This girl is Anna, and she's your little sister now.
The stormclouds had rolled outside and when the final lightning-flash finally cleared Elsa had found herself looking down into a pair of teal-green eyes. "Anna."
Strong arms enfolded her as the king lifted her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest in a mirror-pose of the queen and the newest princess. "That's right," he had said. "This is a big responsibility for you Elsa."
She's had responsibilities before but only small ones. Is it like her favourite toys and she's going to have to make sure she doesn't lose her? Is she going to make sure she's cleaned and fed? Elsa has servants that do that though, so…
The king goes on. "Little Anna is going to look up to you one day, so you have to show her what a good princess looks like."
Oh, phew, this is easier. Elsa has picture-books that tell her what a good princess is, she can just show Anna those. "Okay!" Elsa knows she's smart. So young and already she knows so much about how to be a proper princess. She knows how to curtsey when visitors come and how to always smile at them even when their jokes are bad. She knows she should be polite to people underneath her and above her and not to eat too fast or else she'll choke. She knows all of this is just a small part of being a good girl and that the more she grows up and grows smarter the more she'll learn so that she can keep being a good girl and keep her father and mother happy.
She also knows that good girls don't wake up in the middle of the night to sneak to the north corridor and look out at the mountain. But it's such a little thing, and unlike when she knocks something over or does something wrong nobody has to clean up after her or tell her to do it again until she gets it right. So it can't be that bad, and all she gets is a little more tired than usual on the morning. It's hard to be a good girl all the time.
"Look, she's opening her eyes." The king leans down over the bed.
Elsa watches as the little creature squirms in its white robe, then suddenly she's looking down into a pair of teal-green eyes so pure and clear they could have been lit from some inner light. To Elsa who has lived all her life in a castle by a fjord it's like staring into the ocean.
"Beautiful," her mother whispers as the baby tries to struggle out of its swaddling, waving her arms around.
Entranced by those eyes Elsa reaches down at the ever-so-small and vulnerable child, and one of little Anna's hands reaches back up. A tiny hand grabs her finger and holds it as tight as a new-born can, and Elsa can feel the small warmth radiating from it.
"Anna," she whispers quietly, captivated.
The pebble bounces a second time.
If the disappointment of having a little sister instead of a brother had been made irrelevant by that small green gaze and warm hand, the years afterwards swept away even the memory of it.
The baby grew from a helpless crying bundle of noise and sleepless nights into a toddler whose enthusiasm for life – and getting into trouble – seemed to stretch beyond the bounds of her body. Anna was forever clambering where she shouldn't go, and sometimes where she couldn't go. The castle staff who had lived through a curious but careful and obedient young Elsa panicked and then adjusted to the much more adventurous and rebellious second princess. Lectures from the staff on why she couldn't go wherever she wanted were met not with polite acceptance but with crossed arms and pouting sulks. Kai could already see adolescence and beyond with resignation, when the fiery redhead could reach the higher doorknobs of the castle's outer walls, and really get into trouble. Until then the biggest damage was confined to the kitchens, a cook turning back to the table to spot a flash of red hair vanishing beyond a door, and two apples or cakes missing from a plate. Always two of whatever she took, one for her and one for the sister she worshipped. Anna would hunt down her sibling and the two of them would retreat to some remote part of the castle to celebrate and eat their plunder.
The king and queen looked on with pride and joy as Elsa transformed before their eyes from a gangly toddler into a young girl whose intelligence and grace shone out from behind blue eyes that captivated any who looked into them. Picture-books were replaced with instructional manuals on peerage and how to address other royalty, and lessons on how to curtsey without falling down and how to read and write slid smoothly into court manners and how one conducts themselves at a grand ball. Everything thrown at her Elsa caught and took in her stride. Everything.
The staff are used to it by now. Guards on their ceremonial patrols, maids carrying linens or a dozen other people that form the lifeblood of a castle as big as theirs would take the northern corridor and find the princess already there, staring out of the window silently, a contented expression on her face. Arendelle is beautiful from above, and from the northern corridor the entire kingdom is laid out like a map, the castle's moat giving way to the main town beyond, and the rolling fields of green grazing pastures and golden waves of corn hugging the side of the mountain before the land becomes too steep for it, and after that only the pristine untouched mountain beyond. All of the passing servants assume Elsa loves the view of the kingdom she'll one day rule, and only Kai and maybe Ida can sense something just a little beyond a childish fascination. When Elsa stares out she isn't looking down at the town, she's staring up at the mountain, and those blue eyes shine just a little brighter as she does.
