"Elsa?" a disappointed voice, barely a whisper, snuck through the crack under the door; it made Elsa's spirit, or what was left of it, churn with self-loathing. Her only comfort, two handmade dolls, fell from lean white fingers; cold and dusted with frost, the blonde and red haired toys rolled away from Elsa. Crude likenesses of her and her sister Anna, they possessed neither eyes, nor faces. The result was a sad, dejected existence.
Like me. Elsa thought, I think… She looked at the dolls, her vision beginning to blur as tears collected in the corners of her gray blue eyes; I will always be alone too.
Only nine years old, the harsh, cold reality of the world was as clear to her as if she were looking through a window, not yet touched with the wintery fingers of frost. Her parents, they were afraid of her. Elsa's sister, Anna, who leaned now against the door, she didn't really know her.
No one knows me, Elsa thought as her tears began to spill over the delicate rim of her eyelids and cascade down her cheeks. The pain inside her raged tempestuously, screaming and howling out curses like a cruel storm about to overturn an unfortunate sailing ship.
You're a monster! It hissed maliciously; you will always be nothing more than a beast, unable to control your abilities you will turn into them. You aren't a daughter to your parents, or a sister to Anna; you are a burden!
Her emotions overcame her, the agony of everything rising to an apex and crashing over her; Elsa reached her little hands to her head, trying to shut out the voices that stirred up a tangible fear inside her. Pungent and dark, it was smeared with red, and held in its clutches a foreboding of her dismal future. Her mind flashed back to the day that she had been playing with Anna in the palace hall. . . .
Terrible things happened that day.
It was my fault, thought Elsa; if it wasn't for my curse…Anna would have been happy!
Elsa started to cry harder, her sobs shaking her entire body. She shook with convulsions of sorrow; her tears froze to her cheeks as the power within her responded with her emotions. Frost crept its way over the floor, its familiar crackle sounding like the hiss of some disturbed beast in Elsa's ears. She clamped her palms over them.
No, be quiet! She repeated to herself the chant she had been taught to use when her powers threatened to supplant her will, Don't let them in! Don't let them see! Conceal, don't feel!
"Elsa?" Anna tried one more time, "Please come out and play."
Elsa didn't respond; unable to make a sound, she sat curled in a ball, trapped in the storm that was herself.
Anna's voice came once more through the crack under the door, "Want to build a snowman?"