The weather was bright. It probably wasn't warm, but it was certainly clear outside.
Resting her head in her gloved hands, Elsa sighed. She didn't have to look away from the window to know her room was cold and dark, because it always was. She wished it would be anything else instead. She was half sick of the shadows.
She longed for other colours than the sharp, frosty blue that was permanently etched into her life.
Everywhere she went, it followed. It was in her eyes, her hair was a weak imitation of it and somehow, her entire wardrobe was filled with it, in every shade you could imagine, except the colour of the sky she longed for.
All the weak, pale, sharp or bitingly cold blue was making her feel sick, her own reflection laughing at her desperation to find something colourful.
For Elsa, the blue had turned into grey. She couldn't see the difference between her room and the ice, that shot so irregularly from her hands, covering the floor and walls, anymore.
So all she did was stare out of her window, musing how the colour of the sky was so different from her own blues, wondering how the shade of the trees could be created from mixing that same blue with the sparkling yellow of the sun.
This was how she spent her days. Sad, she knew. But there was nothing left to do. Sometimes, she would take one of the many books from the high case they were stocked in, and she'd read. But she never found much pleasure in it, as the books her parents had so lovingly provided her with, were dull and unadventurous, non-fiction and she'd bet half of them were about the trading relationships between Arendelle and the adjacent kingdoms.
So she would return to her window, where she'd sit for hours, where she was sitting right now, when she heard it.
She instinctively brushed it off as one of the servants passing by at first. But the sound was too distinctive for that and she felt her hands tense dangerously under her gloves, which had become a second skin. She heard it again.
A small click, not louder than as if someone had tightened their jaw and clicked their teeth together. It was the first noise to reach her room that wasn't made by her. She quickly checked her clock. Twice a day, a servant would place a plate filled with the most delicious meals in front of her door and she would wait exactly thirty seconds before opening her door, seizing it, and shutting herself in again. Pathetic, she knew, but it was expected of her.
This wasn't the sound of a plate hitting the carpet, and it wasn't the time either. It was the sound of the lock opening, from the outside, as if opened by a key. Elsa listened closely again, but it was silent.
She breathed out softly, not realizing she had held her breath until her lungs sharply reminded her. The very tips of her gloves, blue gloves, were frozen, and her shoulders were tense, toes curled inside her boots. She slowly released the tension, loosening the tight spring that her body had become.
She closed her eyes, and decided that she had imagined it all, a mere daydream. Until she heard the creaking of hinges, a sound never produced except by her own hands.