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Entry tags:
superstitions
A lot can happen to a legend over a period of almost a thousand years of isolation. Although the original settlers of Barrayar were Earth-born scientists-- leading even modern day Barrayarans to consider themselves atheists-- people are still people, and over time, the medieval level of technology they had been plunged into after the wormhole collapse had fostered superstitions. Old folk legends brought from Earth took on a life of their own, and warped.
It takes a while for Barrayarans to start being a presence around the Nexus even after contact is reestablished. They spent the first twenty years in a bloody, gruesome, guerrilla war, after all, and then lurching forward in tech development, using the scraps left behind by Cetaganda after they'd pulled out to launch themselves into space. This means it's not really until around the time of Gregor's father's generation that Barrayarans can be casually seen on space stations and other planets. Infrequently, and always out of place in their old-fashioned military uniforms or full skirts, but increasingly common if not accepted. Most of the city dwellers, probably, are not so prone to buying into superstition, but carrying death-charms around their necks was still fairly standard practice for servicemen and gone unquestioned.
The first time Jack probably notices anything different about the Barrayarans is when one of the country-bred ones looks directly at him on a space station somewhere and shrieks, leaping backward, clutching their chest where the death-charm is. This sets a trend: not often, but occasionally, a Barrayaran will see or hear him, and react dramatically. They are never very cooperative for interacting, though, and certainly not in public where they're trying to combat a galactic reputation of being backwater barbarians barely accustomed to indoor plumbing. (This is unfair; they've had indoor plumbing for a whole generation now.)
As for Gregor, he was one of very few Barrayarans raised by a scientist who is also a theist, and encouraged by her to think openly and freely about the universe around him. He also is prone to trying to make friends with his servants, feeling weird about living in the sprawling Residence with them while having them be quietly underfoot, and as a hungry teenager is similarly likely to sneak into the kitchens for snacks. His servants indulge him at this age, for the most part; and so he'd grown up listening to a good amount of these country stories, and had questions about the supernatural patiently and thoroughly answered by his foster-mother, who always maintained a position of informed skepticism but not certainty.
Regularly he can be found reading outside in the Imperial Gardens, a sweeping expanse of manicured land maintained as green rather than the native reddish-brown of Barrayar by painstaking effort. Gregor's favorite places to read are all off the pruned pathways and out away from easy eyesight, curled up against trees, sometimes doing his studying for classes and sometimes reading books of poetry, guiltily, and sometimes doing neither and wistfully daydreaming. Today is a daydreaming sort of day; he's a lanky, tall form not quite used to his height dressed in overly-expensive hand-tailored clothes, which he is getting dirty on the ground not out of carelessness but simply because he needs to do some things to keep himself sane.
It takes a while for Barrayarans to start being a presence around the Nexus even after contact is reestablished. They spent the first twenty years in a bloody, gruesome, guerrilla war, after all, and then lurching forward in tech development, using the scraps left behind by Cetaganda after they'd pulled out to launch themselves into space. This means it's not really until around the time of Gregor's father's generation that Barrayarans can be casually seen on space stations and other planets. Infrequently, and always out of place in their old-fashioned military uniforms or full skirts, but increasingly common if not accepted. Most of the city dwellers, probably, are not so prone to buying into superstition, but carrying death-charms around their necks was still fairly standard practice for servicemen and gone unquestioned.
The first time Jack probably notices anything different about the Barrayarans is when one of the country-bred ones looks directly at him on a space station somewhere and shrieks, leaping backward, clutching their chest where the death-charm is. This sets a trend: not often, but occasionally, a Barrayaran will see or hear him, and react dramatically. They are never very cooperative for interacting, though, and certainly not in public where they're trying to combat a galactic reputation of being backwater barbarians barely accustomed to indoor plumbing. (This is unfair; they've had indoor plumbing for a whole generation now.)
As for Gregor, he was one of very few Barrayarans raised by a scientist who is also a theist, and encouraged by her to think openly and freely about the universe around him. He also is prone to trying to make friends with his servants, feeling weird about living in the sprawling Residence with them while having them be quietly underfoot, and as a hungry teenager is similarly likely to sneak into the kitchens for snacks. His servants indulge him at this age, for the most part; and so he'd grown up listening to a good amount of these country stories, and had questions about the supernatural patiently and thoroughly answered by his foster-mother, who always maintained a position of informed skepticism but not certainty.
Regularly he can be found reading outside in the Imperial Gardens, a sweeping expanse of manicured land maintained as green rather than the native reddish-brown of Barrayar by painstaking effort. Gregor's favorite places to read are all off the pruned pathways and out away from easy eyesight, curled up against trees, sometimes doing his studying for classes and sometimes reading books of poetry, guiltily, and sometimes doing neither and wistfully daydreaming. Today is a daydreaming sort of day; he's a lanky, tall form not quite used to his height dressed in overly-expensive hand-tailored clothes, which he is getting dirty on the ground not out of carelessness but simply because he needs to do some things to keep himself sane.
