Woo, more ultra-fast updates compared to normal. I'm making myself sound like a liar... ha. Oh well
EDIT: I knew this AN was too short. Ha, ha... forgot to reply to reviews. Sorry, everyone.
MantaI-305Apollo'sChariot: Yay, you came! ^_^ You're the real reason I started posting this, I'll admit. I'm glad you like Letha; I like her too ;3 It's natural to like the villain-ish one.
Elsa Tomago: I didn't think about that, to be perfectly honest. And yes, Agdar is unfair, but he's also scared for his daughters - all three of them, believe it or not - and for his kingdom and people. {Does he know about - you know, what Letha found?} Oh. Maybe he does. I haven't thought about that. Ha, that would explain it, though. But that's enough teasing for now.
QueenOfIcelandia: Guess you'll have to read on and find out, won't you?
Enchiladas: Yay! I love it when someone leaves a comment like that in their review XD It always makes me so happy when people like my work.
Letting it Go: Letha is very understandable, but things get worse after this. That is kind of what Letha is, isn't it? Though I must admit that's not where it started. You'll see what I mean by that later. (I only replied to the review on the last chapter, btw.)
Word count: 2,244
Seven years later
Elsa glanced up as Anna flounced into the room, smiling at her little sister's antics. "Hey, Elsa," Anna greeted her, plopping herself down in a chair and leaning forward to look at the papers the queen was examining. "What's up now?"
"The same as the past few days... nothing interesting." She set them aside. "Did you want something?"
"Nothing in particular," Anna admitted. "Just kinda wanted the excuse to talk. You're awfully busy these days."
"Such is the life of a queen," Elsa sighed, leaning back and rubbing her eyes. She'd been sleeping less and less at night, and it wasn't just because of the paperwork. Old memories were coming back to haunt her recently, although she wasn't sure what was bringing them forward in her mind.
When she opened her eyes again, Anna was watching her, concerned. "You okay?"
"Fine," Elsa assured her. "Just a little tired. Strange dreams."
"You too, huh?" her sister mused, leaning one elbow against the table and tipping her head until she was looking at Elsa sideways. "I don't know why, but recently I keep thinking about... um." She bit her lip. "I mean, old stuff keeps coming up in my head. A lot. Like I said, there's no real reason for it, but for the last few days, I can't stop thinking about..." She trailed off again.
For a long time, the subject had been forbidden, so even when Elsa guessed, her voice came out in a hoarse whisper. "Letha." Anna glanced up at her, surprised. "Me too. I keep seeing her face in my dreams... like she was right before she -" She glanced up at the door, as if afraid someone might overhear. Hearing nothing, but knowing that the walls had ears in a place like this, she finished, "Before she died."
Silence stretched out for a moment. Both of them knew that was a lie, but it was a lie that had been kept up for years. Letha hadn't died, that they knew of. She had simply disappeared one night, vanishing like a ghost, and no one had been able to find her. But their father hadn't wanted to admit that he'd simply lost one of his daughters, and so the kingdom had been told that she'd fallen ill, to excuse her disappearance from her frequent place at the windows, where she had been visible. When none of the quiet search parties he sent out came up with any results, the public story was that the illness had been fatal, but no one else had caught it. The kingdom had grieved for their princess, but Elsa always got the feeling that very few people had actually cared very much – and why should they? They had two princesses left over, one of whom always had been the heir anyway, and Letha had never made much of an impact on the general populace. She hadn't been able to, even if she'd wanted to. Elsa was fairly sure that most of the kingdom had all but forgotten the second sister's existence. She herself had felt the loss the most keenly, of course – Letha had been her only companion in her years of solitude. Anna felt the blow as well. But everyone else seemed to barely notice.
After Elsa's coronation, a couple weeks after the Great Thaw, Elsa and Anna had sat down together and, for the first time in years, they had openly discussed their missing sister. At first Anna had wanted to tell the kingdom the truth, but after several minutes of debating, they had decided together that they would leave the existing story in place. There was no point in bringing out the truth just to cause a stir, since both of them accepted that if Letha were going to come back, by now she would have. Wherever she was, all they could hope was that she was happy with the life she'd chosen.
