"Oh, come on. Pretty please?"

Kristoff's voice echoed off the sides of the cliffs that flanked either side of the small group of travelers. They were now more than halfway to the Northeast Pass, with only three days of walking left. Anna and Elsa alternated between riding their horses and walking, while Kristoff was content walking the whole time. Olaf loved riding Sven, placing his head facing forward directly in-between the reindeer's antlers and leaving the rest of his body on Sven's back.

At the moment, Kristoff was walking very close to Elsa. His hat was in his hands, and he was giving Elsa a look not unlike the one Sven gave him when he wanted carrots

Elsa, on the other hand, had a look of sheer amusement. She chuckled at Kristoff's latest plea. "I've already said no," she insisted. "I've said it several times, in fact."

"But your ice is the best," Kristoff rebuffed.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Elsa replied.

"It wasn't flattery, it was the truth." Kristoff pointed ahead. "Look. Do you see that?" The ground in front of them was covered in snow; the temperatures had not yet dropped low enough for it to melt here, and since they were in-between two cliffs, there was not much wind to disrupt the snow either. "To anyone else, it would look like perfect, unadulterated snow." Kristoff put his hat back on his head and turned back to Elsa. "But I've seen your snow. I've seen your ice. It's flawless. It's even more perfect than this—and I'm only asking for you to make me a tiny piece!"

"And no matter how many times you ask," Elsa insisted, "I will continue to say no." The tone in her voice overrode the smile on her face; no matter how patient she was with him, her answer was final.

"Besides," Anna chimed in from the back of her horse, "didn't we already give you a new sled? And how often do you use that?"

"He hasn't used it even once," Kristoff replied in Sven's voice, to which he turned around and instantly snapped, "Hey!" Sven gave a wry smile, and Kristoff turned to Anna. "That's kind of my point, actually. I spend all my time admiring it, and all I want to do with Elsa's ice is admire it. Is that too much to ask for?"

Elsa and Anna nodded in unison. "My magic," Elsa responded, "is only for emergencies."

Olaf spoke up from between Sven's antlers. "You used it yesterday to slide down a hill with Anna."

"That was an emergency," Elsa insisted, but everyone knew that that was a lie. Anna had been standing on top of a hill overlooking the Northeast Pass, after they had come across their first good look at it, and Elsa decided to push her down the hill—but not before quickly freezing the entire hillside in ice.

Kristoff sighed. "It's okay," he said, though his voice betrayed his disappointment. "I'm sure I'll find another girl with crazy snow powers somewhere else."

Elsa chuckled. "That will be the day." However, the thought intrigued her. This was, after all, part of the reason she was on this trip. If what Ivan said was true, it was possible that there were many other people like her in the world—that there had been in the past, and that there were right now, living in the same time as she was.

If that's the case, however, she reminded herself, surely I would have heard about it. The more she thought about it, the more she questioned Ivan's claim. She and Anna had not spent much time together growing up, but the few times they did interact, it was because they were both in the castle's library. Even after Elsa had begun to seclude herself, Anna kept happening upon her in the library, reading up on geometry or history. Anna, being the younger sister, was always more interested in fairy tales and mysteries, and would constantly beg Elsa to read her a book. Once in a while, Elsa would comply, and for those few minutes that so seldom came, the two would forget their distance and become sisters again.

It was not often enough. Their parents would find them huddled together around a book, and quickly separate them before Elsa could hurt Anna. After a while, Anna stopped asking Elsa to read to her, and eventually, their shared time in the library was spent in opposite corners.

However, during all that time, Elsa and Anna had managed to read almost the entirety of the library between the two of them. It was a large library, as well, full of books of every genre Elsa could imagine. If she had ever read a single sentence in any of the books that might have anything to do with the origin of her powers, she would surely have remembered it.

She brushed her bangs out of her eyes and turned to Anna. "Anna?" she asked.

Anna hopped off her horse. "Ready to stretch the old legs!" she exclaimed. She proudly took one step forward, before falling face-first into the snow. "Cramp, cramp, cramp, cramp," she feverishly repeated over and over, rubbing her left leg as quickly as she could.

Elsa chuckled, and motioned for Kristoff and Sven to stop while Anna recovered. Olaf's head rolled off Sven's, and his body hopped off to fetch it. "I'm okay," he insisted as soon as his head was back in place on top of his torso. He looked up. "Hey, look! Summer's coming here soon!"

