Run away and hide with me. awakening

[j a c k .]

WINTER CANNOT BE CHAINED

— THE FIRST FROST IS OVER, BUT IT WILL NEVER LEAVE US

Winter was a time of famine, of stagnation, ice and quiet. One would think the local aspect of it given form would be active, a beacon of power. In ways he was, at first when the snow had yet to settle and there was still the threat of it hung in the air. Resources were scarce, when people were first running from the blizzard jack had been there, swiping up two of his family and tucking them back into the white temple before he slumbered.

Waking up, to make a fort of ice, Dante coming to bother him. Sparks of memory and emotion, he felt it then the hair-trigger nature of his own sense. Elemental control was a sixth sense, to be surrounded by it at all times, to feel the pull- the call to use it, engage with it. Along with his own clanmate's volatile tempers, his clan's fear and panic even then at the sight of first snow- panic

Jack could feel it, the ice, the cold- the winter present around him. It was overwhelming, suffocating. To escape his own control was unbecoming of the once Imperator of the Pitt, it was unbecoming because he felt the control slipping from him consciously. He was better than that, better at control or so he thought. Around his siblings there was no need to fear it. Each a column of power in their own right, paragons of strength and of the seasons itself. Winter tempered by Summer, Spring and Autumn in constant flux. Together thigs were so much simpler, but around animals that were... fragile, delicate- Jack was cautious overtly so.

It was wrong to say that he left his home. He chose the desert for a reason, to escape the chance of even letting his powers become rulers of his temper. Even as his worst thoughts became reality, he shouldered on, as his control sliped from his consciously, he let the unconscious mind- instinct take the reigns, the only way he knew how to.

He slept

Slept until the first warm breeze brushed past the iced over city of ashes. Where a den was surrounded by quills of ice- started to melt. When the warmth touched the ever present chill of Jack's home. He found himself awaking with a start. Icy eyes blinking open in the trenches of his small fox-like den. He crept out slowly to the bright light and yawned. a low grumble along his maw as he looked around. Relieved to see not snow but the floor of Soddy mush the once settled ash had turned into when the ice had frozen over.