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Had he joined the Guardians when they offered, Jack thinks sometimes, he probably would never have lived this long. His myth was obscure enough already, of course it didn't make it off-planet; and he would have withered away as his believers dwindled. But he didn't make that contract all those centuries ago. Something about it just didn't feel right, not with his bitterness towards the Man in the Moon still sitting dark and tangled in his chest, not when they all seemed to expect him to be somebody other than who he is. So instead — instead, he has some handfuls of children that believe in him for a few decades.
And then nothing. Not until Barrayar.
At first, he was only ever intending to make his way towards the planet out of curiosity, hearing that they had appeared out of isolation. But he isn't in any hurry to get there until the first Barrayaran sees him. It might be a coincidence, he tells himself even so, just some fluke, because he doesn't have the courage to risk touching them just to make sure. Another few see him over time, then, and Jack has to slip aboard a ship to Barrayar immediately.
Being planetside is always better for him. He feels uncomfortable on ships and space stations, with no weather to manipulate and no North Wind tugging at him; it's ill-fitting and heavy, like walking around with a ball-and-chain weighing him down. As soon as he gets to Barrayar, he can finally wander as freely as he likes. Once he's eavesdropped enough, paged through stolen books to figure out the place (and what's happening, why they can see him) it only makes sense to visit the heart of their Imperium. Besides — it's always been fun to mess with royalty, and he has to take his fun where he can get it these days.
He comes to the Imperial Gardens when he gets bored for the time being with playing the poltergeist (and he thinks that a few people saw him, too, which is— it doesn't even seem real) and perhaps he only intends to wander about there; but he sees the boy hidden away, and he recognises him. Young Emperor-to-be.
It isn't sneaking up on him, not really; Jack doesn't even think that he might be noticed at all, and so it's not a deliberate choice to drift over from behind, to quietly hook his feet and staff on a branch and hang there, upside-down and over Gregor. He wonders, idly, what the boy is like; considers following him for a while to see, or trying to interfere and steer him away from becoming a bad politician.
But for the moment—
"Well," he says aloud, "I can see you're hard at work," and it isn't meant to be heard. One-sided conversations are a necessary habit, through centuries of isolation.
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So hearing this makes him stiffen and jerk backward against the tree trunk, although Gregor by default falls silent instead of yelping even as his heart starts racing. He clutches his book to himself and looks about for who spoke-- and upon finding him, his eyes go wide, his mouth actually drops open a little.
"Wh-Who are you?" Damn, he's not supposed to stutter, he's supposed to be composed. Gregor swallows, straightens up and tries again. "How are you upside down?" He should be asking how he got in, but... ImpSec will just take him away once they know he's here.
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The only reason Jack doesn't fall from his branch when he startles is that the wind catches him and picks him up, enough to get his feet under himself and drop quietly to the ground in front of Gregor. Except even then, he almost stumbles through his shock, because— He... saw him. He sees him, right now, he's still looking right at him and he actually said something.
"Can you really see me?" he asks. It comes out thin with a desperate kind of hope. There had been the other Barrayans but nobody will talk to him, and his faux pulse stutters to think that something might finally change.
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"Um. Yes," he says tentatively. Then, again: "Who are you?" He holds his book to his chest as, gradually, Gregor's desire for adventure, for something not the confined, sheltered existence he's always led, overtakes him.
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"Me? I— Jack Frost." There's a stammer to it, sounding dazed, off-balance. He used to think about this, though. And he pictured it happening differently, didn't he? When he used to imagine that someone might see him, he had plans for how it would go; if he thinks back really far, to Earth, he'd come up with the most elaborate daydreams where someone saw him and he got to introduce himself for the first time.
Jack takes a breath that he doesn't need, an old human habit, and some of his nervous energy eases as he exhales. (Visibly, at least. The magic in his chest is hammering something awful against his ribcage, just shy of painful, a frightened undead heartbeat.) He steps back from Gregor and then sweeps a melodramatic bow, one hand on his staff and the other flung out to the side; he bends so far forward that one of his legs stretches out behind him, leaving him balanced on one foot.
"Jack Frost," he says, with much more lazy, casual confidence, "the spirit of winter. Bringer of sleigh rides and snowball fights, at your service!"
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"But you're way too young to be Ded Moroz," he says, using the Russian for Father Frost. "And Snegurochka is, um, a girl." The staff and the mention of sleigh rides is completely on point, though, as is his white hair. Plus Gregor isn't about to doubt someone who had appeared hanging upside down, impossibly. "I didn't know there was another winter spirit."
