Chapter 7:
The Vision
Not once in the seven years since her coronation did Elsa, or anyone else, ever think that she could actually 'talk' to a season, obviously Winter. Sure, she had ice magic, and it was assumed she could control the weather, as long as it involved ice and snow and cold. When she cast that winter, she believed it to be her own magic, coming out of her in response to her fear. Not long ago, there was Gregor, someone with her power, who in a mad quest for conquest, attacked Arandelle and lost. Not long after that, the Princess of Berglia, Kira, was revealed to have had such a gift, and she actually did bring upon a winter storm on her country, albeit with enchantments from Lars and under great strain. Saying this, Elsa assumed she was simply more powerful.
So when Gethro tells her that she had in fact 'called' the winter, like it was an entity, it left her and her company confused.
"Of course she called a winter" said Anna, not understanding what the elf meant. "She doesn't have tropical powers now does she?"
"What? No, you misunderstand" continued Gethro. "She called the Winter... the season of Winter. She summoned it and it came."
No one spoke, for they had no idea what he meant. Seeing their bewilderment, Marge began to explain. "Let's try this again. We know you can manipulate and create ice and snow. Big deal, hundreds before you have had the same gifts. But none of them, since the beginning of human history, have ever manipulated the season of Winter, especially to call it while in another season, particularly Summer."
"So what?" asked Jase. "No one before her had any accidental winters?"
"And what about Gregor, or Kira? Both of them could control the winter" said Anna.
"Gregor we knew about" said Marge.
"And the Princess of Berglia had only recently become news to us" said Gethro. "I can see where this can be confusing. But they only manipulated the winter, in that Winter was already there when they acted."
Elsa thought back. It hit her that Gregor attacked near the end of Autumn, just as winter was about to hit anyway, and in Berglia Lars attacked in the dead of winter. It was eerily coincidental.
And now that she thought about it, she didn't even realize the winter had hit in Arendelle until Anna told her in her ice palace.
"That, and the prophecy states clearly that you can heal what only love can do." said Gethro.
"Which is?" asked Elsa.
"Heal a frozen heart... your sister's heart to be exact, the act which saved both her life and your nephew's"
Elsa turned to Anna quickly, remembering the second time her heart was frozen, and how Elsa, albeit with great difficulty, was able to remove the ice. At the time, Anna, Kristoff, everyone including herself were relying on blind hope. Pabbie had stated that only an act of true love could thaw a frozen heart. Elsa knew that she could remove ice from any other wound, such as Jase's head wound from Gregor. But a frozen heart? A wound that Pabbie himself could not heal? It seemed impossible. But alas, the impossible happened, and Elsa saved her sister and her nephew. She had called it a miracle, but a sign of a prophecy?
At this moment, a feeling of dread began to slowly form in Elsa's gut as these realizations began to click in her head. It was as if these allegations angered her, or troubled her or something. She attributed this to a distrust; distrust of these two strangers, whom she knew nothing about, after all.
"What we mean to say is" continued Gethro, "Is that our shaman's have determined the identify of the Snow Queen of legend. They believe that Her Majesty is indeed the one the prophecy refers to, the only one who can call Winter itself.
Elsa was quick to shake her head dismissively. The gut feeling in her grew stronger, and she didn't want to hear any more. "This can't be" she said. "I'm the Queen of Arendelle but nothing more."
"I realize this might be hard to..." started Gethro, before Elsa interrupted him.
"I'm sorry Mr. Gethro, but you are mistaken" Elsa was quick to retort, more harshly than she had intended. The feeling in her gut grew, turning into an overwhelming sense of dread. At his point, she began to loose her firm demeanor, quickly retorting to her fallback emotion, an emotion she worked hard to suppress: fear.
"Elsa?" Anna asked, the first one to see the early warning signs.
"I think you better go..." said Jase to Jethro and Marge. He went on to say something else, but Elsa didn't hear it. Instead, his voice faded to mute, though his mouth continued to move. Everything became blury.
