A/N: Sorry for the delay, guys!

"I can really order what I want?! Are you serious? I mean, everything cost so much. I would have to sell an house for eating here! And I don't even have an house! I can't believe it. They are thiev-"

A barely audible laughter cut her sentence in half.

"Don't worry, I'll pay for you! Take it as a thank you for saving me."

Anna thought she was joking.

She wasn't.

Elsa and her were sitting on a small tables of the most luxurious café that the ship could offered. The sun was illuminating the room with its rays that penetrated through the windows on the side, while the light of the chandeliers lit up the corners that the sunlight didn't reach.

The atmosphere was inebriating.

Near the girls, there was one of those window. It gave a magnificent view of the sea around them that seemed to hypnotized those who watched at its waves.

The bartender was looking at the two, dazed, wondering how such a strange couple could have met each other. He continued to clean his glasses professionally, without saying a word, waiting to take the orders from the girls.

A little further a pair of old ladies were playing cards in the hall opposite to them, sipping tea now and then and listening the little spat between the two.

"But-"

"I insist."

"But-"

The ice look of the blonde girl calmed the protest immediately. At that point, only one thing was possible.

"All right."

To agree with her.

When Anna had entered in the café, a few moments before, she had been pleasantly surprised. In particular she had been attracted by the creamy colors of the place: the iron wrought tables were white and they stood out against the dark mahogany walls around them. Her first thought was she had entered in a house made of chocolate, which didn't help to handle her hunger.

Elsa was behind her, observing Anna's reaction. In her point of view, the place wasn't so special. It was just a place as many others. They were all like that, weren't them? Chandeliers, fine wood, bottles of expensive liquor... As usual.

But that time there was something that made it difference: the presence of a certain girl by her side. She would have never thought that there could be someone so adorable as her.

The spell ended when Anna's stomach growled again. Elsa have chosen their seats since the other girl seemed to be too embarrassed to even lift her head and look at her, but now that they had the menu in their hands, the embarrassment was forgotten.

"I think I'll take a chocolate mousse! Oh, and a hot chocolate! " Anna said, excited.

"Oh, you like chocolate?"

"No I don't."

Elsa looked confused. How could a person order so much chocolate if she didn't liked it? It was weird. She opened her mouth to ask for an explanation but the other girl anticipated her.

"I love it! There is a difference, isn't it?" And she winked.

She should have anticipated it. She was Anna, after all.

"Without doubt." She found herself answering.

When the bartender arrived, Anna told him her order with a so palpable excitement that Elsa struggled to hold back a laugh. When her turn came, she ordered a hot chocolate too. At the mention of it, Anna's eyes widened.

"You too?!"

But Elsa had an answer ready that time and, with a tone very similar to the strawberry blonde one, she said:

"I love it!" with the same wink that Anna had done previously.

Anna didn't reply. She simply smiled. The same smile she had on the deck when they had met each other.

Which reminded something to Elsa...

"Didn't I told you to wait near the clock?"

"Uhm, yeah, why?"

"You were going the wrong way."

Anna looked at her, assuming she was joking, but - again - she wasn't.

"The wrong way?!" She thought. "That would explain why at that crossroads we clashed. Don't tell me...I did it again! I almost get lost again!"

So her orientation was bad under any circumstances. How shameful. She tried to find an excuse.

"I-I must have been confused. This ship is so big."

"Oh? Really?"

Irony. It was clear she didn't believe her. The excuse didn't work. Anna swallowed, not daring to utter a word, waiting for Elsa to speak first. Her next question came shortly thereafter.

"What about last night? What were you doing on the deck?"

"Oh, I know how to answer to this! I was looking at the stars. The sky was awake, so I was awake!"

It was bizarre. But apparently she would have to accept that side of the strawberry blonde girl; Anna was surprising, she had to admit it.

"You're strange."

Anna smiled.

"I know."

But the question triggered in Anna the memory of the night before and the situation where Elsa was. She could imagine what was passing through the head of the other girl, although she didn't know anything. She assumed a serious expression, earning the attention of the blonde girl.

"I was wondering what happened on the deck last night..." She muttered. Elsa's face dropped and sadness took over.

