The snow crunched under Elsa's heels as she ran. It was the first time she'd experienced such fear in years. The wind was picking up around her and she took a deep breath, willing her emotions under control. She paused for a moment to regain her bearings, and the storm inside her calmed. The air stilled.
It had been a long time since Elsa's powers had gotten the better of her. Out in the mountains it was only her, and she rarely felt strong enough emotion to cause a break in her control. In fact, it had been so long since she'd had problems controlling herself that Elsa had begun to believe that she'd finally mastered her powers completely. Yet here they were again, rising up unbidden at the first sign of fear. Perhaps there was no hope for her after all.
Elsa glanced back over her shoulder, but luckily the girl had not followed her. She didn't know what had possessed her to intervene like that. She knew what could have happened if she'd been spotted. The last thing she needed was for someone to see her using her powers. There would be a witch hunt within the week. Else had managed to live undisturbed in the mountains for years, and that was how she would prefer it stayed.
Yet she hadn't been able to help herself. Something had stirred within her when she'd seen that helpless young girl get attacked. She'd felt almost protective. After all, was she just supposed to let the poor girl die? Not that it wouldn't serve her right. What kind of idiot went wandering about in the mountains alone? Besides me, Elsa thought to herself.
But she and the wolves had reached an understanding long ago. It had happened on one of her first journeys into the forest. She'd been attacked as well, but she'd been perfectly able to defend herself. Ever since they'd gotten a taste of what her powers could do, the wolves had steered clear of her and she of them. She almost never interfered in their hunting. But then, she almost never saw other humans this far up the mountain either.
In truth though, she had wandered a bit farther down than she usually did this morning. Normally Elsa would have stayed closer to the castle, but she had been lost in thought and not paying attention to where her feet were taking her. Sometimes she walked for hours. She had nothing else to do, and the cold, empty halls of her castle became unbearable if she stayed in for too long. Still, Elsa reminded herself, it was for the best. It was the only way to make sure she didn't hurt anyone else.
And anyway, murderers weren't supposed to lead happy lives.
She still remembered that night. It still haunted her dreams, sometimes to the point where she wouldn't sleep for days. Anna was dead and she, Elsa, was still alive. It was proof enough that the world wasn't fair.
Elsa didn't often let her mind drift back to the past these days, but that was where her thoughts took her now. For some reason, she found herself oddly nostalgic. She wondered what her parents were doing and whether they ever thought about her. She wondered if they'd ever had other children. After all, with both Elsa and Anna gone, the kingdom would be in need of an heir. They'd all be better off without Elsa on the throne anyway. She was not the type of leader any country deserved to be saddled with.
Elsa flicked her wrist absentmindedly as she walked, the snow swirled around her, this time at her command. She watched it with a faint smile on her face, enjoying the feeling of control. As she watched her snowflakes fall, an old memory bubbled its way up to the surface of her mind.
Elsa's strange powers hadn't been obvious from the time she was born, but they had made their presence known when she was still very young. It had been a clear spring day and Elsa had been four years old. As was the normal state of affairs, she was tottering around the castle with the shadow that was her baby sister close behind. Anna's chubby legs were still a bit slow and uncoordinated at the tender age of two, but Elsa always stopped and waited patiently for her younger sister to catch up.
This particular day found them in the hall outside of their shared bedroom. They'd been out there for hours, playing all manner of pretend (or rather Elsa had been playing pretend and explaining most of what was going on to her baby sister). Elsa delighted in having a playmate. She had been skeptical at first when Anna had appeared on the scene. The baby had been small and wrinkly and rather useless, and she'd monopolized all of their parents' time. Yet now that Anna was learning to walk and talk, the two had become almost inseparable.
They were playing knights now. Elsa had started out with the intent that they would both be enemy knights locked in an epic duel, but Anna had proved that she had no code of honor and had simpy taken to whacking Elsa with her stick-sword with reckless abandon, even though that wasn't how you were supposed to play sword fight.
So Elsa had relented. Anna was the knight and Elsa was her trusty steed. The two went barreling down the hall, both giggling madly as Elsa raced about with Anna on her back.
"Faster horsey!" Anna shouted, hugging Elsa tighter around the neck.
At her sister's request, Elsa began to pick up speed, but in the process she leaned too far forward. Before she knew it, they were both toppling over. Elsa shrieked and put her hands out in front of her to brace for the fall, but to her surprise something cushioned it.
