After finishing writing the letter, Elsa put it into its envelope, then pressed down on the wax with her ring, giving it her official seal. She moved up from her desk and over to the open window.
Arendelle's queen took a moment to admire the beautiful sunrise, and then, with a slight movement of her hand, created the magical construct she needed. Aside from color, the chilled creation was a perfect replica of a golden eagle, one of Elsa's favorite animals. It was very detailed, right down to its eyes and feathers. It even had functioning eyelids, blinking every few seconds.
Elsa could have sent the letter via boat, but this way was going to be much faster. She handed her letter to her little delivery bird, and it extended one of its feet to take it from her.
"This is for the king of Corona. It is an import request, and I want you to deliver it directly to him at his castle. Do you understand?"
The bird nodded to Elsa, indicating its comprehension of her words.
"Good. When you arrive, I want you to wait there until he's written his own letter in reply to my own. Then I want you to take his message and fly it back here to me. Do you understand?"
The bird nodded again.
"Then off you go," said Elsa.
It leapt from the windowsill and took flight, its wings beating against the air just like the real animal it was based off of. The queen watched the ice eagle fly off, clutching her letter in its talons. It flew faster than any real bird was capable of, until it was just a speck on the horizon.
She turned from the window, went back to her desk and stored away her papers and pen, then left the study, heading off to her bedroom a few doors down.
As she opened the door to her room, Elsa saw the dress prepared for her, neatly laid out on her bed. The outfit came with a cape, and the whole thing was almost entirely black, with dark-grey embroidery. The embroidery was of the same flowery design that adorned Elsa and Anna's coronation dresses.
Elsa didn't want to put this outfit on, because she knew what it was intended for; it was a funeral dress, and Elsa had three of them to attend on this day.
She picked up the dark clothes, moved behind her vanity screen, and sighed as she can began to get dressed.
If it weren't for Elsa and Fridolv, one of her guards, there would not be anyone attending Lukas Evensen's funeral except for the priest and the four grave diggers.
Even in her isolation as a child, Elsa still had her parents and multiple servants to interact with. But this man, Lukas...he had nobody. Elsa felt sorry for the farmer. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to literally have no one in your life; no family, no friends. She wondered how he went on, day after day, year after year, working on that farm with no one else around.
Elsa thought about her own family and friends; Anna, Kristoff, Sven, Olaf, Marshmallow, even Kai and Gerda. She was very fortunate to have so many who cared for her.
The queen used her magic to form an ice rose in her hand. She then tossed it on top of the coffin. With misty eyes and a heavy heart, Elsa watched as the casket was carefully lowered into the ground by the grave diggers, each of them grasping a rope. When it was all done, they began to toss dirt into the hole with their shovels.
Elsa turned and began to walk away, Fridolv following along in her wake. They were both off to their next funeral.
Unlike Lukas, the funeral for Johann was attended by two guests; an elderly couple. Under more ordinary circumstances, there would have been a full ceremony done by Arendelle's Royal Guard to honor their fallen comrade. But in this case, there was none; murderers did not get that sort of privilege at their funeral.
Elsa watched Johann, inside the casket, get lowered into his grave, just like Lukas had been. Despite his crimes, she couldn't help but feel a slight amount of pity for him. Obviously, whatever had happened to Johann on that farm had changed him for the worse; perhaps it had influenced his later actions in some way. Elsa didn't feel too bad for him, though; there was no excuse for murder, especially that of innocent children.
As she turned and began to move away from the burial, the elderly man and woman walked up to her.
"Your Majesty," said the man. He swallowed, then continued.
"We...we would like to express our deepest apologies to you. Our son has sullied the good name of your Royal Guard."
"It's fine..." Elsa began.
"No...no, it isn't fine. Our son is a cold-blooded murderer," the man replied, his voice cracking.
His wife began to cry, burying her face into her husband's chest.
"Oh Harald, our own son..."
"I know, Evelin, I know..." the old man said, on the verge of tears himself. He looked back to his Queen.
"I-I'm sorry your Majesty, please excuse us."
"Of course," said Elsa.
She wished she could say something, anything, to relieve them of their sadness, but there was nothing she could do.
Elsa and Fridolv moved past the old couple, on their way to the third and final funeral.
This was the funeral Elsa was dreading the most. It was the funeral of Johann's wife, Maila, and their two children.
Standing at the back, behind everyone else, Elsa could see the numerous guests attending the solemn ceremony. There were men and women, boys and girls, people of all ages, from the old to the young. Maila appeared to have quite the extended family.