"How can someone so beautiful be so sad?" Anna wondered to herself.

Elsa didn't answer. She looked down and wrapped her arms around her chest while painful memories started to create in Elsa's mind. Anna didn't linger over, regretting of having said such a thing. She leaned forward, trying to fix what she had done, and took her hand, squeezing it strongly.

Elsa stared at their joined hands. She focused her thoughts in the strong hold of the other girl, in her soft and rough at the same time skin, as confirming its beauty and, at the same time, her strength. Looking up, she got lost again in the features of Anna's face. Her rosy cheeks full of freckles, the lively tones of her skin, her strawberry hair and in particular her eyes, sometimes elusive, sometimes so intense she had to look away.

Despite her watery eyes , she smiled at the girl in front of her who was still holding her hand, a smile that let anxiety and sadness glided away.

"Here, ladies."

The two jumped and left their hands quickly. They were so taken by their intimate moment that they didn't notice the arrival of the bartender with their orders.

Again, the difference between the two girls couldn't be more obvious.

The blonde girl sipped her hot chocolate with grace and manners, while the other was tasting - with the joy of her stomach - her mousse so fast that she devoured it in a few spoonful. Followed by the hot chocolate, another mousse, and then another one.

Finally satisfied, Anna leaned back roughly in her chair, with an happy sigh and she began to look at the other girl, enchanted by the firm but calm movements of her hand as she drank from her cup.

Elsa looked to the other girl and couldn't suppress the smile impressed on her face. She finished drinking her chocolate, exchanging glances from time to time.

She jumped when Anna appeared in front of her all of a sudden.

Her face was close.

Too close.

Her hand was approaching her mouth and she was staring at her intensely.

The heart of Elsa missed one…

Two...

Three beats. She felt the warmth of Anna fingers on her lips, her lovely touch and then... it disappeared.

"You had a bit of chocolate." Anna said, turning her attention to the finger.

Elsa looked at her, suspended in the midst of vague thoughts, starting to realize.

"Ah." She murmured, touching her lips with her hand, as if she were reminding the emotion she had just lived.

It made sense.

She lost another beat when she saw the chocolate-dirty finger in Anna's mouth.

She felt jealous of that finger for a moment, drowning in embarrassment when she understood her own thought. She kind of felt ashamed of herself.

Anna watched Elsa's blush and enjoyed her beauty, as if she was looking at a rare event, like a bright comet in the sky.

"Delicious, don't you think?" Anna muttered eloquently, raising her brow with a bold attitude.

She had tasted her scent closely. Elsa smelled of yearning. She was so close to kiss her… That indirect kiss alone was enough to high her spirits. Now she was thirsty, thirsty of her. She was hypnotized.

Elsa didn't answer immediately. She was lost in watching Anna's lips grinning as her eyes. They sparkled.

Everything was new to her, new and confused. What was that feeling? And despite the chaos in her head, there was one thing she was sure of: she liked this feeling. More than she could imagine.

"Yeah." She said, taking the towel and wiping calmly. "Delicious." Her voice was warm.

She saw Anna blushing and changing the direction of her gaze.

They began to talk, as if nothing had happened, but both girls managed to capture the excitement, which was still present around them. Their hands trembled and a bubble of happiness seemed to swell within them, absorbing their body and limbs.

It was a wonderful feeling.

Even better: Delicious.

The girls were talking since two hour. Their orders had been consumed a lot of time ago and they had been recently replaced by two simple glasses of water. Both had learned many things about each other and, without knowing it, they shared a thought:

"I want to know everything about her."

Elsa had discovered that Anna's favorite color was green, in all its shades and variations, that she had tasted chocolate for the first time at the age of two years and fell in love with it right away, and that she had always lived in poverty, traveling from place to place through the exchange of favors or concessions of good-hearted people.

