nutshell, I was getting super stressed out about starting college. I was trying to balance that out by writing fanfics, but it just made things worse. I also felt like the quality of my academic and personal work was suffering. It got to the point where I hated EVERYTHING I was writing or had written and posted on the site, and the fun of it was gone for me.

So, I took a major step back and decided to focus ONLY on college and not write on the side for awhile. I even deleted a few of my old stories, including the full, 40 or so chapter-long version of Frost and Fire which I thought was SUPER cringe-y.

Honestly, that ended up helping in such a tremendous way! My academic work improved a lot, and I had time to grow as a writer in a college setting. Now I finally have my last semester coming up, and a lighter class load to look forward to. I finally feel like I'm in a better place to write for my own enjoyment and reconnect with the awesome people on here!

I've been thinking about Frost and Fire quite a bit this holiday season. Although the original version of my story no longer exists, I still have the notebooks where I wrote many of the key concepts down. So, the basic story is staying the same...but with some new, added twists! I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. Looking forward to your thoughts. :-)