It took Elsa a moment to realize what Olaf was talking about. The sun was beginning to peak over the eastern cliff face, its warm beams beating down on the party. Right on cue, Olaf's snow flurry appeared above his head, ready to keep the snowman cool.

"Summer's almost here," she agreed with a smile. Then she turned her attention back to Anna. "Are you okay?"

Anna stood back on her feet. "Yeah, I'm okay," she replied. She took another step forward, this time more hesitantly. Then she took a few more steps, more confident. "Is there any magic power you have that can instantly un-cramp things?"

"Don't I wish," Elsa mumbled in reply.

"So, what did you want to ask me?" Anna began hopping from one leg to the other, and finally took the time to brush the snow off the front of her green dress.

Aware of the multiple eyes staring at them, Elsa turned to Kristoff, Olaf and Sven. "Would you boys mind giving us a moment?" she asked.

The three glanced at each other, each of them obviously tempted to respond in a smart aleck manner. However, Elsa's face, and the mixed emotions on it, caused them to think twice, and without a word, they walked a little bit ahead, out of earshot.

"Well?" Anna drew herself close to her sister, a smile on her face. "What's the big secret? Should I be nervous? Or excited? Or maybe nervous and excited?"

"I don't know," Elsa quickly replied, in much quieter voice than Anna. She drew in a breath, suddenly afraid—afraid that, somehow, saying her worst fears out loud would validate them, and make them so. "Did you ever read anything in our library about where my powers might have come from?"

"I think I would have—" Anna started, before being cut off by Elsa pressing her hand against her mouth. She tried to fight Elsa for a moment, before sighing and nodding her head in submission. When Elsa removed her hand, she repeated, in a whisper, "I think I would have remembered it if I had."

Elsa nodded. "Me, too." She gulped. "Between the two of us, we've read every book in the library. And yet, that's exactly where Ivan said he got his information." Her eyes wandered ahead, to where Sven was attempting to bite Olaf's nose, to which the snowman just chuckled and kept glancing up at Kristoff. "The most I had read about the Northeast Pass was only in geography books. There is no history there, and there are no well-known inhabitants."

"Yeah, I didn't read anything about the Northeast Pass," Anna agreed, still in a whisper. "I think the most I remember about it is something about a neighboring country claiming ownership a few hundred years ago. It's not important."

Which can mean that it's exactly the place where a troll would want to live, Elsa thought, trying to encourage herself. However… "If there's nothing in the library that we read, there can't be anything Ivan read."

"Unless we just missed it," Anna quickly countered, still in a hushed voice. She put a hand on Elsa's shoulder. "If there's even the smallest chance that we can find the source of your powers, we need to pursue it."

Elsa turned back to Anna. She could feel the air around her grow cold, and no matter how much she tried to focus on her love for her sister, the fear of this whole trip being nothing more than a ruse slowly began to overpower it. "Why would Ivan tell me the truth? I've rejected him. He knows I do not love him. Why would he send me this way, knowing all that?"

Anna not only firmly kept her hand on Elsa's shoulder, she also placed her other hand on the other one. She looked Elsa dead in the eyes. "I have been in the same position as him, Elsa. I thought you didn't love me. I thought you hated me. But even when I felt all that, I still went out of my way to make sure that you knew that I still loved you. I know you don't love Ivan, but there's always the chance that he is doing this because he loves you. We have to hope that that's the case."

Anna's words struck Elsa like a snowball to the face: not harsh, but still strong enough to get her attention. She had to admit, Anna was right. When it came down to it, there was simply no reason to worry about it until they found out for themselves, firsthand, whether Ivan was telling the truth or not.

She turned to Kristoff, Sven and Olaf and opened her mouth, about to call to the boys that they were ready to continue going. However, something seemed odd about the small group. Something seemed different from the last time she looked at them, not thirty seconds prior.

It took a few moments, but then she figured it out. "Olaf," she called, "where's your snow flurry?"

Olaf looked up, expecting to see it hovering above him. His jaw instantly dropped, a gasp escaped his mouth, and he started bouncing up and down, desperately reaching for the sky as if his personal cloud was merely invisible, and needed his mere touch to make it reappear. "It's gone!" he cried. He sank to his knees—or at least, the bottom part of his torso—and spread his arms wide. "I'm lost!" he wept. "I'm a lost snowman!"

