The two figures moved slowly together in the center of the Grand Ballroom. Well, mostly together. One was still having trouble staying in step. The other's problems, meanwhile, had more to do with staying out from underneath steps.

"One, two, three. One, two three. Whoops! No, no that's alright, you're fine. Just keep watching my feet. That's it. Good girl! You see, once you get the feel for it, you won't have to think about it quite so much. Trust me, you just need a little bit of practice, and you'll have the hang of it in no time."

Anna stared down at her shoes, concentration plain on her face. "Well, at least it's better than ice skating," she said tightly. "When I put my foot down, I don't have to worry that it's going to go off someplace else all on its own. Now if I could only get them to go in the right place in the first place! Oops, sorry!"

The king chuckled. "Don't worry about it. You're doing just fine. I fully expected a few mashed toes when I agreed to be your teacher. Believe me, I've had far worse. Okay, let's start over from the beginning. And like I keep trying to tell you, take your time and don't rush so much. Speed will come later. Right now, you just have to be patient."

The princess rolled her eyes. "No wonder I'm having such a hard time then! You know how I do with patience. That's always been more of an Elsa thing."

She leaned to one side and peered around her father into the far corner of the ballroom. "Come on, Elsa! Are you sure you don't want to give it a try?"

A long blond braid swung back and forth as Elsa shook her head. "I'm fine just watching, thanks. You two go right ahead."

"You just don't want to embarrass me by getting it right on the first try," Anna teased. Elsa simply smiled quietly, which caused Anna to retaliate by sticking out her tongue

"Are we dancing or are we talking?" their father asked, making as though to grab his daughter's tongue before she could pull it back into her mouth. She grinned up at him.

"I hope I can learn to do both at the same time, or balls are going to be a lot less fun that I'd imagined."

In the corner, Elsa covered her mouth with one hand, her shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Then she drew her feet up onto the seat of her chair, wrapped her arms around her legs, and settled in to watch her sister have another go at mastering her first dance.

"Having a good time?"

She let her eyes drift shut for the briefest of moments. She really didn't want to miss any of Anna's dance lesson, but she needed a chance to steady herself before she could attempt a courteous reply.

"Yes, I am," she said, returning her attention to where it belonged.

There was a lot more that she might have said. Instead, she opted for simplicity and civility. She didn't wish to be rude, but she had actually been enjoying herself immensely and would have much preferred it if only she could have been left undisturbed. All the same, she did owe the speaker for a favor done the last time they had met. So, in the name of proper manners, she added a few words more.

"Thank you, Fare."

A chair had appeared beside her where she was certain none had been a minute earlier. In it sat a fourteen-year-old girl whose short black hair somehow swooped upward like the flame atop a candle of darkness. Her pose perfectly matched Elsa's, which managed to be simultaneously endearing and unsettling. Then again, Elsa had grown used to feeling unsettled in this girl's presence. After all, it was difficult not to be a little put off when talking to someone with whom you happened to share a face.

She was grateful then that Fare said nothing more right away. For a time, the two just sat in a mostly peaceable silence and watched Elsa's pleasant little dream unfold. It was one of the happiest she could recall in quite some time, filled as it was with the simple joys of laughter and love. Best of all, there wasn't the tiniest hint of snow or ice anywhere to be seen. Yet despite the warmth she felt inside and the debt she knew she owed her dark-haired twin, she nonetheless felt ample justification for resenting Fare's presence at that moment.

Before she had appeared, after all, Elsa's sleeping brain had been more than content to believe that the scene unfolding before her was absolutely real.

Of course, she reflected sadly, only in a dream would it be possible to convince herself that she was worthy of such a perfect moment as this. Once she awoke, she knew that the best that she could hope for was to be able to hold on to some scrap of this vision for a short while – to cherish, however briefly, what it had felt like to be a normal part of a normal family, even if that feeling had been nothing more than a trick of the night.

"Why do you do that to yourself?" Fare asked softly.

"Do what?"

"Try to convince yourself that you don't deserve to be happy."

"I don't."

"You don't deserve it, or you don't tell yourself that you don't deserve it?"

