The Queen of Arendelle attempted to flash her visitor a slightly oversized smile as she saw the large basket that Alia was carrying into her cell. She could hear the soft clinking of glass against glass coming from beneath the cloth covering the woven basket. Just in time, she thought as she looked down at the empty wine bottle by her feet.
"You look terrible," her lawyer casually commented as she set the basket she was carrying down onto the stone floor of the queen's prison cell. Alia looked Elsa up and down from her grime-covered bare feet to the mess of unkempt blonde hair atop her head. Normally kept tidy in a thick braid, her hair loosely fell on and all around her bare shoulders. The dress that she wore, a simple white chemise that went all the way down to her knees, was covered in numerous smudges and patches of dirt. The replacement clothing that was given to her last time was still in a neat pile on one of the stone slabs on the other side of the room, as were a pair of untouched sandals.
"I'm all out," Elsa gestured towards the empty wine bottle by her feet. She had finished it the night before, and she was already missing the sense of freedom that the precious red liquid was able to give her. There was a certain sense of weightlessness that she loved even just for the little while it spent resting in her belly and then in her blood.
"How are you?" Alia shook her head, looking quite concerned. She pulled out a small apple from the basket and rolled it across the table towards the queen. Elsa watched the spinning red orb slowly make its way across the uneven wooden surface towards her half of the table.
"Can't sleep," she confessed as she barely caught the small fruit right before it fell off the edge of the wooden table. Famished, she bit into the apple and let the sweetness of its juices flood her mouth. "I've been having bad dreams."
Alia quickly pulled out her clipboard and her pen and set the former down on the table while holding the latter point first onto the top sheet of paper. Her lawyer appeared excited, more than she typically was whenever they had a mental breakthrough. Clearly she thought this was important enough to skip the formalities and small talk that the two had ritualized over their past many sessions. "Go ahead, this may be a memory trying to come out in the form of a dream," she said as she began jotting down a few notes.
"The dreams - no - dream," Elsa corrected herself. She carefully tried to recall a few memorable visages from her more recent nightmare. Images of false memories created by her own mind in an attempt to escape the harsh reality of the waking world. In actuality, she really didn't need to think that hard. "It's one dream. The same one. It's always the same one." She closed her eyes trying to remember the images her recent dreams brought to her. "It's me, Anna and Kristoff." Of course it was. "Us three. At that tavern. You know, our favorite one." Elsa took a quick glance at the tiny window above them, wondering if her sister was even thinking about her this very moment. Whatever she had done, it was enough to put a wedge between Anna and herself. "One second, we're drinking, having fun. And then we start shouting at each other." Elsa felt a shiver as the raw feelings of her dream slowly crawled out from deep within her subconscious.
"And then?" Alia paused, her pen following suit stopping to hover an inch above the stack of paper attached to her clipboard. The older woman was looking intently at her client, her deep black eyes peering into the queen's own.
"I wake up. I always wake up as it starts to get worse," recounted Elsa. It was like her mind wouldn't let her remember past that point, as if there was an invisible barrier that she wasn't allowed to cross. A feeling, in fact. Elsa realized she had to tell Alia. "There's this lingering feeling of something bad. Terrible. Like that time I told you before."
Her lawyer nodded, then put her clipboard down. "Well, at least we know where we're going for this session," she said while she reached down and pulled up two cups and a bottle.
Elsa replied with a hesitant nod.
Alia poured two cups of what didn't look like wine and handed one to her client. "Think back to the dream," she urged as she put the drink into Elsa's hands. "Remember it. Remember the way the food tasted. The way the air smelled. Remember the smallest audible cues, from glasses clanking, to the sound of your own breathing."
The former snow queen nodded. "My dreams feel like nothing but a cruel joke." She knew the drill. Find a single point of reference and concentrate on that point. Expand slowly, much like painting a landscape or a scene. Start somewhere and build around it, slowly, cautiously. She closed her eyes and slipped into a familiar trance. "I'm starting to remember," she reported after a few minutes of introspection. The still image in her mind began moving, ever so slowly. And with it came emotions, sensations, memories. "I think I remember a fight. A big fight. And then after, something horrible."
Elsa snapped out of her state. Eyes wide, she looked at Alia sitting across the table from her. "You know that terrible feeling I had?" She asked. Alia's eyes shifted in acknowledgement, although she was restrained, instead waiting for Elsa to continue. "When I thought I had killed someone? It's been getting stronger. It's like, the more I remember, the closer I get to...who knows what?"
"Then you will know the truth," the woman she had come to look up to as an older sister gave her a reassuring smile. "And the truth shall set you free." She added. There was something in the expression the older woman wore on her face as she said those words. Something to her tone, and it wasn't just a feeling of support.
