a.n. I've had this idea for a few days and it just wouldn't leave me alone. I don't own the characters in this story.
For the small town of Arendelle, every child's gift is a unique and much-anticipated occurrence. Most come on the individual's sixteenth birthday, but some come later, often on a Christmas.
There's one incredibly large business tycoon of a company after which the town is named: Arendelle Corporations. Its owner, a kind man with straw-colored hair and an overabundance of patience, is currently trying to read the newspaper while his daughter, Elsa, nervously paces their living room with her arms wrapped around her torso.
A few things should be noted about Elsa Arendelle. First and foremost, she's pretty much always nervous, having been incredibly bookish and incredibly introverted from a young age. Secondly, she's been awaiting her gift for a while now. Her sixteenth passed without so much as a feather dropping from the sky, and so had her seventeenth. It's currently the Christmas after her seventeenth birthday, and Elsa is praying that it finally makes an appearance.
The gift is not a material object, and it's not a superpower, either. It's an angel. Arendelle's been blessed with this miracle since before anybody could remember. It's such a long-standing tradition in the city that the local hobby centers sell scrapbooks for it, and the drugstore gives a fifty-percent discount on pictures printed of a soulmate meeting. Angels were supposed to be a person's soulmate, the one.
At least, in most scenarios.
To Elsa, after losing her mother to sickness and listening to her father's stories of their first meeting on his seventeenth birthday, meeting her angel is everything. Meeting her angel means her life can finally begin.
And Elsa wants, more than anything, for her life to begin. She wants to go to college out of this small, sleepy town with people who can't think beyond the next weekend football game. She wants to go to a grocery store that sells vegan food, and she wants to go to a place where the libraries actually have working computers.
Which is why today, on December 25th, Elsa woke up earlier than usual. She's already pacing back and forth while her father calmly makes himself some tea and begins reading the newspaper.
"What if he doesn't come today?"
Adgar Arendelle sips his tea and turns a page. "Then he'll probably come next year. On your birthday."
She bites her bottom lip, a worried expression on her face. "But, that's too late. No one in our family has had it so late. If it's that late, I probably won't be getting one at all."
"Dear, don't worry about it, it'll be okay. There are a few people who don't even get one, and that's perfectly alright too."
Elsa is crestfallen. "That...that can't be me. I've made plans. My angel has to come before I'm eighteen so I can go to college with him, and then figure out my life..."
Adgar puts his paper down, his expression gentle. "Look, I'm just telling you not to worry too much about it, alright? What ever happens always happens for the greater good."
The young blonde sighs and nods. "I understand. I guess I'll go and read or something in my room."
Adgar nods, picking up the paper once again. "Good! That's the spirit!"
As Elsa leaves, Mr. Arendelle turns to a framed photo of him and his deceased wife. He leans forward, quietly whispering. "Idun, make sure you send our little girl someone who'll love her a lot, someone who can take good care of her and cheer her up. Send her someone who can teach her to grow."
A small gust of wind blows through the living room, making him chuckle. Adgar leans back in his seat, glancing towards the heavens and smiling. He turns another page in his newspaper and begins reading a new story.
Unbeknownst to either of the Arendelles, Idun, sitting in her cloud away from the other angels, watched her daughter and husband intently during their exchange. She stands up, racing into Paradise where all the angels reside, and hollers.
"My darling little girl is READY!"
Some of the other angels smile, knowing how long Idun has waited for this day. Idun turns towards a large electronic screen and types in her daughter's name while mumbling incoherently.
"Ugh, I despise protocol...ah! Okay. Summoning the angel for...E-L-S-A A-R-E-N...yes! Elsa Arendelle!"
With her dark hair flying, Idun hits the machine's large pink button with as much brute force as she can muster.
From three cloud layers above, a girl with fiery red hair yelps as she tumbles through the white fluff, landing face-first at Idun's feet.
The older angel's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "Huh! Not quite what I was expecting. Interesting!"
After groaning slightly, the girl shoots up to her feet and salutes, a warm smile and a face full of freckles greeting Idun.
"Anna at your service! Though I hope I don't have to fly very much, I was making myself something the other day and one of my wings sorta got caught in the blender. I was trying to make...a milkshake is what they call it, I think! God, those are so delicious. I just love earth food, you know? So many different flavors, so much color...oh, I'm rambling, aren't I?" The young angel smiles, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly.
Idun smiles back, motherly and warm, and ruffles Anna's fiery red hair. "Unexpected, but you're just what my darling child needs."
