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The Girl and the Ice Queen
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Chapter Four
10:20AM, Classroom Block C of the Adventurer's Academy.
A short and elderly man stood in front by the blackboard, scrawling rapidly upon it with a piece of chalk while a class of thirty enterprising young students attempted to keep up. Finishing, the professor set the stub down with a resounding CLACK! and turned to face his students.
"This concludes the theory on magically enhanced persuasion." The man announced. "Your practical exam on this unit will be held two weeks from now so I highly suggest that you all get some practice before then. I'll be at the front if there are any questions, otherwise class is dismissed."
Anna gathered her belongings as people began to file out of the room. She followed suit, passively listening in on the background chatter as her classmates talked amongst themselves.
Anna checked her class schedule and sighed. Her next lecture wasn't due to begin until 11:20AM, meaning that she now had a full hour of free time on her hands to kill. What was she supposed to do until then? Study? Hah! She decided instead to wander around campus.
The Adventurer's Academy was known for its gardens, for it was situated on top of a rather tall mountain, and so had vast amounts of spare land to throw around. Why the founders had chosen such an isolated location was beyond Anna's understanding. It was so far away from Arendelle that a two-way round trip ate up the better half of the day!
The redhead walked up to her favourite bench, which was situated at the edge of a cliff. She swept off a couple rogue leaves and sat down.
From here, Anna could see everything.
She could see above and beyond the surrounding ocean of evergreens. She could also see the whole of Arendelle at its finest, with its bustling port and strong infrastructure. And lastly, way off in the distance, at the apex of another mountain even taller still, where the land was snowy all year round, she could see the Ice Queen's palace reigning supreme over the land.
Anna drank in her surroundings for some time, at peace with herself for the time being.
Of course, it didn't last long, Anna being the restless soul she was. It was a bit of a relief in fact when a nearby tree began to rustle. Anna looked up and managed to catch a glimpse of a familiar sight, to her great joy, in the form of a snowy owl flying overhead.
Anna smiled. Looks like she may well be doing some "studying" after all, because if her hunch was right... then she very soon would make a new friend. She fished out her lute from her schoolbag, readied herself to put some newly learned concepts to use, and began to play.
...
And sure enough, like a sailor enchanted by the siren's call, the owl swooped down and began to circle around overhead. For you see, the owl was actually yet another one of the Ice Queen's many autonomous snow creatures.
"Hey there buddy," Anna called out. "What're ya up to today?"
Of course, she knew it wouldn't exactly reply as it was mostly made out of magically animated snow. She also knew that the Ice Queen no doubt would've purposed an owl as a flying scout, but that was also besides the point.
"Hm, well. What's your name, then?" Anna asked, continuing to build a friendly camaraderie while strumming along on her instrument. She racked her brain for potential names, recalling many that belonged to other famous owls from literature, but none really felt right. She wanted to come up with something original.
Anna stopped strumming to enter the Thinking Man pose, the music having served its purpose, and returned her lute to its place. The owl continued to circle around in the air.
"Gee, I'm really stumped." Anna admitted after some time. She watched as the bird balanced itself onto an overhead branch with a short yet furious flippity-flap! of the wings, and that's when it hit her.
Flippyflaps.
It was terribly juvenile, but she liked it. She liked it a lot, actually.
Truth be told, "Flippyflaps" was not the silliest name she'd ever come up with before, that title belonged to something else which itself was another story entirely, but she was a child back then and therefore such behaviour was not unwarranted. To still be coming up with things like this at her current age though...
Anyhow, the bird seemed to like it, for immediately upon being named it fluttered its way off the tree and found a new perch in the form of Anna's outstretched and thankfully thickly sleeved left arm.
The two enjoyed a short silence together as Anna mentally congratulated herself on naming the bird.
She hadn't brought with her any means of precisely telling time, however, so she figured she'd best start heading back to the academy now if she were to make it to her next class on time. This meant that the two would have to part ways though, since it would never do to let anyone see Flippyflaps. Never ever. He was acreation of the Ice Queen after all. Who knows what things they'd do to him.
"Thanks for keeping me company Flippyflaps, but I gotta head out now." said Anna, giving the bird's very cold back a soft stroke. "Oh! But there's something I'd like you to do for me first."
Leaning over to her schoolbag, Anna pulled out a piece of parchment paper and very quickly scribbled something on it. She rolled it up against the bench once finished and held it out to the bird.
"Could you do me a favour and give this to the Ice Queen for me, please?" she asked.
The owl dutifully grasped the scroll and set off, flying away into the sky towards the Ice Queen's palace. Once it had become nothing more than a tiny speck in the distance, the redhead packed up her belongings and turned back to the Adventurer's Academy to attend what would probably be another very long lecture.
She groaned.
A few hours later, at the Ice Queen's palace.
The Ice Queen was in the middle of a late lunch when one of her owl scouts suddenly flew in through the balcony doors, dispensing onto her table a very damp piece of rolled up paper.
Her first thought, after realizing what had just happened, was that the sender of this message had evidently not thought of the limitations of using literal snow owls as couriers. Her second thought was along the lines of waaaait a minute, exactly how and why were her scouts being used as messengers?
She carefully and cautiously plucked the wet scroll off her table, and was even more so when unrolling it. It read, in almost illegible scrawl (water damage notwithstanding):
"Hi mommy Elsa! I'm a snow birb whose name is Flippyflaps, and I love you!"
It had taken the Ice Queen no less than half a second to realize who had authored this letter. She glanced upward at the snow owl, who had perched itself on top of the chair across from her.
She groaned.
And then laughed.
This document on my laptop is literally called "TGIQ4 new new new new" (one "new" for each rewrite).
I kept writing awkward things that I didn't like and would never publish but struggled for the longest time to do the right thing and just trash them.