The powerless snow queen wrapped her arms around her own body to stave off the frigid chill that the windless room had suddenly bathed her in. "I'm afraid, Alia."
"It's ok." Alia reached out from across the table and placed her hand on Elsa's arm. The slight warmth of another human's touch was a welcome sensation. "Fear is fine. Fear is good. It keeps us alive, Elsa." Alia tapped her a few times on the soft flesh of her left arm, just below where the fingers of her right hand clutched her inner elbow. "It means you're alive."
"Still." The barrister set her clipboard down on the table and she gave Elsa a concerned look. "I don't want to push you further than you can take. Are you sure you are up to this?"
That tone in her lawyer's voice seemed reminiscent of her dead mother's. 'You don't have to if you don't want to,' she used to say to the young crown princess. From the sound of Alia's voice, Elsa had no doubt that she would have stopped her questioning if the former snow queen had asked to. And she truly didn't. If it were up to her, she would run, run away. Far, far away. But it wasn't up to her. Not entirely. She was still queen of her kingdom. Her father's kingdom. Her father's father's kingdom. She had a responsibility to Arendelle, to her subjects, to her family. Family.
"No," Elsa looked her questioner straight into her deep, blue eyes. She was certainly not 'up to it.' But it wasn't really her decision to make anymore. The queen then threw her palms up in the air in a gesture of surrender. "But do I really have a choice?"
"All right," Alia sighed. She did not seem too happy about the situation, even though her client was now in a more cooperative mood. Or perhaps because of it? Elsa sensed a reluctance hidden somewhere within Alia's demeanor. Whatever it was, the stalwart woman did not let it affect the way she encouraged her client. "Go ahead," she said to the queen. "I'll be right here when you return."
That night actually started early in the morning during a meeting between the queen and prominent members of Arendelle's parliament. As queen, these official meetings were not gatherings that Elsa took lightly. Especially not the topic of that morning's closed conference. The representatives were not happy. Which meant one thing. Her people were not happy. Arendelle was not happy.
The news was dire. The Storting, a group consisting of representatives of the various townships throughout their tiny kingdom, had passed a bill further limiting the monarchy's control over Arendelle. As the ruling monarch, Elsa still had to sign it, to give it her Royal Assent, in order to officialize it into law. The queen could refuse to sign, but in the thirty-odd years of the Storting's existence, no king or queen had ever refused to give his or her Royal Assent. To do so would be to deny what was essentially the will of the people. That was mostly because the previous king, her father, was a kind and understanding leader, as was his father before him. Elsa wouldn't dare sully their legacy. Even if meant destroying what they had worked so hard to build.
Besides, Elsa realized. She knew how the people felt. They simply desired more freedom to manage their own affairs. They wanted to be free. Free to decide their own fate. No better than the reluctant snow queen of Arendelle to understand that deep yearning to control even just a fraction of one's own destiny. Autonomy.
And besides, she wasn't giving up all her power as queen. Just most of it. Still, the young queen couldn't help but wonder if her father would have been disappointed with her reign so far. If perhaps she were better trained, Anna might have made a better queen.
Would have made. Would make. A thought crossed the queen's mind. Not so much an act of self-sacrifice but a more self-serving act of achieving the freedom she had sought for so long. But no. She could never place the burden on her younger sister's shoulders. Even if Anna had been prepared to take it. She looked down at her ice-encrusted palms and thought about the relationship between power and responsibility.
Elsa remembered how difficult it was the first few months after their parents died. In their focus on helping their daughter control and repress her powers, they hadn't been able to prepare her properly to take upon the mantle of ruling the kingdom. Not that the young princess could have sat down with a tutor anyway, giver her limited control over her powers during those years.
So when the king and queen never returned on that fateful voyage overseas, Elsa had nobody but herself to pick up the pieces of a kingdom in mourning. The crown princess had no choice but to learn by doing. Trial and error, and pretty much everything presented itself as a trial, and there were many errors. Errors that added to her feelings of inadequacy, errors that continued well into her reign as the formal monarch of their tiny little kingdom.
She did not want Anna to suffer the same fate should that power and responsibility suddenly fall onto her shoulders. Anna was the next-in-line for the throne, if something were to happen to the current monarch. A chill went up Elsa's spine as she tried hard not to think of the most obvious example of how Anna could ascend to the throne. In the event of the queen's death.