The crash of breaking china echoes through the air, reverberating up and down the long corridor as the maid passes by the princess. It takes her a second but the young woman realises that it isn't morning condensation that's misting up the huge floor-to-ceiling window, and it isn't white paint that's covering the space where the princess is standing.
Young Elsa stands in the north corridor, a smile as bright as the sun plastered over her young face as behind her patterns of frost etch themselves onto the glass. Pale lines radiate out from the girl's hands forming the uneven scribbles and lines that another child might have done using a stolen paintbrush. The maid looks in shock as above Elsa's head the lines come together and thicken to form a child's doodle of a six-pointed star. Snowflakes dance and swirl around her as she waves her arms like a conductor.
"Look! Look what I can do!"
The broken china is forgotten, and Elsa watches as the maid turns and bolts from the room. Left alone in her favourite part of the castle, the girl just shrugs, and goes back to her work on the window. She can see the shape she wants to make in her mind, all she needs is a little practise. How much time passes she doesn't notice or care, but when she's next disturbed it's not by a servant girl at all.
"Elsa, my love?"
"Elsa?"
Elsa shouts in joy and turns away, the window instantly forgotten as she runs to her mother and father. Skipping to a stop she looks up and smiles, beaming with pride. She doesn't know about what her power is exactly, only that she knows it's beautiful. "Mother, father, look what I can…"
She trails off as she see her parents. They aren't staring at her, they're staring past her. No smiles full of pride the same way as when she recites perfectly from her exercise books or manages to remember the correct table manners for a visiting count. Instead she looks up into her mother's eyes and sees fear, and hears from her father something that will affect her much, much more as he speaks thoughtlessly words that will haunt Arendelle for decades to come.
"A curse…?"
To young Elsa eager only to please her parents and show them the beautiful and amazing things she can do, it's like a gut-punch that smashes into all her happiness and confidence and drives them deep, deep down into her heart. The king seems to catch himself and puts a smile on his face but it's too late, because through the whole conversation that night as her parents comfort her and ask her how long and how strong the thing that will be imprinted on her memory is the fear on her mother's face and the fear in her father's voice. At the end of the long talk her parents will hug her very closely and tell Elsa that they still love her, and Elsa listens and knows they aren't lying, but that doubt will always be there in her head.
The pebble has bounced its final time, and the course of the avalanche has been set. The slightest push in a different direction at any point could have averted it, or at the very least changed its course. But like nature's beast nobody with the power to hold it back had known until far, far too late. The only thing left to do was watch as it fell, and try to survive its onslaught.
Because when Princess Elsa goes to bed that night she isn't thinking about the dangers or the costs of her unique power. She's only thinking that all her life she's tried to be a good girl, the best she could be. She tried to create something beautiful for her parents, to make them proud that she had a skill only she could use, and instead they had called it a curse and had it scrubbed from the walls. As it had been cleared away from the window Elsa had seen the mountain behind it. She and the mountain were the same, kindred spirits who could create something pure and white and beautiful. The scale was different, that was all. But where people treated the mountain with reverence and respect, she was told it was a curse to be removed as fast as possible. It wasn't fair.
The mountain doesn't have to apologise for creating something beautiful, so why should she?
"Elsaaaaa."
Anna lands on Elsa's bed with a flooompf noise, shaking the comfy bed up and down as the little sister tries to shake her bigger sister awake.
"Elsa wake up!"
Urgh. She's had an entire day on the lives and genealogy of the countries surrounding Arendelle. Elsa feels like her head is full of the names of old dead men she can already barely remember. "Go away Anna," she mutters, trying to dig herself down deeper into her pillow and pretend she's dead.
The ploy fails miserable as Anna falls on top of her staring dramatically at painted ceiling. "But Elsa. The sky's awake, so I'm awake. So that means we have to play!"
Elsa doubles down and plays dead some more. For a few seconds there's blissful silence as maybe Anna gives up for the night and goes back to her own room and lets her sleep. But then she feels her little sister shift above her and a pair of teal eyes materialise close to her own as a voice says…
"Doyouwannabuildasnowmaaaan?"
Elsa can't help the smile. She loves snowmen. She loves her sister.
She throws back the covers.
