A/N (06/22/2020):
Unfortunately, my schedule is getting increasingly hectic as the summer goes on. Things are opening up, more work, etc etc. I promise to keep updating as often as I can, but realistically I can't guarantee a once a week posting. I want everyone to know that this will be continually ongoing. And just a reminder, if you want to read these episodes in complete chunks you can head over to AO3. The version of this story on that site has the episodes in single, complete chapters instead of the pieces that they appear in here. Again, thanks for reading!
Outside
"Hey Sven, do you feel that?"
"It feels like an avalanche," said the reindeer, through the same voice box as the huntsman.
"That doesn't make sense Sven, we aren't in the mountains."
A deep rumbling shook the castle, and then the blonde and his reindeer were petrified as the eastern wing of the castle burst with snow from every orifice. Every door, window, chimney, and balcony spewed soft, fresh powder in all directions, spilling out into the central square creating a rolling snowdrift.
A large, crystal ball burst forth from the snow, receding to reveal two figures standing impossibly atop the delicate surface.
"Jeez, Elsa. A little overkill don't ya think?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…. It just burst out of me."
"I'll say…"
Elsa was still breathing heavily, not from the magical exertion, but from the lingering embarrassment.
They heard a royal pain, trying forcefully to wade through the thick white with his entourage. "Get them! Capture the witch! She's kidnapping the princess!"
"Hurry Anna! We have to go!"
"Hold on, let me get my shirt…..back together….. Aw jeez! You couldn't have been more gentle when you grabbed me?"
Anna was hopelessly struggling to get her shirt to stay covering her modesty when Elsa hurriedly walked over and, without saying a single word, ripped the rest of the shirt off the startled girl.
"Elsa! I thought this was not the time…"
"Be quiet!"
She closed her eyes and placed her cool hands on Anna's bare, freckled shoulders causing the red in the girl's face to reignite with new fury.
From her hands, radiated a cool and tingling sensation across Anna's skin. It dripped down her body to meet the skirt at her waist. She let out a whimper as the ethereal magic of the woman standing so close to her body, wrapped itself around her exposed breasts and down the line of her back.
"Are you ok..? Did I...hurt you?"
Anna didn't even realize she had closed her own eyes and was lost in the enrapturing of her flesh within the cool embrace of the other woman. She looked down and saw that she was covered in a simple, form fitting shirt, more or less resembling the top that Elsa herself wears. Complete, or incomplete, with bare shoulders, and with a crystal structure oriented so that they shown green in the light.
"That was…. thrilling. We should do that again…" she said in a breathy exhale.
"Can we escape now?"
"But bare shoulders? Really? You know how I feel about my splotchy nubs."
"I like your shoulders. And your freckles. They are cute. Now, we are leaving!"
Without waiting for a response she turned and stormed across the snow, toward the exit of the castle. A grinning redhead trailing behind her, hand in hand.
Elsa stopped as she saw the veritable army storming the square from the narrow entrance.
"What do we do now Elsa?"
Elsa looked around for a means of escape. She desperately searched for an option that wouldn't involve leaving a trail of blood behind them.
"I have an idea, but I've never done this before so bare with me."
The artist went to work. Hands carving through the air. Magical chisels chipping away at swirling ice as it formed and reformed. Sweeping lines, graceful angles, with sturdy walls and smooth runners. A white and blue sleigh rising out of the snow and fog generated by the artist's imagination.
She stopped her hands in midair, and channeled an entirely different kind of focus. A cold sweat dripped down the side of her head. Her hands were not clenched with raw power as if forming her shield, but instead soft and loose as if molding clay.
Except she wasn't molding clay. She was molding life. Life born of ice…. and love. A piece of her poured out like water from a jug into a mold that formed into a magnificent facsimile of a hart. Two harts in fact. Standing tall and elegant out of the snow, their antlers piercing into the heavens. Their snowy pelts were as white as their creators' hair, but one was adorned with speckles of faint blue while the other had a swath of shimmering red cascading across it's hide.
"Elsa… did you just….. make something…. alive?"