Now things became weird to Elsa. What she had believed to be nothing more than an uneasy feeling was now turning into something else. With the room growing more and more blury with each move of her head, she knew the time to alert her friends to her condition was too late. Soon, all she saw blured into one another into a dark, molted grey mesh of a void. No room, no friends, no elves or trolls.
It was just her alone in this empty space. A whitish mist formed around her. She looked around her, somewhat mesmerized by the vision before her. She turned to her right, where she saw a figure. It was slightly shorter than herself, shrouded in a black robe. The silhouette was blurry, the edges of the humanoid figure swirling in a blaze. The being looked at her, then snickered. Elsa stepped back in shock, her sense of space and judgment still in a daze. She turned to flee, only to see a large, reptilian face appear through the mist. It was a dragon, a greenish, bluish dragon, with ebony horns pointed backwards on its head. Across its face was a white scar, the shade of which seemed familiar. The beast looked on, like it didn't see her, focusing on something else in the distant. It roared, then darted away.
The image vanished in a blur of mist, then turned into an image of a castle. It stood to the North of a small city, surrounded by two rivers. The image blurred again, this time showing her a war zone. Men, trolls, and what she throught were elves, were fighting against other trolls, men, and elves. Among the faces, she recognized Gethro, alongside her soon to be fiancé Jase. They fought through their enemy. Leaping into view she saw Wesley, fighting alongside his companions. He seemed, enraged, and focused, something she had never noticed in him before.
In yet another image, she saw a mountain face, an a cave near its peak. She was thrust into the cave, where a silverish, glowing light appeared around her. It felt sickening, and again familiar. She heard what she thought was ice and glass cracking, followed by a muffled scream, a scream that sounded an awful lot like her sister's. She turned to see the cloaked figure again from before, growing in size. Then he laughed. It wasn't a horrible, evil laugh she had come to expect from such images, but instead like that of an average man. It was a typical laugh one would come to expect when seeing something funny, a very casual, un-menacing laugh. This only unnerved her more. She was surrounded now, by a flamelike swirl of snow, magic, darkness, fire, and that silver light. She grew dizzy.
"Elsa!" called a familiar voice. Elsa tried to focus through the swirling images. A faint, comforting light shun through.
"Elsa!" It called again. This time, Elsa recognized the voice.
"Joan?" she asked. She felt like she was about to hurl.
"Elsa! Listen to the..."
"Elsa?"
Jase calling her name was what snapped her out of it. She was still sitting at the chair; Anna, Jase and Dodgson by her side, and the elf and the troll before her. They were all fixed on her, like she had done something embarrassing. She had expected to see ice of snow covering the room, but was surprised to see that it was still warm in the room.
"Elsa, are you alright?" asked Anna.
Elsa hadn't even blinked for who knows how long. She hadn't even moved, and yet it felt like she was dragged through another dimension, then thrown back as quickly as she left. Unnerved, and fearful of what she just experienced, she prayed for an excuse to leave.
"Hey guys" said Olaf, his little head peeping out the door. "I think Kristoff just pulled up..."
Elsa said not another word as she turned and made a bee-line for the doors, ignoring Olaf as she went out.
"Elsa?! What the heck?!" asked Anna down the hall, following Elsa at a distance as she rushed into the nearest room. It was one of the reflection rooms, the very one Hans trapped Anna in all those years ago. Elsa went in, closed the door, and went over to the fireplace. She put her elbow on the mantle and leaned against it. She took several deep, exhausted breaths, as if she had just run a marathon. Having finally come to a stop and had a moment to herself, she realized that she had no memory of the short trip over to this room. She left the council room with only the instinct to run, her conscious mind in a dazed from the vision. She was still dizzy, and held on to the mantle with both hands now, feeling weak. She looked up, realizing she had left the council in an disorderly, very unprofessional manner. And with foreign dignitaries nonetheless. All of that was on instinct, having reverted back to her earlier days of reacting in fear as opposed to logic.
It took a major event to trigger this response from Elsa; having her senses numbed and a series of images forced through her head seemed like the type of thing to do that.
