Merida picked the black horse.
She wasn't exactly sure why she did. The mare seemed more cantankerous than the other white and sable horses in the stable-one of which seemed altogether too suspicious of her nighttime visit to the stables for an ordinary horse - that were happily napping and chewing at their cud when she opened the stable doors. The horse's hooves already unsettling the stable dust.
And she sniffed angrily with disdain at Merida as Merida removed her from her pen. She chewed her bit and Merida told herself that the great beast looked a bit like Angus but the truth was that she looked nothing like Angus and Merida knew that. She was much too skinny and anxious where Angus was grand, peaceable and steady. But she'd already decided that she liked the mare. She didn't know why she'd picked her but she had done so and she would stick to her decision.
Maybe it was because she didn't match the other palace horses, and probably wasn't a guard's horse and thus was unlikely to be taken out in the snowy weather. Merida knew that wasn't why she took the onerous mare. But it was a sensible reason to take the black horse. And that ought to count for something.
Merida never could claim logic to be a motivation for any of her actions before now and certainly she wasn't going to stop doing things on pure instinct now.
'Probably a white horse would have blended into the scenery better,' she thought to herself, urging the horse out of the stable as gently as she could, having tided over the suspicious
Probably a white horse would appeal better to a person who had flooded the landscape in snow.
Probably Merida oughtn't be thinking about that right now.
But it was too late to change her mind now.
For better or worse the scot had taken the coal black mare off into the night after the snow queen.
It occurred to Merida that she wasn't entirely certain which way the frigid ice queen had gone, beyond that it was past the frozen bay. She had only a few short hours to catch up to the princess in before the princess froze herself to bits, assuming that she hadn't already done as much.
She thought of the winds, how the air moves cold winds into hot stagnates in the summer, how good that feels, and reasoned that whichever way the frosty wind blew from was a good direction to look in for the source of the cold, the icy queen and thus her sister.
And the scot felt the prevailing winds were blowing her hair from the north like always.
She looked northward, in the direction of the wind, already knowing that part of the landscape. And saw a steep mountain peak. A gust of cooler wind took bit into her nose.
Merida groaned hoping her gut was right as she urged the mare deeper into the night. The Dellian princess would not be able to handle a trek like this on her own.
Anna realized her limitations. Or to be more specific, her horse did.
She had never spent as much time riding as she'd wanted to. There wasn't really much fun to be had within the palace walls and riding around the gardens in circles wasn't much fun for Anna or the horse. In what time she had spent riding horses, no horse- especially not a palace trained, orderly, well behaved one like the one she'd taken to go after Elsa- had ever bucked her from themselves.
Of course there's always a first and it always comes as a shock.
She had to give it to the horse, it had picked quite the time to do this, leaving Anna in the cold, all wet inside a snow pile, when Elsa had abandoned her to run all of Arendelle.
Anna had tried to continue forwards, although she wasn't entirely sure of whether or not she was going into the right direction, if Elsa had continued in a straight line, if she had gone in a straight line, things other than the cold weren't too clear right now.
She had been going through how to talk to Elsa, what to say, why had Elsa done this thing, how Anna could apologize, but the cold was swiftly smothering out all other thoughts.
Her shawl was no longer keeping the cold out but was keeping the snow in. She left it in the snow pile. The winds danced cooly on her exposed skin. She realized that probably wasn't too smart but she brushed the snow off herself and trekked forwards.
She knew her progress was slowed by the loss of her horse. She could deal with that.
But the cold, she could feel the snow shoving her back as she kept trying to plod forwards. It had invaded her every orifice and her snot had frozen solid in her nose. Her face felt all crackly and it hurt to move. She instinctively scrunched her nose and pushed forward. She'd be damned if she let her sister push her away again. The stinker of a horse wouldn't hold her back and the snow shouldn't either.
But her hands and feet had prickly numbness to them and her boots were filled with snow.
Her empathy for the horse grew as she felt less and less certain that she would make it to Elsa.
Most people have a warmth requirement, and Anna was no exception so when she saw the smoke she jolted towards it, not considering obstacles, only rejuvenating warmth that the source of it would provide.
She slid into the crick.
The cold had only grown as she'd ventured into the night. Anna's dress froze solid to her skin almost immediately upon exiting the water. The ice wasn't melting at the against her skin and Anna's joints ached from the cold. She had never felt like this, or maybe she had once and forgotten but the cold had never seemed so cruel. Anna could have cried if she weren't so sure that the tears would freeze to her cheeks.
Anna was almost there. She would not freeze to death here. She waddled forwards, avoiding the iciness of her skirt. She stopped to brush the sign off before entering. It was best to know what you were getting yourself into.
'Wandering Oaken's Trading Post' the snow slid off of the addendum sign 'and Sauna'. A sauna sounded fantastic right now.
When the sun rose Elsa smiled.
She had never been a morning person and she had never seen a sunrise before. The sunlight refracted off the ice refracting rainbows of blues and violets throughout her ice castle. She had never known just what she was capable of. What all was inside her, this wonderment was always inside of her, she had just needed to stop being so afraid.
She shouted words she wouldn't remember into the morning air, free as a bird she wouldn't let anyone take this away from her. She reentered her castle manic with ideas for additional details.
She couldn't dwell on the past anymore. She would live and love this life with all the vivid magic that she'd restrained before. Nothing would ever hold her back again.