"We don't have time to think about it."
Elsa grabbed the astonished girl and practically tossed her into the magical sleigh. She then sat in the front seat, glowing blue reins forming from her hands and extending to the harts before her.
I….. I really have no idea what I'm doing. Are they alive? How do I command them? What if this didn't work and they just stand there like statues? We have to escape. Please, please get us out of here!
The harts took off.
The sleigh dashed through the rolling snow, across the expanse of the courtyard. The befuddled guards at the entrance of the castle were standing with pikes at the ready. The gates were closed and a wall of piercing metal stood before their escape. Reaching her arms out in front of her, Elsa commanded the snow beneath them to rise as if she were the moon tugging at the waves below. The white wave rose high above the guards, high above the gates, high above the walls. And then plunged downward on the other side.
"WOOOOOO!" Anna was screaming. Her hands were raised in the air and her stomach was nearly in her throat. The steep decent over the wall gave the exhilarating sensation of flight for an ever so brief moment.
Elsa had felt the rushing wind in her hair before, soared above the forest, sailed down a mountain side. But she had never felt the childlike joy that was radiating off of the beaming, tear welling, blissful to a fault, ginger haired girl bellowing her happiness at the top of her lungs with a white streaked, copper braid trailing behind her.
"They won't be able to follow us through this snow on their horses and carriages," Elsa said with misguided confidence at their escape. It was soon corrected.
"Uh…..Els? We've got a problem."
Elsa glanced over her shoulder. To her astonishment, another sleigh burst from atop the castle gates, following the trail of snow at incredible speed.
"How is that possible?" she said as she realized the sleigh was being pulled by another antlered creature.
Anna was leaning over the back of their own sleigh, watching as the pursuer gained incredible ground. She yelled out to the other driver.
"You brought your sleigh with you?! In the middle of summer!? You're such a loser!"
"It's called being prepared!" He yelled back at her. "Nothing can outrun a reindeer in snow! Make this easy on yourself and give up!"
Rage and annoyance welled up in Elsa. "Did he just challenge me in my own element? How dare he!"
"Calm down Els, he's just being an idiot."
Suddenly there was a *SHINK* with a *CRACK* and Anna looked as a shiny bit of serrated metal jutt through the back of their ice sleigh. Peering over the side again, she saw an arrow attached with a rope extending back toward Kristoff as his own sleigh began to come up toward them.
Elsa threw her arm out sending a blast of cold in his direction to try and knock him back. He somehow brushed it off, the cold energy harmlessly being absorbed and redirected by his thick armor. He had donned an intricate combination of furs and leather made from walrus hides. A wool mask covering most of his face as well as reinforced arm guards.
He reached a hand behind his back and pulled out an obscenely gargantuan hunk of metal. It somewhat resembled a sword but it was jagged with massive teeth and was far wider than any common blade. He swung it down with both hands and it sliced through the sleigh of ice as if it was made of paper; shoring off a corner.
I'm too focused on the harts. I can't channel my energy enough to fight him off and direct these creatures at the same time. But I will not be bested by this…. ice carver!
The two sleighs sped through the forest. Snow drifts formed underneath them as they went, as well as from the ever increasing summer blizzard forming over the Southern Isles. The harts bounded through the snow with relative ease, but they were still no match for the wide footed stride of the powerful reindeer running atop the snow as if it was a smoothly paved road.
The sleighs were side by side, knocking into each other. Kristoff made ready to slice the other sleigh in half with his ice cleaver. Elsa no longer had a choice. She forced her concentration to split. Harts continued their flight through the forest, while she summoned her shield and spun around into the back of her sleigh just in time to deflect the serrated teeth from separating her from Anna again.
An icicle launched out of her left hand, but the lack of focus only generated a small spear that bounced off of his thick, walrus hide. He swung at her again, and again, teeth scraping against smooth glacial ice.
"I've never met any ice that I couldn't cut through!"
"Then allow me to introduce you!"