So engrossed was she in the scenario of her possible death that she barely remembered the one actual historical example of when Arendelle's succession rules involving the princesses had taken effect. It was way back during the Great Freeze, when she ran away during the night of her coronation. The task of ruling the kingdom fell onto the young Princess Anna. It was a relatively short tenure for the naive princess, who almost immediately left the kingdom in the hands of the dastardly Prince Hans of the Southern Isles. That almost ended in disaster, for both princess and queen, if not for the timely intervention of the then-simple ice harvester, Kristoff.
Hans. The one glaring example of why Anna should be prepared to take the reins of the kingdom. If she was ever needed. And that was why Queen Elsa had insisted that her younger sister be tutored in many things procedural and royal, many aspects that she had to learn by herself through self-study and experience. Anna didn't take kindly to the lessons, but unlike the times when she ran away from her tutors as a young adolescent, she knew that someday these skills would be useful. Elsa thought it best, for the kingdom and for their family.
And so the afternoon went by with the queen carrying the fate of the kingdom upon her weary shoulders. A mix of emotions simmered under the stoic facade that she managed to project. Frustration, with the Storting and their demands. Too much, too soon. Anger, at herself. For not being the ruler her father was before her. Disappointment, at life in general. At how it unfolded in ways she never felt was right, or fair.
And of course, there was the one thought she refused to acknowledge above all the others. Which was quite difficult considering that that thought seemed to take precedence over any other especially for the past few weeks. A thought that had been brewing for some time now, hiding underneath the love and compassion that she felt for her sister. Envy.
It was an underlying conglomerate of thoughts and emotions that now seemed to be present with every interaction she had with her beloved sister. It didn't help that for a majority of the time they were together, the object of her envy was standing right there with them, holding her sister's arm or pulling her sister close with his arm around her thin waist.
Anna was obliviously naive to the simmering tension between her two most beloved companions. And yet however much the queen tried to hide her feelings, to 'conceal, don't feel,' they gnawed at her with every tiny glance, every single whiff of reindeer musk, every shared moment between her and the ice master.
The queen felt like a kettle of water suspended over a raging fire, well beyond simmering, her insides shaking and bubbling, with barely enough time before she hit boiling. And yet, with her concerted effort to suppress her feelings, it was tantamount to forcefully holding the lid down upon a vessel whose contents were way past due to boil over. Such a situation would eventually reach a point when the pressure rising within was too much for the vessel to contain. Conceal, don't feel.
It all came to a head that fateful evening, an evening which under any other circumstances would have been a night of enjoyment and revelry.
It was late into the evening, when many of the tavern's patrons had already left, wandering into the darkened streets along the outskirts of Arendelle in various states of sobriety.
For the royal family, most of the early evening was spent listening to the queen recount her many woes. Elsa was careful not to go into particular details, however, lest her sister attempt something extremely unpolitical. The ice master understood the situation fully though, mostly because his rank and tasks brought him access to certain circles of the Arendelle government.
That, and because Elsa had told him earlier that day while she was nestled in his arms. It was torture, losing herself in Kristoff's warm embrace, with the implicit acceptance that this was as far as they could go. And then just like most good things Elsa had ever experienced, it was over far too soon. Fleeting moments when the two found themselves alone for a few, scant minutes.
"You have no idea how much I want to feel your lips again," Elsa whispered as she reached up and stroked Kristoff's mouth with the tips of her fingers. They were dry and chapped. She could feel where the warmth and wetness began as she lightly traced the outline of his mouth with her digits.
"We really shouldn't," Kristoff replied, taking hold of the queen's hand. He closed his eyes as he brought her tender fingers down to the side of his neck and pressed them against his warm skin. She could feel his reluctance to take things further through the controlled way he guided her hand back to her hip. She could hear the hesitation in his sigh as he placed his hands on her shoulders and agonizingly eased her body away from him.
Neither said a word to each other when the three met up after hours to head to Minner just as the sun's brow disappeared below the horizon. Elsa gave her sister a restrained smile as Kristoff went off to fetch Sven from his personal stables within the castle grounds.
"It's been a long day, sis. I need a drink," the princess remarked. She had just come from an entire day of protocol sessions, part of her duties as a princess of Arendelle.
"Long day." Elsa agreed, carefully considering her body language as the ice master came around with their family reindeer in tow. She managed a wave at the loyal beast of burden that had been with them since the former ice harvester had moved into the castle with them. "Hi Sven!" She said. He snorted in response.
"Yey, complete family drinking time!" The princess exclaimed as she jumped with both feet, her fist in the air. At least Anna still retained some energy. Then again, Anna had always been the more energetic of the sisters.
It was nice to be with the complete family after a long day, the queen realized. Kristoff had just finished hooking in Sven onto one of his smaller sleighs and was waving the sisters onboard. No nobles, no servants, no guards or soldiers. Where she could just be Elsa. Just plain, old Elsa.
