Perched on the tips of her toes, Anna peers over the narrow stone wall by the Fjord. Narrowing her eyes against the morning sun's glare, she grins at the solitary cyan figure standing on the ice a mile away.
"Elsa!" Anna yells, hopping and waving her hands. The Queen's hair shows up as a golden streak against the azure sky as she turns around and even at this distance, Anna's heart leaps at her sister's smile.
Hurling herself over the wall, the Princess slides down the muddy riverbank and scrapes her knees as she slips on the ice. With her eyes fixed on Elsa's cape fluttering in the wind, she ignores the blood on her knees and starts sprinting towards her. A gust of frost-laced wind whips through her braids, but the excitement in her chest pounds with every step she takes. The thudding of her boots on the ice barely rises above the panting reverberating from her lungs, and before long, Anna's ribs ache under the exertion.
"Elsa!" Anna gasps, slowing her pace to a jog and pressing a hand to her chest. The sight of Elsa waving back at her spurs her on upon the ice, but the blood has already left a slick trail of red behind her. Carried by the cool morning breeze billowing around her dress, the faintest whiff of blood reaches her nostrils. Anna bites down hard on her lips and drags her feet along the ice, keeping her gaze anchored on Elsa's still figure in the distance.
The unpleasant odor soon turns into the stench of rotting flesh, sending Anna buckling over and retching saliva. Nausea overwhelms her senses, and she crumbles to her skinned knees, the very act sending a rumble through the ice. Horror flashes across her eyes as the ice darkens to a dull transparency beneath her mittens. With the hope of reaching Elsa forgotten, Anna scrambles backwards on her hands and hips as the rumbling intensifies.
The stench persists in her nostrils, and a shriek escapes her lips as a hand appears beneath the ice; pale white with emaciated fingers, its nails make grating noises as they rake underneath the ice. Anna's breath halts in her throat as a crack emerges above its half-rotten fingernails, and another hand joins its assault on the ice. She drags herself to her feet and turns to run, but her lungs empty in one long gasp as she sees dozens of other hands beneath the ice scratching away at the surface – and a web-like lattice of cracks forming around the trail of blood she's left on the ground.
"Elsa!" Anna screams one last time, before the ice shatters with a deafening roar and the hands drag her down into the frozen depths.
Pain blossoms across Anna's cheek like an arc of lightning in a blizzard; ice-cold, electric – fiery to the skin with a dull afterglow spreading into her neck. The sensation of falling overwhelms Anna's senses, until the thud of her head against the carpet robs every trace of air from her lungs, and her eyes flutter open into a foggy darkness. The image of Elsa, kneeling over her with frost glowing in her hands, swims into her vision. A dull ache courses its way down Anna's arms, and she traces the pain's source to the very tips of her fingers wrapped around her sister's throat.
Her fingers.
Pain crackles across Anna's cheek again, and the sight of Elsa is momentarily stolen from her.
"Fuck, Anna, let go of me!" a voice slices into her ear; high and stifled – like the furious tweeting of a bird caught in a net. At once, horror befalls her and she loosens her fingers from Elsa's neck. Sweat rolls off her palms and down her wrists, sending a chill through her arms as Elsa slumps against her chest – knocking all the air from her lungs and sending a spurt of fire through her ribs.
"Christ, Elsa - I'm sorry!" Anna sputters, feeling around in the dark for her sister. The split-seconds tick by as she anticipates Elsa's answer, and her heart pounds between her temples like the thumping of a war drum.
"No, fuck, stay the fuck away from me!" Elsa spits, clutching the sheets to herself and scrambling away from Anna. She presses herself against the wall and stretches a glowing hand in front of herself. Fear flashes through Elsa's eyes as her sister beckons towards her with outstretched fingers, although she can't decide if she's afraid of the frost curdling in her hands – or Anna's vice-like grip.
"Oh god, Elsa, please, I didn't mean to-" Anna gasps. Beneath the pale green light filtering through their curtains, bruises form on Elsa's neck: dark and sullen, a contrast to the angry red welts lining Anna's cheek. The sisters' widened eyes well with tears at the injuries they've inflicted on each other, and Elsa's gaze softens. The frost within her hands fades into darkness, leaving a radiant warmth emanating from Anna's cheeks filling the room's air, and the heady scent of sweat lingering in the stillness between them.
"I didn't-" Elsa whispers with the softest of breaths, as though the tinge of frosty air leaving her lips is enough to hurt her sister, "I didn't hit you too hard, did I?"
