Part III
While Marie waited, she re-lit the lamps with her sword and shed the armor from her loins on her own. The latter was not an especially sensual procedure. Moist hair clung to the porous rock in unglamorous places. Rock chips clanged in the washbowl - surprisingly loud. Elsa must have placed them most gently. That is, until matters progressed and she just let the tub be the receptacle.
The used bathwater was now a bog of basalt, the powdery aroma of violets and irises receded in favor of murky amber. Marie ought to have drained it but she didn't want to mess up the pipes more than the ash already had, and Elsa wasn't back yet to extract the water from the silt.
In any case, she wasn't getting back in that water tonight. Balancing on one foot, she dried her clean skin and threw on the ill-fitted nightdress. In the clouded diamond barred glass of the bathroom window, she looked comically modest with thick black stockings and sleeves of rock. She thought of something to say, but Elsa wasn't back yet.
"Was she lying?" Marie wondered aloud.
"She believed what she said," the Firebird chirped. Marie looked over to where the sword rested against the tub, and the demon perched on the pommel in her songbird form.
Marie sank down on the floor beside her and leaned back with her neck on the cool tub rim. The ceiling had a blue snowflake pattern that appeared dark ocean purple in the candlelight. Staring into the diamonds, Marie felt a heaviness come over her body, like an anchor had dropped on her chest.
"Well. I'm in her room, the rest of the castle is full of refugees, and Arendelle is covered in ash for miles. She's got nowhere to run."
"She ran to get you bandages." The Firebird cocked her head, a touch bemused.
"I did scare her. She scares herself, but I burned her - quite literally, with fire." Marie shot the pedantic creature a caustic look. "And as her first lover, too. If she needs to get away from me, of course I don't blame her."
Was this night really so different from all the others? That's what she told them - all the past lovers she wasn't good enough for. They alone could melt the prince with a frozen heart. A tired line, but it worked like a charm. And when daybreak came, and she left with the hearts they gave willingly and the gold she took by force, she'd have a good laugh. She had to laugh, because what did they expect?
"What did I expect?"
"You're lying, Marie," the Firebird chided her.
"I am," Marie admitted. "This time was just a mistake, I know. But why do I still feel this way?"
The Firebird went quiet, puzzling. Then she offered Marie's refrain back to her. "Aah-ahh-ahh."
Marie sighed. "You made the effort."
She touched her stomach - where Elsa's lips had been, and where her ice nearly was - and shivered. Exposed and vulnerable.
She flexed her calf, stinging herself.
"Why didn't you heal my leg, along with the rest of me?" Marie asked the Firebird.
"I didn't heal you," she corrected. "You burned true, because you are my knight."
"That I did. But, I don't suppose there's another way you can say it."
Marie really wasn't expecting the Firebird to have an answer for that either. But then the demon's tail flared up, her eyes blazed like a pair of suns, and she gave one.
"You reconciled the chaos of materiality and consciousness within a single soul, and thereby reversed the combustion of your every molecule with a force and heat surpassing the volcano's power to annihilate." The high, piecing voice echoed off the walls of the chamber, cast in furious red and gold light. For a split-second Marie glimpsed that terrible power around her, in her, welding marrow to bones, sense to nerves, blood to veins.
But then she gasped, the light died, and she was whole again.
She tried to ask again. "So - ?"
The Firebird clicked her beak, as if irked that she had to spell out something this simple.
"The wound on your leg reconstituted - with the rest of your flesh - to the former stage of your natural dissipation into space and time."
Marie nodded slowly, as the hair on her neck settled.
"Oh. That's… about what I thought, more or less." Marie qualified.
The Firebird rolled her eyes - clear black once again - and preened her feathers.
"I asked anyway, because I wondered if it didn't heal because I didn't want it to. As if… in spite of my glorious reconciliation, there is still a part of me that wants something to be wrong," Marie confessed in a shaky laugh. She could hear how she sounded; like a child asking where the moon had gone on a cloudy night.
The Firebird's eyes glimmered in a tender way. "You want to be alive."
"Yes," she affirmed and raised her chin with a defiant smile. "I do."
Then, she heard a disturbance in the other room - the door to the hallway opening, and a voice like moonlight.
"Marie?" Elsa called. "I'm sorry I took a while - I brought provisions."
A light clattering noise accompanied her approach - that didn't sound like bandages.
