Never mind the fur-wearing natives of the enchanted forest. Never mind the Arendellian guards equipped with decades-old uniforms. Because, as she stood there back to back the white-haired man, she only had eyes for him, evident in the way she looked over her shoulder to stare none too discreetly at the enigma.

There he was, her every contradiction.

The pair of magic-users let their arms drop to their sides when the situation began to wind down and all three sides of the conflict began to assess each other in the stillness.

"Who are you?"

Elsa heard the question but her attention could not be robbed. She faced the elderly woman who spoke the quandary only because the white-haired man was in that direction as well. Her heart skipped a beat as cliche as that sounded when his head turned ever so slightly to acknowledge her from over his shoulder and corner of his eyes. Their gazes met for the briefest of moments.

Giving one last cursory glance at the Northuldra and making sure that they weren't a threat, he turned all the way to look pointedly at the blonde queen. He deduced by the way her lips parted, sealed shut, only to part once more; how she was staring at him so intently with her absurdly expressive eyes that she wanted to speak with him instead of the person who actually asked her a question.

"What's-"

But, with a languid finger to his lips, he kept her from asking. Elsa could not have shut her mouth any quicker, and her teeth clacked painfully together with the motion of her jaw. She could barely register the ache, however, as he kept her enthralled with his hand's honeyed slowness gesturing to both his baby-blue eyes then finishing by pointing at the weathered old woman.

She released a shaky breath like how she would on cold mornings, fogging small puffs of steam in front of her face. Saints above, the effect he had on her was simply... staggering, and she didn't even know his name. Who was he? She wanted to find out so desperately, that was until her senses caught up with her brain and gave it a good shove. Only then did she grasp the gesture. If no one could see him except her then everybody would think she'd gone insane if she just started talking to him all of a sudden. He knew this and wanted her to wait until they were alone.

That way, he was like her very own little secret; she blushed when the errant thought betrayed her. Oh, the travesty! The scandal! This- This wasn't like her at all — wholly unbecoming; tart! Why it stood against the very silhouette of the queen she tried all her life to cast...

...but at that moment, she couldn't find it in herself to care. Not even a little bit.

In all honesty, the idea of having him all to herself thrilled her in ways that baffled her to no end, and she surprised herself, even more, when she gave him her stuttered nod. Tart, indeed! If only her sister knew, oh, she should have a field day.

'Elsa! What are you doing?! The lady just asked you a question; stop it with the goo-goo eyes and ANSWER the woman!' The part of her that still retained some semblance of decorum screamed. She would have slapped herself just to get her mind right if that did not look stranger still, "I-I..."

Everyone stared at her expectantly and blinked in synchronized anticipation.

"I- uh. I'm- my name is- ah..." Suddenly finding herself in the situation, surrounded by a multitude of eyes, just saying her name had become too tedious a task, for truly.

Embarrassed, Anna came to her rescue, rushing in front of the dazed queen and hurrying to fill in the dead air with a fake smile and nervous laugh, "She's Elsa! Haha. Yeah, her name's Elsa. *Ahem* and I'm Anna, her sister. Helluuu..." She wiggled her fingers at the crowd in the most awkward wave while the subtle stink-eye she'd pointed behind her at her older sister asked the blonde, 'What gives?'

"Y-Yes," Elsa withered at her sister's scary look, 'Alright, that's quite enough of that,' she reprimanded herself and breathed in deeply to finally settle her nerves. The next time she spoke it was with the practiced ease and grace of her crown. She cleared her throat, "Greetings, all, and well met. I am Elsa Briar Ádelair, firstborn of house Ádelair, queen of Arendelle," her eyes stealing glances at the white-haired man the entire time.

Gasps were heard all around.

"Ádelair? You're... You're Agnarr's kids?"

Though gruff they all were at first, their tones changed once they'd found out that, not only were they the daughters of prince Agnarr, but of the waiting-chieftess Iduna as well. The thought of such a union and how it was not only a possibility but was an actual reality made even the Northuldra and old Arendellian guard tolerate each other.

They were brought to their little village and there a tale of the past, of lies and betrayal, was told.

Elsa was honored that they found her trustworthy enough to share such history with her. It was all very informative and answered a lot of the questions she had about her parents. She would have loved to know more, but the white-haired man lingering, never straying from her peripheral was highly distracting, so distracting in fact that the better part of her evening was spent craning her neck, making sure the white-haired man did not wander off without her knowing when she should really be paying attention to the conversation at hand.

She almost panicked when he actually went and did wander off; it was only because of the look he gave her before he left the camp that kept her from bolting up and rushing after him, sanity be damned. His gaze, although a bit frigid, had been reassuring; it told her that once she'd finished talking to everyone '...come find me.'

Knowing that he was out there waiting for her lit a fire of anticipation in her mind that burned her with the utmost curiosity. It was with a reluctant rear-end that she sat back down from her about-to-leave position.

"I-I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?" She asked her companion, Honey... marry? Or was it maren rather? She failed to recall at the moment, and it looked like the bewildered Northuldra woman noticed her distractedness.

"What's over there?" Honeymaren asked the queen.