"Elsa, what was that about?!" Anna asked insistently upon entering the room. "Look, I realize that you don't people making a big deal about your powers, but that is not how you..." Anna stopped, realizing that Elsa was trembling. Her eyes seemed bloodshot, like waking suddenly from a deep sleep. Seeing that something was greatly troubling her sister, Anna asked for sympathetically "Elsa?"
Elsa turned to face her. She gulped, still nauseous from the experience. "I'm, sorry. I, I don't know..." Elsa went to take a step towards Anna, but lost her balance and stumbled.
"Whoa!" said Anna as she jumped forward to straighten her sister. "Elsa, what happened?" she asked worryingly. "Was it something you ate?"
Elsa shook her head. Anna held her up as she helped her over to the couch to sit down. Nearby was a pitcher of water and two glass cups. Anna poured her sister a cup of water and handed it to her. "What happened?" Anna asked again.
Having taken a sip, Elsa sighed deeply, still panting. "I, I saw something."
"Saw something?" Anna asked, raising an eyebrow. She truly had no idea what her sister saw. All she saw was Elsa freeze, staring blankly at the wall for half a minute. She and Jase both called to her, only on Anna's fourth try getting a response. After that, Elsa bolted. Anna and Jase both got up to follow her, though Anna made Jase stay with the messengers, believing Elsa to have blown a fuse or something else less serious.
"What do you mean? Did you have a panic panic attack?" Anna asked, seeing the signs of Elsa's earlier, more secretive days.
Elsa shook her head. She remained quiet, trying to find the words to explain what she saw. "I don't know how to explain..."
"Then take your time" said Anna, who had since sat down next to her, ready to listen.
After some time, Elsa shook her head. "I think, I think I had a vision."
"A vision?" Anna asked. "Like, like a dream?"
"No, more than that. The last thing I remembered was, what was their names? Gethro and Marge, explaining their prophecy, and the next thing I knew, Jase was calling my name."
Anna nodded. "You did seem kind of phased out for a minute there. You were, eh, looking at the wall, kind of blankly. I even shook you, and you didn't budge... You saw something?"
"In my head" Elsa confirmed. She opened her eyes wide, unsure of what she saw was real, or more importantly, making sure that what she saw right now was in fact real. She shook her head. "I, I was alone. I saw images... places, things..."
"What things?" Anna asked.
Elsa tried to recall. At the moment, everything seemed swirled and mashed up. She remembered the figure, some sounds, and a place? She remembered the familiar voice, but couldn't remember it's owner. "I don't remember" she finally said.
Anna nodded. She realized that Elsa was in no shape for prying. "Alright, take your time. We'll figure this out later..." Anna remembered what Olaf said, that Kristoff had made it back with Pabbie. "I'm going to go straighten this out. Maybe send them, the messengers, to a room or something under guard until we can figure this out. Will you be alright?"
Elsa nodded.
"Awesome. I'll be back in a few minutes, I promise." Anna stood up, hesitant to leave like this. But Elsa freaked out at the worst time, and in the middle of a meeting with mythological creatures nonetheless. It was late now, past nine, and she had to go fill in Kristoff and Pabbie on what happened. That, and a royal had to be present for something like this. Unfortunately, Anna had to step up, since Elsa was in no state to do it on her own. Anna continued to talk to her as she left the room. "I'll be back as soon as I can, alright. Just rest."
Elsa nodded. Anna closed the door behind her and left, leaving Elsa to her thoughts as she tried to sort out the images she saw.
"...Are you good with a bow and arrow?" asked Olaf.
Once Elsa had left, Olaf was left with Captain Dodgson, Jase, Gethro, Marge and the other guards who had not budged from their position along the wall. Meeting Marge and Gethro for the first time, Olaf was quick to introduce himself, establish that he liked warm hugs, and wanted to know everything there is to know about elf-kind, since the last elf was 'not very nice'. Jase and the Captain attempted to show them to one of the more easily monitored rooms in the castle, but Olaf almost immediately broke out with the questions.
"Another stereotype" said Gethro, who had been battered by many ridiculous notions already. From working for Santa Claus to making cookies in a tree. "Some hotshot a while back made a big name for himself in legend, and suddenly everyone assumes we're all natural born archers."
