Jack slipped into his den after the meeting, having spent quite a bit of it teasing the Guardians more about letting Manny choose their Spice and them taking seriously his question about meeting Manny – which Jack wasn't opposed to, he just...wasn't sure if he was ready. Or if he could come face to face with Manny and not demand answers.
Touchy subject. The Guardians still seemed to see Manny as...well, as humans looked at them. And Jack...it was confusing and conflicted. He was grateful for being pulled out of the lake and chosen to be a Guardian, for this chance to help kids, but there couldn't be something? Like a hint to go to Tooth or something? Well, she might not have been much help then but who knew.
He needed a little time alone after the meeting. Three hundred years was a long time to get used to being alone, and being around so many people was tiring now.
There were letters on his rug, as if they'd been slipped through the door.
A whole pile of them.
Frowning, Jack checked over his den. Empty and undisturbed, save for the pile of used stationary.
Cautiously, Jack picked the top one off the pile. It was addressed to him, though how it got here he didn't have a clue. He dropped the rest onto the table, before tearing the letter open, glancing over it. He got three lines in before he was rolling his eyes and groaning, dropping into a chair.
Right before the party, along with the RSVPs had come letters seeking Jack's favor. He'd gotten Bunny and North, Nightlight and Katherine and Greta and Phil to help sort through them then, the pile had been so large.
Katherine had taken copious notes of who wanted what, or who Jack said had been cruel or kind during his three hundred years, who simply was reaching out with congratulations (a very short list) and who had wanted something (ninety nine percent).
It was the pile all over again, if much smaller. Why didn't they bother anyone else, why just Jack?
He answered his own question a second later. He was the youngest, the one that they thought they knew. Katherine and Nightlight were still unknowns, and the other four intimidating.
Jack was young. Jack was friendly. Jack had been lonely. So maybe, Jack could be manipulated.
Ugh. He was going to need Katherine's notes to remember how to deal with this. What a pain, he'd wanted to go over more of his ideas for the ice palace and have a little downtime, not deal with politics.
Well, the letters could just wait until after he had a nap, at the least. They made Jack wait three hundred years, so they could wait a few days.
Jack worked on the plans for his ice palace a little after his nap and before setting out. It was important to him to get to building – he'd started, then gotten a new idea that needed a little fussing before he could add it on, and he wanted to get it down before he forgot about it.
Well, that was half the fun, and it wasn't like he was building in wood and stone that he couldn't reshape at a moment's notice.
He'd never expected to have this much fun with something like building, but eh, that was the beauty of it – finding fun where it hid.
Now that he had that written down, and had procrastinated as much as he felt like right now, he put the plans away and set off.
