So, the old ‘Dare you to lick that frozen mailbox’ trick.

‘Cept nobody dared nobody and it was frozen wind-chimes ‘n not a mailbox.

My wife likes the tuned steel pipes best but, a gift, these were like copper foil with pleasing shapes cut out. I’d offered to put the pasta thru them shapes but she keeps me out of the kitchen ever since I gommed up the pasta maker, so I hung the wind-chimes outside the window near the garage where she could see them blow in the wind and hear them when we walk out to the car.

Tinny, banging noise unless the wind is from dead south. Then they blow free and clear and when they touch, they sing.

Where was I?

Oh! It was Jack Frost, no doubt putting the finishing touch on a frosted window. Not layers of frozen sleet like winter storm but he done up the window like a sand-painting, fitting each bit of ice into a border all around.

Beautiful.

I can almost see ole Jack Frost, staring at the just right spot to etch the next crystal, his mouth open with the tip of his tongue stuck out, what with all his concentration.

Wind puffs from due south.

Wind chimes blow over towards the window.

Flick of the tongue.

Trapped.

Now I aint all that metaphysical: there’s natcheral ‘n super-natcheral ‘n one is the real world and the other is all stories.

And I aint a scared a no ghost. At least, not back then.

But what I seen was the windchime floating out sideways, stretched flat, not flapping in a breeze.

I figgered a nail or a splinter on the window frame ‘r maybe even gommed up paint had dried into enough of a point so as to catch the wind-chime. Cept, I knew better. Mostly, cause I looked for such when I hung that wind-chime last week.

Somehow, I musta forced my eyes to see thru Jack Frost’s camouflage. Or bedazzlement. Whatever gimmick the feyfolk use so as not to be seen in broad daylight by us mortals.

I’m thinking my normal optics plus a fierce disbelief that windchimes ought not point straight sideways when the wind stops blowing is how and why I saw Jack Frost stuck with his tongue frozen to the windchime. I remember he wasn’t smiling.

Don’t help me here. Piss aint the answer. There’s a whole ‘nother website for that kinda answer.

That thin foil was easy enough to warm between my hands til I melted the ice locking Jack Frost against the metal. Like a flash, no Jack Frost on the windowsill.

While my thoughts and lips were framing a “Don’t bother to thank me!” to the ungrateful imp, my real self squelched the thought.

Instead, I said, out loud and everything, “Thank you for figuring out how I could see and believe without you breaking the kayfabe!” (Once, long ago, I thought tv wresting was real. Then my kids did. Then grandkids. Santa gets the same deal. Kayfabe.)