Elsa looks down the coastline towards the trees. There's a fire burning there in those trees, red flames rising hot and hard against the snowfall around it. She can smell the fire on the wind sweeping down towards her. She looks down at the water she stands ankle deep in. But it isn't water at all, but it is thick and black, like oil. She steps back onto the rocky sand, her feet and dress covered in the black, oozing thickness. A sudden, awful feeling rises from within her stomach, up to her throat. She can taste that feeling, sitting in her mouth and threatening to strangle her.

She hears a strange shouting to her right, a man's voice crying out for something, but in words that she can't make out. She looks down towards his shouting and sees a black figure running towards her, bearing fire in his right hand and roaring monstrously. Elsa tastes fear inside of her and moves backwards, stumbling on her own feet. Her heart thunders in her chest, threatening to free itself from her ribcage.

Then it's over. The same way that it always is. Elsa wakes up safe in her bed in her home. She has the covers twisted in her grasp, and her breath tears at the silence of the night. Her chest heaves and she runs a hand through her sweaty, matted hair. She sighs and lies back in her bed. The dream is always the same – one of only two dreams that she can ever remember having. The second dream is far more pleasant, until the waking hour when she is shaken from her dozing and realizes what it means.

She slips out from under her covers and walks to the bathroom, adjoining her bedroom with her sister's. Slowly opening the door she sees Anna's sleeping form in bed, her mouth opened and drool spilling slowly onto the pillow. Elsa can't help but laugh a little before she closes the door again and smiles to herself. This is the way it is at night for her. She turns on the water in the sink and draws her hair back. She leans in and takes a few quick gulps before turning it off and returning to bed.

She knows that in a few hours her alarm will go off and she'll make her way downstairs to eat breakfast. Anna will already be sitting at the counter, smiling at her over a bowl of cereal. Her mother and father will come down just as Anna leaves for school, and they'll all say their goodbyes. The house will empty out – save for Elsa, and the day will get underway. She crawls back into bed and pulls the covers up to her throat. She can still see the man with his fire, running at her.

Elsa pours herself cereal and milk in silence, looking around the kitchen with the tiniest bit of confusion in her mind. She can hear Anna upstairs doing something in her room, but she hasn't come down yet which is most unlike her. Anna's first alarm buzzes at 6 am, and then again every five minutes until she finally wakes up at 6:30, but Elsa checks the clock on the microwave and now it's nearly 7.

She's going to be late for class. Elsa thinks to herself as she fishes a spoon out of the silverware drawer. She considers going upstairs to get her sister briefly. Nope. Nope. No way at all. Not doing that. She thinks of the last time she wandered into Anna's bedroom in the morning – that time looking for a spare toothbrush because she had dropped her own on the bathroom floor, and there's no way she was using that. What she was met with was Anna wearing almost nothing and sitting upright in bed. Elsa still got scarlet at that memory. Eventually Anna comes bounding down the staircase, taking them two by two and running right into her sister.

"Oh! Hey! What's up? How're you?" She asks with an effervescent tone. Elsa smiles warmly and Anna steps forward, closing the distance with a sort of practiced ease. Elsa looks down at her smiling little sister a little bit awkwardly. Anna removes the cereal bowl from her sister's grasp.

"Uhm…" Elsa stammers. Anna presses her body against her older sister's and places her hands on the taller girl's shoulders.

"Yeah?" Anna prompts, getting onto her tiptoes and kissing her sister on the lips. She does it at first like calmly, sweetly, with tiredness in her eyes. Then she does it faster, harder. Like a freight train barreling into an obstacle. Elsa's eyes go wide, and her hands wrap around her younger sister.

Anna presses against Elsa, forcing her up against the counter. Elsa smiles into the kiss. Her younger sister tastes like toothpaste concealing morning breath, and it's the most magnificent thing that Elsa can imagine. When she and Anna pry themselves apart, just a little bit, enough only to breathe, Elsa has tears pooling in her eyes.

"What is it?" Anna asks. Then – again – Elsa wakes up in her own. This is the second dream, the much more delightful of the two – as far as Elsa figures it. They rarely happen like that, each of them in the same night. Elsa looks dully at the clock on her bedside table, and sees its red numbers barely two minutes off of the time her alarm goes off. She stares at the bright display until the alarm goes off, like an emergency signal for a natural disaster. She sighs and reaches out to the alarm button, turning it off.

"I've been having these…dreams, lately. They're so real, they feel so real, that I can't tell if they're dreams or not." Elsa says, staring up at the ceiling, holding her hands up in front of her face, looking at her palms. Anna sits on her bed, while Elsa leans back in the chair that sits at her sister's desk. Anna, her fiery red hair in two braids running down either shoulder. She's got her school books and several sets of notes spread out around her.