"Wait," Elsa paused as she placed a foot into the back seat of Kristoff's sleigh. Something that had been nagging her the past few times they had gone off on a family adventure. "Where's Olaf?"
Her sister just gave her a blank stare. Kristoff simply shrugged and went back to securing Sven's reins. The reindeer itself made an expression with its lips that Elsa couldn't decipher, and his owner didn't bother translating. The snowman that had become a part of their family had been skipping out on them for the past few tomes they had gone together. The snow queen sighed and shook her head. It seemed like these days, that snowman always had something else to do. She was going to have to ask him one of these days. Next time.
The ride felt relatively fast, with Anna chattering about her day while Kristoff listened attentively. Elsa was so deep in thought that she barely noticed they were already at their favorite watering hole. Anna had already rushed inside to cheers from the regular patrons who loved having their princess with them as they wound down after a long afternoon's work. Elsa couldn't help but smile as Kristoff helped her out of the sleigh and onto the slightly damp soil that surrounded the tavern. Her sister was loved, as usual.
The establishment that had become their usual haunt was located on the very outskirts of the town, on the opposite side of the castle and the fjord. It was so far out that two of the four roads that bordered it were mere dirt roads, unpaved with the flat stones and gravel that lined most of the streets of Arendelle.
Soon, the three found themselves at their favorite table, surrounded by plates of good food and mugs of strong liquor, lamenting about their woes of the day.
"I really, really hate this protocol stuff," Princess Anna started her ranting with a spoonful of deep fried potatoes in her mouth. Anna didn't seem to know - or care at all that not only was she speaking with her mouth full - a protocol faux pas, but she was also chewing with her mouth open. Elsa felt her skin crawl as she tried not to look at the yellow mush that danced and wobbled beyond her sister's teeth. Almost as if the young princess was doing it on purpose. Knowing Anna, she probably was.
Elsa found herself slipping deeper into a haze with every mug of liquor she managed to down. She had grown to like that comforting feeling of being softly choked by a thick, warm scarf around her neck. That familiar feeling of her body asking for more air than her lungs could give. It was a feeling of bliss that just wasn't meant to last.
It all started with an innocent question, asked by an intoxicated young woman, carrying far more than her frail body could support.
"Why do you get to be happy?"
Elsa was slumped down onto their usual table, half-sitting but with her belly and chest almost flat on a fourth of the damp wooden tabletop. She was lying face-down into the wood, a smudge of what tasted like fried potato oil near her cheek, and speaking directly into the wood. Her question was directed to no one in particular, which prompted her even more drunk sister to laugh.
"Because I'm drunk!" The princess exalted. In direct contrast to her older sister, Anna was slumped backwards into the booth, her head hanging off the top of the headrest.
"Alright, Elsa. You've had too much to drink." A somewhat-intoxicated but still-functioning Kristoff said as he pulled the queen up from the table and into a sitting position. He sat between the sisters because he was usually the last man standing at the end of their tavern nights and it was up to him to make sure the sisters were safe, more from themselves than from anything else.
"Yeah, sis!" Anna half-shouted as she slapped the tabletop with both palms in unison. "Hic! Too much."
Elsa tried to turn her head towards her sister but for some reason, her neck refused to go that far. "No, you've had too much!" She shot back. These nights usually ended with Anna as the most intoxicated of the three but tonight just seemed like a good time to cut loose.
She reached out for the cup of mead a few inches in front of where she was slumped down but Anna beat her to it. Funnily enough, her hand still reached out and grasped what was now empty air beside a bowl of leftover bits. It was almost as if her arms had a life of its own, only going back to her side a minute after she had commanded it to.
"Mine!" The young princess laughed and emptied the contents of the cup into her mouth. It took Anna a full minute to down the liquid.
"No fair," Elsa whined. "I need it more! It makes me happy! You're already happy!" She drolled at her sister. There was a tinge of contempt in her voice that she only realized was there a moment too late. But the queen was too drunk to hope that her companions hadn't noticed it as well.
"You think I'm happy?" Anna's face suddenly shifted into a more serious disposition, as if the drunkenness was a mask that she had just taken off. "I see my sister, in pain." Her voice was clear all of a sudden, without the drolling and slurring it had been exhibiting earlier. "I hate seeing you like this, Elsa. Pining for the love of my life. And there's nothing I can do about it."
She knew.
"Why did we have to fall in love with the same guy?" The princess continued. She was still drunk somewhat, leaning her head on the side of her lover's arm. Her lover who seemed to be a bit stunned by the exchange between sisters.