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Jack makes a playful, half-hearted jab at Gregor with his staff, grinning. "Hey, I may not look it, but I've got more than a millennium behind me."
So his name doesn't seem to mean anything at all to Gregor, which isn't a surprise; he's just never been in a situation where there was nothing. Even that awful Christmas Song line gave him an identity to work with. But Barrayar can cope with him being a spirit, they just don't have anything left of Jack Frost. He supposes that's the easier of the two to explain. It's not like he's never been an unknown before.
"And I don't just bring gifts, y'know," he says, and rests the crook of his staff against his empty hand. Ice comes from the staff in threads, delicate filaments of frost weaving together and building a shape in the air. "Ded Moroz has got nothing on me. I make winter."
When his work is done, Jack lifts his staff away and catches a crown of solid ice in his hand, the surface glittering with frost crystals. The design is intricate and fern-like, thin despite its apparent sturdiness. He holds it out to Gregor and then pauses, considering: "That, uh... might give you brain freeze if you put it on."
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He tugs his sleeves down over his hands to have some insulation as he gingerly accepts the ice crown, as if scared of breaking it. He immediately wishes it were possible to preserve it, but in the crisp yet comfortable mid-fall weather, he suspects it will melt eventually. "It's okay," he says faintly, automatically, "Barrayaran Emperors don't actually wear crowns. It would be considered an affectation." Things about being Emperor he is slowly absorbing, already instinctive and innate. Things about acting his age... he gets in fits and spurts.
Then, suddenly, his real reaction catches up with him and he blurts out, "This is amazing. Do you do this all the time?" He's not even sure which this he's referring to. Make beautiful objects out of ice, talk to random people?
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"No," he says, and the teasing lilt in his voice is friendly rather than mocking, "you're just special." Maybe Gregor hears that sentiment too often, growing up Emperor-to-be.
Jack sobers a little and adds, more honestly, "It's been a long time since anyone could see me, actually. I mean — a long time." Something cracks in his light-hearted front, and beneath it, he seems self-conscious, brittle. It's easy to get caught up in Gregor's excitement, but... Having attention on him means the old anxieties claw their way back up sooner or later. Jack clutches his staff and looks down at his feet, scuffing his heel against the ground. "Not since Earth, probably. So, I haven't really been in a position to do anything like this."
And even now he's already wondering how long he has until Gregor gets bored of him, or just stops seeing.
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That doesn't mean he isn't itching for something else. It also doesn't mean he's never done anything else-- maybe not lately, but when he was younger, Cordelia had been in charge of his education. And she had instilled more than a little sense of empathy in him, and much more deftness at handling emotional matters than is typical for Barrayarans.
"Not since Earth?" he repeats, aghast, picturing that as a thousand years ago until he realizes that might not necessarily be the case. Jack could go to Earth any time, presumably. Gregor hesitates. "Um, I don't know why I can see you-- I really doubt it's because I'm Emperor-- but you're welcome to hang around."
His fingers are starting to go a little numb, so Gregor carefully bends to rest the ice crown down on the grass before straightening up again, concern evident.
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He only has to crook a finger for the wind to leap at his command, and he drifts a lazy circle around Gregor; his feet only just off the ground, trailing the crook of his staff along behind him and leaving frost in spiralling fern patterns across the grass. It's hard to keep still when he's so thrilled — something not like belief, but a happiness that bursts in his chest, his magic skittering sparks in him.
"You might regret that, though," he says, and he does sound like he's joking. "From what I used to hear, I'm kind of a pest." He sits in mid-air, crossing his legs, and cants his head to the side. It's a strange gesture, almost bird-like curiosity. "Especially in a place as boring as this! Do they let you have any fun?"
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"You can't be more of a pest than Miles is," he says factually, undaunted. Then he shrugs, uncomfortable and a little awkward. "I do occasionally. I used to have more free time, but... I'd rather spend what I have out here than tracking down my friends. ImpSec has to follow me everywhere when I leave the Residence." He sounds glum about that, finally starting to get over the ridiculous incredulity of Jack Frost.
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"And... what, you never give them the slip?" he asks, teasing. "Come on, be a rebel!" He hooks the crook of his staff playfully around the back of Gregor's neck, the hold of it loose, using it where another might tug with their hands. It's been a long time since he could bring himself to risk touching someone.
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"It doesn't seem fair," he admits hesitantly. "They're only doing their duty. They get really upset if I go missing-- like, personally ashamed. And... there are real assassins."
A pause.
"But, um, I do. Give them the slip sometimes. Mostly with Miles." His voice turns dry and sarcastic: "Just so I don't go totally crazy cooped up in a house with portraits of my dead relatives."