Watching the other boy wave and leave nearly had Pitch stepping out from under the shade to try and cross to where Jack was. As it was, sunlight didn’t hurt him so much as weaken him and, with the way things had been trending, he didn’t have much strength to spare. His feeding on Jack’s nightmares did sustain him, kept him from going even further insubstantial, but even that glorious fear could only go so far on its own.
Besides he didn’t want to lose a drop of that warm honey-like fright that Jack spoiled him with.
The teenager sat long after the other boy’s departure, not even looking in the Nightmare King’s direction for long minutes. That stung a little, that feeling of being ignored but he put it aside. After all, he could tell by the waves of anxiety rolling though the human that he was far from forgotten.
So he stayed put and waited, wondering if Jack would approach him or flee, as though he could ever escape Pitch truly. If he wanted, he could chase the boy to the ends of the earth. Their contract meant he knew exactly where Jack was and was permanently connected to his sense of fear. Whereas with others, it was only through proximity that he could tell if they were frightened or not and had to get even closer to read the specifics properly. He could tell that Jack hadn’t been in any real danger even from the distance of his lair but he had wanted to see the boy.
It was very much a novelty. This person who could see him – despite age and other barriers to the usual pathways of belief – and feared him but not so fully as to already be running at the mere sight of him. Pitch felt the moment when the teen had laid eyes on him in the focus of his gaze and the crawling of the fear inside him. But still, Jack didn’t run.
Rising from the bench, he picked his way over to the shade of the trees where Pitch was taking cover from the brightest of the daylight filtering through the clouds. Dropping to the ground not but a few feet from Pitch and completely in the shadows, Jack made himself comfortable and propped his back against the tree behind him. For all that he kept from looking at Pitch, it was quite clear where the boy’s thoughts were centered.
Pitch could have taken pity on him and broken the silence first but he was too caught up in the confusion of why Jack had approached him at all. He was scared and though it was controlled and not overwhelming, it was still there. Humans were notorious for not liking fear or at least not the kinds that didn’t accompany something exhilarating. So why was this one coming closer to the very thing causing him these upset emotions?
Jack had been so different from the very beginning but it seemed the more he got to know him the more Pitch was baffled by him. And what’s more, Jack was in the shade with Pitch. Didn’t he know just how vulnerable he was? Didn’t the boy understand just how unsafe it was to be where the Bogeyman could grab hold of him?
The next thought stopped the spirit cold: did Jack have any idea just what he was entrusting Pitch with?
Because if he did, if Jack was even the slightest bit aware, that meant he was extending at least some small measure of trust to him. And that was just not possible. No one trusted the Nightmare King to do anything that wasn’t cruel. The possibility left his skin feeling too tight with how tense it made him.
It was terrifying, this idea of someone having some sort of faith in him. He didn’t know what to do with it and the instinct to destroy or corrupt or make miserable was entirely absent. That was both a comfort and a worry.
Words came from the boy and Pitch only just caught them, as wrapped up in his near panic as he was. They grounded him, gave him something to focus on that wasn’t so unfamiliar as to be completely unknown. Jack’s assumptions were all old hat, things that had been gleaned from the unoriginal thoughts of others long before his time. He could bandy words with the best of them and it was comforting that he still had the advantage in things to do with this at least.
Swallowing and letting a slow smirk spread over his face, he moved back a few paces away from Jack, to lean on shoulder against a tree, still facing the other and keeping his eyes on his face. “Humans do love to demonize the night and the things that dwelled in it. But I merely made use of that fact, maybe encouraged it a little, because it was easier to do so than to try and turn them against the day.”
Shrugging, he crossed his arms over his chest and rolled his eyes. “Belief has an odd way of reshaping what already exists. The power of the human mind has so much potential. It really is too bad it’s so hard to channel it all in one direction.”
The things he knew that people would be capable of if they could focus their efforts and minds in a single direction were staggering, both for good and ill. “But I digress. I am not actually prone to sleeping much myself. It’s more something I choose not to indulge in as it merely passes time and serves no purpose for me.”
A bitter turn of his mouth, there in a second and gone in the next, and his eyes shifted nearly pure silver only to go mostly gold a heartbeat later. “And it’s only due to people believing the sun has some sort of mystical power against dark things that its light has any affect on me. Like I said, belief is strong and it governs the ways in which the spirits of this world live in it.”
That opened up an old anger but it was one he’d long found unhelpful and had conquered. It was degrading, that so much power had been wrested from those on the other side of the veil, but it was simply the way things were. Wishing otherwise wouldn’t make any difference.
Pitch found he wanted to tell this story, this history, to Jack who seemed to at least be willing to listen which was more than he could say for any other being he knew. It was a sort of unspoken taboo to reveal spiritual secrets to mortals at this point in the game. But it was a rule which came from those who would prefer the Nightmare King didn’t exist in the first place. He hardly saw any reason to do what they wanted. So he laid out the basics for this strange and oddly compelling person who he wanted to understand and be understood by.
“Once, people were open-minded and the spirits were the ones who dictated the beliefs. Some, including myself, may have been a bit too greedy and didn’t take into account that humans are very adaptable. They began to shut out the influence of spirits subconsciously as a way to deal with how powerless they felt against us,” it was hard to admit but also freeing to finally say it to someone.
Without even meaning to, Pitch had begun to gravitate closer to the Jack. He sat beside the teen, keeping at least a foot of space between them. He raised his knees and rested his forearms over them, hands dangling between and he hunched forward a bit staring intently at his fingers twisting about one another. He turned his eyes to the boy again and sighed.
“Overtime, this trait spread and became prevalent as science found ways to explain what was once thought to be the providence of ‘gods’,” he explained, enjoying that there was actually someone to listen for once to the things he said and thought.
Gritting his teeth and frowning deeply, Pitch growled, “Now, most mysticism is discarded sometime early in one’s life and, typically, only children are imaginative enough to believe in the things others can’t see for that short time before they are made to leave behind ‘childish things’.”
“Many spirits have either wasted away or disappeared permanently beyond the reach of the mortal realm. Only a few intrepid souls remain… and me. I can’t retreat from this place. I was never meant to be here in the first place. But now I’m trapped with that rabble the moon blessed and set against me, forcing me to scrape the bottom of the barrel and-“ he savagely bit his tongue to stop the words spilling from his lips and took a deep breath. “And I’m a horrible conversationalist,” he murmured with a wry twist of his lips.
Silver and gold eyes stared at gray fingers and the black grit resulting of the experiments he’d been performing on Sanderson’s golden sand that was stuck under and around his fingernails. There was a difference between telling a story and unloading one’s problems. And he doubted Jack gave a damn about Pitch’s when the Nightmare King was making him suffer.
“You must have other questions or concerns though and I’m feeling charitable at the moment. So, why don’t you take advantage, hmm?”