"Um, guys. I'm right here." Kristoff mumbled almost audibly. He shifted uncomfortably in place, glancing to his left and then to his right, like a cornered animal looking for an opening. But both of his escape routes were blocked. Anna was firmly situated to his left while Elsa was a limp mess to his right. The ice master briefly looked at the table, probably considering the merits of leaping over it and running to freedom before he abandoned the notion.
Anna wrapped her arms around him, banishing all possibility of escape. "You should be happy, Elsa. He likes you too."
"Wait, what?" Kristoff attempted to extricate himself from the princesses' grasp. "I don't uh," he was grasping for words, flustered. "How did you know?" He asked the tiny bundle of arms and hair that had wrapped itself around him.
"I'm naive, Kris. Not blind." She pulled out of her impromptu embrace and reached out across the table towards her sister. "Smile, Elsa. You're halfway there." Her tone had suddenly taken on an accusatory tone, which frightened Elsa a bit.
Then again, her sister had all the reasons in the world to be angry. "Halfway where?" Elsa asked.
"Halfway towards stealing my man."
"What?" Elsa felt the heat from that. Combined with the effects of the spirits she had been imbibing all night long, she realized that despite the cold, her skin was on fire. "I am not stealing your man!" The queen realized she had shouted that one out. Nervously, she glanced around, worried that the other patrons had heard. However, it was late into the night and everyone was pretty much drunk, or had gone home. And besides, part of her didn't care one bit. She was mad.
"And I am smiling," the ice queen looked her sister straight in the eyes, her mouth a single straight line that ran from cheek to cheek. Elsa felt her eyes widen with anger at her sister's accusation. She surprised herself with her openness. Then again, the alcohol in her veins made it quite easy. "This is me, smiling."
Silently, the two sisters locked eyes for the longest time, the shared object of their desires trapped between them. In that time, the beleaguered ice master managed to flag down a serving girl or three. He couldn't extricate himself from the quiet crossfire, but soon there were three full pitchers of liquor on their table.
"Girls, maybe we should just drink this away?" He asked hesitantly, pushing a pitcher of potent spirit towards each warring sibling. The third one stayed under his chin, and he was eyeing it somewhat nervously.
Surprisingly, it was Elsa who first agreed. She pulled one wooden pitcher close and refilled her cup. The scalding cold ale went down her throat in such a rough way that it almost made her forget her issues with her sister.
Her younger sister soon followed suit, after some prodding from her boyfriend. He flashed Elsa a guilty look as he was refilling Anna's cup for the second time. Anna didn't seem to notice her sister smile back as she brought the cup to her mouth and half-gargled the thick yellow liquid within.
It was much later, when almost all of the other patrons had left, well past the time when the royal family usually headed back home to the castle, when the pot finally boiled over. The three, already half-cognizant before they began drinking again, were in much worse shape than they had ever been. All three were sitting on stools outside their booth, as it had become too constricting between the table and the wooden circular bench that separated it from the tavern wall.
Elsa was slumped onto the table face-first, her forehead supported by her left arm. A red, circular welt lay in the center of her right forearm, where her head had spent the past hour on. Anna was bowled over, clutching her stomach. Drool was dripping down from her smiling lips. She had already thrown up twice outside, and had just come in a third time after a false alarm. Kristoff was sitting upright, just a bit too straight for the normally lax ice master. His brown eyes were glazed over as he watched unseen patterns on the wall behind the booth.
"Kristoff," Elsa started at it again. There was an inner sentiment inside of her that wanted out no matter how much she tried to bury it with drink. "Why do you harvest ice?" She had no idea what was coming out of her mouth anymore. "Do you like ice?" Her words sounded much more coherent in her mind before they came out slurred and slow. It wasn't a good sign.
"Yah!" Her sister piped up from the other side of the table, very little trace of their earlier confrontation. "Ice is like, his life!" Anna tried to slap Kristoff's behind, missed, and ended up striking the edge of the wooden stool he was sitting on. "Ow." She pulled her hand in and rubbed her wrist.
The drunken snow queen felt like someone else had taken control of her mouth, making her say things she was simply content just thinking. Things she meant to keep inside. "I'm the snow queen!" She mumbled, forming a sloppy snowball in her palm. "I'm ice!" Elsa poked the tabletop with an icy fingernail. "Why am I not your life?"
"What?" Anna asked, some semblance of sobriety in her voice.
"Ice is his life. I'm ice. I should be your life." She tried to make another snowball but ended up just creating a puddle that dripped down from her open palm into the wooden planks beneath their feet. It made perfect sense in her mind.
