Two years later, Elsa and I were just getting ready for bed. I was brading my little sister's hair, which turned out to be a platinum blonde color, when she gasped and darted to the window. "Elsa, what is it?" I asked worriedly, joining her.
"Sky's awake!" she exclaimed, pointing outward. My eyes followed her finger until they fell upon the night sky. Sure enough, blue, green, and purple lights danced among the stars.
"The sky isn't awake," I giggled. "Those are the Northern Lights. They say the spirits of people who leave us make up the lights, so they let their loved ones know they're not alone. But it's really just a natural wonder."
"Wonder..." Elsa mumbled, trying the word out. She smiled. "Wonder!" she repeated. "Wonder, wonder, wonder!" My sister raced out of our room, chanting the word over and over.
"Elsa, come back here!" I ordered, but I couldn't help laughing as I said it. Darting after her, I called her name and told her to come back, but Elsa tried to make a game out of it. She thought we were playing tag, so I stopped chasing her once we reached the end of the hall.
"Well, I'm going to bed," I announced. "If you want to get caught by Kai and Gerda, be my guest..." Elsa, not wanting to be caught by our parent's servants, immediately rushed back to me and threw her arms around me. "Sorry, Julie," she said sadly.
"It's alright," I chuckled, hugging her back. "Now, let's get back to-" My sentence was cut short when I witnessed a most unbelievable sight. "Hey... Elsa?" I asked her. "You see the snow too, right?" My sister turned around and gasped. Snowflakes coated the floor of the hall and continued to fall from the ceiling.
"Snow!" she cried out giddily, dancing under the flakes.
"Elsa, get away from there," I warned. "I don't know what's going on..."
"It's snowing, silly!"
"Yeah, indoors." Elsa stopped. Even a two-year-old knows it's not supposed to snow inside. She stared at her hands, then scrunched her face up as if in deep concentration. What I saw was absolutely unbelievable, but it was real.
A blue blast of light shot from Elsa's hands. It hovered in the air for a moment, and then dispersed into tiny snowflakes, which fell alongside the other ones. Elsa gasped. "It's... me," she managed, her voice hoarse with fear.
"Elsa..." I began, starting to walk over. The floor and the walls, due to how afraid my sister was, were starting to ice over. When Elsa saw the ice, she began to cry. "Elsa, it's going to be okay..." I soothed, reaching out my hand to hold hers, but she pulled away. "No!" she shouted between sobs. "I don't... I don't want to... hurt you..."
Seeing my sister like this almost made me cry myself. "I'm going to get Mama and Papa, okay?" I told her tearfully. "Just stay here and don't move." Gulping, Elsa nodded.
When our parents finally got to the scene, Elsa was still sobbing into her hands, and spikes of ice began to slowly form and protrude through the wall. No matter what my parents tried, there was no calming her down. Finally, and idea popped in my head. "Elsa?" I asked tentatively. "We're... we're going to play a game, okay?"
"A g-game?" Elsa choked out.
"Yeah. With all this snow, we can... well... we could build a snowman." The tears seemed to vanish from my little sister's eyes as excitement replaced them. "But I don't know how," she confessed.
"Then I'll show you." I walked, confidently but cautiously, toward Elsa. Elsa eyed me warily, making sure she didn't hurt me. Kneeling in front of her, I made a little ball of snow. "Now you just make the ball bigger and bigger, until it's big enough for a head and body," I explained. "And then you put them all together..."
My parents laughed as Elsa rolled around in the snow, trying to make the snowman's head. The finished result was a lopsided snowman without a nose (which we had named Olaf), but it was also my sister's fear fading into oblivion. Mission accomplished.