Anna's teal eyes light up like a small puppy's. "OH! Does this mean I get to go down to earth and meet my human? I've been waiting for this day since Council told me I'd be a guardian, I'm so excited!"
The older angel nods slowly. "You will. And, if it isn't too soon, probably today."
Anna grins, jumping up and down. "Am I your son's angel, Mrs. Idun?!"
Idun shakes her head knowingly, stifling her laugh. "Well...not my son, dear. My daughter. Her name is Elsa."
It takes a second for that to sink in until Anna's head tilts in confusion. "Did they make a mistake?"
Her eyes scan the electronic screen, analyzing the data for any sort of telltale sign or giveaway. "No...it says this was planned when Elsa was born."
Anna nods slowly and then rolls her shoulders back, her cheerful smile returning full force. "Well then I can't WAIT to meet her! My gosh, I'm so excited!" Anna leaps into the air and triple flips, laughing as she spins.
Idun reaches out in worry. "Anna, your-"
The redhead squeaks as she tumbles back onto the cloud.
The older angel sighs. "-wings."
Anna huffs and stands, ceremoniously dusting herself off. "I'm okay!"
Idun shakes her head.
"Consider yourself lucky. She's cute and NOT dangerous. I got this girl who carries a frying pan."
Anna rolls her eyes at her closest friend, Eugene Fitzherbert, as she digs through her dresser for a decent set of clothes. "I wasn't complaining. I just wish I was notified in advance, you know? So I could pack and stuff."
Eugene snorts, laying back on his cloud."We're angels. We never need to pack. Besides, we may not even be staying that long."
The redhead throws a shirt at his face. "How are you even an angel? We're supposed to look out for them, that's what a guardian angel does. It's our job! We are not supposed to be planning on coming back. And besides, I intend to at least be friends with her."
"At least?"
Anna's cheeks begin to heat up. "Yeah. At least."
Eugene glances at her and scratches at his beard. "Huh. I didn't think you swung that way, but whatever, no judgment from me. I'm going to teach my human how to steal or something. She seems like a goody-two-shoes. I think her name was Rapunzel? Some weird fairy-tale thing like that."
The girl stops searching through her clothes and whirls around, her mouth agape. "You're the worst! Why the heck would you do something like that?"
He smirks before his expression turns serious. "Actually, she hasn't left the house in years. Her dad was an angel, and he died in a car crash. He didn't come back to the angel realm either, which means he's really gone. Like, 'lost connections' gone. Her mother hasn't really been the same, I don't think. Stealing, doing something 'out there', that'll get her and her mother to wake up and face the world."
Anna pauses, thinking about it, and nods. "Not the best plan I've heard but it makes sense. I think Elsa's just really shy. Like, she doesn't really have that many friends, and she's kind of nerdy, always reading. I think it's kind of endearing, actually..." she trails off, before she remembers another thing Eugene said. "And I don't think I swing that way. But I've got to make the most of the situation. It's for life, right? A literal 'till death do us part' kind of deal."
Eugene rolls his eyes. "Well, little miss optimism, I guess your work is cut out for you. Maybe she doesn't have physical walls separating her from the rest of the world, but like, mental ones. And how do you know she's not homophobic, or whatever the humans call it?"
The redhead pauses, nodding slowly. "Somehow, I think I can break through them. Maybe it's just a gut feeling, but I think I can do it! And I have no idea. I guess we pray for that not to happen."
Eugene shrugs, flopping back into the cloud. "Eh, it's good to take chances every now and then. I say you go for it, feisty pants."
"Elsa! Come down!"
Elsa groans, pulling herself up off of her pillow and trekking down the steps. "Coming, sorry, I was sort of falling asleep..."
Adgar smiles softly. "Someone very special will probably be here soon. You could even dress up, if you wanted!"
Probably?
Elsa pauses and tilts her head, her crystal blue eyes wide with curiosity and hope. "You really think he could come down today?"
Adgar nods encouragingly, smiling. "Call it intuition. I have a knack for things like this, I'm rarely wrong!"
His daughter races up the stairs and into her room, throwing on a warm sweater over her t-shirt and skinny jeans, beaming at the mirror as she brushes her hair and pulls it into its usual French braid. In the mirror, she smiles and whispers to herself softly.
"Finally."
As if on cue, there's a feminine scream and a resounding crash in their front lawn. She hears her father open the door, making a slight noise of surprise, and some tidbits of muffled conversation. She's only barely able to make out her father's voice.
Brushing her hands over her clothes and straightening out imaginary wrinkles, Elsa breathes and steps out of her room, nearly tripping down the stairs. Her father gestures excitedly to the figure in the doorway. When she reaches the door, she gasps, one hand grabbing the banister behind her while her other arm instinctively wraps around her torso protectively.
