Okay, so this story is pretty much done now except for the New Years chapter that will be coming up soon! I am thinking of doing a sequel, but I'm not quite sure about it yet, I'll see about it in 2014! Oh yeah! Anyway, Chapter 12!
"No!"
I gasp in shock as Anna jumps in front of me and shields Elsa and I from Hans' sword. How had she even gotten to us? What was she doing?! She put her hand up, but just as Hans was about to hit her with his blade...
She completely froze into solid ice. Almost like a statue, just too shockingly real and detailed.
The sword shatters completely and Hans is blown back by the impact, Elsa finally turns to see me in front of a frozen Anna. Getting up, she gasps and puts her hands on Anna's icy face.
"Oh, Anna...no...no, please no."
Olaf walks up and sees Anna frozen in a defensive pose and he seems confused and sad. "Anna?" Elsa hugs the side of Anna's frozen form and I find myself dropping to my knees onto the icy cold ground facing Anna, and crying. Next to me, I could see Elsa's tears turn into small snowflakes that drifted onto the ground.
Getting up from my knees, I take small careful steps towards my frozen sister and throw my arms around her.
"Oh, Anna. Why did you do it? It was supposed to me..."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kristoff and his reindeer...Sven? I think Olaf had said that was his name. While Kristoff looked on at the scene before him in complete despair, Sven stood next to his friend, in a supporting kind of way.
A few feet away looking down at us from the top of the wall, citizens of Arendelle and dignitaries bow their heads in respect. I see Edvard and two dozen men behind him as they too bow down their heads at the loss of Anna. The whole kingdom falls into a somber silence, due to the death of its youngest princess. I don't even look around anymore and just fall a little so that I am on the ground now, my head in my hands.
I hear Olaf give a small gasp and don't think much of it, that is...until I feel an arm pull me into a hug. Moving my face out of my hands to look at the person hugging me, I gasp in shock and delight before hugging her as well.
Its Anna. She's alive and back to her normal state with no white hair.
She gives me another smile before turning to Elsa, and gently stroking her hair so that she looks up. "Wha-? Anna?" Elsa gives her a huge sincere smile before I grab one of her hands and pull her back up to normal level. "Oh Elsa. Nora." Anna smiles.
Let's just say, there was a lot of hugging and crying between the three of us before we finally stopped and I looked at Anna as Elsa looked at me.
"...You sacrificed yourself, for me?" I gave her a sad grin before turning to Anna.
"You were willing to die to protect us? I thought that was my job." I teased, and she gave her weak-sounding response. "I love you. Both of you." Olaf bounds up to us and he seems so excited about something, but I wasn't sure what it was. He lifts his head off of his body with his arms and jumps around.
"An act of true love will thaw a frozen heart!"
Elsa took a moment to process this information. "Love...will thaw..." Then, she finally got it into her mind and smiled at Anna. "Love...of course!" We all held each others hands, making a triangle with our arms. "Elsa?" Anna looks concerned, hoping our elder sister hasn't lost her mind.
Elsa only responds with a confident smile and I join in, as I now know what she had been thinking of. "Love." Elsa lifts her arms and the ground shakes and forms cracks, lifting away the snow and ice into the air. Beneath our feet the bow of a ship thaws and I watch as the entire fjord melts and all of the ships that had been frozen were released from their icy spell.
Using my wind, I blow some of the snow upwards towards the sky and watch as it dissolves in a spiral-shape. A few ships were askew and unbalanced, so I righted those as well before turning to see Elsa moving the floating snow towards her.
With one last wave of her hand, Elsa gathers all of the accumulated snow and forms it into a gigantic snowflake. "Nora?" I snap our of my amazed trance and look her in the eye when she smiles at me. "Will you do the honors?" Nodding my head vigorously, I hold my hands up in a grand gesture and wave the giant snowflake away so that the kingdom of Arendelle is left with a warm summer day.
Anna grabs Elsa's shoulder with one of her hands and mine with her other, pulling us closer to her. "I knew you guys could do it."
Olaf piped up and we noticed that he was quickly melting!
"Hands down, this is the best day of my life...and quite possibly the last."
Even when he was about to melt, he was still smiling and spoke in a good-natured sort of way. "Oh, Olaf. Hang on, little guy." Elsa waves her hand and Olaf becomes refrozen into his natural form and he now has a little snow cloud above his head that follows him wherever he goes. "Hey, my own personal flurry."
