It was happening again.
A strange sensation burned at the lines of her palms, distracting but not uncomfortable, and if this was anything like last time, Anna knew she was in serious trouble.
God, what had she done to deserve this? She'd never been anything but nice. She'd even been kind to the freaking Ice Queen, and Lord knew that girl was impossible to deal with, what with her frosty demeanor and bitchy back-chats.
But she'd tried, hadn't she? So why was she cursed like this?
Raising a trembling hand, Anna tucked one fist between her thighs as the sensation spread, gathering at her fingertips.
"Sir? Please may I be excused?"
"Of course, Anna," The Calculus teacher barely spared the girl a glance: if he had stared a bit harder, he'd have seen how pale she'd gone beneath her freckles, and see how her hands were clenched into fists, so tight her knuckles were white with tension.
Clumsily edging her way around the desks, her sapphire eyes downcast, Anna stumbled from the room; it was difficult to ignore her friends' pointed stares, more accusatory than anything - shit, she'd promised them all drinks at Planet Smoothie for lunch - but she couldn't bear to meet their gazes. What if they saw something different about her?
Anna's hands were burning. The pressure inside was increasing steadily, and suppressing it was getting more and more painful. Every inch of Anna's body begged for release.
Gasping, she stumbled into the girls' bathrooms, shouldering her way into the far cubicle - holding her hands as far away from her body as she could.
The muted roar of a sudden fire tore at the silence and Anna watched with horrified fascination as flames danced from her hands, spirals of fire snaking around each finger, spitting at the air.
The flames were a constantly shifting tangle of color, amber and saffron and auburn and crimson. There was a dangerous beauty to them.
The feeling of feverish pain had vanished at the release. There was no pain from the flames; no biting agony as the heat burned her hands raw. Instead Anna was enthralled by the light, the colors, the warmth against her skin.
But Anna's feeling of contentment quickly lessened as she felt the flames suddenly become hotter, as they raged more powerfully, becoming a single eye-watering orange. They'd slipped from her control and panic flashed through her.
I'm going to get burned alive!
Panic only made the flames worse. When Anna pressed a hand to the flimsy wall separating her and the next cubicle, black decay spread outward from her touch, like waves on the surface of water. The black decay smoldered like the end of a cigarette, red-hot in places, black as tar, burned sections of the wall curling and peeling. Smoke rose in gray columns.
A wary whimper escaped Anna and the fear of herself caused the flames to cease.
The smothering smell of smoke pricked tears into the corners of Anna's eyes and with a choked cry she dove from the toilet cubicle, her hands having returned to their tanned, freckled selves.
Quickly slamming the cubicle door closed - the decay was still spreading, though more slowly now, the edges fizzling red - Anna paused to check her appearance in the mirror, ignoring the smoke seeping beneath the door.
As the Junior Body representative and as a member of the cheer-leading squad, it was Anna's duty to look physically perfect at school. And despite her abundance of freckles, that was usually something she managed quite well.
Wide, glistening azure eyes and high-set cheekbones; tanned skin and strawberry-blonde locks. Aside from the freckles, embarrassing clumsiness and awkward, halting speech, there wasn't much disagreeable about Anna D'Arendelle.
The same, however, couldn't be said for Elsa Winters.
"Preening over your reflection, D'Arendelle?"
Striding into the girls' bathrooms with a hostile curl of her lips, Elsa's eyes slid past Anna and to the smoke wisps curling beneath the far cubicle door. "Did you set something on fire?"
"No," Anna replied stiffly, clutching her hands into fists. Her nails bit into the flesh of her palms, cutting crescents into her skin. "I did not."
Elsa smiled. Her smile was cold, distant, uncaring. Almost chilly. Thus her well-deserved nickname, "The Ice Queen".
It wasn't that Elsa Winters was unattractive. Actually, that was rather far from the truth. Her hair was a shimmer of platinum, thick and twisted into a perennial plait down her left shoulder. Her eyes were blue, startlingly so against her porcelain skin. Overall, a highly attractive individual.
Until she opened her mouth.
Because it turned out that Elsa Winters was the single most hostile and heartless person one could ever come across. After a mysterious illness left her absent for most of her senior year (some rumors arose that she'd had pneumonia, though the truth behind those rumors was dubious) the 18-year-old was retaking senior year and was apparently rather bitter about it.
She didn't look a year older than every other Senior. It wasn't that she was short - though admittedly, she wasn't tall either - but she had a look of vulnerability. And fragility - like a strong gust of wind would break her china body.
She quickly made up for the fierceness her appearance lacked, however, with her spiteful words.
"Well, I should be getting back to Calculus." Anna offered Elsa a forced smile, desperate to avoid conversation.
"Whatever," Elsa dismissed Anna with a flourish of her fingers, tossing her white-blonde head. "I need to find a new bathroom, anyways." She tossed Anna a smirk over her shoulder and then disappeared out of the door.
Anna watched silently as the older girl stalked out, her hips swaying.
And then, once the door had shut, she breathed a sigh of relief. That girl put her on edge.
Author Note:
The start of an Elsanna fanfiction, based in a modern-day AU c: Non-incest :p
Thank you for reading! xx