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The shingles form first. Ice cold flakes that dust over his shoulders and down the hem of his pants. Its the cold-dark-drip that forms and fills in the deep-dark-drop of shadows under the bed. Jack doesn't notice it at first--the way cold water pools at his collar bone, slips down his sides, and freezes.
Except not.
Because the cold water of the dark runs like a living thing, like a shadow. It turns his hoodie blue-black and then tints it white with the cold fog of breath. It forms shingles and then sickles that point and shatter and sing in the hollow between here and there.
Dark does not always mean endings and it does not always mean silence. Shadows thrive best in low light--and here, here, under the bed there is always a nightlight. Just there. Shadows need the light as much as they hate it and that is why there is always, always, the flicker of hope licking at the heels of true darkness. Together they make the song of endings and beginnings.
And that is something only Pitch Black and Jack Frost could ever truly know.
Spring might be hope and new beginnings.
But darkness pierced by low light and the sound of someone gasping is, too.
When the night ends and they see a child crying out—winter comes. Jack Frost kneels and strokes a hand through their hair—sealing them with cold until they feel warm again. Pitch Black guides him, stands by his heels, and watches as he pulls the little breaths from their bodies. They form clouds that glow next to his ice in the darkness and slowly, slowly dissipate.
They are ghosts, the two of them, never to be seen--never to be anything but blackness and cold.
But sometimes, sometimes, life is more of a nightmare than death ever was--and when that is true they bring beginnings.
Because cold and dark go so well together.
And guarding dreams and hopes aren't kind to those whose hopes and dreams have run out and left their bodies in the corners. And isn’t death not just death--but another start?
Jack Frost think’s so.
And maybe, maybe, Pitch Black also.