Whimsical Mortality - SEQUEL OF THICKENING SHADOWS

Chapter 3

"This is not good," Mother Nature said as she cupped her hands over her mouth, beginning to pace in her worry.

"Brown?" Jack questioned as he quickly froze a puddle of water and knelt down to look in the blurry surface. Sure enough, one eye was a solid chocolate brown; exactly the same colour it had been before he died. Hand covering the eye, he stared at Mother Nature.

"What's happening to me?" Jack asked in a panic.

"This can't be happening. Not after last time-"

"This has happened before?" Jack's chest rose and fell quickly.

"I must alert Manny," she worried a strand of her brown hair, "and Aesir! Oh, how he'll worry!"

"What's going on?" Jack stated loudly, making Mother Nature pause.

"I don't know for sure. If I tell you, you'll worry," she curled hair around her slender fingers, "Just go to the North Pole. North can protect you-"

"Protect me from what?" he advanced forward a step, but Mother Nature took one back, before erupting into hundreds of butterflies and flying away, leaving him alone.

Trying to quell his panic, he began climbing a thick Pine tree, heading up through the thick foliage to a point where the wind could carry him. All the while he tried to figure out what was happening. Everything had gone so fast. His staff was missing and now he had one brown eye. His brain scrambled to discover a reason, but only came up empty.

The wind picked him up and carried him out of Mother Nature's abode and towards the North Pole. It ruffled his hair in a worried fashion, and Jack tried to calm it the best he could. For a moment he thought about finding Nico, asking him for help, for advice, for anything! Nico was always reading books with odd titles, and the Son of Hades always commented they were about immortal beings. Maybe they had something about sprites or spirits? All he knew was that he needed help to figure this out.

He was just outside Toronto, Canada, when a shadow fell across the moon. Jack paused and stared up at it, swearing that he saw something fly across the blocked moon, but shook his head. His nerves were all over the place. The shadows moved from the moon (clouds no doubt) and Jack attempted to continue on his way. Attempted being the key word. A sudden hunting horn pierced the night (Jack hadn't heard the sound of an authentic hunting horn in over two centuries) at the same time that an arrow nearly pierced his side.

The wind, in response, skittered away slightly. That caused Jack to plummet towards the ground. Arms flailing wildly he called for the wind all the while. Unfortunately he hit the trees before the wind caught him. His back landed hard on a thin top branch and snapped it in two, his back cracking along with it. Hands scrambling to find purchase, the trees whipped at his face, and just before he hit the ground, he managed to hook his knees around a branch, nearly dislocating them in the process.

Breathing heavily he let himself hang upside down. Blood dripped into his eye from a cut on his cheek, staining his hair, and then finally dropping onto the ground. He hadn't broken any bones, a fall like that couldn't damage his strong Guardian bones, but his skin had always been prone to cuts and scrapes.

"A man," a feminine voice said from behind him and Jack snapped into a sitting position on his tree branch.

It was a women; a teen, actually, with auburn hair and a rather beautiful set of eyes. Jack looked her up and down, trying to figure out what she was. She wasn't mortal, that much he could tell (the bow slung across her back was a sure indicator).

"Hi," He wiped blood from his eyes.

"You are not the thing that I'm hunting," the women stated in a cold voice, "be on your way before I decide to turn you into an antelope."