disclaimer — I don't own Frozen.
warning(s) — none. (yet.)
notes — the ss elsanna has claimed another victim. *shifty eyes*
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i mean, fifty-two weeks is kind of a long time
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(but still not long enough, apparently)
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52
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prologue — supernova
[exploding into cosmic proportions]
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Not that it mattered any, right? —
— Elsa was kissing a girl the evening her parents died.
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Elsa's parents were away on a business trip.
She and Alice were at a meadow that was right next to the Arendelle estate, in the night, underneath the stars — their cold, silvery light, stabbing downwards toward the earth.
Elsa had always loved the stars. So bright. So far. So unattainable.
And she wanted to make them attainable. She wanted to be the first to be able to fly through the universe, skimming through all the stunning wonders it contained within its shadowy folds — cloudy, multi-colored nebulae; galaxies burning fiercely with the radiance of ten million suns.
She looked up, and she dreamed.
The grass was springy beneath her. Wet with the recent rainfall, the smell of freshness and spring permeating the air. It was easy to get drunk off of.
It was a game, at first. Antics brought back from the dusty cabinets of a child's fun.
"Truth or dare?" Alice asked, her pale white fingers absently brushing the very tips of the grass. Water droplets collected on her fingertips, before she flung them at Elsa with a teasing flick.
"Ah...," said Elsa, grimacing slightly as the cold water landed on her face, "Dare."
They were still for a moment, nothing but the sound of the wind tearing through the trees to break the heady silence.
Alice wasn't looking at her when she spoke.
"...I dare you to kiss me."
Elsa's head whipped to the side in apparent disbelief. "What?"
"I dare you to kiss me," and Alice turned this time, staring at Elsa with blue eyes that flickered with some hidden emotion.
Apprehension?
Excitement?
Elsa blinked. Looked at her hands, which were planted firmly on the grass below.
It couldn't hurt, could it?
The kiss was soft and slightly hesitant and it tasted of Coke, which made total sense because they had been sharing a can of the soda prior to coming outside.
And it was, Elsa decided soon afterward, very nice.
More than nice.
Breathless —
"Actually...can we do it again?"
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It was strangely funny how when before they stepped back into the Arendelle manor, Elsa still had parents.
And right after they crossed the threshold, right when Gerda came bustling in to greet them and wrap a coat around Alice and send her off back to her home...
She didn't.
Didn't have parents.
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("I had a bad dream."
"Oh, darling. What was it about?
"There were two people. They were in a crash. A really, really bad one. There was a big bang and an...explosion. Mommy, it was scary."
"...Elsa, you understand that it was only a dream, right?")
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She wasn't there when her dream became a reality, but the pain was.
She was twelve at the time, young enough to still not have been in junior high yet but old enough to know that there had been an accident. A crash. A really, really bad one.
Never coming —
There had been a big bang and an explosion.
Never coming —
Two people, her parents, were gone.
Never coming back.
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They came rarely, but her father gave the best hugs.
They came often, but she never got tired of her mother's smiles.
Their absence hurt like nothing else ever could.
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The funeral was absolutely gorgeous and absolutely horrifying at the same time.
For one, the shrouds were pretty. Made of smooth black silk that hung over the caskets like solid shadows, mirroring the somber atmosphere of the service precisely.
And then on the other hand, her parents were buried beneath all those pretty shrouds. White and dead, inside oaken caskets. Never to be touched by the light of day.
Never to be bathed in starlight again.
Her parents' oldest and best friend gave a long speech that was so heartbreaking everyone in attendance, except for Elsa, was weeping or sniffling by the end of the stupid thing.
She wondered distantly, was it a problem if she couldn't find the tears that were supposed to be there?
She stayed mute throughout the whole ceremony and watched as the caskets were lowered into the ground.
Turned her head away, because she couldn't bear to see her parents slowly crumble away from her life, one handful of dirt at a time.
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One night in her bed, Elsa looked out the window, saw the stars, and remembered something she shouldn't have forgotten in the first place.
And then she panicked. Fingers clenching tightly around her sheets, crimping the fabric into something unrecognizable. The tears she couldn't find at her parents' funeral came rushing out of her then in one great torrent, shaking her body uncontrollably as she wept. Broken, amorphous sounds came tumbling out past her throat, a threadbare wall that refused to waver and thin out, because —
Before they went out.
I forgot —
Before they crashed.
I forgot —
Before they died.
I forgot to tell them I loved them.
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People offered her food for comfort. Gerda and Kai collected them for her. Steaming casseroles, strawberry rhubarb pies, and piles of cookies.
They sat silently on the kitchen table in the manor, stagnant, collecting into an ever-growing stack of well-meant intentions.
Yet they laid abandoned and forgotten.
Their intended recipient sat crumpled in her mother's favorite wine-colored couch and stared vacantly at the monochrome beige-colored walls. She was drowning in leather, drowning in air, drowning in life —
What little left there was of her world completely shattered when the doorbell rang.
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It was Alice.
For some reason unbeknownst to man, Elsa told Gerda to tell the blonde that she was napping.
She still hadn't forgotten their kiss, because how could she ever forget anything like that?
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She couldn't even talk anymore, except to Gerda and Kai.
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Days crept by in a blind stupor.
Nights were spent staring at the stars with tears leaking out the corners of her eyes.
Elsa did not improve.
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She found the book one day when she was wandering through her father's study.
A book about stars. A book about the cosmos.
So bright.
So far.
So unattainable.
The stars.
Unattainable. Just like her parents. Still and silent in their grave, they were.
She had to make something attainable in her life, then. Something she could reach. Something that seemed so far, but would be so near.
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It quickly became an obsession.
These stars. These galaxies. This universe.
Astronomy.
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[next/ beginnings (i)]