They laugh as the take the stairs three at a time and push their way into room, both giggling without knowing why but not wanting to stop. Anna had tried to take them both to the castle's central stairway but Elsa knew what her little sister wanted and knew she could give it to her better elsewhere.
They both skid to a halt at the centre of the northern corridor and Anna jumps up and down in joy, just so happy to be playing with her sister that Elsa would do anything she wanted.
"Do the magic do the magic!"
And Elsa's only too happy to oblige. Since she had dared to show Anna her power and the little girl had responded with delight and wonder, they've had dozens - maybe hundreds it feels like - of playdates like this one. Anna glories in the amazing power her big sister has, and Elsa grows ever more confident showing off, making snowmen and slides and tiny ice creatures. The only reward she needs is the smile on Anna's face.
Which is why when it happens, the tragic result is all the more crushing.
No, no no no no no.
Elsa opens her mouth to scream but no sound comes out as she scrabbles to her feet and runs over to Anna, lying motionless only metres away. "Anna? ANNA!" She turns her over and this time she does cry out when she sees the results of her own careless power. The frost is fading from the warm cloth but Elsa can still see where the shot landed. Slipping on her own ice like a stupid, stupid, bad little girl and the pillar of snow that was supposed to have cushioned Anna'd jump had instead went wide, straight into the air, and had hit in the worst place possible.
Directly over her heart.
She wants to open her mouth and scream and cry and shout for her mommy as loud as she can. Wants big strong hands to come and look after her and Anna and take care of all of it.
But she knows she can't do that. She can feel it in her bones and in her own heart, the same heart that when told her power was a curse knew that it wasn't, it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't.
If she cries out now then her father's words and mother's eyes will be true. Her power will be a curse and she'll be a witch, and when she was just a child she read enough storybooks to know what happens to bad witches with evil powers. She can fix this. It's her power and her ice. Anna lies moaning on the floor clutching at her chest and Elsa glances out the window at the north mountain like a parent seeking permission or approval. Wind streams off the silent peak, carrying ice and snow away from the rocky pinnacle.
Carrying it away.
I can do this.
Elsa holds a hand up against Anna's chest and closes her eyes. She can feel the ice there in her sister's still-beating heart, can see it with something beyond normal sight. The shards pulsate with a beautiful blue glow, clear as day, and Elsa pushes with her mind the same way she pushes snowflakes around with the air.
Anna cries out in pain, eyes as big as dinner plates, but Elsa knows she's doing the right thing, fixing what she broke, and she keeps going. She can feel the ice sliding but it's too slow and too hard. In seconds the little princess is gasping for air, feeling more tired than after anything she's ever done. Elsa's breath heaves in her tiny throat as she tries to hold down the black panic that's filling her lungs, and her eyes go out of the window towards the north mountain. Under the light of the moon the towering stone evidence glows with a pale white light.
I'll be stronger there, Elsa thinks, and by the tingling under her skin she knows that she's right.
Their adventures through the castle had taught them well and the secret pathways and disused staircases that Elsa didn't already know about Anna had found and shown her. Elsa knows there's a way down to the stables from the north passages, and she knows the stableman there is a normal adult who'll do anything for her if she asks nicely and bats her eyes.
With all the strength and determination she can muster Elsa picks her shivering little sister up, and starts to walk, leaving behind the cold northern corridor and the remains of their playtime; a small pile of snow on the ground in the shape of a ramp, beautiful snowflakes that glitter in the pre-dawn air, and the slowly melting remains of a ragged and misshapen snowman.
It's an hour before the maid comes in to check on why Elsa is being so quiet in her room, and the another half for the castle to realise that she and Anna aren't playing hide-and-seek. By the time the stableman is questioned Elsa is already halfway up the mountain, and she isn't slowing down. Getting faster, if anything. She had left the horse behind her when the beast had refused to climb another another step, and now she had one arm under Anna and was crying at her to stay awake as the two girls struggled up the mountains.
To Elsa every step she takes to the summit of the peak feels better than the last and every breath of cold air she takes invigorates her. She's only in her skirt and jumper now, wrapping Anna up in the winter coat, shawl and scarves she took escaping the castle. The frigid air everyone in the castle seems so afraid of seems to be pushing at her from behind and helping her up. If Elsa wasn't crying and terrified that her sister was going to die and it would be her fault she would be happier than she had in years.