"What?" It was Kristoff's turn to ask, looking somewhat confused.
Elsa pulled herself up and stood. Or rather, tried to stand. Almost immediately, she fell forward onto the former ice harvester. Only his rapid instincts made his hands fly upwards to catch the falling snow queen, who slumped onto his chest.
"You make ice," she said, alluding to his former profession as she placed her right palm flat on his chest right over his heart. "I make ice!" Elsa held her other hand out to make another sloppy snowball but for some reason, her magic refused to obey her. She shrugged and placed both hands on the ice master's face. "Why aren't we together?" She asked as she pulled him down to her. "Let's make ice together!"
"That doesn't even make any sense!" Her sister loudly commented. Elsa felt tiny hands grab her wrists and pulled them off Kristoff. It was her sister, much less angry than earlier but no less decisive. "This one's mine, sis."
"Hey hey hey!" Kristoff pushed both sisters apart gently. The ice master was too drunk to realize he was pushing them back with his hands flat on either of their chests. Elsa welcomed the pressure on her breasts, and she smiled at Kristoff who appeared to have no idea what he was doing to her. "You are my life!" He said as he looked at Anna, and then to Elsa. "Both of you."
The other patrons, whichever ones were sober enough to comprehend reality, barely noticed the brewing altercation in the far corner booth of the tavern. Most of the remaining townsfolk's attention was drawn towards the windows that opened out into the cold, Arendelle night. The frigid night. In the middle of their heated exchange, neither sister nor the ice master consciously registered that it had just begun to snow.
The spirits surging in her blood, Elsa felt emboldened, invincible. She pushed back against the hand holding her back while simultaneously taking it by the wrist and pressing it deeper into her bosom. She felt his fingers dig into her soft flesh. It tingled.
"Do you like me, Kristoff?" Her voice had dropped into a low, sultry tone. Almost like each syllable was born in the back of her throat and refused to ride her breath as it exited her lips, only choosing to crawl out the floor of her throat up and on her tongue. They sounded like they were being spoken by another woman, and she had no idea how that had happened.
"Uhh," was her sister's boyfriend's slack-jawed reply. His gaze dropped from her eyes down to his hand, though he didn't pull away. He looked to Elsa like he was still figuring out what exactly was happening. Or that he was trying to discern what his hand was doing on her future sister-in-law's breast.
"Do you love me, Kristoff" She felt herself lean towards Kristoff, despite her commanding her body to stay in place. Instead, her hands grabbed the object of her affection by the collar, pulling down and simultaneously bringing her lips close to his mouth. Elsa felt the longing within her. She wanted them. Now. Her sister be damned.
Just as she was leaning forward to kiss the stunned ice master, she felt herself being pulled backwards by the hair. It was forceful enough to bother her forehead, but didn't hurt at all. The drunkenness had already numbed most of her body. She would probably have felt more pain without it.
"Enough!" She hear her sister scream into her left ear. Deep inside, some part of the queen realized she deserved that. Unfortunately not the part that was currently in control at the moment. "That's enough, Elsa. Not in front of me, please!" Anna pleaded.
Elsa pushed her sister away as she herself took a few steps backwards until she felt the hardness of the tavern's wooden wall behind her. Her eyes were still focused on those lips that moments before had been within her reach. "Do you love me?" She repeated at her sister's lover.
His eyes told her all she needed to know. But she needed to hear it. Again. She already knew, so why was she asking? Elsa realized. She wanted him to admit it in front of her sister. She wanted her to know.
There was no need for verbal confirmation, it turned out. The tears that were forming in the eyes of the young princess were a sign. Anna knew she wasn't the only one in her beloved ice master's heart.
Even though, an unseen force prodded the snow queen to keep pushing. She needed to hear it from his own lips. Confirmation that she was more than just the sister-in-law, a fixture he was having light fun with despite her feelings. "Who do you like more, Kristoff?" She felt the warmth, the heat that now coated her body within and without. It was talking to her. Telling her to keep asking. To make him force his hand.
"Elsa, stop!" Her sister shouted, one hand over her eyes while the other one steadied herself against the wooden countertop. Elsa could see streaks of wetness under that other hand. She felt terrible, seeing her sister cry. But that feeling was masked underneath the heat that was ravaging her soul.
"Who do you love more?" Elsa asked louder this time. She felt anger rise in the back of her throat. The heat was becoming unbearable, and the air had gotten thick. It was getting harder to breathe.
"Elsa, please stop!" Anna sobbed. She hobbled to her lover's side. Kristoff, still in his intoxicated daze, managed to place his arm over his beloved princess. The ice master pulled her close, reassuringly rubbing her shoulder with one hand. He was giving the queen a look that bordered upon confusion and bewilderment. And perhaps even a little bit of fear.