Elsa listened to the priest perform the proper funeral rites, the sound of his words mixed with the quiet weeping of the many attendees. When the coffins began to be lowered into the earth, entire bouquets of roses, made of snow and ice, started to form on top of each one. The guests all looked behind them and saw Elsa with her hands extended, magical frost gently flowing from them towards the graves.
If any of the guests had looked closely enough, they would have noticed that their Queen had frozen tears in her eyes.
Captain Byron stood with Elsa near Arendelle's docks. The sun was beginning to set, casting an orange glow over the fjord. The two looked at the house that stood before them.
"Are you sure you want to go through with this? I can do it for you, if you wish."
"No, this is something I need to do. It's my responsibility, not yours," Elsa replied.
Byron watched her walk to the front door and knock. From inside the house, Elsa heard footsteps move towards the door. It opened, showing the woman who lived inside.
When the woman saw who had knocked on her door, a look of surprise came over her face.
"Oh! Y-your Majesty!" she said, curtsying.
Elsa was silent, trying to muster up courage.
"What brings you to my humble home, my Lady?"
Elsa took a deep breath, then began to speak.
From afar, the captain watched as Elsa broke the unfortunate news to the woman, of her husband's untimely death. Byron saw the woman's expression go from a nervous smile, to one of sadness and anger.
"I am very sorry for your loss, ma'am. I...I know what it's like to lose people you care about," said Elsa, in an attempt to comfort the recently-widowed woman.
The queen saw the woman's raised hand, she knew what was going to happen and could have easily stopped it, had she so wished. But Elsa let it come.
A loud smack could be heard as the woman slapped Elsa across the face. She moved her head with it, minimizing the impact of the woman's hand. But still, it stung. A red mark formed on Elsa's face.
The woman's eyes were filled with hate.
"What the hell do you know? You were born an heir to the goddamn throne, you don't know about struggle."
The woman tried to prevent the angry tears from coming, and failed.
"You let my husband die. Weselton's Duke was right...you're a monster."
Hearing the commotion, the woman's son came into view, coming up and standing behind her.
"Mama?"
The woman looked at the small child, then back at Elsa one last time.
"Get away from my home, witch. You're no queen of mine."
With that, she slammed the door.
Byron ran up to Elsa.
"Are you all right, your Majesty?"
He began to reach for the door, but she stopped him.
"I'm fine, captain."
"Assaulting the monarch is a very serious crime, that woman could be facing imprisonment for life. I'll go in there right now and arrest her-"
"No. Her boy has already lost his father, he doesn't need to lose his mother too."
"But my Queen-"
"Let it go, captain," said Elsa, turning away from the house and beginning to walk back to the castle.
Byron, incredulous, looked from Elsa to the house, then back again.
"B-but..."
He quickly followed after her.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I am. That woman was probably right, anyway."
Byron could not think of any response to this, and so, the two continued along to the castle for the next few minutes in silence. It wasn't until they were only about a mile from their destination, that he decided to speak again.
"Your Majesty, I...I would like to apologize for yesterday, for that whole ordeal with the finance minister. When I told him about your forgetting of names, it was something that I simply made a passing mention of. It was not my place to make offhand comments like that, and I am sorry."
"You are not to blame for any of that. It's my own fault for being so forgetful of these things. Perhaps I should simply start making everyone wear nametags."
Byron stifled his urge to smile. He wasn't sure if Elsa was being serious, or that was some sort of dry humor he just heard.
"And as for that...errand you say you have in the forest tonight? Are you sure you don't want a guard to be sent along with you?" the captain asked.
"I am sure. There won't be any need for guards, when I'll just be seeing some old friends," the queen replied cryptically.
Captain Byron was curious about Elsa's ambiguous statement, but he knew better than to push the matter any further.
It had been quite a while since Elsa had last been in this part of Arendelle. In fact, she was still a child at the time.
Elsa stood in the middle of the Valley of the Living Rock, the domain of creatures she had only spoken to once before. Around her, the rocks began to move about, rolling this way and that, until they transformed into their true forms; stout little trolls, with bodies of stone and clothes made of moss. Among them was a troll that stood out from the rest, a great mane of grass surrounding his head and neck. He wore a moss cape, with little yellow crystals hanging from his shirt.
Despite the time that had passed, Elsa still instantly recognized this troll.
"Grand Pabbie?" she said.
"Ah, Elsa, my dear! It's been ages since I last saw you! I remember when you were only twice my height!" Pabbie cheerfully replied.
"Yes, it has been some time."
"What brings you back out here, Elsa? But wait, I guess I should be calling you 'your Majesty' now, shouldn't I?"
"I...we can drop the formalities, for now."
As much as she wanted to talk to Grand Pabbie about old times, she was here on business.