But Anna is all that fills her head now. Even under the inches of wool she can feel her little sister shivering and Elsa is afraid. She can feel the heat leeching away from her the same way she can see the ice in her heart. Elsa can see a clump of rocks ahead, five huge monoliths and a smaller, thicker one thrusting out of the frozen ground like an unturned hand was clawing from beneath the surface, and she heads there hoping they'll find at least a little shelter. Once glance the way she had come showed she had dragged and carried her sister nearly a third the way up the mountain, and even though the cold air surrounding her is affecting her in ways it doesn't affect others, it had always been Anna who had the boundless energy and stamina, not her. This is as far as she can go.
The huge boulder is large enough that in its lee the wind is reduced from a steady push to barely a breeze, and Elsa collapses beside the thumb of the rocky hand.
This is enough please please please please-
"…'Lsa?"
Elsa struggles to get her little sister turned face-up, and is rewarded with a pair of bleary green eyes looking into hers. "Anna!" She hugs her sister as tightly as she can.
"'M sorry I went too fast," Anna mumbles into her ear.
"It wasn't your fault! I was just stupid," Elsa cries into her sister's face. "Daddy was right, I'm just a bad girl and cursed and WEAK!"
Elsa wails into the dawning sun for only a moment before a gloved hand reaches up and wipes away a tear that immediately freezes. "…Not stupid," she young girl says back to her crying sister. Even with something cold in her chest that makes it hurt when she breathes all she wants to do is reach up to her sister and hug her and tell her how much she loves her, and loves her magic, and she would never call her any of those silly names. She opens her mouth to try but the hand around her heart tightens just a little more and she cries out in pain.
"ANNA!" Elsa lets go of her little sister as she sees the bright points circling closer and closer towards her heart. Be strong be strong you're a good girl listen to what Anna said she knows better.
Closing her eyes again and concentrating as hard as she can, Elsa reaches down a hand once more, and grabs at the icy shards with her mind the same way she did back at the castle.
This time she feels them. Not sluggish or hard to move like they were back then, Elsa can feel them as if she were actually holding them in her hands and just her mind. She takes a deep breath and moves her hand and with joy and wonder feels the ice move away from her sister's heart and up, up and closer to the surface away the beating core.
She feels the mountain all around her, the cold wind watching from above her whistling around the hand-shaped cluster of rocks as if cheering her on. I can do this!
"ELSA!"
As suddenly as the triumph is there it vanishes, and it takes all her concentration to stop the ice from falling back down towards Anna's heart as a voice she knows well shouts her name from beyond the rocky circle. It's all she can do to stop the shards before they fall even further and pierce the small beating organ and keep them safe and still all around it as Anna cries out in renewed pain.
"ELSA WHERE ARE YOU?"
Daddy?
Elsa peeks around the corner of the rock and sees him there, the dawn sun rising further into the sky. Her father's there, just a few meters below the rocky outcropping, huge and imposing on top of one of the giant fjord-horses from the stables. Some palace guards and her mother are there too, looking all around in panic, and Elsa can see that she's been crying. She almost runs out right there and then, wanting her father to pick her up in his warm arms and tell her that everything's going to be safe. But three things stop her; that memory of the fear in his voice when he had seen her powers, the whispering of the wind all around her buffeting her and keeping her standing, and one more thing that makes her gasp when she sees it. At first Elsa had mistaken them for supplies dragged behind the guard's horses, or maybe small rocks the mountain had thrown down into the snow. But then one of them moves, and unfolds to reveal eyes and a huge nose and a mouth that speaks.
"There, your majesty. We had thought she was coming to us, but it seems the mountain called her higher."
Elsa has only read about trolls in her storybooks, but she knows the legends. Even with her own power telling her that magic was a real thing, she had never thought there were other people besides men in the world. She slides back behind the rock, hiding, as the king and queen and their entourage come closer.
The king steps forward, the sharp footfalls of the horse buried in the soft snow of the mountain. "Elsa please out!" The king raises a hand to ward off the wind around him.
The troll hobbles forward on an old stick. "Your majesty, I can feel the princess slipping away us. We must do something now, before all is lost."
But I'm fine, she thinks, before she realises she isn't the princess they're talking about. Elsa turns away from the family that has hunted her down and back to the family she wants so desperately to make better. If I show them I'm a good girl they won't be mad. She knows she only has a few seconds, not long enough to remove the shards entirely, but she knows it's just long enough to do something.
