I know I promised the bonfire, and I'm sorry this isn't it. But as I was editing said bonfire, it whooshed into an uncontrollable conflagration surpassing the 5,000 word mark. I needed to break some stuff apart, so I could put it back together again. Anywho, don't own, never will, just like to take it out to play briefly. Enjoy!
She wouldn't do it. She couldn't let herself. The grainy feeling under her eyelids fought her, moment for moment, but she resisted their prickling, just like she had resisted the cold, the flurries, the wintry mix of sleet and slosh that poured from her body into her room, alone, and tired, so tired…
Elsa's head jolted up when her chin bobbed down to strike the top part of her chest.
"Ow…" she said, rubbing the crick at the base of her neck. She'd fallen asleep on the throne, again, as evening faded into night. The candles were out and the torches were snuffed, but she had not ordered the curtains drawn for the throne room.
She couldn't.
The Queen needed these precious hours before she slept, to concentrate completely on the ice shipment. The further away it sailed, the more effort she had to expend. The Southern continent had never seen such frozen quantities as she was providing, but fees would only be paid if the shipment arrived intact.
And she was the only thing keeping those blocks of ice frozen.
"You can guarantee these goods will reach my homeland? I was unaware Arrendale possessed such technologies for transport."
Elsa remembered the conversations with the emissaries, traders from farther south than previous rulers had seen fit to welcome. But the greater the distance, the greater the pay, all for the magic— that is, the icy technologies Arrendale could offer.
"You have my assurances that you will get everything you pay for, Abdul," Elsa had said. "But ice is not a constant. Especially in your climate. You cannot save it without proper storage, and, once it's delivered, it will not remain frozen beyond three days time."
Three days… she had promised them three days. The shipment had nearly run its course. Well, her projected shipment, the one that allotted for delays, the one accompanied with a contingency plan. The actual shipment should have arrived five days prior, but she had received no confirmation in missive or message from the captains of her trading fleet. And until that message came through on the talons of her homing falcon, she could devote herself only to the ice's delivery.
Knots formed in her shoulders and the tendons in her throat lunged against their skin casing. She was overwrought, overexerted, muscles taut and straining as her powers crossed oceans to fulfill political promises.
Her concentration was unshakeable. She could have been assassinated, for all the attention she paid to her physical surroundings. Elsa's mind, as well as parts of her body, her soul, her powers and her waning strength, were with the delicate bonded molecules stacked so beautifully, so coldly, leagues away. Whether in ship or port or goblet, she did not know.
She only knew exertion.
And her exertion, her effort, would save Arrendale.
Elsa was unaware of the pressure on the meaty part of her calf, the stiffened muscle being kneaded like dough in a baker's hands.
The rolling force migrated to her left leg, and she felt smooth, legato strokes of heat roam from her ankle to her knee and back again, drift over the bulging muscles behind her shin and tug, rub, squoosh. Muscular tension disintegrated at the hands of the kneeling masseuse.
"Anna—"
"How much longer?"
"Anna, I—"
"How many more days, Elsa?"
"Very few."
"I wish it were zero. You can't keep doing this to yourself."
"I must."
"No. You're wrong. You're the Queen. No one tells you what you 'must' do. You tell you what you must do."
Elsa shut her eyes and inhaled. It took more effort than she would cop to.
"That sounds like a nursery rhyme."
"Elsa, please."
The Queen took Anna's outstretched hand and rose. A stranger would have seen a woman simply standing from a rather imposing chair. But Elsa knew better. The tension was sloughing off of her like something dead: used, recycled, and reused, she wrung every ounce of power she had like a washer wrung wet linens. They would be clean and usable again, but not before some uncomfortable warping.
"Come to my chambers."
"Anna, I can't."
"Not for that. How could you even— I want to help you, Elsa. You're injuring yourself," Anna said. "Come, please."
This was not one of her finer moments. Her younger sister playing cane and crutch to the monarch-sorceress of Arrendale.
It was embarrassing.
"I didn't know it would take this much out of you," Anna mumbled.
The hallways were dark and soundless, and the carpets absorbed her voice.
"I would never have let you do it."
"Weren't you just saying that no one tells me what to do other than myself?" Elsa tried for levity.
"Except for me. You cannot do this again."
"I may have no choice, Anna. But with time, I'm sure I'll be able to channel it. The power is there, but the distance is troublesome. The climes of the lower latitudes—"
"When this is over, the only lower latitudes receiving any attention from the monarchy of Arrendale will be yours," Anna said, mischievously. "But for now, rest. Let your mind wander."
"I don't think I can. This maiden voyage is too important. I need this time to get myself together. My mind wanders only to the Southern Continent."
"You have to sleep. You'll only be worse off if you don't take a few hours."
Anna led Elsa to her bedside and pushed her down to the mattress. She turned back, shut, and locked her bedroom door.
Elsa took it all mainly because she hadn't the strength to resist. Anna kneeled and began unlacing her shoes. She slipped them from Elsa's feet, and then lumbered to the other side of the mattress to take down her hair. Anna's fingers combed through her braid and down to the button-eye hook at the nape of her neck. She undid it and slipped the gown from Elsa's arms, her torso, over her hips, and off completely. Anna did the moving for her, for Elsa was now so spent she had turned a whiter shade of pale.
Anna guided Elsa's head to the pillow, stomach-down against the plush woven blankets in her slinky shift.
And then Anna mounted her, hands on her body, squeezing, massaging the depressions between cervical and thoracic bones, traveling outwards along tight-rope muscles and stringy tendons to the lateral sides of the Queen's back. Anna was doing her best to rub away the stress, to erase the mark of steadfast attention Elsa felt compelled to maintain. In that action, devoid of anything sexual, Elsa began leaking.
She shut her lids so tightly she thought no tears could escape. But the hot, salty water sought liberation, her eyes frostbitten by sadness.
"Anna—"
"Don't, Elsa. For once in your life, let someone else do something for you."
The princess's hands traveled over her delicate deltoid and clutched at her triceps, milking the muscles of any remaining strain.
"It's my job," Elsa whispered.
Anna crouched low over her back and pressed her face into her sister's ear.
"Not now, not here. You have no job, no duty to me. You can't stop me from wanting to give. I've shown you, and I will continue showing you, though you fight me tooth and nail every time."
Elsa smiled and cried through closed lips and lids, her sister's ministrations and the pull of exhaustion overwhelming. She needed a few hours, just a few, and then back to her sentry, back to her job, because she was the one in charge, she could not falter, and it would all lead to disruption, resentment, because she was the one who messed up in the first place, so she had to fix it, didn't Anna see, she had no choice, it was all her fault, she could shoulder the blame, and maybe, just maybe, the people would look at her as more than abomination—
"Elsa, stop thinking. Just sleep."
It was the first command she had taken from someone since her coronation.
And above her, raining touches and adoration, Anna was formulating a plan.
Oh gosh, didn't mean to pour lighter fluid directly ON the thing... Reviews appreciated :)