Elsa didn't answer.

"Alright, a different question then. Why are you sitting all the way over here? Why aren't you over with Father and Anna, sharing in the excitement?"

"I don't know. Why does anyone do anything in a dream? This is just where I was."

"Ah, but now you know it's a dream, don't you? That gives you some power over it. It should be at least enough that you could get off your chair and walk over there right now if you wanted to. Yet here you are, still sitting beside me instead. I had no idea you valued our friendship so much."

Elsa scowled, but chose not to rise to Fare's provocations. Instead, she tried to focus more intently on her father and sister. It didn't seem to help much, though, probably because she was aware that a second set of identical eyes was trained just as keenly on her own face.

"That would make Anna happy, wouldn't it? To have you over there with her? I'm sure your father would be more than willing to teach you how to dance too."

"He can't teach me anything here. This isn't really real. It's all in my head, so there's no way I can learn something that I don't already know. This is just my imagination working late."

"So? You could imagine that you're learning to dance. I bet you'd have a lot of imaginary fun, too." Fare's usual smirk was more than evident in her voice. Her pointed gaze, however, did not waver. Elsa felt her scrutiny as surely as if she was being poked by a sharp stick. That keen consideration made the offhandedness with which Fare next spoke seem all the more artificial. "Unless perhaps there's some other reason..."

Drawing her knees even closer to her chest, Elsa tried as hard as she could to ignore the implication. It didn't work, though. Fare's ceaseless probing had somehow managed to find a vulnerable spot and was now determinedly worming its way past her defenses. Her eyes briefly left the dancers to make one quick circuit around the ballroom. Then they snapped back to her father's face. Not to Anna's, not right then.

"You know what happened here," she said. "It's something I'll never be able forget. How can I? I always have the nightmares to remind me. So I don't know why my mind decided to let me have this moment tonight. I only know that I'm too grateful to risk losing it. It could too easily turn into… into something else, if I get careless, if I let myself get too close. Which means that I don't mind staying exactly where I am if all this can last just a little while longer."

"Oh, I see! It's the room you're afraid of then. Well, if that's all there is to it, then you're in luck. This is just a dream after all."

They were sitting in dappled sunlight that filtered through the leaves of a solitary tree. Beyond the leafy canopy, the cerulean sky was as clear as the sparkling water of the little stream that gurgled just behind them. A short distance away, in exactly the same spot they'd occupied in the palace's dance hall, Anna and her father continued their lesson, apparently oblivious to the fact that the polished floor beneath their feet had been replaced by a lush carpet of meadow grasses.

"There you go!" Fare declared proudly. "No bad memories here. Now there's nothing to keep you from joining in the dance. Well, go on then. What are you waiting for?" She looked at Elsa with an impatient air.

Elsa did not move. She simply continued to sit and watch her sister as Anna laughed her way through the slow steps of the waltz. What am I waiting for? she wondered silently, but no answer came to her. Fare's unrelenting regard, however, was making her more and more uncomfortable. She'd never liked being the center of attention, never enjoyed the feeling of an audience watching her, even if it was only an audience of one. Despite herself, she self-consciously lowered her eyes.

"I'm not wearing my gloves."

There was a note of surprise in her voice. It was only a casual kind of curiosity, however – the sort that arises when you suddenly notice a scratch but have no idea where you got it or how long it might have been there. Of course, why should she be worried? None of this was real. And after all, far stranger things had happened in her dreams before, especially when Fare decided to make an appearance.

All the same, she continued to stare at her bare hands. She wanted to return to watching Anna and her father, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from her pale, slender fingers. The longer she fixated on them, the more agitated she became. It felt as though she was watching a snake she had startled in the grass. She hadn't quite realized what it was at first, but once she did, she became afraid to move or even turn away for fear that it might decide to strike at any moment.

"Where are they?" she asked. Her attempt to make the question sound light and casual did not meet with much success. She tried to glance quickly away, to scan the ground around her, to glimpse the flash of white that would lead her to the comforting protection she now found herself needing with ever greater urgency. Always, though, her eyes snapped back to her hands, as if afraid what they might do while she wasn't watching.

