Appearing in a fizz of magic smack in the middle of a bright white landscape where the ice fields stretched away to the far horizon, Genie rubbed his hands together and breathed deeply, sending out a cloud of delightfully smoky breath into the low, slanting sunlight as he did so.
Looking eagerly around, he was about to tell himself that in genie years must have been a decade or three since he had last seen this place and boy had it changed a lot during that time. In reality however, it had only been a couple of years since, along with his 'guests' he had last last visited the snowy wastes of the
North Pole and tried to get them into the holiday spirit with snowball fights, hot chocolate, ice forts, snow-mobiles, and of course a generous dollop of Genie magic.
It followed then, that since it had only been been around two and a half years, then by rights not a whole lot should have changed. This however, was not the case and hands on hips, Genie gazed left and right, his bright, black eyes taking in the strangely altered landscape, his mouth falling open a little as he did so ...
"Nothing much has changed huh? Okay, fine, bang goes that theory." Feeling a prickle of strange magic brush his skin - a kind of misplaced magic that shouldn't have been lurking in that icy world at all - he turned around suddenly and gaped at the towering cliffs of ice that hadn't been there before. How come he hadn't noticed those?
Had someone been remodelling?
Curious yet cautious, Genie floated a little towards the cliffs, noting as he did so the many other things that hadn't been there on his last visit, cold caverns from whose open-mouthed depths plumes of coloured mist streamed and curled. Strangely bubbling springs of hot, clear water, and deep fissures and cracks in the icy ground that oozed a quiet yet deadly cold. Gone were the walls of his snow fort and the remains of his party table, now everywhere he looked he saw twisted shapes held frozen in time. Frosted trees bearing iced fruits and frozen flowers loomed close by, with leaves that had once rustled in the summertime breezes of lush lands far away now stiff and silent, turned to glass, to crystal, to
ice.Trees didn't bloom and fruit in a frozen wasteland, and towering cliffs didn't just spring up out of the ground, clearly this was now a world where nature itself had gone mad. Being immortal, Genie was rarely bothered by extremes of temperature and so the shiver that ran suddenly up his broad blue back had little to do with the chilly atmosphere, in truth he had just realised that the arctic landscape hadn't so much been artfully altered as mercilessly denatured by some force that clearly did not belong there. It was strange and undeniably beautiful in some forlorn, alien way, but behind the bright facade was something plainly unnatural ...
Clearly something was here that didn't belong. But what?
In that world of white, a hint of colour suddenly caught his eye and moving closer to a large chunk of ice, its surface glassy and faintly opaque, Genie peered into the mass and could just make out a vague red shape. His eyebrows shot up,
something was caught inside the ice like a fly trapped in amber.
"Hang on little guy, I'll have ya outta there in no time!" Zapping up a blow torch he set to work with his usual enthusiasm and it wasn't long before he had melted a sizable chunk of the ice and released the whatever it was that waited within. If the blue spirit had anticipated effusive thanks and a warm hug of gratitude, he was quickly disappointed for as far as reactions went, this one was two shades shy of absolute zip. In short, the thing just lay there in the snow like a pile of sodden leftovers.
And talking about the whatever it was, whatever actually was it? Throwing away the blow torch, Genie stooped and picked up the red creature by the loose skin of its nape and raising it to eye level, viewed it critically from all sides. In response, the creature just hung there limply, there were no visible signs of life. Gently, Genie waggled it to and fro and then extending one large finger prodded it a few times in the chest, hoping to wake it up. His voice was as anxious as his expression,
"Ohhhh c'mon wake up! Don't make me have to give you the kiss of life now lizard-boy, I'm all outta mouthwash an' it's miles to the nearest 7-11!"---------------------------------------------------------------
[OOC: Mushu auto-dangling and prodding by kind permission of Toxy <3 ]
.
