Chapter 25

Lunch was eaten sitting on the benches surrounding the fire pit. Dessert was chocolate. Sarah would have none of it. Ruth nibbled it. Alex enjoyed it. Kristoff and the guards sampled it. Anna and Elsa started by gobbling it and ended by savoring it. Alex noticed, tensed up and asked, "Your Majesty, do you enjoy chocolate? I don't mean hot cocoa, I mean solid chocolate." He looked as if enormous consequences hung on the answer.

Elsa looked from Alex to the piece of chocolate in her hand, wondering why it seemed so important to him. "Yes, I do. It's one of the few vices I allow myself."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Alex relaxed and smiled.

"Why is chocolate so important?" asked Elsa, perplexed.

"The chocolate isn't important," said Alex. "I'm just relieved I won't be getting sent to the dungeon."

Elsa looked even more confused. "What does my enjoyment of chocolate have to do with you not being sent to the dungeon?"

"It's a question of metabolism, Your Majesty. Before you had your powers under control, you froze things with your touch. Even now, your ice regalia doesn't melt from contact with your skin. But human metabolism operates in a narrow range around 100 degrees. And at some point I was going to need to determine what temperature your metabolism operates at, and whether performing magic changes it. And to do that I would need to measure your temperature. Unfortunately, I'd want you to be able to communicate at the same time so an oral thermometer wouldn't be the best choice. And I have a feeling that requesting a lab session with.. the.. um.. appropriate instrumentation would end up getting me sent to the dungeon."

Unbidden, but unstoppable, an image rose in Anna's mind's eye. The elegant and regal Queen Elsa lying face down on a lab work table, talking, gesturing and performing magic, naked from the waist down with a lab thermometer sticking out of her butt. Anna was having a very hard time stifling a giggle. As she looked around she could see she wasn't the only one.

Kristoff guffawed and that set off everybody else.

Elsa looked affronted, which only made Anna laugh harder, but soon enough she was laughing along with the rest of them.

After the laughter died down, Alex said, "Your enjoyment of chocolate, however, means I don't even have to propose the experiment. At base you've got a human metabolism, the cold is only skin deep and almost certainly backed up by a zone of thaw.

"How does liking chocolate tell you all that?" Elsa asked, hope stirring within her.

"One of the wonderful things about chocolate is its melting point. It's almost perfectly matched to the temperature of the mouth. If your metabolism truly operated below the normal human range, eating chocolate would be an experience akin to chewing on nicely flavored hardtack. The textural element would be missing completely. The unctuousness of the melting chocolate against tongue and palate, the scents released to waft up the back of the nose, these are intrinsic to the enjoyment of chocolate, and they both require a normal body temperature. So later this afternoon, while we're experimenting, if you can enjoy a piece of chocolate, a basic human metabolism is very likely. As to how your magic overlays and integrates with your metabolism, I don't have a clue. Yet."

Elsa turned to Sarah, "Do you think..."

Sarah interrupted, grinning widely, "Yes Your Majesty."

Elsa sat dazed as whole new worlds of possibilities opened up in her mind.

"Elsa? Are you all right?" asked Anna, worried at the uncharacteristic expression on Elsa's face.

Elsa was still imagining possible futures, so Sarah replied, grinning all the while, "She's fine Your Highness. Alex just unscrewed the top of her head and the light of imagination is a bit blinding right now. Give her some time for her mind's eye to adjust."

"Sarah, sometimes I don't understand what you're talking about at all," said Anna.

For an hour or so after lunch Elsa was incredibly distracted. During that time Alex attempted to run experiments to determine how fast she could freeze and thaw the water in the lake. The experiments were an annoyance to Elsa when she wanted to be thinking about other things, so she was hasty in her use of her magic. Freezing and thawing the entire lake in a small fraction of a second didn't give Alex much useful information. When the lake froze, the ice level was six feet higher than the previous water level. And when the ice instantaneously thawed, the newly liquid water that was above the previous lake level dropped, sending a wave a long way up the beach and sending a pulse of water over the ridge. A little later the accidental instantaneous thawing of the snow pile Elsa had created earlier and the panicked freezing of the resulting twenty foot high onrushing wall of water, rise of the lake level as the frozen mass was quickly (instead of instantly) melted, near flooding of the fire pit, and frightening of the horses further indicated that her heart wasn't in the work. Alex was getting exasperated, beginning to wish he'd never mentioned chocolate, and wondering why Elsa was so obsessed with it.