Shaking herself back to the present, Elsa heard Anna ask softly, "Do you think it means something?"
She sighed. "I think it means we're both thinking about the past too much. Letha is gone. There's no point in agonizing over it."
Anna nodded, but she didn't look convinced. "Elsa," she whispered, leaning closer, "what if we could find her? What if she's still out there somewhere, and -"
"She made her choice," Elsa said firmly, too softly for anyone but Anna to possibly hear. "It was her decision. No one forced her hand. Now it's up to us to keep Arendelle safe and in order. If she wants to find us, she knows where we are. We've talked about this."
Anna nodded again, looking subdued. "I know. You're probably right. I just... mm. I don't know. It's strange." She sighed and opened her arms, and Elsa leaned over to give her sister a hug. "I love you, Elsa," she murmured.
"I love you too, Anna."
After Anna had left, Elsa tried to go back to her paperwork, but she couldn't focus. Instead, she repeatedly found herself staring out the window at Arendelle, her mind wandering to a pair of pale blue eyes and choppy, near-white hair streaked with black.
Up on the North Mountain, Kristoff pulled a block of ice free of the water below and heaved it up onto the surface of the lake. He pushed it along to the next harvester, pausing for a moment in his work as the last hummed notes of the song that kept them all in rhythm died away and wiping his brow. Despite how cold it was up this high even in the summer months, he was still overly warm from the work.
Without warning, a cold wind gusted across the lake, chilling him and his fellow workers in seconds despite layers of protective clothing. All of them shivered and looked up, and Kristoff heard uneasy muttering. The same wind howled through the tops of the trees, rattling their branches and producing a sound eerily akin to laughter. Shadows swooped across the ice as clouds swept through the sky, hiding the sun. Although there had been no sign of snow this morning, it took only seconds before crystalline flakes were falling fast and thick, whipped up by the winds that continued to grow in ferocity.
The ice harvesters had all stopped by now, staring through slitted eyes at the storm that had come out of nowhere. Their mutters turned to cries above the wind, a name that had long since been feared and respected by everyone who walked the North Mountain. A name that had recently seemed to lose its bite, but which was spoken now with all the fear it had ever been accompanied by: "Snow Queen!"
Kristoff knew this couldn't be Elsa's work. There was no reason for her to do this. But he also knew this was no natural storm. Storms had been known to blow up on the mountain without warning, but this kind of ferocity felt... pointed. Directed. Angry. Either way, the workers were scattering now, fleeing whatever way they could, fighting the sudden storm. "Sven!" he called, struggling to raise his voice above the storm. "Sven!"
A shape in the blinding snow – this was quickly turning into a whiteout. The reindeer's familiar antlers butted the wind, driving forward to get to his friend. Kristoff flung his arms around Sven's neck and said into his ear, "We gotta get out of here, buddy."
The reindeer snorted and turned, barely giving the man time to get up onto his back before dashing headlong down the slope, as fast as he could without tumbling forward or running straight into trees. Strangely, as the two made it into the woods, the storm didn't abate – rather, it became stronger, only strengthening Kristoff's fears that this tempest was of unnatural origin. But the two made it out of the trees and down the mountain, and the storm's fury slowly faded, until Sven slowed to a stop, sides heaving as Kristoff slid to the ground.
"Thanks, buddy," Kristoff breathed, and Sven grunted in response, all he could manage so out of breath from the chase. The two both turned to look up at the mountain.
The snow clouds were dissipating, but Kristoff knew their impact on the men and women would not do the same. They would be frightened – and, once they had tallied their losses, angry. There would be a few who would argue the storm was just a freak event, but by and large, the people who made their living off the mountain were a superstitious lot. They would be quick enough to believe this was the doing of magic, and there was only one person with magic capable of such a storm that Kristoff knew of: Queen Elsa.