"I - what do you mean, provisions?" Marie pushed herself up, wiping her eyes, and hopped to the bathroom door. She swung it open just as Elsa reached the otherside.
Elsa stumbled back, nearly dropping a large tray laden with snacks, two glasses, and two steaming mugs that carried a sticky, cloying smell.
"There's brown cheese and crispbread, strawberries and hot chocolates for both of us. Waters, as well." Elsa summarized the spread. "Before you ask, yes, I did remember the bandages, and ointment."
Indeed, Marie saw a roll and a jar were tucked under her arm.
"That's not what I was going to ask." Marie steadied the other side of the tray. She met Elsa's eyes, clear skies. Her cheeks weren't so pale, and her scalded palms were coated in a protective layer of frost. Elsa grinned, amused by Marie's bewilderment.
"I ran into Anna," she said, by way of explanation.
"Oh. Ok." Marie's voice cracked. "My questions are different now."
Such as, 'Is there arsenic in the cheese?' Marie didn't say this, but Elsa smirked as if she heard it.
"Let me set this down first."
While Marie kept the tray steady, Elsa freed one of her hands and made a flourish in the air. A current of ice magic swept under the tray, and carried it over to her bedside table - and displacing the lamp to the floor. The table was still a little small, but the tray balanced well enough.
"And now, we'll set you down." Elsa slid her arm behind Marie's back, bracing her. Only now, Marie registered what she was wearing. An elegant satin nightgown with a wide v-neck and back that made Marie feel she was wearing a bed sheet with holes cut in. She'd have to see the tailor about nightwear tomorrow - provided he still had a business and she still had the King's generosity.
"So, you met Anna on the way to get bandages," Marie prompted as she half-reclined onto the bed.
"Yes. At first, she was a little horrified -"
"Because you were getting bandages, and your hands are covered in burns." Marie completed. She took a sip of water, and soon downed most of the glass. She hadn't realized how dry her mouth was.
"Essentially," Elsa confirmed, too quickly, and darted to the bathroom.
A moment later she returned bearing towels, and Marie noticed faint pink stains around her eyes, from recent tears. Anna found her sister covered with burns and crying. And she doesn't want my head on a pike?
"I told her what really happened, of course. I started with just our clash at the end, but then I had to give her some explanation for how things spiraled." Elsa blushed. She folded the towels on the bed, and propped up Marie's leg on them. "Once she had the picture, that sent her into a different kind of whirl. She started talking about 'aftercare' and 'sub drop' - I still don't know what she meant by that."
Marie sort of knew what some of that meant.
"She was very upset that I left you alone." Elsa's voice brimmed with fond warmth sprinkled with guilt. She settled onto the bed alongside Marie and took one of the mugs from the tray.
"That's not fair." Marie touched her shoulder. "I completely understand if I was a bit much, and you needed to step back."
Elsa blew on her hot chocolate. "She also called us 'emotionally constipated children'."
Marie chuckled, and snapped off a piece of crispbread to pair with some cheese. "That is entirely fair."
The contrary sweet and savory flavors of whey cheese danced in her mouth. Marie washed down the thick cream with more water, and then asked her question.
"Anna really didn't have any problems helping you, with me?"
The Queen had forgiven her, after a fashion, but Marie knew she wasn't absolved by any means. Her ex's leap from tolerating her presence to playing wingman beggard the beneficence of saints.
Elsa sipped her chocolate, and shrugged.
"She did say that if she had to think about it for even a second, she would start screaming. Then she distracted herself by selecting the snack plate." Elsa took the left-over half of the crispbread. "She said we needed something filling and comforting, and something sugary to replenish energy - and not to forget hydration."
Perhaps it wasn't such a shocking turn after all, Marie mused. Nothing ever went the way she expected with these people. She picked out the least overripe strawberry while Elsa went on.
"The hot chocolate took a while to prepare. But the only food either of us could remember you liking is chocolate fondue, and so this with the strawberries is our best approximation."
"Oh, dear," Marie laughed, remembering why Anna would think that. "Elsa, I'm afraid I've cruelly misled your sister. In truth, I can't stand chocolate."
Elsa glanced down at her half-empty mug, as if to confirm that they were talking about the same substance.
"Marie." She did a slow, exasperated, blink. "Why would you lie to her about chocolate?"