"No!" Anna shoots back, with strained voice. She traces a finger against her cheekbone and winces at the stinging pain. Biting hard on her lower lip, Anna's thumb comes away with blood, and Elsa's face betrays sheer horror when she sees an angry red gash slicing through her freckles. The instinctual protectiveness supersedes her fear from earlier, and she reaches out towards her sister.
"Jesus, Anna – you're shaking," she exclaims, shuddering at Anna's trembling hurt passing into her hands. Inhaling deeply, she holds her breath as Elsa seals her cut with frost, and cups her warm face within her chill hands. With her pain numbed, Anna's emotions overwhelm her; her tears brim over and seep through Elsa's fingers. Anna buries herself in the tangled mess of sheets lying knotted around Elsa's chest, and weeps.
A deathly glow glistens from Elsa's tear-stained face as she lifts her eyes from Anna's shivering weight pressing into her. She chokes back a sob and tries not to remember the last time Anna was in her room when the sky was awake and gleaming with the shifting red-and-green hues from the Northern Lights.
"I'm sorry," Anna murmurs against her sister's chest, "I should probably go sleep somewhere else before I…um…strangle you to death or something."
Elsa's heart clenches at the suggestion; she trails her fingers through Anna's hair, taking care to avoid touching her scalp.
"No!" Elsa pleads, her voice breaking from the tears, "Please- you can't, I-I need you here with me. It, it gets awful when you aren't around and I- I just can't-"
Anna tears her face from the comfort of Elsa's bosom and asks with widened eyes, "You get nightmares too?"
"I-I-" Elsa stutters, trying to find the words to describe the chill nights where she'd scream herself awake with a glittering sheen of ice over her skin and her mind throbbing with the still-vivid memories of Anna's accident. The dark fractals of frost surrounding her bed only served to remind her how permanent her curse was, and she'd press her face into the pillow, hoping there'd be enough warmth left inside her face to melt her tears as she cried herself to sleep yet again. Elsa's nightmares persisted until her parents' deaths; they grew in intensity thereafter, and the weeping proved woefully inadequate for helping her fall asleep.
"I know something that might help," Elsa whispers, reaching beneath her bed. A soft clinking punctuates the sound of Anna's breathing, and a glimmer emerges from the darkness. The bottle's cork comes off with a pop, and a swishing sound fills the air as Elsa takes a sip, followed quickly by another. Elsa points the half-finished bottle at Anna, and allows her to decide.
"Is that…wine?" Anna asks, taking a whiff and recoiling from the harsh scent of alcohol burning through her nostrils.
"Whiskey," Elsa answers, staring at her sister's fingers wrapped round the bottle's neck. Anna's gaze falls upon the label, cracked and tattered from the salty corrosion of her sister's icy tears. With her heart pounding in her chest, she allows her lips to linger on the edge; the pungent stench of booze from earlier gives way to a sweet maltiness on her nose. Already, Anna's emotions grow numb at the booze invading her mind, and she can't decide if she's deriving pleasure from the scent caressing her brain, or the thrill of fleeing her tortuous dreams.
"I don't know if…um…I should be…doing this…" Anna stutters. She shuts her eyes and tries to shake the sleepy haze from her mind, but all she sees is a veil of blood and a thousand fingernails trying to bore her eyeballs out. Instead of fighting the visions, Anna succumbs to her sister's vice and downs a glug of rye whiskey. The alcohol's burn invades her throat and pools in her stomach's pit where the pungency conquers her every thought, replacing them with mere visages of her present reality.
"Fuck!" Anna gasps, exhaling a long, throaty breath and thrusting the bottle back into Elsa's hands, "th-hat was some…strong shit."
"It helps get me back to sleep," Elsa says, taking another sip and corking the bottle, "I haven't drank much after you started sleeping with me."
"You could've asked me anytime," Anna slurs, laying down in Elsa's lap, "I was…I was always there, waiting, hoping."
"Shh," Elsa whispers, straightening Anna's disheveled hair, "just try and…get some rest."
Through the curtains, Elsa watches the Northern Lights weave their intricate dance through the night sky, painting the blackness with silhouettes of red and green. The Queen listens carefully to her sister's breathing, and waits patiently for it to even out before whispering.
"The sky is awake."
Before long, sleep weighs heavy on Elsa's eyelids, and she spends her last few waking moments wondering if there's anything still alive inside her.