"I think they're over there."

Elsa quickly turned to Fare, then followed her gaze across the meadow to where Anna continued to dance. Only the bright green dress that she'd been wearing before, which had been of a shade that almost perfectly matched the springy grass beneath her feet, was gone. Instead, the fern green uniform of the palace staff had taken its place. Her hair had disappeared beneath an overly large bonnet, and her hands were now hidden inside all-too-familiar white gloves.

Anna's outfit was not the only thing that had changed, either. So too had her dance partner. The king had been replaced by a lanky young man in dapper but common clothes. He held one of her sister's hands in his own while her other rested upon his shoulder. His back was to Elsa so she could not see his face, but it hardly mattered anyway. She was quite positive that she'd never seen his features before, and yet she still knew exactly who he must be.

And there was one other change as well. Anna was also no longer watching her own feet. Now she held her head high and moved through the steps with smooth assurance. The broad smile on her face appeared to confirm her confidence. She flowed through the dance with the same grace that Elsa always associated with her memories of the balls she'd attended so long ago.

Temporarily dumbfounded, Elsa continued to watch her sister, the frantic search of a moment earlier all but forgotten. She almost couldn't believe her eyes – or her mind, or whatever. She knew with absolutely certainty that she was looking at Anna, but it almost didn't seem possible. Could this really be the same gawkish girl who had always been the fiercest enemy of suits of armor that the castle had ever known? How was it then that, despite her humble clothes, she now seemed to carry herself more like a princess than ever before?

Apparently, Anna must have sensed the attention being directed at her, for Elsa suddenly found herself looking eye-to-eye with her sister across an intervening shoulder. Anna's face crinkled as her smile grew into a slightly goofy grin, and just like that, the sister that Elsa remembered was back again.

Lifting her fingers off her partner's shoulder, Anna waggled them in Elsa's direction. Elsa raised her own hand and waved back, wondering as she did so exactly how dazed her face must look. Certainly, she was feeling sufficiently staggered that she'd very nearly forgotten she still had other company.

"She wears it well," Fare observed astutely.

"What? Wears what well?"

"Her disguise. Pretending to become someone she's not."

"But she hates it."

"What does that matter? Your father hates to wear his crown, but that doesn't mean he can't pull it off with style. Apparently, Anna shares something of that skill as well, wouldn't you agree?"

Elsa wondered how it was possible for such a short conversation to leave her feeling so thoroughly exhausted, especially considering that she was already asleep. "I'm sure I don't know. After all, I've never actually seen her sneak out into town, have I? And she never even danced with Edvard, so no one can ever really say what that might have been like. This is just me imagining things again, just like I imagined the meadow and the tree and everything else."

"All in your mind, hmm? And yet you're so afraid of yourself that even here, inside your own head where you know nothing is real and nothing you do can hurt anyone, you still feel the need to hide behind your own little disguise, don't you?"

"What disguise? What are you talking about?" Elsa was becoming increasingly frustrated by the direction things had taken since Fare's appearance, and her normal politeness was beginning to fray around the edges. "Why can't you just say what you mean for once?"

Fare's hand came up. She wiggled her fingers in Elsa's direction, much like Anna had. And just like Anna, her hand was now covered in a snow white glove.

Elsa looked down at her own hands and found that they too were no longer bare. She flexed them, feeling the fabric pull tight across her knuckles. However, despite her earlier panic when she'd realized they were missing, she didn't feel the relief she would have expected. If she was being honest with herself, she actually felt a twinge of disappointment.

"I really don't know what you see in these," Fare said, turning her own hand this way and that as she examined the glove that she herself was wearing. "We both know that you don't actually mind the cold, especially considering that it's the middle of summer. And as a fashion statement… Well, you could do worse, I suppose."

"You know perfectly well why I wear them," Elsa replied brusquely. "They help control my curse."

She had expected Fare to reply with more of her typical snark. So she was quite surprised when instead, the other girl simply looked terribly hurt.

"I'm not very good at this, am I?" Fare said in a surprisingly meek voice.