Elsa had to know. "If you had to pick between me and Anna, who would you choose?"
The drunkenness seemed to have been shaken out of the princess, who was now speaking in between sobs. "This isn't cool, Elsa! This isn't you! Let's go home! Please?" She buried her face in Kristoff's chest and sobbed some more, obviously taking a lot of effort not to just straight-out bawl into his tunic.
The anger was in control now. That and the spirits. "Who would you choose?" She could hear her voice reverberating in her head. It felt like someone else, shouting with her voice but it wasn't her.
"Elsa!" It was Kristoff that answered this time, his arms wrapped even more protectively around his princess. Anna was still sobbing into his chest. The snow queen barely realized that the wind outside had gotten stronger, and snow was coming in through the windows. On a lovely summer night.
"CHOOSE!"
Elsa heard herself scream as she stomped her foot hard on the wooden floor. Just as she felt her heel dig into the stained wood, her ice exploded. Almost instantly, a large icicle shot out from the ground towards the two lovers standing just a few feet away from her. With her diminished senses, she saw it form in slow-motion. It grew, layer-by-layer, starting from a point in the ground that crawled upwards towards Kristoff and Anna.
No! A part of Elsa screamed inside her head as the sculpture raced into a sharpened point.
Silence. The sounds of the tavern had been replaced by the howling wind outside. The remaining patrons stood frozen, staring at the spectacle before them. The Princess of Arendelle had her arms wrapped around the Royal Ice Master and Deliverer. The razor-sharp point of the icicle Elsa had conjured having stopped an inch away from their faces.
In a moment, the boiling heat that was directing Elsa's actions evaporated, leaving an icy chill that spread out from her soul outwards to her extremities. She stared with wide, open eyes as the icicle that almost killed the two most important people in the world as they stood there, a testament to the consequences of her anger. Anna and Kristoff stared back at her, looks of shock and surprise on their faces.
Wide eyed, the snow queen looked down at her bare hands. The smoothness of her palms was covered with a fine coating of frost. What have I done.
There was only one thing to do.
Elsa ran.
"Elsa! Wait!" She could hear Kristoff shout as he bolted after her. Or tried to, at least. The large, bulky former ice harvester was unexpectedly restrained by the tiny Anna as she managed to quickly wrap her arms around his own. He would have protested but one look from the princess turned the ice master acquiescent.
"Just let her go," she heard her sister's voice clearly over the silence of the frigid Arendelle night. It seemed like even the crickets had stopped for the snow queen's flight.
Elsa ran. As fast as her legs would take her. Past the stunned townsfolk, silent and staring at the shouting match between their stoic queen and their beloved princess. She didn't see the open concern on the faces of unwilling spectators, wishing nothing but well-being for their troubled monarch. She didn't see the looks of sympathy her subjects had on their faces as they saw first-hand that their queen was just as human as the rest of them. She didn't see the tears on a select few of them, knowing how it felt to be the lover and never how it felt to be the loved. She didn't see the look of regret that slowly came over her sister's angered face as she had realized she made her older sister run away yet again. She didn't see the confusion in the ice master's eyes as he pondered what his answer would have been to her last question.
She barely saw the stack of large snowballs as she almost crashed into it a block away from the tavern. "Olaf! I-I'm sorry," she held him for the briefest of moments, pushing him aside so she could continue her flight away from it all.
"Elsa, come back!" Olaf shouted at the fleeing snow queen. "Come back to us." His words were quickly lost among the sound of the growing blizzard that Elsa had conjured.
She ran as far as her tired legs would take her, and then just a little bit more. It felt like that night, a lifetime ago. It seemed like she was treading a similar path to the one she took back then. And yet, she wasn't thinking of a destination. Fight or flight. She just wanted to get away.
She ran through the forest surrounding Arendelle, snow quickly blanketing the foliage in her immediate vicinity. It was reminiscent of that night, except that instead of a trail of frozen ice crystals encasing shards of her fear, this time it was the soft and powdery snow of her despair come to life.
She ran up and down the hills that lined the many fjords in their tiny Scandinavian kingdom, on bare and lichen-covered rock and over fallen logs. Her flight took her up the mountains where ice harvesters like Kristoff went to mine the ice that she could so easily manifest with a simple thought. Up past miniature lakes whose surface waters completely froze over as her she neared them.
Up, up she went, until she reached a familiar sight. A staircase of ice. Leading up into the sky. Calling to her, beckoning for her to become one with the wind and sky. At the end, two large double doors reflecting what little light there was into a miniature kaleidoscope of hues and colors. Almost as if the towering structure was responding to her presence like a sentient being. Her ice palace.