"I lied about it to everyone," Marie confessed. "I had to - what kind of a heartless monster doesn't like chocolate? With Anna in particular, I think I noticed her enjoying some at the coronation party. So - naturally - as part of winning her hand, I made a point of saying I liked it too."
Elsa gave her a dry look. "Forgive me, but I have some grave concerns about this marriage."
Marie laughed, and a bit of strawberry juice overran the corner of her mouth. Elsa pursed her lips, and exchanged her mug for a glass of water.
"What food do you like best?" She asked.
Marie paused to wipe the juice from her lip.
"Honestly, it might be this cheese." She carved out a sliver with her thumb, and licked it off. Of course she'd had whey cheese before, as a child, but here - while she reclined on Elsa's bed, basking in love, the caramel-like tang was suddenly the most incredible thing she'd ever tasted. She'd have to thank Anna tomorrow. "And you?"
Elsa contemplatively swished and swallowed the water before answering.
"Does it count if it's something I've never tried?"
"This is a food you're talking about?" Marie asked, unsure of where Elsa was going, but intrigued.
"Yes - a food." Elsa smirked. Then her eyes went distant, and her tone turned hushed and sparkling. "There's a kind of wild berry that grows in the mountain bogs at the farthest edge of the Enchanted Forest. I've only had them preserved, when they're sugary and lovely with reindeer milk. The jam actually looks a bit like brown cheese, in color. But when they're ripe and fresh, I'm told they have a sweet sour taste that melts in your mouth and their skin is this brilliant sunset-amber. That's why they're called the gold of the forest.
"Ah, anyway -" She blinked and blushed a little, catching herself. "Maybe that sounds like a bit much, for a favorite food."
Marie chuckled. "Sounds like someone you know has a real way with words."
Elsa nodded. "A friend of mine. She invited me to go pick berries with her this summer. Although, I suppose that's not going to happen now."
They both stared off at the shuttered window, at their own ghost-like faces in the diamond-barred glass, and listened to the gentle patter of ash. Marie leaned over, and pressed her lips to Elsa's shoulder.
"It's your fault, it's my fault," she murmured, like a psalm. "It's our mothers' fault, it's no-one's fault."
"It's a volcano." Elsa surmised. She let out a sigh that rolled into a yawn.
Marie sank down on the blankets, propping her chin on one hand, watching Elsa's frame rise and fall through eyes half-closed. "Tired?"
"Ah, nothing escapes you, does it?" Elsa softly teased. "But first, we should finish what we started tonight. Are you ready?"
Poised words, delivered with a tremulous note - reverberating not from wary nerves, but eager ones. Elsa's gaze drew over the length of Marie's figure, draped in pale blue, to her legs stretched out over the towels, sheathed in black.
Marie gazed back at her, openly admiring her curves, hugged by dark magenta. "I am feeling somewhat overdressed, at present."
"If this hurts, you will tell me."
Elsa held Marie's leg over the basin, wrapped in a gentle river she drew from vapors in the air. The towels were spread underneath, to keep the bed dry, but not a drop of water fell while Elsa looked Marie in the eye and set her terms.
"Elsa, some degree of pain can't be helped," Marie explained patiently. "As a matter of course, when you start to rinse - "
"Marie," Elsa stopped her, with a note of imperiousness. "I lived on my own in the wild north for half a year; I've dressed my own wounds before. To do this right, I need to know what kind of pain you're feeling, as you feel it."
"Understood," Marie dipped her head in deference. "Whatever hurts, I will tell you. I trust you."
Elsa smiled at that - eyes warm, but lips tight. There was a skip in the currents around Marie's leg.
Then, Elsa breathed out, opened her hands, and the water evaporated again. She ran her fingers along cracks in the softened basalt. With utmost care and concentration, like she was handling a skittish animal, she pulled at the armor. The main plate broke away easily - revealing Marie's knee, and much of her shin. And, at the very edge of her skin, a vivid dash of red.
The cut prickled in the air. Elsa glanced at Marie.
"Go on," Marie prompted, eyeing the cut with morbid curiosity.
Elsa coaxed away the ridges around the calf - exposing the wound in full. A clean slice over the calf muscle, like a red fishing line.
Marie hissed. Elsa gave her a sharp look.
"It stings," Marie told her.
"That's all?"
"At the moment."
Elsa placed the basalt chips in the basin bowl and then raised her open palms. She closed her fists above the wound, vapor condensed to liquid, and ran over Marie's skin, into the basin, and back on itself in the air - flushing the wound in a continuous ribbon. The sting subsided, and Marie breathed out.