Sarah realized that Alex didn't understand what was occupying Elsa, so she walked up to him and whispered in his ear. He looked at her, puzzled. She rolled her eyes, sighed, and continued whispering. The look of puzzled exasperation on Alex's face disappeared and was replaced by one of sympathy.

"Why don't we all take a break. We'll continue when Queen Elsa is less preoccupied."

While everyone else was sitting on pads made of oilcloth and blankets on the ice benches and warming up by the fire, Alex went to the trunk on the cart and pulled out three boxes. Each one was about six inches on a side. One was made of glass, one was made of wood, and one was made of metal.

Alex walked down the beach about a hundred feet and placed the glass box on the ground. He walked another hundred feet and placed the metal box on the ground. He continued walking to the far end of the lake, where the cliff met the beach and placed the wooden box on the ground.

When Alex returned to the fire, Kristoff asked, "What are the boxes for?"

"They're for one of the later experiments. I want to understand if Queen Elsa's powers are limited by her line of sight. I expect her to be able to fill the glass box with ice because she can see into it, much like the experiments our first day in the lab. I don't know if she'll be able to fill the metal box because the wall's are opaque."

"What's so special about the wooden box? Why did you put it so far away?"

"That one's potentially dangerous. It's a solid block of wood, and might explode if Queen Elsa 'fills' it with ice. I don't want anybody being hit by the pieces. I'm not sure we'll use it. It depends on the results with the metal box.

Eventually Elsa came up for air. She stood up and walked over to Alex and said, "I'm ready to continue. Do you want me to try freezing and thawing the lake again?"

"That won't be necessary, Your Majesty. The lake clearly isn't big enough to determine the limits to your powers. It took so little time to freeze and thaw that I couldn't measure it."

"Oh. So what's next then?"

"I'd like to know more about the way you manipulate the wind. I've seen you blow your office door closed with a breeze triggered from a gesture. I've read reports of your blizzard near the end of the Great Freeze. Olaf's flurry follows him around by using controlled breezes. So wind can be created and controlled by conscious magic, created and uncontrolled by emotional magic based in fear and despair, and can be utilized by magical processes. There's a lot to find out."

"All right, how do you want to start?" asked Elsa.

"Please direct a heavy wind across the lake, Your Majesty."

Elsa turned to the lake, making sure there was no-one and nothing in her way, put her hands together in front of her and pushed gently with her magic. A breeze sprang up, directed toward the water. She pushed harder, and the breeze stiffened, rippling the water. Elsa leaned into the push and the wind roared away from her, raising small waves on the lake. Elsa's feet started slipping out from under her.

"That's enough!" yelled Alex, struggling to be heard over the roaring of Elsa's wind.

Elsa eased back on the wind and then stopped it, straightening up as she did so.

"Your Majesty, it looked like you were experiencing a pressure from the wind. I can't imagine that you always feel a reaction force, otherwise your blizzard would have been flinging you about like a rag doll. When do you feel pressure? Did you feel it when you closed your office door?"

"No."

"How about during the blizzard?"

"No, then I was just buffeted by the winds. When I create a breeze by pushing magic through my hands, that's when I feel a force."

"Is the reaction force equal to the projected force of the wind?"

"I don't know. I don't even know how to tell."

"Hmmm," said Alex. He thought for a few moments. "Your Majesty, how much do you weigh?"

"Alex!" said Sarah, shocked at his temerity. "That's not a question you ask any woman. Much less a Queen."

"All right then," said Alex, "we're going to have to do this the hard way."

Sarah narrowed her eyes and asked, "What do you mean, 'the hard way'?"

