AN: And we're back! Book One ran from June 1-25, and it's now October 1.

Okay, it's October 4. Perhaps daily updates won't be quite as feasible for this book as they were for the previous one. But at least today I can post all four segments of Day 15 to catch up, so that's nice and symmetrical.

Word-count trivia: when Book One ended, this story, at some 74,500 words, was already the fourth-wordiest story I've published. And it's only one-sixth of the way done. 74,500 times six is 447,000. I wonder! Could this be a half-a-million-word story? How exciting!

PRINCESS PARTY: BOOK TWO

Day 15, Part 1

As the light of a rosy red sunrise filtered through the castle windows, Anna sang and danced down the hallway toward Elsa's chambers.

She lifted her hand to knock, but the door opened before she made contact, and Elsa emerged, accompanied by Merida, the two of them intertwined and watching each other rather than where they were going.

"Merida?" Anna exclaimed. Her eyes darted between the two of them several times before she suddenly drew in an enormous gasp.

"Wow," Elsa remarked, smirking. "With that much gasping power, you'd think you'd have a stronger singing voice."

Her hands shaking, Anna pointed at Merida accusingly. "How long has she been in there, Elsa?"

"All night," Elsa said smugly. "All. Night. Long."

"Did you…?"

"Yup."

Anna took in another massive intake of breath. Grinning, Elsa held up her hand, as high as she could raise it, and Anna eagerly jumped up to give her a high-five.

"Yes!" Anna whooped. "We are awesome naughty sisters!"

"Yeah, we are," Elsa agreed.

The three of them stared at each other in silence for a moment before breaking out laughing. After a moment, Elsa began hacking and coughing, and the other two went silent in concern. Elsa held up one finger, then reached her thumb and forefinger into her mouth and rooted around for a moment, withdrawing a small, vibrantly red curly hair.

"Eww," she said, flinching at it. "How long has that been in there?"

Anna laughed. "Wow."

Elsa flicked the hair aside and turned to Merida. "So… breakfast, my darling?"

"Oh, you bet, babe," Merida gushed.

The two of them headed off down the hall. Anna lingered behind them, peering at them in confusion. Elsa was wearing a lavender dress with a many-layered petticoat, and seemed to be too big for her, though it left her feet and ankles uncovered. Merida's dress was white and long-sleeved with an elaborately patterned bodice, long enough to drag on the ground.

"Um… guys?" Anna said.

They turned to face her, and Anna swiftly noticed what she hadn't before: the otherwise baggy dress was tight around Elsa's chest, while the white dress pinched around Merida's waist but hung loose around her bust.

"Are… are you wearing each other's dresses?" Anna demanded.

"Is it that obvious?" Elsa said dryly. "Haha, I know, it's all wrong."

"Yeah, this was a terrible idea," Merida agreed. "I'm cold. And I do not have a killer waistline like you, babe. This pinches like hell…"

"Let's, uh… switch back," said Elsa, adjusting the bust as well as she could. "At the earliest opportunity."

"Yes, let's."

"Heyyyyy, wait a minute," said Anna, "did you imply I have a mediocre singing voice?"

"I'm just saying you could use some lessons," Elsa said defensively. "Not a lot, just a little. You know, work on breathing."

~0~0~0~

Halfway to the dining hall, Elsa and Merida ducked into a broom closet.

"All right, I'll be taking back me dress what actually fits," said Merida.

"Mm-hmm, yeah, totally," said Elsa, struggling to squirm her way out of Merida's dress. "Ugh, this is gonna look weird. Do you think anyone's going to notice that we're wearing the same dresses as we did yesterday? And they're wrinkled."

Merida raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, you don't care, do you?" Elsa said affectionately.

"Let the people talk, babe," said Merida, winking.

"Yes indeed," said Elsa, smiling. "So… yeah. At least, let's not be caught wearing something so… ill-fitting. Yeah?"

"Yeah," said Merida. "Though, you know what we could do? To go about our day with this same… spirit? Let's wear each other's panties."

Elsa flinched. "Oh. Um, that's, uh…"

Merida tilted her head. "What's wrong?"

"I, um…" said Elsa, her voice dropping to below a whisper, "Actually, I'm not actually wearing panties, actually…"

"What?" Merida exclaimed.

"Well, you know," Elsa said, with a squeaky-voiced attempt at sounding breezy, "I knew yesterday what I was gonna try to pull last night, so in the morning I decided to hype myself up for it by not wearing any… all day… and, and since we're wearing yesterday's clothes, I… I didn't have any prepared, so…"

Merida gazed at her in delight, seeming almost entranced. "You are so wonderful, you know that?"

"'Wonderful'?" Elsa repeated, smirking. "Because I'm not wearing panties? I'm beginning to think you're easily impressed, sweetheart."

Merida giggled. "You just take this dress back… and I'll take that dress back… and I'll keep the panties I'm wearin' and you just keep on not wearin' any, you wonderful, beautiful human being."

Elsa snorted. "You are so weird."

"And you're a good lay," Merida countered. She feinted an attempt to bite Elsa's nose.