She sat up and blinked, glancing over at Anna, who had rolled off of Elsa's back to land next to her. There were snowflakes in their hair, Elsa realized. Somehow they had landed in a snowbank.
Anna didn't seem phased by the impossibility of the circumstance. "Do it again!" she said excitedly, looking at her sister with wide, excited eyes.
Elsa didn't even know how she'd done it the first time, but she tried to comply with Anna's request. Screwing up her face in concentration, she tried to replicate the magic she'd just performed. It took a few tries, but finally another pile of fresh, fluffy snow appeared before them.
Young as they were, the trifling matter of where the magic had come from or what it meant did not concern them. They only knew that it was snowing in their hallway, and they were going to take advantage of that fact.
It was over an hour before anyone happened upon them. One of the household staff had found them, and in her alarm had called for their parents. Both girls had been confused by the maid's frightened reaction. They'd only been having a bit of fun.
Their parents arrived minutes later with matching looks of shock and fear on their faces. Though she had been young at the time, Elsa had never forgotten that look.
Anna was shivering by this point and her lips had turned slightly blue. Elsa had failed to realize that the cold affected her little sister in a way it did not affect her. Anna had come down with a cold, and she and Elsa had not been able to play together for almost a week. In that time, their parents had spoken to Elsa almost non-stop about her powers and their dangers and implications. They told her to be careful and to use them as little as possible.
Yet the moment Anna was better, all she'd wanted was to see Elsa's ice magic again and, though her parents had warned Elsa against it, that incident became the first of many secret snowball fights and midnight romps in the snow.
Elsa could feel a strange wetness on her cheeks. She touched her fingers to them and realized that at some point she'd started crying. She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. It never paid for her to dwell in the past for too long. It only made the return to her cold and bitter present all the more difficult.
She'd loved her powers once, long ago, but that had been before they'd betrayed her. It had been back when she could share them with Anna, the only other person who seemed to love Elsa's snow and ice as much as Elsa did. But Elsa's powers had betrayed them both in the end, and there was no going back from that.
It took Anna a bit of time to regain her bearings. She could feel the cold snow seeping into her dress, but she felt as though she were frozen in place and unable to get back up. Even after she'd finally managed to stand, it took some time before her hands would stop shaking. She'd known that being on her own in the mountains might be dangerous, but there was nothing like first hand experience. She couldn't even believe how lucky she was to be alive.
Anna decided that the best thing to do for the moment would be to get out of the forest as quickly as possible, lest that pack of wolves change their mind and come back for another round. Brushing the excess snow off of her dress, she began walking again, though now feeling considerably more ill at ease.
She walked on for another twenty minutes or so without incident. She was just starting to relax a bit when she became aware of a strange noise in the distance, a sort of loud thump. As she moved toward the source of disturbance, Anna became aware of another sound as well. It sounded like someone grunting with effort. It was a human voice.
Anna was so excited by the prospect of finding another human being, she nearly forgot that she had a reason to be wary of them. She slowed her pace and made her way carefully toward the source of the noises, keeping out of sight behind the trees as best she could. It wasn't long before she found what she was searching for.
He was a young man, perhaps a year or two older than she was, with shaggy blond hair. The thumping sound was coming from the axe he held. He was swinging repeatedly at the tree in front of him, obviously intent on felling it. Beside him was some kind of large, antlered animal; a moose or an elk or something like it. Anna was too far away to be certain.
Anna watched him for a few more minutes, her face barely peeking out from behind a tree. He was the first man her age she'd seen in practically her entire life. Before she could stop it, the thought that he was rather attractive rose unbidden to her mind, and she felt a bit of a blush creeping into her cheeks. Shaking her head to clear it of these thoughts, Anna watched the young man work for a minute longer before she decided he most likely meant her no harm. He probably wasn't even from Arendelle. His gruff (and slightly unwashed) demeanor actually suggested that he lived up in the mountains, or at least spent a good deal of time there. It was possible he might be able to point her in the direction of a nearby town.
"Excuse me," Anna called, making her way toward the young man. He didn't seem to hear her though, and continued hacking away at the tree without turning around. Anna tried again, a bit louder this time, "Excuse me!"