"A way that allows me to find a second person who's a close match to Queen Elsa's weight without actually putting numbers on it. Much harder than just asking for people's weights."

"Oh."

Alex addressed Elsa, "Your Majesty, we're going to want a lever. Please create a triangular prism of ice two feet on a side of the triangle and one foot wide to act as the fulcrum."

The triangular prism appeared with a wave of Elsa's hand.

"Next we'll need a beam of ice about eight feet long, a foot wide and six inches thick. If you could put a notch about an inch deep in the center and balance it on the fulcrum you've already created, we'll have a way to proceed."

"You could have just asked me to make a teeter-totter," said Elsa.

With another wave of Elsa's hand the teeter-totter was complete.

"If Your Majesty will sit on one end of the lever we'll find the person who's closest in weight to you. We may have to have one or the other of you move forward on the lever until it's balanced. And please excuse me, but I'm going to insist on measuring the distances from the fulcrum."

"You won't have anyone's weight?" asked Sarah.

"No, all I'll have is a proportionality."

It turned out that Anna weighed nine tenths as much as Elsa.

While they were both on the lever, Alex asked Elsa to create and levitate a ball of ice. The balance of the lever was unchanged despite the foot diameter crystal clear ball hovering above Elsa's open hands. Alex stared unbelieving until Anna interrupted his befuddlement saying, "Are we done? Some of us are freezing our fundaments."

"Oh. Yes Your Highness," said Alex as the sisters dismounted.

"What's next?" asked Anna.

"Now we need a low friction plane," said Alex. He waved a hand to indicate the lake. "And we happen to have a nice placid lake that can be frozen faster than I can measure it, although we really only need a safe thickness of ice, say five or six inches."

Elsa waved a hand and the lake froze over.

"We want to determine if Queen Elsa feels a reaction force equal to the projected wind force, and we'll do that by having her send a wind that Princess Anna catches in a sail of some sort, probably a spread blanket. Both their acceleration and the friction forces they experience on the ice should be proportional to their weight. I estimate that Queen Elsa should travel about eighty percent as far as Princess Anna."

"Um, Elsa never slips on the ice," said Anna.

"Oh," said Alex. He thought for a few seconds. "What about ice skates? Your Majesty, will you glide if you're on ice skates?"

"Yes," replied Elsa.

"Excellent," said Alex. "This can still work."

"So Elsa and I go out on the lake, she makes us ice skates, I hold out a blanket, she sends a wind at it, and then someone measures how far we each went from where we started?" asked Anna.

"Stripped to it's bare bones, that's a concise description of the experiment. It shouldn't take much in the way of a push, about one second with a force of about thirty pounds should suffice. But I want to take some precautions. I'd like to have most of the experimental area surrounded by a wall of snow."

While Alex was talking Elsa built up snow piles on the cliff side of the lake and a large snow barrier at the lake's drainage. She cleared her throat to get Alex's attention, and then pointed.

"Oh. All right let's see how this goes," said Alex. "Oh, wait, one more thing. Is there any chocolate left over from dessert?"

Ruth went to the picnic hampers and found a piece of chocolate, which she passed to Elsa, who popped it into her mouth.

Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff headed toward the lake, Anna carrying a blanket and Kristoff carrying a length of rope. As they stepped onto the frozen lake, Elsa created skating blades on Anna and Kristoff's boots. When they reached a good place to set up, Elsa produced a bar of ice on the lake, and added skating blades to her own boots.

Anna attached one corner of the blanket to each of her boots by the laces and held the other two corners in her hands. Anna and Elsa stood facing each other on opposite sides of the ice bar. Elsa's arms were relaxed and her hands were together and almost touching the blanket.

"Begin!" yelled Alex from the shore.

Elsa pushed with her magic and a stiff focused breeze left her hands and hit the blanket. Elsa and Anna started moving away from each other. Elsa stopped the wind after a second. Several seconds later she and Anna came to a stop about thirty five feet apart. Kristoff gave Anna one end of the rope, then played out the coil until he got to Elsa. He used the pencil to mark the rope where Elsa was holding it, then marked the rope at the same point as the ice bar. He went back to Elsa, took the rope back and coiled it up until he returned to Anna. The three skated back to the beach.

