Not gonna make a thing of updating every day. But I wasn't in class and I'm running on a creative high so yeah

To all of you who've given me feedback, or even just read the first chapter all the way through: Bless your faces. I hope I don't disappoint.

This chapter gets somewhat saucy towards the end~ You've been warned...


Anna had cleaned her room meticulously before Elsa's arrival, but that didn't change the fact that it was terribly overcrowded. There was about five square feet of empty floorspace, a branching path between the door, her bed, and her desk, the rest of the room stacked with books (most of them coffee table editions) and papers. Olaf's fishbowl sat on a pile of ancient algebra textbooks, conspicuously unused. He swam in broken circles around the disemboweled snowman ornament at the bottom of the bowl, never having learned to swim through its gaping stomach-hole. Anna had tried teaching him, since she read goldfish could be taught tricks somehow, but it never stuck.

I have a dumb fish. Okay. Goes with me perfectly.

Elsa, who was now properly dressed for the weather in a loose grey t-shirt and shorts, watched Olaf with rapt engagement. She wore glasses now (Anna swallowed something at the sight of them) and they kept creeping off the end of her small nose.

"So his name, it's Olaf, yes?" Elsa's eyes rolled around as Olaf darted towards the surface.

"Uh, yeah. Olaf the third," Anna mumbled, staring at anything but Elsa's downy, colorless legs, "As in, the third Olaf."

"Did something happen to the Olafs before?" Elsa began pressing a cheek to the fishbowl, squinting, as if trying to make eye contact with the fish. She somehow did it delicately enough that the bowl didn't move and Olaf didn't swim the other way.

Anna sat awkwardly on her bed, a book of Monet open in her lap and ignored. Elsa being in her room was a little stranger than she'd expected; but then she realized she'd never had anyone come in besides her parents. It made her feel dizzy, dangerous, letting this odd creature roam around in her sanctum and squint and flap its mouth at her goldfish.

"Well, you see-" Anna turned a page to look like she was still reading, "-well, we used to have this cat. Opal. She was really nasty, like, the worst…"

Elsa's eyes widened. The question of what monster would harm an innocent little fish hung in the air.

"...but yeah, that was only the first Olaf. We got rid of her after that. The second one was…uh, my fault," Anna winced, "but I was like ten at the time."

She felt, that by saying that, Elsa might think less of her. All she got was a long, pointed blink, before Elsa returned to being fascinated by the fish.

Elsa paused in her attempts to get Olaf to flap his lips back at her to twitch her mouth back and forth briefly in contemplation.

"My family, of course not in Stockholm, but my family owned many dogs, many horses when I was young," Elsa said quietly, "they were too big for me. Really. I like this Olaf."

Elsa, as willowy and pale as she was, didn't seem terribly suited to keeping horses. Or anything that involved going outside and being active. Anna assumed that her fragility and complexion came from spending too much time indoors, and as much as she'd been looking forward to showing Elsa the wilderness she decided to play a more protective role instead.

It was hard to believe, really, that Elsa was three years older than her, and a certified genius no less (she'd been hounded over the phone by Mensa the second she set foot on American soil). She was like a five-year-old. Perhaps she had some developmental disability. Anna wanted to ask how the photo of the charming, elegant princess had even come to be, but it seemed rude.

"Too big for you? How?"

That came out kinda weird, huh.

"They are...how do you say...rough?" Elsa wiped her thumb over her bottom lip.

"Oh," Anna said.

"Yes," Elsa said, "but this one is pleasing. Peaceful."

"Are you…" Anna swallowed, again, hard, between laughing and something worse, "like, a vegetarian, or something?"

"That is…?"

"Where you don't eat meat," Anna clarified, pulling not-so-subtly on her purple wristband.

"I hate cows," Elsa replied.


Elsa's first dinner at the Brenden house, the night of her second day living there, not long after the incident with the fish, was one of the many moments yet to come where Elsa endeared herself to Anna but completely alienated everyone else.

They were having spaghetti and meatballs, because Mrs. Brenden reasoned that they should have a "regular American meal" that night, and Anna was too stupefied to correct her.

"The Swedes like meatballs, right?" She'd said.

Even though Anna couldn't tell the difference between Swedish meatballs and Italian ones, that was less important than the fact that Elsa had distinctly said she hated cows. Did that mean she didn't eat them? Or that she relished eating them?

Elsa seemed to always say things without a strictly linear meaning.

They ate in silence, Elsa twirling her pasta fruitlessly around her fork, trying to gain enough leverage to bring the noodles to her mouth without getting sauce on her shirt. She blushed as she wriggled her lips in an attempt to bring outliers fully between her waiting teeth. Mr. and Mrs. Brenden looked down at their plates in pity, and Anna giggled. Elsa gave her a shy smile full of tomato sauce; it accented her flushed cheeks beautifully.

"So, Elsa," Mr. Brenden cleared his throat, "you're an engineering student, right?"

"Architecture," Mrs. Brenden corrected.

"Architecture," Elsa mumbled dryly.

"Well," he said, "well. I, uh, hear the community organizers are really lookin' forward to having you on board. Fresh viewpoints. S'like they imported some good minds from over there, eh?"

Mr. Brenden, who (in between janitorial work a couple of towns over) volunteered at the town hall, had already been acquainted with the other two boys from the institute. Kristoff and Hans, they were called. One of them was studying agriculture and the other was studying some legal practice or something. Anna didn't really figure on running into them any time soon.

"I know of Kristoff," Elsa said, "and Hans I know a small bit. He's...smart."

"Kristoff or Hans?" Mrs. Brenden reached for the pepper discreetly.

"Hans. He is-what is the word? A grass something."

"Grass something?" Anna leaned forward. Elsa was looking back at her the moment the phrase finally came to her tongue.

"A grass in the snake," she said.

"You mean…" Mr. Brenden's mouth flopped open and closed. He wasn't going to finish that sentence. Minnesota nice prevailed.

"A grass in the snake," Anna repeated, twirling her spaghetti again.

Even when she's being mean she's adorable.

"Hans' family are friends of my family. I do not like his...entitlement. Throws his pearls in front of pigs." Elsa grimaced. Anna's parents exchanged a private look of exacerbated discomfort and began discussing weekend plans. Anna wrinkled her nose and snorted like a pig. Elsa looked up from fumbling with her meal.

"Such sass. You're too much." Anna whispered. Elsa gave another lopsided smile, and she could see more of her teeth this time.

"What?" Her parents chimed in unison.

"Oh," Anna blinked, looking between the three of them, "too much. Uh, sauce, I mean," that didn't sound gay as hell, "Elsa, if you use that much...sauce, you noodles are gonna go everywhere."

Smear it on her chest, and she'd make a great Rousseau.

"Hmm. But the strings are dry," Elsa murmured, eyes glinting only when they passed Anna's, "you have strange ketchup in this country."

"That's spaghetti sauce, dear," Mrs. Brenden corrected."We've, uh, got ketchup, though, if you need?"

Elsa looked as if she was pondering something deeply important.

"Anna has said, I think, and that it is true, I have too much already."

"Too much what?"

"Sauce."


.

Such sauce