At any other time, the snowman's antics would have amused the others. However, right now, they found it far from amusing. Olaf's snow flurry had been made by Elsa with a very specific purpose: to keep Olaf cold in weather conditions where he would otherwise melt. The cloud only ever vanished when the weather conditions were satisfactory to keep him alive.

However, the sun was directly overhead, and its heat was already beginning to melt the snow all around them. It would start melting Olaf soon enough, if Elsa didn't create another snow flurry immediately.

"Hang on, little guy," she called as she and Anna approached the others. She raised her hands, ready to create a new flurry, when Kristoff suddenly raised a hand, motioning her to stop. "What is it?" she asked.

"Ssh." Kristoff's urgency caused not only Elsa to freeze, but everyone else as well. He took his hat off his head and cupped his ear with his hand. His eyes darted from one side of the canyon to the other, as if he was looking for a very small object high up the cliff walls.

Nobody dared to move. Kristoff was extremely good at sensing when danger was near, whether it was wolves or, as Anna once found the previous autumn, thinning ice. It was anyone's guess as to what he was sensing this time.

After several long, agonizing seconds, Kristoff quickly turned to Elsa. "Can you create a bubble of ice around us?" he asked.

Elsa sighed. "I already told you, mountain man—"

"Do you think you can do it now," Kristoff asked, sarcasm just as heavy in his voice as urgency. He pointed up the cliff to the west. "Or are you interested in getting buried under that?"

The group looked up, and as soon as they did, the cliff face seemed to disappear. At the same instant, a thunderous noise filled the canyon, a noise which sounded like a thousand thunderstorms all at once—and it got louder and louder. The cliff continued to disappear, and it wasn't long before Elsa realized why.

It wasn't disappearing. It was buried. Under snow.

An avalanche was headed their way.

"Get close to me!" she shouted. She didn't wait for everyone to follow her command; time was of the essence, and even if she had the time, Elsa did not know if her plan would work.

She threw her hands in the air and, more out of instinct than thought, produced an ice bubble and enveloped the group with it. Anna clung onto her, but not nearly as tightly as Kristoff, who squeezed her so hard she had to fight to breathe. Olaf, not seeming to truly understand what was going on, eagerly grabbed her leg and hung on tight. Sven, unable to do much else, lay down next to Elsa's other leg and made sure to keep his antlers out of Elsa's ice bubble.

The bubble was formed within milliseconds, and Elsa frantically made layer after layer on top of it. She knew the weight of snow an avalanche could produce, so she made her layers slightly apart from each other, with tiny air gaps in-between to help cushion the falling snow. Barely ten layers deep, each layer the thickness of a book, and already some snow was beginning to find its way down.

"Elsa!" Anna yelled in fright.

That was all she needed. The sound of her sister's plea—a plea that she had ignored far too often in the thirteen preceding years—caused Elsa's powers to exponentially grow. All at once, her layers of ice grew thicker and appeared far more quickly—within a single second, the bubble had reached several dozen feet above the group, and kept going. The air inside the circle swept around in circles, tossing Elsa's braid back and forth and everyone's clothes to blow every which way. In no time, the avalanche outside could no longer be heard. The sun disappeared behind all the layers of snow, but her ice glowed blue and provided them light.

Even after the sounds of the snow stopped, her powers didn't let up. She lowered her arms, knelt down, and touched the ground. A single sheet of ice appeared underneath them, reaching from one end of the bubble to the other. Then she slowly stood up—ever so slowly, almost deliberately. As she stood, with every inch of progress she made, the snow outside the ice bubble slid down the walls.

Elsa's arms raised to her side, and she pointed her palms upward and made her hands into fists. The ice bubble, which now more closely resembled a snow globe, broke free of the surface above. The group could now see that the avalanche had completely filled in the canyon. There were no more cliffs on either side of the group; the tops of the cliffs were now level with the snow. Elsa's ice bubble had lost most of its outer layers to the avalanche, and shock and horror filled everyone as they realized what might have happened had Elsa not made the final push.

Even she never knew that she was capable of this. The surprise was etched onto her face more than any of the others, even as she set down the ice bubble and shriveled up the last two layers into snow powder.

The group took a moment to collect their breath, still processing what happened. Olaf was the exception. He giggled and tugged on Elsa's dress. "Can we do that again?" he asked.