She's...
In front of her stands a girl who looks one or two years younger than her. With a bright smile of almost blinding white teeth and hair as red as a dark strawberry sunset, she grins and waves, a sort of nervous, anxious expression on her face. Two long, slender, white wings loosely rest behind two equally slender, toned shoulders. They nearly glow in the snowy twilight morning. The longer Elsa stares, the more the redhead's wings begin to twitch, eventually fluttering and sending thousands of tiny snowflakes fluttering to the ground.
...Beautiful? Breathtakingly gorgeous...?
"Hi! My name is Anna! I'm your angel! Or, I mean, I want to be? Wait, no, that's stupid because I'm already here...ugh, never mind. That was dumb to start off with, I don't want to guilt you into this, sorry..." The redhead, Anna, gestures with her hands quickly as she speaks.
A girl.
A voice inside of her mind whispers to her venomously, prompting Elsa to run up the stairs in leaps and bounds and lock herself in her room. Shell-shocked, she closes her eyes to sprint away from a reality she couldn't believe existed.
After nearly a lifetime of exclusion, she expected this to be one of the few matters of normalcy in her life. And now it isn't.
It's unbelievable, the amount time Elsa spends with her face mashed into her pillow as she sobs. Anna at least thinks so, her shoulders drooping as she sits outside the Arendelle's house. More like a mansion, she thinks to herself. Every sob is made worse by the fact that she can literally feel it because of that stupid connection every angel and human shares after meeting.
If their little "encounter" even counted as a meeting.
Truthfully, Elsa's reaction stung more than she had anticipated. She knows it isn't normal to get an angel of the same gender, but she didn't think she'd be rejected so coldly. The angel community was open to it, and if the angels were, why weren't the humans?
Anna stands up, deciding to walk around town a bit to try and clear her mind. She's changed into human clothing: a skirt with leggings, black flats, and a green t-shirt and jacket. She's already cut slits in the t-shirt and hoodie and pulled her wings through them. She's put effort into this outfit, and though she doesn't want to admit it, a part of her desperately wants Elsa to at least notice her, speak to her. It isn't fair that she's outside looking cute and semi-glamorous when her stupid human, who doesn't have to be her soulmate, won't even look at her.
Anna huffs and shoves her hands into her hoodie pockets. She kind of understood now why all these humans cursed at God so much.
After a little while, she finds herself strolling along what looks like town streets. Arendelle seems pretty homey. Anna has always dreamed of being in the big city, but she realizes this was pretty cool as well. The town has a soft yellow-orange glow around the streets (no matter what time of day it is) during winter, and the angel can appreciate how it contrasts the now-darkening blue sky above the portly buildings.
Lost in admiring it, she doesn't realize she's bumped into a couple until she finds herself on the concrete and she hears a muffled "Hey!" from the other party.
Anna sits up and rubs her already-sore wing. "Twice in one week, damn..."
"Who are you?"
A shrill and panicked voice interrupts her thoughts and she looks up to find a girl with short brown hair and a frying pan poised above her head and strike-ready. Before she has the chance to react, the frying pan is yanked away from her by none other than Eugene, his smirk growing when he sees her.
"Hey Anna. I'm guessing it didn't really go so great?"
Anna gets up and brushes herself off, already kind of ticked at the whole situation. "It went just fine, thank you. What about you?"
The girl responds before Eugene can. "Well Flynn broke into my house and then everything sort of went downhill from there."
Eugene realizes the same thing Anna realizes because his expression morphs into panic as he quickly moves the frying pan away from the brunette.
"Wait, did you just call him Flynn?"
Anna snorts as the girl whirls around, her eyes narrowed. "What aren't you telling me?"
Eugene backs away slowly. "Nothing in particular?"
"Stop trying to run, Eugene Fitzherbert." I always did have perfect timing, Anna thinks to herself.
The aforementioned angel's eyes widen in fear. "Rapunzel, it's not what you think-"
"Oh, so you think it's okay to lie to someone you just met, about something as important as your name? What the hell, Eugene! What else haven't you been telling me?"
"Nothing, I promise that's all!"
Rapunzel pulls out another frying pan while Eugene gapes at the one in his hands. "I always carry extras, you dunce! Now, you better start running unless you have a really good excuse!"
Anna decides now is a good time to make an exit. She doesn't miss, however, the inappropriate hand gesture Eugene sends her way as she leaves, along with the glare. Anna waves and smiles, turning around.