The young man started and whipped around with a cry of "Woah!" He raised the axe over his head as if ready to strike, and Anna backed up a bit, hands up in a defensive position. The young man relaxed a moment later. He lowered his axe and began rubbing his temple with his free hand.
Anna resisted the urge to giggle at his over reaction. Instead she smiled a bit and said, "Sorry."
The young man looked up, obviously still a bit shaken. "I could have taken your head off. Don't you know better than to sneak up on people like that? Were you raised in a barn or something?"
Anna was a bit indignant. "No I-" she opened her mouth to quip about how she'd actually been raised in a castle, but Gerda's words of warning echoed in her head. "-I wasn't," she finished lamely. The young man shifted his eyes back and forth for a moment, as though trying to decide if Anna was crazy.
"Okay then...well what are you doing way out here? This isn't really the best place to be wandering around on your own," he said.
"Well you're out on your own," Anna pointed out.
He seemed offended by this. "I happen to know these mountains like the back of my hand," he said haughtily, "and besides, I'm not alone. I've got Sven here with me." He patted the antlered animal beside him, which Anna now identified as a reindeer.
"...Uh huh," she said, clearly unimpressed. "Anyway, I'm just...passing through. I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the nearest town."
The young man quirked an eyebrow at this. "No one is 'just passing through' these mountains," he said.
Anna huffed, "Well I am, and if you're not going to help me I'll just be on my way," she made to stalk back off in the direction she'd come. but he called after her.
"Wait, I'm sorry," he apologized, though he was obviously somewhat amused by her outburst, "My name's Kristoff by the way."
Anna turned back around to face him, arms crossed against her chest. "Anna," she said curtly. She figured it was a common enough name that it wouldn't set off any alarm bells.
"So where are you headed, Anna?" he asked, dropping his axe and dusting his hands off.
"Anywhere," she responded, "The nearest town or city."
Kristoff gave a nod of understanding. "Running away from home, eh?" he asked. Anna thought it best not to correct him. He was essentially right anyway.
Instead she changed the subject, "So what are you doing all the way up here?"
"Lumberjack," he said, gesturing toward the tree he'd been hacking away at. "Not the most glamorous job, but it pays the bills."
Anna nodded, not sure of what else to say, and he went on, "When I was younger I was actually training to be an ice salesman, but well..." he gestured towards the snowy mountaintop to emphasize his point. "Anyway firewood's what sells nowadays; supply and demand and all that."
Anna nodded again. Having never worked a day in her life she couldn't exactly understand what he meant, but she could empathize. An idea occurred to her.
"Well, I need to make it to a town or city, and I have no clue where I'm supposed to be going. If you'd be willing to escort me, I could pay you-" Anna paused for a moment, unsure of how much money she actually had with her. She opened the front pouch of her rucksack and peered in. The sum she found there was far larger than she'd expected, and she snapped the pouch closed before Kristoff could see, "-a bit." Though Kristoff seemed pleasant so far, Anna knew people could do rather unkind things when faced with large sums of money, and she didn't need to be taking chances right now.
Kristoff seemed skeptical. "A trip like that isn't really in the cards for me right now lady."
Anna attempted her best puppy dog face, the one that had always worked on her parents when she was younger. "Please? I'll pay you double whatever you'd make selling that lumber!"
Kristoff sighed. "See, now I feel bad leaving you on your own because you clearly have no common sense. What're you doing telling a strange man you just met that you're carrying that much cash on you? What's to stop me from robbing you blind right now?"
Anna, realizing he had a point, was a bit abashed. "Basic human decency?" she offered, biting her bottom lip.
Kristoff shook his head, "Fine, fine. I'll take you as far as the nearest town and no farther. I have friends who would kill me if they knew I'd let a girl like you go wandering around the mountains on her own."
Anna's face lit up, "That's wonderful, thank you!" Without even asking permission, she scrambled into the passenger side of his waiting sled.
Kristoff sighed heavily and took Sven's reigns. "Come on buddy, looks like we're taking a little trip."
If Anna hadn't known better, she would have thought the reindeer was laughing at him.
So this was originally supposed to be two separate chapters, one for Elsa and one for Anna, but they were both a bit on the short side so I combined them into a slightly longer update. Thanks to everyone who's favorited or followed this story so far. If it's not too much trouble, it'd be cool if you could also leave a review and let me know what you think. I'd definitely appreciate the feedback. Either way, see you soon!