Sarah asked, "Your Majesty, was the chocolate any different?"

Elsa smiled and said, "No, it was just like eating chocolate always has been."

Kristoff walked to Alex and handed him the rope.

"Thank you. I'll need to figure out a more precise way to do this experiment, but for now this will do. I'll measure the distances on the rope before it's time to write up the report on these experiments."

"Are we done with wind?" asked Anna.

"Not quite. But for the next wind experiment we should probably use Olaf as recipient of a wind generated by a gesture rather than a push of magic, so your part of the experiment is done."

Elsa dissipated Anna and Kristoff's ice blades and they stepped off the ice.

Alex addressed Olaf. "Olaf, would it be all right for Elsa to blow you around on the lake?"

"Sure!" said Olaf and he waddled out onto the ice. Elsa took his hand and pulled him along with her to the center of the lake. She released him and skated a few yards further.

Elsa faced Olaf, reached back and swept her arms forward. A blast of wind blew Olaf apart and spread his pieces over the surface of the lake. Elsa didn't move at all. Elsa reassembled him with a gesture.

"Is that enough or do you want me to move Olaf around some more?" asked Elsa.

"No, Your Majesty, that should suffice," said Alex. He muttered, "Especially when it's so confusing."

"Why is it confusing?" asked the sharp eared Anna as Elsa skated over to Olaf and pulled him back to shore.

Alex said, "Because in one case there appears to be a conservation of momentum, and in the other there doesn't." He gave a rueful smile. "Don't mind me. It's just magic making a fool of me. Again. Anyway, I want to record what we've done here. Everyone else take a break."

"Aren't we done yet?" asked Anna. She was getting bored, tired, and irritable.

"We're almost finished," said Alex. "The last two experiments ought to be quick. In the first, I want to determine if Queen Elsa's powers are limited by her vision. For the second, I want to see if she can put out the fire by removing energy from it."

"Fine. Make 'em quick. I've had enough of this expedition and we still have an hour's travel to get home."

Alex turned to address Elsa. "Your Majesty, a hundred feet down the beach is a box made of glass. Please fill it with ice."

Elsa pushed a pulse of magic through her hands and everyone could see that the box was now full of ice. "Next," said Elsa.

"Two hundred feet down the beach is a box made of metal. Please fill it with ice."

Elsa sent a pulse of magic at the metal box. No one knew whether the box was full or not.

"Ruth," asked Alex, "can you run down the beach to the box and see if it's full? And if it isn't go get all of the boxes and bring them back here?"

Ruth ran out to the metal box and yelled, "It's empty." She started down the beach to retrieve the wooden box.

"Well, that was less conclusive than I'd like. If the box had been full we could have said that a line of sight isn't necessary, but since it's empty we don't know if it's a limitation of the magic or a limitation of Queen Elsa." said Alex. "Time for the last experiment. Putting out the fire using the removal of energy."

"What would you like me to do?" asked Elsa.

"Have your magic absorb heat from the fire faster than it can be generated."

Elsa looked at the fire and made a gathering gesture using both hands, as if she were inviting the heat of the fire into herself. The flames disappeared and the embers cooled within seconds. Soon after that, ice started forming over the ashes in the fire pit.

"I think that's probably good enough Your Majesty," said Alex.

Elsa grinned.

Ruth returned with the three boxes carried in her arms. Elsa thawed the ice in the glass box and Ruth dumped the water in the lake.

The picnic supplies were repacked into the hampers, the blankets, oilcloth sheets, and boxes were repacked into Alex and Sarah's trunk. Trunk and hampers were loaded into the cart. The rope, fire grate, coffee pot and the leftover animal feed were loaded as well.

Alex finished writing up the final experiments and put the lab journal and pencil into one of the hampers.

Sarah locked up the emergency supply box.