As she already knew from the night before, the girl was originally from Wisconsin. She had moved from America to Canada, and there she found a lift to Europe. She had stopped in Norway where she met her traveling companion, Olaf, and then they visited together France, Italy and Denmark to end up in England. When she asked why she was returning to America, Anna hadn't answered. Her smile left her face for a second, and her eyes fell on the waves of the sea beyond the window. Her hand went to close to a chain around her neck. Elsa hadn't noticed it before. Whatever was the reason, it seemed it was important to Anna. She didn't lingered over.
She had also noticed that she used to take a lock of hair behind her ear when she was agitated or nervous and she started to ramble very often. She also wasn't embarrassed to talk about her origins, in fact, she seemed to be proud of it.

Meanwhile Anna had discovered that Elsa's favorite color was blue, specifying that she liked the cobalt blue and that, to her amazement, Elsa had the opportunity to taste chocolate only at the age of ten. Since then she had always kept a box of chocolates hidden in her room. As it was easy to understand, Elsa came from a noble family but in that period they were experiencing a bad situation because of the debts of her deceased father. She also discovered that the guy she met the night before, Hans, was none other than her future boyfriend, although Elsa didn't seem to love him at all. The only trips she had made were those from a noble family to another and, at the time, they were returning from some kind of major celebration of some family friends. She then discovered that the mysterious Mellow was the maid of Elsa and her only friend. Elsa then loved art. She had spent a good ten minutes talking about how beautiful Picasso paintings and other composers of the era were, leaving a dreamy and speechless Anna to listen to her. Anna then noticed that Elsa laughed with a hand over her mouth and every time seemed to face an internal battle when it came to how to behave at the table: when she let herself free and noted to have a wrong posture, she returned to be rigid and "perfect" in a rush, as if she was afraid to get punished because of that.

The questions they wanted to make to each other were so many that after two hours of talk, it seemed they were still at the starting point...

"Wait, what? You are my same age? Impossible! You look older. I m-mean, not old like granny old, just more mature."

"Well, thanks. I will turn eighteen in July."

"Uh? So I'm older!" And this somehow seemed to please her. She smiled mischievously. "I will turn eighteen next month."

Elsa then couldn't help herself:

"Well then, happy birthday!"

Anna looked shocked, as if she had just cursed or something like that.

"Are you crazy? It's a bad luck sign! Now I won't have an happy birthday! Oh no!"

And theatrically, she puts her hand on her forehead, slipping on the chair where she was sitting with an expression of mock pain in the face.

Elsa laughed. Staying with Anna was all she needed to be happy. Just her presence was enough to patch up the wounds of her heart and give color to her world. And she know for sure that for Anna was the same. She saw it in her eyes, the certainty of having found someone special. It was comforting.

"Elsa... Arendelle." whispered then the strawberry blonde girl. "I was wondering if you had a middle name."

Elsa blushed. That was enough to give the answer to Anna.

"Oh! Come on, tell me! I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours"

She considered her proposal. At that point she thought she had nothing to lose. She said it.

"Elsa Marie Idun Arendelle.
"Well then, nice to meet you, Elsa Marie Arendelle Idun. I'm Anna Lily Dawson."

She took her hand, but that time it was different.

She didn't squeezed it.

Instead she brought it close to her mouth slowly, lowering her head and going to meet halfway the back of her hand with her lips, joining them.

And while Anna praised that gesture with thoughts like "Oh my God! I always wanted to do it! I kissed her hand as all the princes do with their princesses! And oh my God oh my God oh my God, I really did it! ", Elsa was completely haywire. She had never felt so warm and red in the face. If ears could smoke, she was sure hers would have been completely on fire.

For the second time that afternoon she found herself confused and speechless, at the mercy of some emotion that she didn't understand. But it was so comfortable somehow.

Anna had to wave her hand in front of her face a few times to get her attention again.

"Hey, is there anyone?"

"Wh-what? "

"You got enchanted."

Oh yes, enchanted was the right word. Anna must knew some sort of spell to make her feel that way. It was magical and oh my, it was beautiful.

"Wait, what? Get back on Earth, Elsa!"

"Y-yes, I'm sorry, I got distracted."

Soon they returned to their round of questions: their favorite food (chocolate excluded), their favorite hobby, their favorite animal and it turned out that Anna loved the sandwiches, she would have spent the whole day looking at the stars and envied foxes for their cunning and agility while Elsa loved pasta, reading books and she would have really wanted to be a bird to be free to fly wherever she wanted.