The temporary humor does nothing to ease the growing melancholy that's nestled into Anna's heart about her own apparent soulmate.
Anna snorts, her cynicism taking over. Eugene was probably right after all. Stupid bastard.
When Elsa calms down enough to straighten out her thoughts, she decides to ignore her dilemma for now and focus on something more important, like her school work. She stares at the thick textbook in front of her, jotting random things down in a notebook. Whatever she's writing isn't clear, though. It just looks like a bunch of random squiggles.
At least from where Anna sits outside, perched precariously on the edge of a tree branch, desperately peering through the window with her cheek pressed up against the glass.
Groaning, she peels herself away from the window panes and slouches against the trunk of the tree. It was beginning to get dark out and she wasn't sure how much longer she could keep this up without catching hypothermia, falling, or bursting into tears.
Maybe she'd just do all of the above, and go back to Angel Realm. She'd tell them she'd failed and they'd give her some brand new, welcoming assignment. Or just demote her to some dumb, boring desk job where she'd have to write a lot and wouldn't be able to talk to anyone. The redhead winces. Even that's looking swell compared to this.
As if feeling the bleakness of her thoughts, the lamp inside of Elsa's room shuts off, and Anna can't see or hear anything more. She stares at the now-dark glass and her freckled reflection stares back. Her teal eyes shine with tears she refuses to let fall. Sniffling slightly, she rubs at her eyes with her fist and steels a determined look instead. I can deal with this. I can get through this, and I can do it without quitting. Idunn trusts me with this, and so I've gotta just bite the bullet and try. At least try. With that final thought, she lets out a calming breath and nods.
Sighing, she flutters down from the tree as gracefully as she can with a wounded wing and strolls along their front lawn, getting lost in observing the millions of snowflakes around her. Giggling, she decides to make use of her time.
Roughly fifteen minutes later, her masterpiece is complete. A very ugly-looking snowman with a misshapen head and two buck teeth smiles back at her, the three small branches she used for its hair waving in the wind. Anna pats down the sides of its midsection, leaning back and crossing her arms, a proud smile on her face.
"You should name him Olaf."
The voice is soft and feminine, low and sweet. Anna is so startled she leaps up a few feet and plunges face first into the snow on her way down. I've got to stop falling that way. My face can't take it. Picking herself up off of the ground, she brushes off the snow and whirls around, coming face to face with light blonde hair.
Neither of them say anything for a solid minute. Elsa takes a step back and wraps her arms around her midsection, staring at the small patch of snow between their feet.
She may not be talking to me, but that's just precious.
Anna smiles gently and takes a baby step forward. "Hey."
Elsa smiles and takes a larger step forward, her eyes still trained on the snow. Inside, Anna's heart suddenly feels like it's pounding, and her mind is flooded with a feeling of uncertainty. These must be her feelings. She steps even closer and sheds her hoodie, pulling it over Elsa's head and letting her guide her arms through the sleeves herself.
The pounding slows a little and there's a feeling of warmth blossoming in her chest. Elsa finally looks up at her, a shy, delicate smile on her face, still looking slightly pained. Anna smiles lightly in response, waiting.
Clearing her throat softly, Elsa begins to speak. "I think I owe you an apology. I didn't want to upset you, but I think I have, because there's this feeling of heavy sadness, and that feeling isn't mine. I don't know where it's coming from, but according to what I just read and researched for the past couple hours, I think it might be coming from you."
Anna tilts her head slowly, her lips forming an 'o'. She's been reading about angels?
Taking a steadying breath, Elsa goes on. "And it was dumb of me to act like I did and expect you to still be here later. Yet, here you are, and I feel so bad about that, and it's my fault you're out here in the cold-"
"It's not your fault." Anna cuts her off, her expression serious. "I get that it's not exactly considered...normal, to have an angel-human relationship like ours. But, it's not actually uncommon, either, so, like..." Anna winces at how stupid she sounds. "I guess we'll just have to start with accepting the fact that it is what it is, you know?"
Elsa nods, an heartfelt smile spreading out over her features. "Okay. And, I don't think I properly introduced myself earlier. Again, sorry about that. My name is Elsa Arendelle."
Anna laughs heartily. "Oh, believe me, I know."
Elsa giggles shyly in response, one perfectly arched eyebrow curving up. "You don't really look like a boy."
The angel strikes a pose, relieved her human is comfortable enough to joke about the situation already. "So I've been told."
a.n. I was planning on making this a one-shot. Tell me if you want it to be longer, like a two-shot or three-shot. I'm only really going to continue this if you guys think it should be continued. So, tell me what you think in a review or a PM. Thanks!