"Dreams?" She asks. Elsa looks down at her younger sister, barely even being aware that she had been talking. "OF what?" Anna asks. She chews on the end of her pen, nibbling on the button. She looks at her sister with a sort of piqued interest, the same way she always looks at her sister, like nothing she could say would be boring, or not worth the time. Elsa smiles.

"The ocean. Forests. Just regular stuff." She looks around a little awkwardly, not wanting to continue this line of conversation. "So what're you doing?" She pushes the chair over to Anna's bed and looks at the homework. She bends over the papers and the homework and starts listing off all of the things that she has to do. However, Elsa looks over at just the wrong moment, and gets a perfect look right down Anna's blouse. She blushes and only catches some of the words.

"-and I need to figure out what exactly Foster Wallace was talking about, but it's all so dense and uuuugh!" Anna falls back on her bed with her hands over her eyes. "I just can't do all of this." Elsa smiles sadly. Her sister is taking a full 6 classes of AP classes in her final year of high school, with the mad desire of getting into an ivy league university next year. Elsa shrugs, ignoring her sister's legs and her sister's neck and the taper of he sister's chest.

"You'll do fine. Look, just try using Sparknotes to get a guide. Here!" Elsa grabs the pen out of Anna's hand – previously in her mouth – and takes the book off of the bed. She reads it briefly, more like scanning it, and begins underlining. She's done all of this before, she had the same class as her younger sister in her own senior year. Anna looks down at her work, fast and brief.

"What're you doing?" Anna asks. Elsa smiles up to her.

"Highlighting pertinent information." Elsa says. She finishes up and hands the book back to her sister. Anna looks at it and her eyes widen, and a smile cracks her face.

"Augh! You're so smart! Why didn't you go to Yale or something?" Anna demands. Elsa looks down at all the books. She recognizes each of them and spent her own long nights studying their many words. Anna turns the smile down a bit. "I mean…seriously?" Elsa smiles at her sister again.

I wanted to stay with you. "I wanted to take a little break, Anna – it wouldn't be a bad idea for you. And…I don't know…once I was done I just decided to stick with the university in town." I thought maybe I'd get the courage up to tell you how I feel. Elsa looks at Anna with a little smile and an even smaller shrug. Anna cocks an eyebrow.

"Is it a boy?" She asks with a little spring in her voice. Elsa flushes. "Oh! It is! Oh gosh! Who?" Anna demands, hopping to the edge of the bed and grabbing Elsa's hands. At once Elsa's mind races. She's been caught up in this before – having to lie to her baby sister about what she's doing. A few months ago when she ran off on her own for a few days to try and get her head right Anna had (of course) found her. Elsa had rented out an old hotel room and was lying on the bed when Anna knocked at the door.

If it's Anna, I tell her everything. Every last bit of it. Then I leave her alone. Accept a scholarship or something. Leave mom and dad to do whatever they're doing. She opened the door, and there stood Anna, tears in her eyes. At once she reached out and threw herself around her sister. I can't tell her. Elsa's memory snaps away and she's back with her sister in her room doing homework.

"It's not a boy, Anna." Elsa says. "I've never even dated anyone." This much is certainly true. It's only ever been her sister – for 21 years it's only ever been Anna. I could kiss her right now. Just once. Just this once. But she doesn't. The air in the room settles into a comfortable haze. Time seems to speed on, uncaring for the tasks at hand or the collective busyness of all parties concerned. Anna falls asleep as Elsa begins to doze in the chair. It isn't normal – this strange routine. Just before Elsa leaves, just before she finds her way to her own room, she stops at Anna's bed.

Anna's chest rises and falls slowly, her feet spread out over the books and notes she had been examining. With tired eyes Elsa begins to clean around her little sister, silently moving books around and stowing things on the desk. She shifts Anna's weight slightly and pulls the sheet up to her chin. Satisfied with her work, she takes a step back and looks at her baby sister. Her bare shoulders are dotted with freckles, like her cheeks. Her braids will be a messy nest by the time morning comes.

Kiss her. As she leaned down, brushing her braid over her shoulder, Elsa thought that she might be making a mistake. As she places a hand on the bed to steady herself, Elsa's breath catches in her throat. As her lips brush, just a little, against her sister's she considers that perhaps this is wrong. But now, as she kisses her sister just a little bit harder, she considers only one thing: she would kill me if she woke up.

Elsa cuts off the kiss and makes her way back into her room, and into her own bed. She throws the sheets over her head, and curls into a ball. She's numb, for only a moment, before that numbness gives way to a bending in her heart. She clenches her teeth, and feels tears pooling in her eyes. Don't cry. Don't cry. But she does. She lets slip a few tears, before quieting the sadness within her. Keep it in. Anna will hear. Anna will know. She repeats this to herself, pushing back one final thought, not wanting to consider it.

I kissed Anna.

A.N. You know how it is. Read and review. Thank you very much – and all of that.

-AT