Still, he could hear people calling to each other, trying to regroup. He joined them, trying to find everyone who had been on the lake. Once that was done, he would hurry to the castle, try to get to the queen before the others could, to warn her and figure out what had actually happened. There was little doubt in his mind that that storm had not been natural, but he also didn't think it was Elsa's doing. Whatever the case, first he had to focus on finding out who had been lost to the sudden storm.
Elsa turned as Anna slammed open the door and gasped between pants, "Kristoff's downstairs... said it was important."
The poor girl had obviously run all the way here; if Kristoff wanted to see Elsa, it must have been important indeed. The queen scared him a little, more because of her stern outlook on his courting her sister than because of her powers. He wouldn't have called her for a trivial matter. Elsa closed the books immediately and came to her feet. "I'm coming."
A few minutes later, she was pacing the room. Despite the fire going in the hearth, the air had a notable chill to it. "What do you mean, it wasn't normal?" she asked, for the second or third time.
"I mean, it came out of nowhere, and it seemed... directed. When we got into the trees, instead of the wind dying down like it should have, it got stronger." Kristoff raised his hands helplessly. "All I'm saying is, the ice harvesters are nervous, and they're going to be here any minute wanting answers. They know an unnatural storm when they see one."
She gave him a sideways look, coming to a halt. "You think they'll blame me."
"Pretty sure. I mean, you are the only one with ice powers. That we know of," he added quickly as she narrowed her eyes.
Elsa put her fingers to her temples and for the first time noticed that the others' breath was misting a little in the air as the temperature dropped. She sighed and reined in her magic with a little difficulty, and the room warmed again. "I didn't do this."
"We know," both Anna and Kristoff hurried to assure her. Anna added, "Maybe it was just a freak storm? They do happen occasionally..."
Kristoff shook his head. "I don't think so. I've seen flash blizzards before, but never anything like this. And it faded as soon as we were away from the top of the mountain. Elsa, I just... we lost three men and a woman up there. They were good people, people who knew how to survive in a blizzard, but I don't think they made it through this one."
Silence reigned as each of the three struggled with their own thoughts. Elsa knew the angered workers would soon arrive, but she simply didn't know what to say to ease their fears. "Kristoff," she said slowly, "do you think you can keep them calm? Just for a little while... just while we try to figure this out."
He shrugged. "I can try, but I can't promise anything."
She nodded gratefully. "Do what you can, please. And – could I speak with Anna alone for a moment?"
Kristoff gave her a strange look, but he nodded and escaped through the door.
The sisters stared at each other, neither one knowing what to say.
Anna finally broke the silence. "You don't think..."
"It can't be," Elsa replied.
"But if it is?"
"It's not."
"Elsa." Anna's eyes shone with worry. "You have to admit... it's an odd coincidence."
"And that's all it is," Elsa said, trying to convince herself as well as Anna. "A coincidence. Nothing more." Silence again. Then she added quietly, "Anna, even if I wanted to believe it – and I'm not sure I do – she could never control it. She could never summon it at will, not more than a snowflake or an icicle. Not even when we were little. She could never do something like this, even if she tried."
Anna sighed. "You're sure?"
Elsa bit her lip. "Yes," she said, not sounding sure at all.
Anna gave her a sideways look, but shook her head and ignored the lie. "All right. I trust you. But Elsa, if you're wrong..."
The queen set her jaw. "If I'm wrong, then I'll take the blame," she vowed. "And I'll explain to the people."
High up on the North Mountain, watching the scene in an orb of ice, someone laughed – a cruel, cold sound like ice breaking. "That, my dearest Elsa," a voice said, amused, "will be quite a job."
I apologize for the slightly abrupt ending; there's a slightly abrupt beginning to the next chapter as well. As I have mentioned previously (I think), this is pre-written, and not pre-broken up, so I'm trying to find the best places to do it.
Reviews, please! Thanks for reading, and I'll see y'all next time!