Elsa felt her irritation recede somewhat when she saw the self-reproach written so clearly on her other face. It was a look she recognized all too well. "At what?"

Fare shook her head. "It's a long list. For starters, though, there's that whole truce business that I mentioned last time. I told you that I only wanted the chance to talk, and yet here I am, apparently unable to do even that without making you angry at me. Not exactly the best way to go about brokering peace, is it?"

"Well, I suppose it shouldn't come as much of a shock to either of us, really," Elsa allowed. "After all, I'm angry with myself so much of the time. Why wouldn't I be angry with you too?"

"Maybe. But maybe the better question is why are you so angry with yourself?"

"You know that too," Elsa answered, averting her eyes.

"So? Part of talking is also listening. And I might be wrong, but it feels to me like this is something you really want to say to someone."

Elsa bit her lower lip before she answered. "I guess I'm mad because I'm not the person I want to be. I ought to be better."

Several seconds passed with no further explanation before Fare decided she would have to speak again. "Better at what?"

Elsa sighed. "Everything."

"Well then, we have something in common after all."

This at least earned a laugh, small though it might have been. "I'm too weak to control the magic on my own. I'm too frightened to leave my room except when I think no one is around. I'm too embarrassed to even talk to anybody except my parents. Yet I'm the one who's supposed to be queen someday? How can someone like me possibly rule Arendelle? I just know I'll make a mess of that too.

"Then there's Anna. She's fearless and she's strong, and she makes new friends without even trying. Plus, she's compassionate and kind, always putting others ahead of herself. Sure, she might be a bit impatient and impulsive, but she's persistent too. Once she sets her heart on something, she'll never give up on it. Just look at how long she searched for that secret tunnel! How is that not the perfect recipe for a queen?"

"So you wish you were more like Anna then?" Fare asked.

"I don't know. Maybe." Elsa looked across at the dream vision of her sister. At some point during Elsa's distraction, she had apparently stopped dancing. Presumably, the figure of Edvard had gone away then too, for Anna was now alone. She was traipsing through the grass, bending over now and again to pluck the wildflowers that dotted the meadow.

"I've certainly wondered sometimes how things might have been different if our situations had been reversed," Elsa admitted. "I'd like to think that I would have been every bit as loyal to her as she's been to me for so long, but then I wonder if I would have needed to be. I can't imagine Anna spending six years hidden away in her room. It's hard to imagine her spending even six hours alone like that, except when she's asleep. Even when she was five, if Father had tried to make her move out of our room, she would have argued with him until they were both hoarse.

"I, on the other hand, was the good little girl. I did just exactly what I was told."

"Of course you did," Fare said sympathetically. "You were scared. After what you'd just been through, you were questioning everything, your own judgment most of all. It's no wonder you were willing to let someone else make the decisions for you."

The princess turned a startled look upon her twin. "Aren't you the one who keeps telling me I shouldn't be afraid of the magic? You're always trying to get me to embrace it. Now you're saying that I was right to be scared?"

"No, I'm saying it was understandable. If a dog snaps at you, you'd be a fool not to be worried. But that doesn't mean you ought to be afraid of every other dog you ever meet for the rest of your life."

"Anna wouldn't even be afraid of the first dog," Elsa said, turning away from Fare again. "She might run off, but she'd be back a few minutes later with a nice big bone. Then she'd be rubbing his belly before you knew it.

"I could never do that. Just like I don't think I could have made it through Bolli's tunnel if I'd been the one who'd found it. I would have just stood there, thinking about all the things that could go wrong and all the trouble I could get into. I never would have even had a chance to meet Hille or Nina or Edvard. Anna has so much fun sneaking out, but I couldn't. I can't. I'm trapped here, inside these walls."

The scenery surrounding them changed yet again. Now they were both sitting in the alcove of the window in Elsa's room, looking through the glass at the suddenly distant figure in the courtyard below.

"You weren't always that way," Fare reminded her gently. "When you were younger, you and Anna both got into plenty of mischief together."

