Anna lay curled up on the window seat, gazing at the northern lights as they filled the sky. Above her, hauntingly pale green bands of light spiraled and coiled like loose ribbons in a schoolgirl's hair flying in the wind. The sky had been awake for hours now, and though it was several hours past midnight, Anna could scarcely bring herself to care.
The nine-year-old princess suppressed a sigh as she tore her gaze away from the aurora borealis and looked at the empty space beside her. The spot that Elsa should have occupied.
She looked behind her. One half of the room, to her left, the side with the fireplace, showed a bed and a dresser covered in clutter. But the other half of her room, separated by the long rug embroidered with pink rosemaling, was starkly empty. It had been that way for the past four years, and though many times the staff had entreated her to fill up the space with more furniture, Anna had stubbornly refused. Only Elsa had the right to that space.
It had been so long since Elsa had occupied the spaces she should have. So long, that those memories seemed like dreams at times. If Anna closed her eyes tightly enough, she could feel the warmth of Elsa's arm around her as they huddled together underneath the northern lights, hear Elsa's laughter as they ran through the hallways and the snow together, see her flash of her platinum-blonde hair and her blue eyes, sparkling with excitement.
But all of those memories suddenly ended. Stopped completely when she turned five. As if running into a wall. It wasn't as though she and Elsa had gradually grown apart, as Mama and Papa had said sometimes happened with siblings as they grew older. Anna could still remember the exact date it all ended, and she barely remembered anything that specifically from when she was very little. One day she and Elsa had been best friends, and the next morning she had woken up to a headache and half her room empty and silent. Later that day, Elsa had given her a mysterious glance filled with sorrow before disappearing behind a painted blue door. And no matter how much she knocked on the door, Elsa never answered.
At first, Elsa's withdrawal had felt like knives jabbing at her from under her skin. She cried for weeks straight, and hurt and loneliness clutched at her heart like a vice. She'd rap on the door until her knuckles were bloody, and still she knocked. She pounded at it, clawing and breaking her fingernails. At one point, she'd made herself so sick with anguish that she vomited, and her parents had confined her to bed for two weeks. And yet there was never any answer from Elsa.
She'd demanded an answer from her parents as well, but her efforts in that direction had proved to be just as futile. They would blather on about Elsa being "ill" or "busy", but she could see the lies in her eyes. Her parents would console her and tell her to go on and be a good girl and play by herself.
That first year after Elsa shut the door, the year she turned six, had been the worst. That was when the wound was still fresh, and she'd put every bit of herself into trying to drag Elsa out from her room. If there was one thing about Anna that was true, it was that she'd never, ever give up on something that she'd set her mind to. But even the strongest convictions can be worn down by constant defeat. When her efforts proved to no avail, however, the number of times she had knocked had begun to trickle down, like ice melting into water and flowing away down the mountains.
At first she'd knocked on the door dozens of times a day, hoping that through sheer persistence and effort she could wear Elsa down. But that didn't work, and soon her knocks had petered down to twice a day—once in the morning and once in the afternoon. By the time she was eight, she was down to one knock a day. Sometimes in the winter, she'd knock more than once, but that was it.
Her parents had been relieved that she'd finally accepted the separation, but in all reality, she had not. She still fervently believed - or wanted to believe- that Elsa still loved her, behind that blue and white door, and though she may not show it outwardly, she still hoped that one day it would open and they would be sisters again. The flame that burnt within her, however, was not as bright as it had once been. The silence from behind the door, the evasiveness of her parents, and the simple passage of time had dulled her hopes, and it was on nights like these that Anna wondered if there had ever been a time when they were close.
Anna closed her eyes, trying not to cry. It would have been easier if Elsa had said something cruel to her, or if she'd done something to make Elsa hate her. Even knowing that she'd done something to lose her sister's love, even if it was something petty, would have been preferable to having no reason at all to explain why one day they'd been perfectly happy, and the next day, Elsa was hiding and everyone was giving each other strange looks and no one seemed to remember that Elsa had a sister who wanted to know why, why, why!
Her eyes opened, and Anna bit her lower lip, not wanting to give in to the anger that was simmering inside of her, but she couldn't help herself. She had suppressed her anger for far too long, and it was overflowing now. Here, in the dark of night, she finally gave way to the rage that she had repressed for the past four years.
Did anyone even care that Anna missed her sister? She had knocked and knocked and knocked, even when all Elsa offered her was a rude "Go away, Anna!" What had Anna ever done to deserve such cruelty? What was so dire, so terrible, that Elsa had to stay cloistered away in her room and never come out, never even offer a simple word through the door?
For the thousandth time, Anna wondered what was it that had caused Elsa to turn as cold and unyielding as the snowmen they used to sculpt so happily. Perhaps she would never know. She might never know what it was that had caused Elsa to turn as cold and as unyielding as the snowmen they used to sculpt together. She might live her entire life without knowing, and she'd be left to wonder on nights like these, when the bareness of the other side of the room and the lack of communication from beyond the door and the years of solitude seemed to cloud her heart and soul like a thick fog and she had no one to share the aurora with.
Anna swung her legs off the window seat and burrowed herself beneath the pink comforter and sheets of her bed, hoping to fall asleep and get away from the terrible feelings bubbling in her chest, but it was to no avail. Her mind was too hot and angry to sleep, and finally she just gave up.
Years ago, this would have been the point where she crept to the other side of the room and pestered Elsa. She'd always ask her to….. Anna furrowed her eyebrows in the dark, trying in vain to recall what it was that she always wanted Elsa to do in the middle of the night. It couldn't have been to build a snowman- there was no way they could have crept outside at night to make a snowman, and she couldn't have asked that question year-round anyway. Yet it had always been the one thing she'd asked her.
Anna sighed. Her warm memories of Elsa were so distant that they were beginning to fade, like letters read too often, opened and re-creased. Maybe Elsa never had been there for her at all, and she had made it all up. Maybe that was why Elsa never opened the door.
But that couldn't be true. She remembered, faint though it was, a time when Elsa played with and laughed with and fought for her. There had been a time when Elsa was her sole confidante, the only person who understood the pressures of a princess's life. Elsa had counseled her that they knew better, and that one day they would show the world that girls were just as strong, as smart, and as capable as boys. She had promised her that Anna would be her right hand when they were grown and Elsa was crowned as queen. There was no way she could have dreamt up someone as loving and caring and understanding as the big sister she once knew.
Without a doubt, Anna knew that the unseen specter behind the blue door was the same person as the sister she once knew, hard as it was to reconcile the two people. There was no way that Elsa could have morphed in the space of one day from one persona to the other.
But why? Anna asked herself, yet again. If there had been some sort of reason given, she would have been able to accept the separation, painful as it was.
Anna had no answer, but that didn't mean she would give up. Once, Elsa had been the finest sister that anyone could ask for, and Anna wasn't about to give up on her.
And with that, the younger princess of Arendelle, a contented smile upon her lips, turned and snuggled into bed, at last asleep.