She brought her shield arm up, and flung it across her front, launching the shield off, and straight into the opposing sleigh. It narrowly missed any of Kristoff's extraneous body parts, and punched through the middle of the wooden, and expensive, royal huntsman's sleigh.
"Hey! I just finished paying this off!"
The ill-fated sleigh started to splinter underneath his feet. Pulling her arm back toward her chest, the shield retracted to it's master with their invisible, magical link. As it pulled out from the wood, the sleigh burst into an explosion of lacquer and supplies.
And then several things seemed to happen at once.
The world slowed. The rushing trees became snails crossing the landscape. A shield suspended in the air seeking an arm to rest on. A leather-clad hunter sailed, arms outstretched, with an ice pickaxe in one hand, ready to anchor into the back of the smooth surface of the magical sleigh.
A ginger haired girl sat in the back, staring and watching and wondering at all of these things flying through the air around her. A sack of carrots spilled out through the void. A crossbow and it's arrows, strewn about in a prickly trail behind them. Chunks of wood, splintered against the side of her own, damaged vessel.
Her wide eyes fixated on one of the pieces of wood. It sailed over her head, spinning end over end. A wide bottom with a thin neck, swinging in circles above her. Not really knowing why, she reached her hand up with her palm open. The thin neck landed square in her grasping hand, the feel of strings pressing into her skin.
The world resumed its revolution.
A shield wrapped gently on an arm, a pickaxe jammed forcefully into the back of the sleigh, and the masked hunter hanging off the end looked in fright as his lute landed in the crafty paws of a fox.
She looked at the lute in her hand, and then turned her mischievous irises to its owner. Her eyelids slowly descended half way as a naughty grin curled around itself and her invisible, furry ears twitched with playfulness.
"Don't. You. Dare."
The fox bared her grinning teeth and wiggled her impish fingers one last time.
"Toodles!"
With the force of both arms, the lute came careening toward the, still mending, face of the poor hunter. A second explosion of wood erupted around his padded nose with enough impact to send him somersaulting into the snow below. Left to ponder where his foxy prey had run off to, whenever his consciousness, and his pride, had returned to him.
"Woo! Ya!" Anna screamed at the top of her lungs with her arms raised high in the air, and her legs bouncing up and down with jubilation.
Elsa looked at her with surprise and relief as her fatigued concentration could finally return to the magical creatures she had summoned. She dissipated her shield and climbed over the front of the sleigh to sit in the driver's seat, glowing blue reigns in her hands, and calming deep breaths entering her lungs.
Her calm became hindered by two arms appearing in front of her, sliding over her soft shoulders and coming together atop her rapidly beating chest. She felt a warmth rest against her cheek, radiating from the adrenaline and excitement pumping through the veins of the other girl.
Wha….what is she…!?
A strange sensation occurred across her cheek. A softness brushing against her skin, as delicate as a butterfly's wingbeats. A tingle rippled and spread down her entire body at the touch of the perfect lips against her skin. It lasted for a split second, but felt like a century as her heart stopped in that moment.
Her skin emblazoned with such a deep pink that it poured out from her body, into the sleigh beneath her and the two harts dashing in front, giving everything a wash of rose.
Then a voice entered her pink ears from the girl pressed up against her back, with her arms wrapped tightly around her.
"Thanks…. for saving me."
Elsa turned her head to stare into those wide, cyan eyes as she raised one of her own hands to rest gently on the arms across her chest.
"Always.."
She drank every last bit of the wide smile across the freckled face as Anna slowly, reluctantly, pulled her arms back across her shoulders.
Anna, awkwardly, climbed over the banister to sit next to Elsa, bare, freckled shoulders resting against the still dark clad skin of the other woman. She stared dead ahead, toward the ongoing journey before them.
"Goodbye, Norslands. Diutlands, here we come! I hope you're ready!"
A/N:
Poor Kristoff. It's almost like I have some kind of vendetta against him. I swear I don't. I think things will get better for him, eventually.
Next we head to the kingdoms of the Diutlands! (Yes, Plural) I will be spending a lot of time here in my fictional Germanic lands. Have fun!
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