Undulating sylph-like in the candlelight, the infinite waterfall flowed on while Elsa lathered up her hands with soap. The violets and irises returned - airy sweetness that gamboled over the lingering stench of chocolate. Then Elsa dissipated the waterfall back into the air, and began to massage Marie's calf muscle.
The pain was immediate.
"Ah - stinging more, a lot more!" Marie gasped.
Elsa blanched, but she kept her hands firm on the wound.
"Elaborate," she ordered, and rubbed in the soap.
"Knives. Digging." Marie snarled, gripping the sheets.
Elsa bit her lips. Then she caressed the air with a dripping hand, and drew out a thin stream of water that she channeled along the cut, like a fast creek into a ravine. Marie imagined whatever minute particles tormented her to be boulders, fallen trees, as the flood swept them away.
After a minute, she unclenched her jaw.
"Better?" Elsa asked tentatively.
"Yes," Marie panted, eyes closed, lashes quivering. "Hell."
She felt this strange gap in sensation. As if, without the pain, the wound didn't know what to do with itself. Then, the fingers came back, cool as perfect ice and numbing with ointment.
"Oh," Marie moaned - and then clarified for Elsa's sake. "The cold is nice."
Their eyes met for a moment. Then Elsa began to wind the smooth bandages around Marie's calf, like a coiling snake, over, under.
"Tighter," Marie requested and Elsa pulled and bound until, at last, they were done.
"Alright?" Elsa looked to Marie once again - this time with a small smile.
Marie sat forward - folding up her leg to better appraise Elsa's handiwork.
"Alright," she affirmed. "That could have been much worse. The cut, I mean - you've been excellent."
Elsa smiled, close-lipped. She lowered her eyes and her voice. "It's the least I can do, for the wound I gave you."
"Oh, that's what's been bothering you?" Marie couldn't keep from laughing.
"Among other things," Elsa muttered, touching her forehead.
"Hey," Marie lifted her chin. "With this, at least, I was asking for it."
"You really were," Elsa let out a short disbelieving breath. "Maybe you could stand to be a little afraid of me."
At once a plea and a threat. The guilt-ridden girl was there, but also the proud sorceress Marie dueled over a mountain.
"I don't know," Marie sat back and slid her gaze askance. "I mean, fire against ice - you don't think I'd always come out on top?"
Elsa raised an eyebrow. "With water against fire - ."
"Oh, but that's a compromise, and you know it." Marie waved her hand in dismissal, as smugly as she could bear while keeping a straight face. "Water is what happens when your cold retreats from my heat."
"That is not at all how it works," Elsa scoffed. "More to the point, you seem to have forgotten who was retreating from whom this morning."
"Tactically retreating." Marie idly picked at the rubble on her wrist. "I still won - the volcano very much erupted."
"Because I had to save you from Anna. If she wasn't there - "
"Before she arrived, I conclusively had the upper hand." Marie cracked off the plate on her forearm and chucked it in the basin bowl. "You said it yourself, you could hardly handle the fire spirits alone."
"And if it was just me and you, without the fire spirits?" She planted her hands on either side of Marie's legs, hair cascading down over the rock.
"And you without your horse?" Marie raised her.
Oh, that was an ask. Elsa's eyes narrowed. Then, with deliberation, she slid her hands up Marie's thigh, finding the edge of basalt like a garter.
"Your sole advantage is your wings, and those are easily drowned."
She stripped down the rest of Marie's wounded leg - ah, not so gentle - then reached back under her nightdress for the other stocking of rock.
"My advantage is my sword." Marie cleared the armor off her other arm, pushing up her sleeve over her bicep, tingling like a sunburn. "What do you do, when the combat gets close?"
"Ah, I wasn't going to mention the sword, I thought you should have a fighting chance," Elsa flicked a lock over her shoulder. "But where's your weapon now - sitting in the bathroom? My powers are always in hand."
Chilling fingers sent shivers up the back of Marie's thigh. Rosey candlelight licked the burning skin of her arms, legs, feet. Marie sat up, skimming Elsa's brow with her nose.
"I'll have to find a chandelier."
Breaths away, Elsa gave her an ardent glare. She rocked slightly on her hips, teetering at the edge of the gap between them. Marie felt her fingers tremble on her skin, and saw her pulse beating like dragonfly wings in her neck.