"So, most elves don't do archery?" asked Jase, giving in to curiosity.
"Don't be ridiculous. A majority of elves are natural born crack shots... just not all..."
"Like yourself" added Marge with a snicker.
"I have done well by my sword!" said Gethro defensively. "I have never needed a bow and arrow before and I don't need one now."
"He couldn't hit the broad side of a barn" said Marge to the others.
"The sun was in my eyes!"
"You hit the target master..."
"He lived! Besides, I thought we all agreed to forgive and forget!"
"Ooh!" said Olaf, unfazed by the argument between the troll and the elf. "Are you really immortal?"
"For Pete's... nothing physical is immortal! We are born and we die like everything else... minus an extra few hundred years, but immortal no."
"Is it true that some elves work under masters as house servants?"
"Here we go again with the house elf thing!" said Jethro in annoyance. "Where did you get theses insane ideas?! Look, we're just like everyone else!"
"Can you do anything magical?" asked Jase, thinking back to Klydrun's escape.
"What? I mean, yeah. To a limited extent, nothing beyond simple enchantments, same as everyone else."
"So, what about turning invisible?..." began Olaf, unaware that the elf had long past his annoyance level.
"Hey, how about snowmen, huh?" began Gethro in retort, deciding to change the tables. "Is it true you can glide down hills on your belly? Huh? "
"Oh, yeah that's fun!"
"What about eyes made out of coal?"
"You know, I have no idea what my eyes are made out of" said Olaf, crossing his eyes.
"Can you smell through your carrot nose, huh?" Gethro asked, more out of trying to get back at the snowman than out of curiosity.
"I can't smell... or breath."
"What about your stick arms, how do those work?"
"I know right?! Their not even made out of frozen water!"
"Does nothing annoy you?!" asked Gethro in defeat.
"Nope!" Olaf said Cheerfully.
"Ugh" said the elf, hitting his head against the table. "I have a headache."
Marge just smiled smugly, seeing this as payback. "So, what happened to 'keeping calm'?"
"Shut up."
As if on cue, Anna came in, quietly opening and closing the door behind her. All eyes turned to her, anxious to here what had happened to the Queen. "Ahem" she began. "Queen Elsa appears to have come down with a bad case of... food poisoning, and had to, uh, leave. I apologize for this inconvenience."
"Not an inconvenience" said Gethro, leaning up quickly, refusing to show weakness to the Princess.
"Well it was a little inconv... ow!" said Marge as Gethro kicked her leg under the table.
"I think we should retire for the evening" said Anna. "Captain, can you take Gethro and Marge to the guest quarters?"
"Absolutely Your Highness" said Dodgson as he rose at attention. "This way" he said as he led Gethro and Marge out the room.
"You don't happen to have any dirt lined rooms, do you?" asked Marge.
"Oh come on" said Gethro, "it's not like..."
"We can bring up some dirt if you like" said the Captain.
"Really?" asked Gethro.
"We have the trolls stay over some times. It makes sense if you live here."
"Well it's not like I'm not used to the concept; you should see the inside of our ship. But here in a human castle?" he asked as they were led out. There conversation continued as Dodgson led them down the hall, the guards following behind. Anna was now free to speak with Jase and Olaf alone.
"What really happened?" asked Jase.
"Elsa, um, had a vision, I think."
"A what?"
"I know, it's weird."
"Is she alright?"
"She's a little confused and dizzy, but she asked to be alone for a little bit to try and make sense of it. Jase, I need to go back and check in on her. Can you go fill Kristoff and Pabbie in on what happened?"
Of course he didn't want to. He wanted to go see Elsa and make sure she was alright. But he knew she was in good hands with Anna, and somebody had to see to Kristoff and Pabbie. He nodded. "Of course."
It was slow going in the dead of night, but Kristoff finally made it home at 10, he thought. He had already parked the sled in the stables and tended to Sven. He saw Olaf in the stables and asked him to send word to Anna that he had made it with Pabbie and Boulda. Yet, when he walked through the courtyard and through the castle doors, he was greeted by no one, which was odd. He figured Elsa didn't want to leave the messengers waiting, so she must have started the meeting already. He waited downstairs in the main hall for almost ten minutes now without a word. Wasn't he told to hurry?