"So, where are your parents now?" Elsa asked.

Anna resumed her bleak and distant look.

So Elsa understood why Anna was returning home. And it broke her heart.

"I hope they are in a better place, where they can look at me and be proud of me."

And she smiled again despite Elsa could see how much the memory of them was still so painful for her and how much the girl missed them. In her eyes she could see how much those people were important to her.

And how she continued to love them, steeling herself for them, and Elsa wondered how she could even smile again.

"How..?" She whispered.

Anna didn't seem to understand the question immediately.

"...Why are you still smiling? They're gone forever, right?"

"No."

Her tone was determined, so determined to send a shiver down Elsa's bones.

"Just because I can't hug them it doesn't mean that they are gone. They will always be here in my heart. As long as I will keep alive their memory they will live with me. This is why I can't afford to be sad. They gave me life, I'm not going to throw it away."

Anna was fighting against tears now, even if her smile didn't waver even for a second.

"They must have been wonderful parents. I'm sure they would be so proud of you."

"I know. I'm proud of them too."

A tear ran fugitive on Anna's face.

She didn't know why she said these things to Elsa but, between the two, Elsa seemed definitely the most fragile one. If there was one thing she wanted to do, that was definitely bringing back the girl's faith: faith in life, faith in happiness, faith in love. On the deck, the night before, her eyes were full of fear and suffering. But now she could clearly distinguish a glimmer of hope. She could see the desire to believe that life isn't only suffering and cruelty and that it hid much more, something more valuable.

Anna wanted to show that it was possible, that it wasn't all a fantasy.

"Elsa. Your parents love you too."

The blonde winced and snorted at these words.

"I don't think so." She said, feeling the anger raising in her chest. "No one would put his family at risk for money. Look at my father. He filled himself with debts that he knew he couldn't pay and then he dumped them all over us. And my mother. My mother that sold me to a man just because it was the easiest way for her."

She felt frustrated and was losing control. Perhaps Anna would have considered her a mad crybaby and she would have gone, like everyone else.

"Don't go away." She thought.

But there was no need to pray and hope for her to stay because Anna didn't go anywhere. She did even better: she tried to soothe her pain.

"You know, sometimes people see in money the power of dreams to come true. They believe that money can buy everything valuable: cars, huge villas, elegant clothes, love... Your parents are simply victims of this corrupt world. This doesn't mean that they don't love you. Nowadays we can't do anything but use masks and hide our feelings. This is a shame, isn't it? Because there is nothing more beautiful to show to a person how much you love her."

Tears had begun to descend from both girls eyes, streaking their faces. The world around them had collapsed. They were alone to fight with their own confused feelings, to externalize every little fear and weakness, to find comfort in each other's presence.

"W-what if you end up hurting yourself?" Elsa asked.

"Sometimes it's inevitable. The important thing though is to get up and fly even higher"

When Elsa opened her mouth to protest, Anna anticipated her.

"And don't you dare to tell me you can't do it. I know you can, you just have to believe in yourself."

"How can I believe in myself when I don't even know who I am?"

Anna then leaned forward and cupped her face in her hands, pinching her cheeks.

"You want to know what I see?"

Elsa nodded.

"I see a person who is afraid to love despite her heart is full of love. I see a person who is able to deal with many difficulties and had the force to stand straight onto her legs without help but who hasn't realized it yet. I see a person who can write her own destiny if she doesn't like what it has been decided for her."

Anna smiled and removed her hands from her cheeks and put her index finger on the nose of Elsa.

"Finally, I see a wonderful person, with beautiful freckles barely visible on the nose, which are the end of the world!"

Elsa chuckled. Apparently the strawberry blonde girl was really a unique person. Being with her was refreshing. And it warmed her heart.

She wiped her tears and nodded again, that time with a smile.

"If it is still not enough, I'll show you the world the way I see it. Come with me!"

And even if that statement was bizarre, at the time, it seemed like the easiest thing to do.

Elsa let herself be dragged out of the bar, letting Anna's essence took hold of her.

With Anna, everything seemed to become easier.

Everything seemed to be full of meaning.

With Anna, everything seemed true.