Anna hoped that following Bjorn's footprints would lead her home. Apparently, the last time he threw her off, he returned to the village with relative ease. If she had any luck left, he had gotten home this time and his tracks would help her find it herself.
Unfortunately, the task was getting increasingly difficult as more snow fell. Soon, the hoof prints were more like small indentations in the snow that could have been made by anything.
Anna groaned before she shivered. She never should have gone with this storm, and by this point she was prepared to sit through whatever harsh, "What were you thinking?" speech her sister had for her if she could just listen to it in front of a warm fire. "How did I even manage to find Oaken's last time?" she muttered to herself.
She stopped to take in her surroundings again. The wind had died down slightly, so the first thing she noticed was that the forest was quiet…too quiet. She gulped. The last time she ever heard the woods this silent was when she and Kristoff were heading up the mountain, and they ran into…
She froze when she saw a pair of yellow eyes creeping slowly toward her. She shifted her gaze, and spotted another two pairs. She glanced again, and saw another three. She slowly took a step back as the pack of wolves began to encircle her. "N…nice doggies," she said as soothingly as she could, "Y…you wouldn't happen to know how to get back to Arendelle, would you?"
The alpha snarled before leading the attack. "I guess not," Anna stated before she turned and sprinted as fast as she could into the forest.
Loki's hooves tore through the snow. Elsa was also following Bjorn's footprints, just up the mountain instead of down. She held tightly onto the reins in one hand, and a lantern she had picked up at the outpost on the town limits in the other. She was thankful that she did accept the light source, as it was so dark in the forest it had might as well have been midnight.
"Come on, Boy, faster!" she urged Loki. He gave her a faithful whinny in reply and picked up his speed.
Elsa was not the greatest rider in the world, mostly due to the fact that she had rarely ever ridden a horse until she was queen. If it were any other stallion, she would have been on the ground by now. But Loki knew her like none other; he knew exactly what she was capable of handling, and right at this moment, there was not much she could not deal with.
And so they raced through the forest with grace and agility, dodging trees and leaping over fallen logs and ravines. At one point they reached a clump of trees with multiple low-hanging branches. Loki did not slow down, nor did Elsa hesitate to blast the branches with magic strong enough to turn the wood into solid, brittle ice. With another sweep of her hand, their path was clear.
Eventually, the falling snow had made following the tracks nearly impossible. A few miles back, Elsa had quieted the wind so she could at least see where she was going. Now, it no longer mattered. Loki slowed down and sniffed the ground, hoping to find some sort of trail. Elsa looked into the trees. "Anna!" she called out, "Anna, can you hear me?"
"Anna!"
Anna gasped. She could have sworn she heard her name, but it was too far away for her to be really sure. She could have just imagined it, seeing as her main priority at the current moment was to try and outrun a pack of wolves.
Not watching where she was going, she ran right into a large bramble bush. Determined not to let it slow her down, she pushed through, not before it tore at her clothes and skin. She stumbled out of it and kept running, the snarling wolves at her heels.