.

The Girl and the Ice Queen

-:-

Chapter Eight


The same day.

11:49 AM. Ice Queen's palace.

The Ice Queen was in her study, quietly reading some texts she'd anonymously purchased a few weeks ago. Living in isolation tended to hurt one's academic prospects, but she tried to keep up to date. The castle was of her own design after all.

A sudden flutter of wings roused the Ice Queen from her studies. A snow owl had unexpectedly flown in through a nearby window, which the blonde quickly recognized to be the same one the redhead had previously tampered with: Flippyflaps. It carried in its talons a familiar looking wax tube which it promptly delivered.

The Ice Queen unrolled the parchment paper, recognizing it also as being the same one she'd originally sent to said redhead. A second message had been hastily appended. The paper in its entirety now read as follows:

That was very cute of you.

Come see me when you are next able. Alone, mind you.

E.

7+ ACADEMY FIRE MAGES GOING TO YOU RIGHT NOW

ATTACKING CASTLE FROM FAR AWAY

! WATCH OUT !

The Ice Queen sighed. She was well acquainted with the mages in question and quite frankly was thoroughly fed up with their brainheaded stubbornness. Granted, the redhead was even worse in that aspect, but at least she hadn't yet tried to kill her. The fact that the mages were finally changing tactics worried her though; sieging the castle was indeed effective. Not only would she be unable to focus her attention everywhere at once, the Ice Queen was admittedly not wholly experienced at long range combat, having never had occasion to need it in the past.

The warning in advance helped immensely, however, and the Ice Queen wasted no time in making her way down to ground level. Exiting out into the snowy wilderness surrounding the castle, the forestry that normally would've worked against her was now hers to take advantage of.

She lay in wait.


Later...

1:13 PM. Ice Queen's palace: living chambers.

The Ice Queen heard a set of hurried footsteps clambering up the stairs. She wasn't alarmed—only one person could get by "Marshmellow" without incident. Sure enough, the redhead soon came scurrying into the room.

"Oh thank god you're still okay," the redhead gasped, out of breath. She had evidently come as quickly as she could.

"I am. Thanks for the heads up." The Ice Queen replied, having long since returned to her readings after dealing with the would-be intruders.

"You're welcome, but uh…" Anna sagged to the icy floor, clasping her mittens over her head. "…I might've accidentally said something I shouldn't have. And then one thing led to another, and then… well… here we are."

Anna felt very uncomfortable as the blonde looked up from her book to stare at her, and even more so as she described to her the events that had occurred in the Academy's library just a few hours prior. The Ice Queen was quiet for some time afterward.

"Why were you looking me up in the first place?" she eventually asked.

Anna nervously rubbed the back of her neck, feeling as though she were being interrogated. "I'm writing another story about you," she answered.

"Oh?" the blonde turned her attention back toward her readings. "How's it coming along so far?"

"You're not mad about the whole fire mages thing…?" Anna asked, surprised. She'd expected the blonde to be harsher about all this.

The Ice Queen shrugged. "It doesn't sound like you meant me any harm, and the fact that you bothered to warn me at all says a lot."

She glanced over at the girl again and saw that she wasn't convinced.

"Well," she sighed. "If you really want to make it up to me, then why don't you show me how you managed to do that little trick with my owl?"

"Sure!" The redhead perked up, immediately comfortable in the blonde's presence once again as though a figurative switch had been flipped. She produced a lute and rose off the floor, humming and strumming. The owl promptly flew into the room, circling around overhead, and the Ice Queen's snow golem bodyguard joined in not long afterward. And thus, before she even knew it, a little dance party had begun.


Back in the day, it felt like every single fic at one point or another had a section where Anna would either ramble for an entire paragraph, or Elsa would word for word say, "the cold never bothered me anyway."

This kind of direct quoting from the movie got old for me really fast, and soon I found myself rolling my eyes whenever it happened. As such, I now try not to write anything that I'd skip over if I were a reader.