Taking a deep breath and concentrating again she finds the ice shards again, all twinkling and cold inside Anna. She knows what she can do now, not miles away in a draughty castle but on the slope of the mountain she loves. Instead of pulling the shards out of Anna's body she pushes them around. Sharp edges that could rip blood vessels and tear into flesh turn themselves into soft dust that moves and shifts as the heart beats. Rough snowflakes that could shred Anna's heart into chunks become thin rounded plates that lay around and on top of the organ and Elsa is especially proud of these, protecting the heart from harm instead of being that harm.
She works for what feels like minutes but in fact is over in seconds, and when she's done with it the shards of ice that were killing her little sister are protecting her now instead, laying around Anna's heart like armour. Before she's even finished Anna has stopped crying in pain and is now just lying there against the rock, breathing softly.
Elsa is delirious with relief and triumph. I did it I did it I did it! She jumps up and down with joy and the mountain dances with her, a flurry of air and snowflakes spinning around her like her own personal snowstorm.
"Elsa, I feel better," Anna whispers. Her eyes stare up into Elsa's with something between love and wonder.
"I fixed it," Elsa replies.
"Knew it," the younger sister says, and reaches up a hand. "I want to see daddy."
Elsa grabs it and ever so careful raises Anna up, and swings the arm over her own, supporting her little sister just like a big sister should.
"Daddy, look!"
Before the guards can stop her the queen is jumping from her horse and running towards her daughters. The king shouts a warning and is a half-second behind as the queen sweeps them both up into a hug that makes Elsa and Anna feel all safe and warm again. "Oh my babies, my sweet babies," the queen breathes quickly.
Then the king arrives. Maybe if the guards and the troll-leader hadn't been with him he might have fallen to his knees and embraced them just the same. But he is a king and his subjects are watching on. "Are you alright? Are you both alright?" he asks, trying to keep the wavering note out of his voice.
Even though barely minutes ago Anna had been closer to the edge than any young girl should ever go, she's the first one who speaks. "I'm fine daddy, Elsa fixed me."
The king turns his eyes from Elsa. She almost shrinks back into her shell then, but the mountain is all around her and she takes strength and courage from it. "What happened Elsa?" he asks.
Elsa stands there as guards come forward and wrap cloaks and woollen scarves around her, and tells him. The expression on her father's face barely changes as she tells him about the pre-dawn playdates the two have always shared, to the small accident that had happened just hours ago, to what she had done to save her little sister's life.
To little Elsa's surprise, when she finishes talking it isn't her father who speaks, but the funny little troll who had appeared at their side.
"Your majesty, this is not over yet," he speaks with a voice like gravel. "The ice surrounding the princess's heart may not take her away but it is still very dangerous. If not removed entirely the curse may wreck a far greater wound than-"
Elsa feels something stab at her own heart when she hears those words. She doesn't really understand what the troll is saying with that worried old voice to her daddy, but she heard curse and she heard removed. "NO!"
Her father turns to her, shocked at the sudden anger in the girl's voice, the nearly trips in the snow from the sudden wind that blew up around them. "Elsa…"
"Anna's fine!" She had saved her sister's life, and now some rotten old troll wanted her to take away the beautiful thing she had made in her heart? "I saved her!"
The troll speaks again, "Your majesty, little princess, it isn't safe for a young girl to grow up with a heart surrounded by ice. She will grow up yes but that coldness will always be inside her, and she will not be the same person because of it. You must let me take her away to our home to remove-"
"NO NO NO LIAR LIAR LIAR!" Elsa screams, and hears the wind scream with her as it turns into a gale that swirls around the royal family and their entourage. Elsa grabs Anna even tighter and tries to push the king and that horrible tiny rock-man away from her.
"Elsa please…" the king says as he slips on the ice, and feels real fear.
But the girl won't be talked to. She can feel the snow under her feet and the ice all around and the mountain at her back and she knows that she's right. Anna is fine because her power saved her, and now because of a troll she didn't even believe existed yesterday they want to take her sister and best friend away from her. They'll never let Elsa see her again. They'll say it's because of Elsa's curse and take Anna away and she'll spend the rest of her life alone in the castle.