"I know," Elsa replied sadly. "Even then, though, Anna was always the one who tried to push things further than we should. I was the one who pulled her back, and we usually met somewhere in between. It just so happened that in between was a wonderful place to be for both of us. But if it had been just me, on my own..." She shook her head, then looked once around the room.

"When I said I was trapped by the walls, I wasn't talking about these, you know. Or even those," she added, nodding out the window toward the ramparts that surrounded the castle. "I meant these." She bowed her head and looked at the gloved hands that lay folded in her lap.

"Anna doesn't believe in walls. If she can't find a way through one, she finds a way around it or over it… or under. And if she can't do that, then she'll just sit down beside it and talk to whomever is on the other side as though the wall wasn't even there. Sometimes I think she'd just try make the wall her very best friend and then politely ask it whether it would consider moving out of the way for her. And I swear, it very well might.

"Then there's me. I build walls out of nothing. I've made so many by now that I feel like I'm lost in the middle of a maze, and I wouldn't know how to find my way out if I tried. I don't try, though, because I'm too scared. And the worst thing is that it's not what's on the other side of those walls that frightens me."

Elsa lapsed into silence, although she did lift her gaze to again watch her sister out the window. Fare, for her part, seemed to be lost in thoughts all her own. Of course, given her nature, perhaps she was lost in Elsa's thoughts as well.

"You know," she said at last, "there's more to you than just your powers. You're hardly being fair to yourself if you let that one thing completely define who you are."

Elsa scoffed. "You'll forgive me if I find that advice a little hard to swallow coming from someone who spent the better part of a year trying to convince me to embrace the magic, especially considering that you threw a tantrum and disappeared in a huff when I eventually changed my mind."

"The magic is a part of you too," Fare insisted, "but it isn't all of you. You can't just pick the bits of yourself that you hate most and say, 'This is who I am.' What about your drawings, hmm? Some of those are just as beautiful as anything you ever made out of ice. What about poetry and chess? What about your love for your sister? They're all you, Elsa. If you're going to condemn yourself for the bad, then shouldn't you also praise yourself for the good?"

"The good didn't almost kill someone."

"No, the good sacrificed everything in order to protect her. How many people do you think would be able to do that? Do you have any idea how extraordinary that is, to be willing to give up your life and your happiness for the sake of someone else?"

"It happens all the time in the stories that Anna reads to me."

"There's a reason for that, Elsa, and it's the same reason why those stories are always set long ago in some far off and amazing land. Most people will never have a chance to see anything like that in their own lifetimes. Tales like those are the only way they'll ever get to meet someone who would do something so completely selfless.

"I know you think of yourself as a monster sometimes. People have a different name, though, for the characters in those fables who manage to do something like what you've done for the past six years. You know it as well as I do.

"They're called heroes."

Elsa finally tore her eyes away from the window to look at Fare, and it was clear from her face that she was struggling. She wanted more than almost anything to believe what she had just been told. It would mean so much to think that she might have made some recompense for even the smallest part of that tragic night. And yet, how could years of inaction repay for that one horrific mistake?

"I'm no hero," she said, shaking her head.

"No one who claims they are ever really is."

"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"

"Hardly. I wish I did, though. I can usually think of something to say, but not every reply is an answer. Believe it or not, if I did have the answers you needed, I would gladly give them to you."

"Ah, there it is," Elsa said, and her voice sounded infinitely weary. "You told me before that you would never lie to me, and yet you just did."

At these words, Fare looked stricken. "How can you say..."

"What are you?" Elsa asked. "You say you want to give me answers, so why not start there? You keep trying to tell me who I am, but how can I possibly believe any of it when you can't even tell me who you are?

"You expect me to trust you, and yet every time I've ever asked you this, you've always evaded the question. I've had too much experience keeping secrets not to recognize when my own face is hiding something. So I'm asking you again, Fare, and now it's all up to you. This is your chance to show me exactly what you think trust means."

The girls stared at each other, two wills engaged in battle inside one mind. At last, Fare spoke.

"I said that I want to give you the answers you need. You have to understand that those aren't necessarily the answers that you want. I realize how unfair that sounds, but you said it yourself. You know what it's like to keep things hidden from someone else for their own good.