"I hope not," Elsa replied, never more serious in her life.

Kristoff stared at her. "What caused that avalanche?" he asked. The tone in his voice was accusing, and when Elsa didn't immediately answer, he stood straight and placed his hat back firmly on his head. "Maybe try and be a bit more careful next time, okay? You almost got us all killed." He sternly walked away, still in the direction of the Northeast Pass, with Sven reluctantly following.

Olaf looked from Elsa to Kristoff and back to Elsa. "You started the avalanche?" he asked, his smile gone. His eyes filled with disbelief, as if he could not wrap his mind around the possibility of Elsa being responsible for such a horrible thing.

Elsa herself could not believe it. She had been afraid for a little bit, yes, but not long enough to lose control of her magic. I would have known about the avalanche if I was the one who caused it. She hugged herself, suddenly unsure. Right?

Unwilling to confuse Olaf, Elsa quickly patted him on the head. "I didn't do it," she assured him. A smile crossed her face when his snow flurry suddenly poofed into the air above him. "It was just one of those things that happens."

Olaf smiled, satisfied with the answer, and proceeded to waddle in Kristoff's direction. Elsa turned to Anna. "It was just an accident," she repeated.

Anna, however, didn't seem so sure. For the first time since Elsa could remember, Anna looked at Elsa with just as accusing of a look as Kristoff had given her earlier. "Elsa," she asked, her voice quivering and unsure, "did you cause the avalanche?"

"No!" Elsa quickly refuted, but even as she did, she wasn't so sure. "I mean…" She turned away, looking at the snow that now filled the canyon. "I don't know. I don't think so."

Anna folded her arms and leaned against Elsa's back, facing toward the faraway mountains. "I want to believe you, Elsa. I really do. But…" Her voice faded away as she found herself at a loss for words.

"But you don't trust me," Elsa finished. Anna slowly nodded, her braids grazing Elsa's bare shoulders. "I don't blame you. After all, I have done so much harm to you in the past."

"I know you didn't mean to," Anna replied. "You've never meant to hurt me. And I know you never will." She turned around and threw her arms around Elsa, collapsing into tears. "But it still hurts."

Elsa's first instinct was to grasp her sister and return the hug, but she hesitated. Already her magic had harmed Anna when she didn't mean for it to. She instead had to settle for simply turning back around so Anna at least could cry into her chest and not her back. "This is why I hid away for all those years," she whispered.

Anna nodded. "And that's why I hurt so much." She dug her face deep into Elsa's chest, sniffling back as many tears as she could. "I love your powers, Elsa. I love you for them, and in spite of them."

Elsa winced at her sister's afterthought; it was one thing to think it in the back of her mind, but quite another to actually hear Anna say it out loud. She did not have a response; what could possibly help Anna feel better now? What could Elsa say that wasn't already plainly obvious?

Anna raised her head and locked tear-filled eyes with her sister. "I love you, Elsa," she repeated.

Elsa suddenly realized what Anna was trying to do. All she had to say was "I love you" in return, and Anna's heart would be healed. That's all it will take. She just needs to hear me say it. If I say it, that means that I've forgotten the past, and that she can forget about the past as well.

But Elsa could not bring herself to say it. So much had happened recently, she couldn't admit to herself that what she felt for Anna was true, unconditional love. She loved her as a sister, as a blood relative, but did she love her any more than that? Enough to sacrifice herself for her, as Anna had once done?

The events of all that had happened since Anna had discovered her powers made Elsa question exactly how much she did, in fact, love her. She had brought a lot of harm upon Anna, and no matter how unwittingly it all was, it still deeply hurt her. And now it was even at the point where she couldn't say for sure whether she had caused the avalanche or not. That she had saved Anna, and the rest of their friends, didn't matter right now. All that mattered was the possibility that she had almost gotten them killed.

"I'm sorry," was what she finally settled on saying, and wrapped her arms around Anna. Anna once again dug her face in Elsa's chest and wept, even more strongly than before. Elsa rubbed Anna's back, tears of her own beginning to form in her eyes. "I'm sorry to have brought this on you, Anna. I'm sorry for everything."

As the sun set on the western horizon, the two girls continued standing there, each unsure of what to do, what to say, or what to think. Eventually, Kristoff, Sven and Olaf returned, and they set up camp for the night.

And for the first time in her life, Anna wished that Elsa's powers would go away.