"Eeee!" Elsa squealed, flinching away. "Oh, Merida, you're such a… this is gonna be great. We're going to do a lot of things… see a lot of places… like we've dreamed."

Merida smiled. "That we will, lass. I don't doubt it."

~0~0~0~

Sitting on the bed in the Arendelle guest room, Eugene pulled on his long traveling coat and slowly ran a hand across his suitcase.

"Well…" he said. "I won't pretend it was the most magical morning we've had…"

Still sitting on the bed, still naked, Rapunzel sat up and wrapped her arms around him from behind. "It was mind-blowing, Eugene," she said passionately, nuzzling him. "It was the perfect way to say goodbye."

He reached back and ran his fingers through her hair. "That's good to hear. So… I guess this is goodbye for a while."

"Well, not right now," said Rapunzel, pouting. "But yeah… goodbye is very soon."

"Mm-hmm," he agreed. "Well… you know, I'm strangely kind of okay with that."

She squeezed him tighter. "I'll take 'kind of okay'. Who could ask for more?"

~0~0~0~

At breakfast, Anna beamed at Elsa, boring a hole in the side of her head with her eyes as Elsa tried to focus on her waffles. Eventually Elsa couldn't ignore her anymore and turned to face Anna. "Hi."

"Hi," Anna replied through her huge grin.

"Can I help you, sis?"

"Maybe so," said Anna.

"…'Kay."

"So…" said Anna, "what's it like to be all… womanly? I mean, besides devastated that I beat you to it by a week."

Elsa laughed. "Oh, completely devastated. But I don't really feel any different. Closer to Merida. And happy. But that's about it."

Anna's smile faded. "Huh. That's strange. I've felt like a completely different person ever since Kristoff and I… did stuff. Like I can take on anything. Like I can conquer the world!"

"To each her own, I guess," said Elsa, shrugging.

"You really don't feel different?" Anna pressed. "I feel so different. More free, and confident, and… wiser, I guess."

Now under her breath, fearful of being overheard, Elsa said, "I highly doubt that having sex with your boyfriend one time made you 'wiser'. I mean, for one thing, the expression is getting your brains… you know… out."

Anna got up from her place at the table. "Well, that's how I feel, anyway. Like everything in my life is different… a bit happier, a bit… rosier. Yeah. Rosie."

She sauntered away, disappearing out into the halls, belting out, "Now that I'm a womaaaaan, everything has changed…"

On Elsa's other side, Merida leaned in close, conspiratorial. "So…" she said. "On a serious note, how was it? Last night, me and you, how was that?"

Elsa grinned at her. "I've never experienced anything like it. It was so wonderful. All the possibilities were surprising… even scary… but you got me through it so well. I could tell… that you'd done it before. A lot."

"Well, I have," Merida said earnestly. "I'm not ashamed to say it. I like to think it was meant to build up enough skill to make me good in bed for you."

"Maybe so," said Elsa. "On that note… how was I?"

"Best I've ever had," Merida said promptly.

"Oh, you can't possibly mean that," Elsa chided.

"But I do," said Merida. To Elsa's surprise, she choked up a bit. "I've never been so happy, Elsa. I've had a lot of sex with a lot of girls, but it's never felt so good, so… so right. Never. You think I've ever asked a girl if it was good for her, before just now? I haven't. That's how I know I'm in—"

Elsa abruptly shushed her as some castle staff brought more food to the table, and Elsa's attention was quickly captured by the chocolate chip pancakes.

"…Love," Merida finished lamely, too quietly to be heard.

~0~0~0~

~0~0~0~0~0~

AN: First thing coming back, I realized I made a really glaring mistake. The summer solstice, and therefore Anna's birthday, is in June, not July. How the heck did I miss that? I made the seasons all… wonky.

I've already mapped out the story so Anna's birthday fits in where they are in the story in July (with, thankfully, no mention of a solstice), so I can't change her birthday back to June. But I can make this work. Elsa being born on the winter solstice has astrological significance, but… let's think about this. Anna subsequently being born on the summer solstice is interesting and all, but I think a big aspect of Anna and her insecurities is the notion that there's nothing special about her, at least not in the same way as Elsa. She's really not the yin to her sister's yang, she's not inherently special herself, she is, on the surface, an extremely average person. And if she was born a full month too late to hold up a mirror to Elsa, that really fits that. I was really embarrassed when I realized my mistake, who the heck gets the summer solstice wrong, but I really like the way I rationalized the mistake and made it work.

I'll just have to remember to remove all planned references to Elsa's coronation (also a summer solstice event) having fallen on Anna's eighteenth birthday. Yes, that's right, it's never mentioned in the film, but I'm fairly certain the events of Frozen took place on or in very close proximity to Anna's birthday. Friggin' ouch, right?

Wait a minute… Oaken calls the blizzard in Frozen a "howler in July"… maybe that's what threw me off and made me ascribe the wrong date to the solstice… so then Elsa's coronation wasn't on the solstice? Screw it, in this continuity Elsa's coronation was on the summer solstice… which is not Anna's birthday. Okay, there we go, there's your damn Princess Party canon right there, that's juicy stuff.