"You aren't the only one either. Everyone does it every single day. They don't give voice to every thought and feeling. They keep quiet about how much their friend's peculiar little habits annoy them, because the friendship is worth more to them than that. They don't tell their employer exactly what they really think of them, because the job itself is too important."

The look on Elsa's face spoke eloquently of low expectations perfectly met, and she had begun to turn away when Fare continued.

"So I can't tell you everything, but I think perhaps I can still tell you some things. I just don't know whether they will be enough. It's the best I can do, though. The rest is something you'll simply have to judge for yourself." Then she paused and seemed to weigh her next words with extreme care before she spoke again.

"I suppose you could say that I'm a child of many mothers. I was born of your magic, but like you, there's more to me than just that. As I am a part of you, you're a part of me. Who I am has been shaped by the person that you are. When you were young, when you were still figuring out who that was, I was little more than an observer. I watched, I learned, and I grew along with you.

"As you've grown older, I have tried to become what you've needed me to be. At first, that was a guide and a mentor, someone to help you pick your way through the mysteries of your magic, someone to encourage you to keep going whenever you felt like giving up. Then, when you lost control and turned away from your magic, I hid as well.

"I wanted to help you more then, to convince you not to abandon everything you'd worked so hard to achieve. But I also knew that if I tried, I would only do more harm than good. You were scared of me and scared of yourself. Had I pressed matters, you would have become more convinced than ever that everything I said to you was untrue. You needed time to heal and space to find your own way through. So I tried to give you that.

"And in time, you did find it, after a fashion. Your talks with your father helped, I think. At least you began to understand that good or bad isn't measured by what we can do, but rather by what we choose to do. So when you chose to help Anna find a way to escape the castle, I saw a chance to once again give you what you needed."

Elsa nodded solemnly. "The hint about Bolli's footsteps."

"Yes, but you already had that. All you needed was a little reminder. What I really wanted to give you was something else, something you haven't truly had in a very long time. Unfortunately, it turns out that was yet another thing at which I've failed rather miserably."

She reached out a hand toward Elsa, but stopped herself when it was not yet halfway there. With a sigh, she let it fall to her side, then hung her head dejectedly. Finally, in a small voice, she finished her thought.

"I wanted to give you a friend."

Elsa's eyes grew wide with disbelief.

"You wanted to know what I am," Fare said, eyes still downcast. "Well, I've just given you the best answer that I can. I don't know if it was enough, but now it's yours. And while I was at it, I gave you another answer as well, to a question you didn't ask and might not even care about. Either way, that's yours now too. Because...

"Because I've told you what I want to be."

Before Elsa could say another word, Fare rose to her feet. As Elsa watched, she walked over to the room's small vanity and gazed at herself in its mirror.

"I do think you were right, by the way," Fare said, still not looking at her.

Elsa felt like she was reeling in the wake of this sudden apparent candor. The most confusing part about it all was that, perhaps for the very first time in the history of this most peculiar relationship, she actually thought that she might honestly believe everything her cryptic double had just told her. That alone made it seem as though her entire world had somehow been turned inside out, leaving her questioning so many things that she had thought she'd known with absolutely certainty.

Which was probably why her response to Fare's statement was simply to say, "That would be a first."

"No, it's not. It just turns out that I'm not the only one you can't trust. You don't believe in yourself either. That's why you refused to listen the other day when a different part of you suggested that maybe you don't need to hide so completely from the world. You're so terrified of being wrong that you can't bring yourself to take a chance on being right, especially when it's so much easier to simply do nothing at all.

"Even if you don't want to listen to me, and I'll certainly understand if that's the case, don't ignore your better angels. You talked about how well you and Anna complemented each other when you were younger. Well, listen to your inner Anna. That was the voice you heard inside the other day, the one that said maybe it would be okay to only hide a bit of yourself.

"She always listened to her heart, you listened to your head, and together you found a place where you both belonged. Well, that quiet little voice lives in the same space in between that the two of you used to share. From what I remember, it didn't seem like a bad place to be."