I glance over to my right and see Hans lying on the floor of the ship that we were currently on. Sneaking over to him, I use my winds to lift him up into the air as high as he could possibly go...before dropping him. As he was falling and screaming like a five year-old girl, this caught everyones attention.
At the last minute, I formed a small cushion of air which knocked the wind out of him and caused him to hit the side of his face on the rail of the ship.
"That,...is what you get, when you try to hurt my sisters!"
Kristoff moved towards him to finish him off but Anna put up her hand to tell him not to. "Uh. Uh. Uh." She approached Hans as he was holding on to the rail, rubbing his sore jaw from the impact of the fall. "Anna? But they froze your heart." He seemed confused now that she was not an ice statue anymore but Anna simply put on a serious face.
"The only frozen heart around here is yours."
She turned to walk back towards our little group satisfied with her words, but not quite finished as she quickly spins around and punches Hans in the face. He falls into the water surprised, and several onlookers stifle laughs. I myself, let out a loud laugh that makes me look like a maniac, but I didn't care. Not anymore.
It was official. My little sister was probably more of a fighter than Elsa and I put together. As I put my first foot down onto the docks, the Duke of Wesselton with his thugs appeared and pointed at all of us, turning to the onlooking citizens and dignitaries.
"Arrest them! Arrest them all! They cast an evil winter upon us! Witches! They cannot be trusted!" I stepped up to him and pushed him back using my winds and he fell into the arms of his thugs, looking up at me in shock.
"Just for your information, it is not our abilities that define us, but the choices we make with them! Yes, we may have inadvertently started this terrible winter...but we also ended it! If anyone should be arrested, it should be you for treason against the crown!" Announcing this to all of Arendelle, they cheered at my mini-speech and Elsa gave me an approving smile while Anna just gave me a small thumbs up.
We walked from the docks, through the kingdom, and in through the castle gates hand in hand. Stopping to turn and look over my shoulder, I let a big smile out on my face and think to myself.
I guess this means that things are going to be much different now...
Running out from the palace, I was now wearing a sleeveless purple summer dress, that very much resembled my ice palace one, along with purple flats. The dress too had silver swirls near the hem and a translucent glittery layer on top of the plain one. My hair was tied back into a braid while my bangs were on the left side of my face.
Making my way past the gates, I watched on the docks as the ships that had come from other lands sailed away and waved goodbye to each and every one of them, allowing some extra wind to push their sails. On one ship, I saw Hans being thrown into a brig and a French dignitary spoke to Kai.
"I will return this scoundrel to his country. We shall see what his twelve brothers think of his behavior." Kai gave him a polite bow and shook his hand.
"Arendelle thanks you, my lord."
Over on another part of the docks, I watch as the Duke of Wesselton and his thugs are being escorted onto their ship by several Arendelle guards. He does not look at all happy and tries to protest until Kai gives him the message Elsa had written, cutting off all of our business with Wesselton much to the Duke's dismay.
Turning a corner on the docks, I saw Anna dragging her friend Kristoff around and..oddly enough, he was blindfolded. "Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on!" She accidentally runs him into a light pole and I stifle a giggle that threatens to come out. "Pole." Anna gasps and guides him around the pole, mumbling an embarrassed apology.
I sneak up behind Anna and tap her on the shoulder, scaring the daylights out of her as she screams, therefore leading Kristoff to scream as well. "Relax guys, it's just me!" Anna regains her composure for a millisecond before skipping over to a clear spot and jerking to a stop.
"Okay. Okay. Here we are."
She takes off his blindfold and he opens his eyes to see a large red sleigh that has a lot of room space. "I owe you a sled." There is silence for a moment as Kristoff's jaw drops at the sight of the gift and Anna has her eyes looking at him and then back at the sled and then back at him.
"Are you serious?" To me, he sounds completely blown away. Anna finally lets out a squeal she had been holding in and does a happy little jump. "Yes. And it's the latest model." He seems awestruck but then finally shakes his head out of his daze and tries to be more modest about the gift.
"No. I can't accept this." Anna responded almost immediately.
"You have to. No returns. No exchanges. Queen's orders. She's named you the official Arendelle Ice Master and Deliverer."
I notice around Svens neck is a large medal which he shows off by walking around proudly. "What? That's not a thing." Kristoff seems confused and I smile, knowingly. Anna gives him an enthusiastic smile and decides to wave off the title that had only been created a few hours ago. "Sure it is. And it even has a cup holder...Do you like it?"