"If it goes too far, what do we say?" Marie asked in a stage whisper. She didn't expect that it would - but, then, she hadn't expected it last time.
Elsa blinked, her eyes cleared, and she set her brow.
"Punch bowl."
Marie snorted. "We're going with that."
"It's effective." Elsa smirked, a touch rueful.
She wasn't wrong - the phrase was a battering ram to tension. Marie brushed Elsa's hair back over her ear and cupped the side of her cheek.
"Now, what was I saying?" She asked, trying to rebuild the moment with rhetoric.
Then Elsa kissed her. Open mouthed - quick study - with surprising force. She pushed her down into the pillows and pinned her arm overhead, hand to wrist.
"Something about who's always on top?" A throaty chuckle. "I don't really recall."
As she kissed her again, now slow and deep, Marie couldn't either.
If their last passion was a thunderstorm breaking, this was the sunset that came after. Achingly vibrant, yet soothing in sublimity. Motion rolled out from their lips like wind and waves, and across their bodies like sky and sea.
Frost melted as she gripped her palm, and Elsa gave a sharp gasp. Marie caressed down her shoulder, under the satin, grasping her muscle, firm and sleek. Slick with ice water, Elsa's other hand stroked up Marie's thigh, higher, to her hip - where she hit the shore of basalt.
"Ah - Marie." she broke the kiss, annoyed but laughing. "I thought we were done."
"I don't know why - I never said so." Marie told her between breaths. "My backside - that's all that's left."
Elsa rolled her eyes as she slid off Marie and pulled her neckline back up.
"Ok - turn over," she muttered.
Marie obliged. She propped herself on her elbows and crossed her ankles. Perhaps it would have been more practical for her to have removed the rear plate herself earlier, instead of moping on the bathroom floor. But she was rather looking forward to how Elsa would take to this new territory.
Elsa didn't waste time. After rolling up the nightdress to Marie's waist, she dug her nails into the upper edge of the rock, and ripped it off like the rind from an orange. Marie gritted her teeth - though the burn wasn't so bad as on her other, somewhat less ample areas.
"Oh, I'm sorry - I think I did it too fast," Elsa gasped, and Marie felt cool fingertips relieve her skin. "There's scars all along here -"
"Wha - Oh." Marie realized what she was seeing. "Those aren't from the armor."
There was a pause.
"What… What are they?"
"I've been with men. Intentionally," Marie clarified. "Some like it rough."
"Men," Elsa repeated, as if it were the name of a new species. "Why?"
Because their money is as good as a woman's. But that was an easy thing to tell herself, and the start to a different conversation with Elsa - a conversation she wanted to have even less than this one. Resigned to honesty, she pulled down her hem and rolled over.
"It's hard to explain. It didn't feel right, with men." She imagined this was her girlfriend's primary concern, but Elsa's brow didn't unknit. "But it was supposed to feel right with women, and they never did either, really. Some nights, I wondered if the wrong thing made more sense. And when they didn't - well, men have fantasies too."
Elsa didn't say anything, and her eyes glanced away in thought. Trying to understand, maybe, but Marie wasn't interested in trying with her.
She yawned and stretched her free body beneath soft cotton, from the top of her spine down to her toes, graceful and profane.
"Well, Elsa," she said. "That's all of me."
She met Elsa's eyes, blue like the east horizon at nightfall, and her smile.
"I doubt I'll ever know all of you."
One by one, Elsa blew out the candles in her room. She started in the bathroom, and worked from back to front - saving the lamp on her side of the bed for last.
Marie was already under the covers, the Firebird sword leaning in repose against the snack tray. The blade caught every drop of light until the darkness was absolute.
Marie heard her breath, still just a bit shallow with nerves, and smelled her perfume, the flowers and their exuberance now humbled by amber. She felt a slight depression in the mattress beside her.
"I was teasing before." Elsa's voice was surprisingly close. She must have sunk into her pillow with no sound. "I think it's terribly unfair that you've got magic powers, too. You've had me at your mercy twice with just a few words."
Marie gave a smile that couldn't be seen. She reached out, slowly, and soft skin met her fingertips.
"Words," Marie echoed back to the darkness. "What are words? You annihilated me - or all the smoke and mirrors I imagined was me - with a glance. And you did it again three days ago."
A hand caught her own, with a palm coated in ice, and pressed it to warm lips.
