"What would you like to know?" Jack asks as he turns his whole body to look at Elsa better.
"You know, right now, I kind of want to know everything," she answers, smiling at him. Elsa's smile makes him smile without him noticing it.
"So, what happened to your parents?" he asked gently. "You know, if it's okay with you to talk about it."
"Well, four years ago, they died in a storm at sea," Elsa said, looking at the ceiling. "That's why when I became of age last year, I was made queen. I've been ruling Arendelle and living with my sister, Olaf, and Kristoff sometimes, when he's not with his family."
She turned to Jack and saw that he looked like he was ready to pat her on the head and let her cry on his shoulder. Instead of doing that, Elsa chuckled lightly.
"You don't have to look at me like I'm a wounded animal, Jack," she tells him as she touches his cheek to make him change his expression. Jack smiles kindly at her, relieved.
"I'm very thankful that Anna is still with me after I messed everything up last year. She risked her life for me," Elsa says, but she seems to be looking past him. "For family."
Jack looks at Elsa's face, which now looks solemn and reminiscing. He didn't know why but something about what Elsa said tugged at his heart. Tugged at it painfully.
"Elsa," he says her name carefully. She looks back at him, anticipating what he was about to say. "How did you get your power?"
Elsa sat up and focused on looking back at her childhood. Ever since she could remember, her hair was always blonde, near white. Anna and her parents' hair didn't even come close to blonde. She was the only one who has this power and her parents never explained it to her.
"If I remember correctly, I think I was born with it," she says, more to herself than to Jack. "I'm not really sure. My parents never told me why or how. They just tried really hard to help me control it."
"Oh. I don't know how I became this way either," Jack turned to his back, making Elsa do the same. They both looked at the ceiling.
Elsa didn't know what to say or ask, so she just waved her hand around and a rocket of snow shot to the ceiling. A moment later, it burst into a white light and the whole room was getting rained on with gentle snow. "I like watching falling snow. It looks so—"
"Peaceful," Jack finished of the sentence for her.
"Yeah."
She turned herself towards Jack and just stared at him. He felt her eyes on her and grinned at the cold ceiling. "Why are you staring at me?"
"Nothing. Just wondering where you could possibly be from," she asked.
Jack grins and says, "What have you concluded from wondering?"
"You're from around. Everywhere," Elsa says, her tone of voice never rising or falling. Somehow she didn't want to be right.
"Yeah, I'm from everywhere. I don't really stop going around," he says and sighs, watching the snow fall on to his clothes.
They stopped trying to find something to say. The silence isn't that bad. But Elsa could feel her heart getting heavy somehow. I don't think this is how Anna felt when she first met Hans or Kristoff, she thinks.
Jack stands up from the couch and holds out a hand for her to hold. "Why?" she asks, curious of what Jack's going to do.
"I want you to show me the rest of the castle. My body is going to start getting rigid if I keep on sitting and lying down there," his eyes turn to the couch. And Elsa grabs his hand to get herself up. With a wave of her hand, the snow slowly disappeared.
They went out the door.
While walking along the corridors, passing the ballrooms and many galleries, Elsa told Jack about her childhood and being estranged from the kingdom and Anna.
"I was just locked up in my room. That one, right there," she points at a white door decorated with blue shapes. "I never learned how to control and manage my powers until last year."
"Was it bad, not being able to control it?" Jack asks with caution.
"Well, I accidentally got Arendelle in a really horrible winter. At summer time. I didn't really know how to get rid of all the snow before," she answers and even tries to laugh at her past mistake. "You've never had trouble with it?"
"No, not really. It feels very natural to me when I started trying my power out, whenever that was. And in the past years I always had fun with children and, sometimes, older people in the snow," he tells her with a bit of embarrassment in his tone. "That's what I do really. That's why I'm from everywhere."
"You don't want to just… stay?" Elsa asks. She didn't notice that they stopped walking and that she was holding on to both of Jack's hands. "You're more than welcome to stay in the kingdom."
Jack smiles, noticing Elsa's hands holding his. He scoops them so that now, he's the one holding her hands. "I'd love to stay. Arendelle looks like it's a great place and has nice people." As he says that, his thumb moves in circles on Elsa's hand. "But I can't stay because I have to make other people happy too, so I have to always be at different places."
She understood. She told him that it was like ruling a kingdom, seeing that the people get what you could do for them. And she let her hands drop.
"Wow, I didn't notice that everything happened so fast. I must have been sleeping for hours. It's almost dawn," Jack says solemnly, looking at the windows. "I have to go to somewhere new."
Elsa smiles and touches Jack's cheek. "Don't sound too sad about leaving. It was just a ball. And what you do sounds so fun."
"Spending time with you is also fun," Jack reaches for Elsa's back and he gently pulls her in for a hug. They stay like that for a while.
"I'm going to visit. Every summer and winter," he says, breaking off the hug. "And I hope someday you come with me to where I'm going."
"I'll try," she tells him.
Jack walks towards the windows and opens one, readies himself to jump off, to go somewhere else. "I really like you, Elsa." He gives her a smile and drops off the windowsill.
She runs and looks out the window. Ice was beginning to form and dissolve at the fjord and it was like a silver-haired guy was riding them. I never thought about riding ice. I have to try that sometime.
So she closed the windows and walked back to the ball.
"JACK'S GONE?" Anna asks like the world was ending. "But WHY?"
"He has to be somewhere else. He has to do some other things," Elsa says quietly. Jack wanted her to come with him sometime. He even said that he liked her.
Anna plops down on her bed and sighs. "But you two like each other already. Will he come back?"
"He said he'll visit every winter and summer. That's enough for me," she answers. Elsa lies down on the bed next to Anna, feeling tired but thinking about what happened at the ball makes her excited.
The two sisters spend the night talking about the ball and all the things they did. Elsa couldn't wait until she throws another ball.