"Hmm, where are they?" he asked. Boulda had seen to Pabbie, making sure he was sitting down. The old troll had regained some of his composure, but was still tired from his visions. Kristoff had taken to staring at the suits of armor, looking at his reflection in the odd shapes of metal. Finally, they heard footsteps. Down the spiral staircase, Kristoff saw Jase come down.
"So, anything interesting happen while I was gone?" he asked sarcastically.
"We just ended the meeting. Man have I got a tale to tell you."
"Likewise."
Anna went back to the room, but found no trace of Elsa. Merging on panic, she walked to the next room, the library, where she found Elsa pacing next to the window, anxious as ever.
"What part of stay put don't you get!" said Anna, coming in. "I'm already stressed out enough! Don't go leaving me guessing where you are!"
"Sorry" Elsa said distantly. She shook her head. "Really, I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it." Anna walked closer. "Did you have time to think?"
Elsa nodded. She tilted her head, signaling Anna to follow her. She went to the couch by the fire place and sat down. Anna did like wise and sat down on the other end. She waited patiently of Elsa to speak.
Elsa stared at the fire, gathering her thoughts. "I was panicked before" she began, speaking slowly, careful of her choice of words. "I felt like I was dragged into a dream, another world, then just shot back out. I was just, dizzy and confused. Most of it I can't explain. But there was a figure."
"A person?" Anna asked.
Elsa shook her head. "I don't know. He was shrouded in this cloak. I didn't see him clearly, or, anything really. Everything was blurry and jagged, like looking through a stained glass mirror in the church. There was him, and a castle, a dragon. I saw Jase in a battle I think. There was a mountain... after that, just, blurs and colors... I think I heard Joan."
"Really?" Anna asked. "It's been a while, right?"
Elsa nodded. "I don't think this is just coincident Anna. This isn't just some panic attack like I used to have. This was, metaphysical."
Anna nodded uneasily, then stopped. She rolled her eyes up, as if trying to make sense of a difficult question. "This is about math now?"
"Metaphysical refers to something beyond physical understanding" Elsa deadpanned.
"Puh, of course that's what it meant!" Anna said, waving her hand. She patted he knees unceasingly. "Ahem, but, seriously, you think this is, magical, or something?"
"You say that like it's a surprise."
"Well of course it's not a surprise. I mean, you have magic, Olaf is magic, we have a fire mage in the dungeon, my in-laws are trolls, there's an elf in the guest room, that turn-coat pirate can teleport anywhere in the world... do you want me to keep going?"
Elsa giggled, Anna's intention exactly. "Yeah we do have a lot of that going around do we?"
Anna smiled. "I don't think it's going to end anytime soon."
Elsa looked back at the fire. "You don't suppose our messengers did something to me, do you?"
"What, like a spell or something?" Anna shrugged. "I mean, anything's possible. Look, Pabbie's here, and the messengers are in the guest room under guard. I think we should just go to bed and sleep on this. Sound good?"
Elsa turned back to look a t Anna. "To tell you the truth, I'm afraid to go to sleep. What if my dreams are worse?"
Anna nodded. "Right. Tell you what, I'll stay with you tonight."
"Oh Anna, I couldn't..."
"Oh I insist. You're going to need some sleep anyway, and I don't think sleeping alone is going to help you any."
Elsa went to retort again, but relented. She turned back to the fire, then back at Anna. "Alright. Tomorrow we'll figure this out. For now, let's get some sleep."
So many re-edits with this chapter. Every time I thought I had it done, something seemed really off and I had to go back. It was like I had this Chinese sense behind me going "Wrong! (strikes back of head) Again!" Imagine that.
Well, not much to say here, but action will becoming in either the next chapter or the chapter after. It looks like you are all looking for Wes to not have his identity revealed in this story, but rather in the spin-off. I am now making this official and closing the poll. Thanks to all those who voted!
Happy new Year!
-Batman