At last, she turned to look at Elsa again. "You had the courage to do whatever was necessary to save Anna's life. But what you're doing now, Elsa – whatever this is, however brave and noble the reasons for it might be – it isn't living. So now I have a question for you. What is it going to take for you to find the courage to try and save yourself?"

Elsa's jaw was hanging open. It was just as well, then, that she didn't appear to have any use for it at that moment. She was too stunned to be able to formulate any reply to Fare whatsoever… much less an answer.

Fare went back to examining her own reflection. "There is one thing that you are wrong about, however. About Anna."

"Oh?" It was the best Elsa could manage under the circumstances.

"I'm fairly certain that Anna believes in walls all too well. There's simply something else that she believes in even more."

In the blink of an eye, Fare was suddenly gone. Her voice, however, carried to Elsa from somewhere out in the hallway. The princess turned in that direction as four final words hit home.

"She believes in doors."

• • •

Elsa sat bolt upright in bed. Her eyes immediately sought out the exit to the corridor outside, and she was almost shocked to find that it was still solidly shut. She'd half expected to see it flung open wide, the way it had been within her dream. In fact, she wouldn't have been at all surprised if she had seen a pair of her own blue eyes staring back at her from out in the hallway, her own finger beckoning her to follow.

Slowly, she laid her head her back down upon her pillow and tried to close her eyes. They sprang back open within seconds, however, and she lay there staring up at the ceiling, secure in the knowledge that she would not be finding her way back to sleep anytime soon.

She remembered the dream vividly, more clearly and completely than she could recall ever having retained one before. For a time, she simply replayed the earliest part over and over, watching Anna and her father dancing in the ballroom. It still held that same sense of pleasant normality that had made it such a perfectly wonderful dream when she had been within it.

It wasn't long, however, before everything that had come later began to clamor for her attention. Finally relenting, albeit reluctantly, she allowed that conversation to spool out again as well. In a way, it became even more unnerving now that she was awake and realized that it all still made perfect sense. It had not, in fact, been the usual random and disconnected gibberish that could never hold together outside of a dream. In truth, it had been no less than the baring of her soul.

And perhaps another had been bared as well.

Tossing the covers aside in agitation, Elsa climbed out of bed and crossed the room to her vanity. There was no moon that night, which left the room so dark that she could barely see anything of her own reflection. It didn't take much to imagine that the almost indiscernible face that stared back at her was topped not by long hair of pale gold but with a short, black coif that seemed to defy gravity.

A friend, she thought to herself. Was that even possible? What would it say about her sanity if she actually attempted to strike up a friendship with a voice that only lived inside her own head? Considering the particular voice in question only made it seem all the more mad.

Of course, when it came right down to it, it really was just her own voice after all, wasn't it? And before you could ever truly hope to make friends with anyone else, didn't you need to be friends with yourself first? Maybe that's all this was: her unconscious mind trying to tell her that the time had come to accept herself as she was, even if that meant including her gloves as part of that definition.

But could she really do that, even if she decided that she wanted to?

Elsa groaned. She already had quite enough questions to be getting on with, thank you. Now answers, those were in short supply. The person who could find a way to harvest answers would be a very rich individual indeed.

After one last glance in the mirror, she turned to make her way back to bed. Should sleep eventually come looking for her, she decided that it would most likely start its search there. Best not to make it hunt any further afield than necessary. However, she did permit herself a slight detour along the way. Passing her desk, she scooped up the small white box. Then, before she crawled back under the covers, she wound its silver key and placed it beside her on the nightstand.

She lifted the lid and felt the familiar notes wash over and through her. One by one, they began to take the place of the far more complicated thoughts that had been insistently cluttering up her brain. Even when the springs ran down, she kept the melody in her mind, repeating it to herself in a cycle of soothing comfort.

When sleep finally found her, it arrived during the part of the tune that she had always associated with a lithesome young woman twirling her way across the meadow. Now as she began to doze, the music transformed into dream. Only this time as the scene unfolded, the dancer had a face that Elsa recognized.

She also happened to have long, strawberry-blonde hair.