Caught not paying attention, "Huh, what?" Elsa was only able to blurt as she returned her wide-eyed focus back to the conversation. How obvious was she being, she worried.

"You keep looking behind you."

*Very*, apparently, "I am?"

Honeymaren let out a good-natured chuckle, "Yes. Yes, you are."

"Oh no, i-it's nothing." Her companion narrowed her eyes at her in suspicion; Elsa began to fidget. Suddenly, the brunette's expression changed from suspicion to utter realization.

Honeymaren looked from either side of her as if she were afraid that someone had been listening in on them. Cupping her hand over her mouth, the brunette whispered to the queen a question that stole her breath.

"You see him, don't you?"

"What?!" Elsa scream-whispered, not believing how the girl was able to make that jump in logic and hitting the nail on the head, "No, I don't! I-I mean, I have no idea whatever it is you are referring to, Honeymarry."

"Aaand that's not how you answer that question if you want to be convincing," Honeymaren smirked and it scared Elsa how much like her sister she looked, "and it's Honeymaren, by the way." From teasing, her tone returned to being serious before repeating the question, "Well, do you?"

"Do what?"

"See *him*?"

"See who?" Why was she still playing dumb when it was obviously not working?

"See the-" Honeymaren stopped herself from raising her voice in exasperation and tried again more softly, "See the spirit of the forest."

Elsa could tell that her new Northuldra friend was getting short with her, and she understood why, but Elsa was still hesitant to let her know what she knew. Hearing something about a spirit, however, made her think of the white-haired man. Could she be talking about him perhaps? What did she know about the mystery that her sister summarily dubbed Samantha? In the end, her need to know overrode her being cautious, and she whispered as quietly as her voice would allow, "Yes..."

Elsa expected a whole slew of reactions, all not very positive, but relief had not been one of them.

"So he's still here after all this time," Honeymaren spoke to herself as if she could scarcely believe what was just told her.

When it settled that she would not be ridiculed as some crazy person for what she admitted to, the questions came to Elsa too quickly that she forgot to feel relieved, "What do you mean? Who is he? And based on what you just said, why does it seem like that only I could see him?"

Honeymaren lifted her stupefied stare off the ground and looked Elsa in the eyes without really seeing. Then she blinked and her pupils refocused themselves. The brunette had to shake her head of the haze that clouded her mind before she could answer the queen, "I should probably start from the beginning."

Barely containing her excitement, Elsa could only nod about knowing more.

She took a breath to prepare then began the story passed down her people for generations, "Legends tell of a boy who fell out of the sky... and into the depths of the dark sea. Too weak to swim its treacherous waters, he would have drowned... if not for the fifth spirit. She saved him, and in gratitude, the boy swore to help look over her forest. For years he did just that, protect the woods and all that lived in it, including my people, the Northuldra."

"Throughout the history of my tribe, the boy often guided us through the perils of the forbidden forest and taught us the ways of the land. He was one of the reasons, if not *the* reason why we are who we are now. All this he did only for our friendship. Eventually, he became our totem... our guardian. Our most trusted friend..."

Enraptured, Elsa hung off her every word, the thirst for knowledge she felt ebbing the more the story unfolded before her mind's eye. So focused was she on Honeymaren that it was hard to miss the sadness that gradually took her friend's words like a heavy blanket of snow.

"...Then your people came," there was no anger or accusation in the sound of her voice, only sadness, "and you know how *that* story went." Honeymaren snickered only there was no humor there, "What was left out of the story was the fury felt that day, the fury of the forest spirit. He was the one who gathered the other four elementals and put a stop to the pointless fighting. He was the one who drew the veil you see before you now..."

Elsa took the time to look all around her at the fog that hid the tops of the trees and was awed now that she knew who put it there.

"...and he was the one who severed our ties to the forest. We've never seen him since. Now here we live like blind men in a place we no longer understand."

"What happened to him?"

"Nobody knows. Some say that in his anger he abandoned us. Others say that he'd died along with the fifth spirit. All theories, of course... one thing's for certain, though, without him, my people lost their way."

Elsa let her eyes fall back on Honeymaren and could not help but feel sad herself. She didn't know what to say. 'Sorry for what my ancestors did and how they took your home' sounded insincere, not because it wasn't true, but because the guilt she felt didn't even belong to her; she hadn't been there when it all happened. She did nothing wrong, but just being related to the people that caused all this still made her feel responsible somehow.

"I-"

"—Please find him." With pleading eyes she looked up at Elsa from where she sat hunched over and hands clutching each other as if she were praying. "If you're really telling the truth and you really can see him, please... please tell the spirit that... we miss him."

How could she say no?

Elsa stood, determination straitening her spine before giving the girl a single nod.

"Thank you, your majesty."

"Elsa, please, and thank you for the lovely conversation." She corrected with a gentle smile, before walking off to do what was asked of her.

Sorry if I took a while to write this. I was waiting for the hd release of the movie because I could barely remember it at this point, but in the end, I was like, "Aw fudge it. I'll just slap on 'loosely based off' and write my own damn script."

Took some inspiration from Jack's origin story in the "Guardians of Childhood" books by William Joyce. Hope you likey.