"You say that." Elsa's breath brushed her knuckles like raven wings. "But it's not a power if I didn't know I had it."
Marie opened her hand around the smooth arc of Elsa's jaw. Elsa's head tilted, so Marie's fingers ran along the top of her neck.
"There was a moment when I could have spoken to you, after the Great Thaw," Elsa said, and Marie felt the vibrations through her throat. "I came down to visit your cell. But you were sleeping, and so I left."
Marie let out a short laugh. "You imprisoned me for attempted regicide, and you let me sleep?"
"You looked like you needed it."
Marie withdrew her hand and rubbed her eyes until spots popped on her lids. She remembered her purgatory in Arendelle as a cold fever, a cacophony of fears and furies convulsing her mind.
"What would you have said?"
"Oh, I.. I really don't know anymore."
Probably just as well. What could either of them have possibly said to undo the years that came after? Marie closed her eyes to darkness, and opened them to the same. She felt - or heard, she couldn't tell - a shift on the sheets beside her.
"Do you remember - oh, you probably don't," Marie murmured.
"Mmm?" Elsa prompted through her pillow.
"After I shackled you in your cell, I covered you with a blanket."
Elsa was quiet for a moment. Perhaps she thought one of her servants or soldiers had done it, as if any of them would have dared to touch her.
"I'm sorry, much of those days are a blur to me now. But thank you."
"It was such a profoundly useless gesture." Marie laughed, "I mean, what was I doing? Trying to comfort you in the dungeon that I put you in, shield you from the cold that you clearly didn't mind."
"The warmth doesn't bother me, either." A note of impatience pulled Marie out of her ocean of memory.
She's waiting for me to hold her now.
Marie reached out again and nearly immediately touched satin, Elsa's back. Her shoulder blade moved out and in with a deep, easy breath. Marie drew her arm around Elsa's chest, and Elsa nestled into her embrace, resting her temple in the hollow of Marie's neck.
"Tell me how you're doing it. Reconciling me." Marie whispered to her. "I know how I do it - it's my life. But you, of all people…"
She pressed her lips to the crown of Elsa's head. She wanted to dive through the currents of hair, into her mind, down to the bottom of her heart. "Do you feel you deserve what I tried to do? Or, you think the mistakes you've made are equal to my crimes?"
"No, I.. It's not about being more of a martyr."
Marie heard the sleek gown shift against her legs.
"During the eruption," Elsa went on, "while we were waiting to see if you'd come back, I had time to think about a lot of things. And I thought about you - what you are to me. For so long, you played this part in my life - the unforgivable monster. Not at all like me, a forgivable one. But that just made you another one of my statues, didn't it? Just more of what I wanted to be true.
"Then I remembered something Kristoff said, when he told me he was going to propose to Anna. I asked him then, why he thought he was the right one for my sister."
"That's quite the question," Marie muttered. She pictured the scene - the big reindeer man, hat in his hand and heart on his sleeve, before the judgement of the Snow Queen and his future sister-in-law.
"I did think he was right for her, but I wanted to hear his answer. And he gave one. He said 'I'm the one who saw her home'."
There was a catch in her voice, breaking on 'home'. Marie felt her swallow.
"And that's what you've done for me. If you hadn't washed up here three days ago, I would still be at the volcano now. I don't know if I'd have ever come down. Anna couldn't bring me home by herself - she couldn't do it the first time. She saved me, but would she have had the chance to, if you hadn't gone to the North Mountain, spoke to my heart and made me take a breath?"
If you hadn't met my eyes, if I had killed you when I had the chance... If I was not myself... If we were not ourselves...
"I never thought of it like that before," Marie said at last.
Her voice hung in the darkness for a heartbeat, before dissolving into silence. True silence, unbroken by patter on the window.
The ashfall was over.
"Marie?"
"Yes," she affirmed.
Elsa paused, and Marie knew her lips were pursed.
"Let me know if this sounds… if this doesn't make sense," she said. "At the ball last night, there was something I saw you do with a flower. One of the ones I crystalized. You thawed my ice with your breath, and then -"
"Oh. I forgot I did that." Marie's face burned. "Goodness, I am a bit much."
"Tomorrow night, could you do something like that again? With me as the flower?"
Marie grinned shamelessly to herself and the dark.
"Tomorrow," Marie promised and kissed her brow. "Good night, Elsa."