After a final inspection of the beach, it looked like everything had been cleaned up and there would be no impact on the ice harvest during the winter.

"Are we ready to go?" asked Elsa.

There were murmurs of assent from everyone but Alex, who was looking a little disappointed.

Sarah poked him with an elbow. "Why are you looking so down. We got a lot done today."

"I had hoped to end the day with a bang. If the metal box had been full I would have asked Queen Elsa to fill the wooden block. I had thought the wooden block might explode, but since it wasn't worth doing the experiment, no bang."

Anna said, "A big bang is easy. Elsa can just make a big ice-work." She turned to Elsa. "Go on, make it BIG."

Elsa started with a ten inch diameter ball of solid ice, which she levitated while she expanded it into a six foot diameter ice shell.

"Your Majesty," said Alex, "I'd advise you to set an altitude trigger on that shell so that it's at least two thousand feet above us before it implodes. It's going to be loud."

"Loud enough to hear at the castle?" asked Anna excitedly.

"Very possibly, although at that distance it'll sound like distant thunder."

"All right, I'm going to release it now," said Elsa. "Everyone cover your ears."

The shell rose into the late afternoon sky, helped aloft by one of Elsa's breezes. Eventually it passed it's altitude threshold and melted with a deafening BOOM. The boom echoed from the cliff behind the lake and from the surrounding peaks, sounding for all the world as if the party had been witness to a nearby lightning strike. Eventually the thunderous sound died away in rumbling echoes, leaving Alex with ringing ears and an enormous grin.

"You happy now?" asked Anna with a smirk.

"Yes, Your Highness." Alex turned to Elsa. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Let's go home," said Anna.

The trip home was much faster than the trip out had been. For one thing, it was downhill all the way, and for another, Sarah wasn't collecting specimens. The party returned to the castle as the afternoon was turning to twilight. The kitchen staff had prepared a hearty dinner and Alex, Sarah, and Ruth practically had to waddle home rather than walking. Their chest and Sarah's box of samples were placed in the Lab for them to pick up the next day.

A/N - Way back in chapter 11 PascalDragon suggested that recording Elsa's vital signs might be useful. Unfortunately, Alex needed to be circumspect. Thank goodness he was able to find an indirect way to get the data he needed.

The whole business of reaction forces from breezes pushed from Elsa's hands was required because of an early scene in the movie where Elsa is seen essentially rocketing herself, inanimate Olaf, and Anna around the frozen ballroom floor. I can't tell if it's the recoil from a wind or the magic itself that's providing the reaction force, so I'll assume that it's the wind (because I have no idea what the mass, or energy equivalent mass, of magic is). By the way, the word 'rocketing' is a very deliberate choice. Not that I'm going to have Elsa flying around on a rocket made of wind in this story. I imagine that kind of flight would have to look like flights made using a jet pack. One problem there is stability. The actual jet packs had the thrust applied near the center of gravity of the pilot/jet pack system. In order for Elsa to do this without needing the upper body strength of an olympic athlete she'd need to wear a harness to keep her hands in the right position. The harness would need to be very well engineered, or maneuverability would be a problem. And I can't imagine a safety obsessed Alex would be willing to participate in designing such a harness for fear that a pilot distraction or something else going wrong would drop Elsa out of the sky. Besides, I suspect Elsa would have issues with being confined in any kind of restraint.

My thanks go to all those who have reviewed, followed and favorited this story since it's inception. Special thanks go to the reviewers of Chapter 24: Morgaine2005 and ptahaegyptus2.

Also thanks to the guest reviewer who took me to task for not taking into account static friction of ice on ice. The kinetic coefficient of friction of ice on ice (at about -20 degrees Centigrade is 0.05, while the static coefficient of friction at the same temperature is about 0.3). This difference doesn't cause much of a problem with the first wind experiment because there's enough force exerted that the static friction is very quickly overcome. The second experiment (which had Olaf being gently wafted about) was a problem. I've fixed it by having the wind have enough force to blow Olaf apart and then having Elsa reassemble him.