"Like it?" He grabbed her around the waist and spun her up in the air she smiles, happy and he laughs. "I love it...I could kiss you!" Putting her down, I can tell he's embarrassed that he said what he did out loud and tries to explain his words.
"...I could. I mean I'd like to. I'd...may I? We me...I mean, may we? Wait, what?"
Anna only smiled at his dorky behavior and in this moment I truly realized how alike they were. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and smiled at him, "We may." He gives her another smile and decides to go for it and they share a real kiss.
"Guess this is my cue to go away..." I stepped away albeit, awkwardly, taking a few steps to the right before running off altogether, just to bump into someone. "Hey, Nora." My face heats up in embarrassment and I try to act cool and nonchalant about everything. "Hello...Edvard." By looking over his shoulder, I can see a couple of his guards loading things onto a ship and a sad look flashes across my face.
"Oh. Are you going back to Sweden already?"
"I'm afraid so, but your sister has cordially invited me to come back for Arendelle's New Years celebration in a few more months..." I gave him a smile which he more than happily returned.
"Would you object if I wrote letters to you ?"
"...No. What I mean is, no at all! Er-I mean,...If you do write to me, I'll write back." He gave a light-hearted chuckle at my flabbergasted state and I throw off my nonchalant-act, deciding to just let my emotions out. Changing the subject, I looked back towards the palace where beautiful explosions of ice were flying in the air.
"Are you at least going to stay for Elsa's ice "party"? I hear it will be a real spectacle"
Looking back towards his guards, they put down the crates they were carrying a began making their way towards the palace. "I guess that's a yes." Unexpectedly to even myself, I grabbed his hand and we began running towards the palace, laughing like kids.
"Are you ready?"
Elsa stomps her foot down on the ground, causing ice to spread from where her foot had been. The entire courtyard is an ice rink in seconds and the villagers cheer, some putting on their own ice skates and jumping onto the rink. She then freezes the fountains so that the frozen water leaves a beautiful design. I slide over to meet her and we watch as all of the villagers begin twirling and gliding across the ice.
Just then, Anna comes slipping in and Elsa and I have to catch her before she does a face-plant. "I like open gates." Anna looks over at the gates, as they had been closed for twelve years, it was a wonderful sight to gaze at.
"We are never closing them again." Elsa waves her hand and magical ice skates, actually made from ice, form on Anna's boots. Meanwhile, I create my own skates using mini-air blades that easily attach onto the bottom of my shoes, Anna admires her new skates.
"What? Oh, Elsa, they're beautiful, but you know I don't ska-"
Simultaneously, Elsa and I both grabbed one of Anna's hands and move her along the ice rink. Anna slips and slides but also laughs in delight, this whole scene reminded me of when we were younger and I smile. Sven goes sliding past us and Kristoff runs after him, passing us and smiling. "Look out. Reindeer coming through!"
When Anna sort of gets the hang of skating, she lets go of our hands and glides over to see Kristoff while Elsa speaks to some villagers. Spotting Edvard on the other side of the rink, I not-so-gracefully slide over to see him, running into a wall in the process. Several people wince in empathy and Edvard cringes slightly, why wasn't I as graceful at skating as I was at other things?
"I'm okay everyone! I'm okay!"
"That's a relief." Edvard grabbed my hand and he helped me stay balanced as we glided all over the ice rink and I smile when watch Olaf helping Elsa coach Anna some more on her skating. "That's it. Glide and pivot and glide and pivot."
As Edvard and I skate by, Elsa and Olaf wave at me and I return the greeting while Anna gives a suggestive look at me and then Edvard. My face goes red even more when Edvard gives me a surprise kiss on the cheek we continue to move around the iced-over courtyard.
The wind whispers to me so that, as usual, I'm the only one getting the message.
Things are now right in Arendelle...
And I know this time, for a fact, it's telling the truth.
Don't worry guys, I'm not putting the COMPLETE on this thing until after I post the New Years chapter. Sorry if I wasn't clear about the whole party thing, what's going to happen, is you'll be announced at the party by the name you gave me and the place where you'd like to be from. There'll be an assortment of virtual desserts (Krumkakes, Rosette Cookies, Ice Cream...) and then the countdown to New Years. The 'person' you're going by will have interaction with the other characters but it they may seem really OOC (apologies!) Anyway, I've "talked" too much now, see you next week!
§~Amethyst~§