Tears streaming from her eyes, the Snow Queen of Arendelle ran up the steps she had conjured so many years before. Past the large double doors of solid ice almost a foot thick, now old and cracked but still standing. Past the silent guardian that stood within the central chamber, stoic and unwavering, patiently waiting for its master's return. It stood there, confused why its master had not acknowledged its presence as she ran past its icy form and into the bowels of her castle.
Elsa finally felt her legs giving way beneath her. She crumpled down onto the cold, icy floor. As she looked upwards, she could see the stars above Arendelle, shining down on her through a tiny opening in the roof of the palace. A well of stars.
"I ran." Elsa recounted in a sad, low voice. "Just like last time." She managed to add as a whisper, almost choking on the tears that she was keeping in through sheer force of will.
Alia nodded silently and reached out across the table towards Elsa's hand. Human contact wasn't something the former snow queen welcomed in her current state. She withdrew her hands back to her chest, to Alia's surprise. The other simply nodded once more in understanding.
"And then?" Alia asked when Elsa had composed herself, wiping vestiges of tears from the sides of her eyes.
The beleaguered snow queen shook her head rather weakly as a response. "I just need some rest."
Alia's question remained unanswered as Elsa ceased her narration. The younger woman was obviously overcome with emotion, frozen in place and silently staring into space. In the snow queen's mind, the memory directly following what had happened that terrible night was clear as day.
"Alright. Don't lose hope." The older woman started packing her things, not in a rushed manner but fast enough to be noticeable to anyone but Elsa. The former snow queen was clearly out of it and there was no more progress to be made this day. These sessions always took a lot out of both the queen and her lawyer, both emotionally and physically draining.
When she had tidied up the table, Alia rose to her feet and placed her basket on the chair she had been occupying for the past few hours. Elsa was as silent as she had ever been, staring through her and at the far wall behind her. "Let's get you rested," Alia walked over to the other side of the table and helped her client to her feet. Wordlessly, the two managed to shuffle over to the other side of the bars where the stone slab was.
Elsa felt an unexpected softness underneath her head as the hole in the ceiling came back into her view. On a more typical day, she would have noticed the new pillow that her protector had smuggled deep inside one of her baskets. She would have meekly thanked Alia, commenting on how the pillow smelled like the fresh fruits it had been smuggled under. She would have enjoyed burying her nose in the soft cotton cushion, losing herself in the scent of apples and berries mixed in with the aroma of baked bread. But this was not a normal night, and Elsa simply gave her companion a weak smile, and then turned back to stare upwards at the tiny glimpse of freedom that was allowed the imprisoned monarch. A well of stars.
For all the softness she had been showing the past few session, her lawyer was still as professional as the day they first met. She gathered her baskets and headed for the exit, pausing just to walk over to her resting client to lay another thin sheet of cloth over her. It was the cloth covering the larger of the two baskets. She made sure Elsa was tucked in before she went over to the door that led outside, to freedom and the real world.
"Do you want me to leave you your wine?" Alia asked from the open doorway, her hand inside the other basket.
Underneath her blanket, Elsa shook her head. Her loose, unbraided hair acted as a pillow, cushioning her nape. She barely heard Alia bid her a good night before the door closed.
As she drifted into sleep, a flood of memories rushed back into her mind, guided by some unseen force.
Forever and a day passed, like tiny individual snowflakes trying to make sense of themselves within the heart of a blistering snowstorm. The Snow Queen of Arendelle lay motionless, supine on the frigid floor, alone in the very center of the deepest bowels of her icy palace. Deep enough that even the very guardian of the palace dare not tread its halls. A womb of pure ice, at the middle of which the snow queen lay, curled up into a fetal position. An unborn child, incomplete, broken, waiting for her birth. Waiting for a rebirth.
Suddenly, her feet left the cold embrace of the icy floor. She felt herself being borne aloft, her dress hanging beneath her battered body. Two, warm and firm logs supported her behind her head and under the small of her back while the all-too familiar scent of aged reindeer hide acted upon her senses, bringing her back out of the self-induced torpor that the snow queen had been wallowing in.
"Elsa, wake up." An even more familiar voice rang in her ears. It was masculine. Strong, yet soft, and it seemed to melt the piercing cold that the snow queen felt encrusting her broken heart. She felt fingertips lightly caressing her swollen cheeks, gently breaking off and brushing away the crystallized tears that traced lines from the corners giving her just enough strength to cling onto his words and join him back in the land of the waking.
"Open your eyes."
Kristoff.