lady_phenyx

The tricksters and spirits of love and marriage were reluctant to leave. They wanted to stay, to help the Guardians – all of them – work through these first few days.

Still, there was a line between 'helping' and 'meddling', between wanted and unwanted interference, and staying longer would be crossing that line into bad territory.

Each made a point to talk to each Guardian anyway before they left, offering everything from a line of communication if they needed advice or a willing ear to another modified shovel talk. Sometimes both, and sometimes the shovel talk wasn't exactly all that serious.

The Guardians, after all, wouldn't hurt Jack on purpose. On accident, though...they'd probably end up punishing themselves worse than the tricksters could, but that wouldn't stop them from taking advantage of a perfect opportunity to get away with pranking some of the most well known and powerful spirits around with impunity.

The first few days were tentative, as the seven spirits did the emotional equivalent of tiptoeing around each other.

As much as they wanted to stay by each other and try to fix this, they all had duties, and all too soon Tooth and Sandy had to leave. No matter what was happening to them personally, the children were still losing teeth that needed collecting, and they needed sweet dreams, and Tooth's fairies could only go without their mother so long, and Sandy could only leave the Dreamsand on its own so long.

Jack was almost relieved by it, and promised to go visit them both soon, after they'd gotten things back under control. He faltered a little when trying to explain, finally falling back on, “I want some one on one time. This is...getting a little overwhelming.”

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