"Listen, Pabbie, there's a few things I need you to take a look at."
Elsa removed the leather satchel from her shoulder, opening it to produce the pictogram sketch, and the two plates dug up from Lukas' field. Upon seeing the different symbols, Pabbie's eyes widened. He then turned to his brethren.
"Everyone...if you could allow the Queen and me some privacy. We have important matters to discuss."
The other trolls looked at each other, whispered a few words, then all turned back into their rock forms, rolling off to another part of the valley. After they had all left, Pabbie turned back to Elsa.
"Do you know what language this is?" he said.
"No idea. My sister Anna looked at it, and she said the closest similarity she could find was the Sumerian language."
"Yes, well, she was close. But this particular language predates even Sumer."
"What do you mean? What societies existed before that?"
"There is much of history that has been lost to time. Human civilization goes much farther back than you think."
"Farther back? How far?"
"Elsa...you may not be aware of this, but there was once a small landmass near the middle of the Indian Ocean, roughly the size of our own fair Arendelle. And on that land, sat a kingdom known as Ilt-n'un."
Pabbie twirled his hands a bit, casting a spell. A map appeared in the air, depicting the Indian Ocean and some surrounding lands.
"If the records I read about this land are correct, it existed from the 15th to the 5th millennium BC. After that, some unknown catastrophe occurred, causing the kingdom to crumble and sink beneath the waves."
Pabbie moved his hands about again, showing the land from an aerial view, disappearing into the sea.
"And after that..."
Another twitch of his fingers produce a small dot on the map, as it moved over the water, up towards more northern regions.
"...the few survivors from Ilt-n'un managed to head north to what you would call the Mesopotamian region, where they set up a new civilization around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. That new society is what we both know as ancient Sumer."
Pabbie clasped his palms together, as the map phased out. Elsa could hardly believe the history lesson she had just received.
"How do you know all this, Pabbie?"
"When I was a young man, I used to be an advisor to Ptolemy II in Egypt. He allowed me to spend much of my time in the Library of Alexandria, and that information was something I found recorded onto a scroll. Shame the whole thing went up in flames, there were things in there that even I never got around to reading."
"Well, I suppose that sheds light on the origin of this language. But what do these things say?"
Pabbie looked at the gold and silver plates, then the sketch, all placed neatly on the ground. He grimaced.
"That sketch of yours, it says 'suspended in the heavens, above'. The ancient Greeks had a word that meant something similar, metéora."
"And what about these plates? What do these words say?"
Pabbie looked at his feet.
"What do they say, Pabbie?"
"Those aren't words on those plates, Elsa. They're prime numbers. On the gold plate, from left to right, are the numbers 11, 829, 127, 2269, and 53. On the silver, from left to right, the numbers are 419, 3833, and 1693."
"What...why prime numbers? And why those numbers, specifically? What are these plates for, Pabbie?"
"Beacons."
Elsa furrowed her brow at the troll.
"Beacons? As in, for signaling?"
"Yes, Elsa."
Pabbie stretched his arms and yawned. But it looked odd, as though he was just faking it.
"I'm sorry Elsa, I'm very old, and not even us trolls live forever. I myself only have a good 30 years or so left..."
He turned away from Elsa, beginning to walk off.
"Pabbie, wait! I need to know where these things came from! Who built them?"
The old troll stopped moving, as he looked straight ahead.
"Pabbie, who built them?!"
Without turning to look at her, he answered.
"None of us trolls did. No human did either, for that matter."
There was a few seconds of silence.
"If I were you, Elsa, I would destroy those plates, and that sketch. For Arendelle's sake. You don't want those things hanging around this area for too long."
He cleared his throat.
"I'm sorry, your Majesty. If you'll excuse me..."
Elsa watched Pabbie go back into his rock form, and roll off to join his family.
Standing at her bedroom window, looking over the fjord, Elsa could see the sky. It was partly cloudy that night, glimpses of stars peeking through the small gaps in the clouds. Down below, in the main town area, slept the citizens of Arendelle. It was very quiet, with only the sound of the wind blowing through the trees and rustling their leaves.
Holding the two plates, one in each hand, Elsa let her magic flow through her hands and into the objects. They each took on a crystallized, brittle apearance. Then, they collapsed, crumbling into small ice crystals. Elsa dissolved each little crystal until nothing was left but bits of frost. The queen then took the pictogram sketch in her hands, and repeated the process.
As she watched the tiny, tiny crystals get carried away by the wind, she reflected on her meeting with Grand Pabbie. She knew there were things he wasn't telling her, things that made him uncomfortable to even think about.
Elsa felt frustrated. She was still left without any answers, only more questions.