"I WON'T LET YOU!" Elsa cries out angrily at the people who had come to take her sister away from her, and as they look back they see something beyond a tiny girl with clenched fists and teeth, her eyes shining a perfect blue with anger. The snow howls around them now, and it feels as if the force of the entire mountain of ice, rock and snow is ready to fall upon them at Elsa's command.
A hand grabs her and pulls her down and Elsa feels the warmth of her mother enveloping her. "Sssssh, my baby girl." Loving hands gently turned Elsa's chin up until she was looking into big brown eyes. "It's going to be alright."
The king hesitates, torn between the daughters he loves so much and the worry that's gnawed at his heart all the years since he had forced himself to acknowledge that his oldest, the crown princess of Arendelle, had a power that was beyond the comprehension of mere humans. Elsa will always be his child and he will always love her. But sometimes he looks into those blue eyes, can see the ice and snow within, and is afraid.
Eventually, the father wins out over the ruler, the heart wins out over the head. The king's love of his daughter overrules his fear of the power within her, and in that final moment when he turns to the troll leader and says "I am sorry, but Elsa and Anna must come home with us together" the pebble that began with a small girl looking at a mountain and being entranced is lost among a thousand others like it as the avalanche begins to accelerate, bearing it's payload of ice and snow and rock to smash apart anything in its way.
Elsa sits happily on the sled, the wind around them dying down to little more than a breeze as together the royal family and their escorts head back down the mountain towards the castle. Anna is sat next to her, still wrapped up against the cold but awake and talking just like they were before the accident in the north corridor. Elsa had looked back once as they had begun the ride back to the kingdom below, and had seen the troll leader looking at them sadly, before turning around and vanishing into wherever on the mountain he lived. In a most un-princess-like move she sticks out her tongue and blows a raspberry after him. Good riddance. Anna was her sister and her best friend in the whole world, and nobody was going to take her away.
"Hey Elsa?" Anna says, half-asleep from fatigue, both of them wrapped together in the same woollen capes. The redhead feels warm again, just like she should.
"Anna?"
"I knew you'd save me," the redhead says happily looking at her sister with a smile.
Elsa feels like her grin might be big enough to remove the top of her head. She wants to burst with happiness, to paint the whole town white with beautiful snow. She knows she can do it now, her fear of the power within her wiped away by the miracle that wraps around Anna's heart, keeping her safe. She doesn't reply, only snuggles against her more, and together the two happy sisters watch the scenery as they leave the mountain, and go home.
Only Elsa looks back, but not in anger or fear. Now she knows Arendelle castle isn't enough for her, even though she's the crown princess and it will be hers eventually. She'll be back to the peak one day, when she's older and stronger, to claim her real throne.
The avalanche is picking up speed.
Not all the power in the world can stop it now.
End of Prologue
Jeez that was a bit longer than the last one. I promised a real author's note so here it is.
As I said before this fic was inspired by the Dark!AU that the very talented and friendly patronustrip (dot tumblr dot com) and her friends have made over on tumblr. It grabbed me and I thought about writing a short little ficlet there too, but then I started wondering how you would get to that cold and dark universe from the movie characters we know and love. Therefore the main conceits in this little story are as follows:
One: Instead of relying on the trolls to save Anna, Elsa does so herself, due to growing up with a greater affinity for the cold than in the regular world. She's never crippled by fear of her powers, but she resents that the rest of the world – even her own father – think that she's cursed. To Dark!Elsa there's no greater power in Arendelle than the mountain she lives by, and the two of them share many similar qualities…
Two: When Anna is injured by Elsa the ice goes to her heart instead of her head. When Elsa saves her to prove to herself and her father that her powers aren't a curse, the ice isn't removed but changed to protect Anna instead, because it's the job of older sisters to protect their little siblings. If you've read the original Snow Queen (and you should have because it's great!) you'll know what ice in the heart will do to a growing child…
Obviously this is patronustrip's world and I'm just playing in it, therefore eventually this little prequel will be Elsanna. But that is the final destination more than it is the journey here, and probably won't pop up anytime soon. Oh there'll be fluff and some angst and drama, but the true M-rated stuff is probably a while away.
Reviews, questions, feedback and comments are all especially welcome (especially criticism in fact, because how else do we learn?). A beta reader too would be especially welcome because I have a strange and debilitating illness called Icantspotmyownspellingandgrammarmistakes-iosis.
God even the author note was longer than I had anticipated. Whatever, I'm done, peace out. Hope you enjoy the ride friends.
~Cobray.