AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry for how brief this chapter is, but it switches POVs again in the next one so there was no way to combine them or average their length out (without being weird and confusing lol).
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Before drifting off, Elsa had wondered if she would even remember any of that in the morning. But of course, the instant her eyes were open, it all came flooding back.
She wanted to make out with her own sister! Was she crazy? Maybe there was something in those pistachios that lowered her inhibitions… but even if there was, she clearly wanted to do it already. It was unforgivable in the eyes of God.
Or was it? The Bible didn't technically have anything to say against doing such things with family members. In fact, she could remember a few verses to the contrary: Lot and his daughters. They made her stomach curdle, but at the same time…
'Maybe it's not the absolute worst thing in the world,' she reasoned while in the shower, trying to scrub the sin off her skin. 'I know two girls kissing is supposed to be wrong, and so is siblings. But there aren't any actual parts of the Bible that make that explicitly clear. Like Rapunzel said…'
Then she was too busy chuckling about Rapunzel calling her "Mommy" to maintain her serious inner monologue. Shaking her head, she stepped out of the bathroom, a towel around her body and another around her hair.
Anna was up and moving, though it was clear by the sluggishness of her movements as she braided her hair and the long, slow blinks she took that she wasn't very awake just yet… and in her sleepiness, she failed to realize that a part of her nightgown was tucked into her underwear, showing off a generous amount of her freckled hip and legs.
"Morning," she greeted sleepily.
"Morning." Elsa saw the flesh, but tried her best to ignore it. She still didn't know why it should matter to her in the slightest when she wasn't gay! "How… did you sleep?"
"Hmm," Anna hummed as she tied off one braid and started working on the next. Her hair, which was a literal lion's mane in the morning, smoothed out beneath Anna's fingers with surprising ease. "I slept pretty good. Had a nice dream…" She yawned. "You had power over ice and snow, I was chased by a giant snowman that sounded suspiciously like Mark, and Kristoff was guiding me up a mountain for some reason…"
She kept rambling about her dream, going into detail about how Olaf was a talking snowman and how trolls tried to marry her to her friend. Elsa found herself smiling fondly as she listened, her anxiety ebbing away that easily. It was just Anna. Whatever was going on in her head, it was just her sister.
"Sounds like a lot was going on in your head before you fell asleep," she finally remarked as she began to pull her panties up beneath her towel.
Anna giggled and nodded in agreement. "I thought about you a lot," she confessed cheerfully and stretched, hearing her back pop with a satisfied half moan. Then Anna looked away and said in a voice that Elsa had to strain to hear, "Which probably explains the huge kiss at the end when I turned back from being an ice statue… doesn't explain the fireworks and angel chorus, though..."
Elsa felt her cheeks warming up already. Anna had a dream like that?! Her own dreams were now gone, but she wondered if anything like that had happened in hers. But clearly, their intimate moments weren't something of no consequence if they were bleeding into her subconscious.
"Fireworks and angel chorus, hmm?" she finally asked, having decided not to let that slide.
Anna suddenly looked sheepish. "Did I say that out loud?"
"You did," she laughed. Then she paced closer. "Do… you like it that much?" Anna seemed hesitant to answer and as her sister got closer, those teal eyes regarded her, suddenly wide awake. "Doing that with me, I mean."
"Yes I do," she said finally, her tone shy. "I love kissing you…"
Both of Elsa's hands raised, then lowered. She struggled with herself; this was ill-advised. But she knew it wasn't so bad as it could be. So she raised them again and let them rest on Anna's hips. Anna smiled at her sister tenderly at the feel of hands settling on her waist before reaching up and placing her own hands on Elsa's shoulders.
"Are we going to dance through the morning?" she asked with a chuckle.
"Well… why not?" Smiling in bemusement, she began to sway them back and forth very slightly, in time to an inaudible beat. "It's been a long time since we danced. Remember?"
"Yeah," Anna said, looking pleased as she followed Elsa's movements. "Not since Mom dragged us to that social when I was twelve and everyone insisted we dance… only you didn't want to dance with any of the boys so you dragged me everywhere to dance with me instead." She poked Elsa's nose teasingly.
"Can you blame me? Twelve-year-old boys don't know how to dance. Fourteen-year-old boys aren't much better, either." As their dance began to get more animated, more graceful from them becoming more sure of themselves, Elsa said, "And I didn't really want to dance with anybody but you. The rest of them… make me feel uncomfortable."
"To be fair, you're still my favourite dance partner." Anna beamed at her with her eyes closed and stepped a little closer. "Esme was a wonderful dancer by herself, but she wasn't very good at dancing with me. Only you ever actually make me feel graceful," she laughed, a loud sound that came from genuine happiness.
At that, Elsa had to dip her head lower, cheeks growing hot from the intensity of Anna's loving gaze. "W-well… I feel the same way. I didn't think about it, but nobody at Prom that I tried to dance with made me feel… much of anything, to be honest."
Anna took one of Elsa's hands in hers and planted her other one upon Elsa's waist so that the two were mirroring one another in their body positions, expertly twirling as she took control of the dance. "I'm glad no one replaced me, then!"
"As if anyone ever could." Anna began to twirl her, and Elsa allowed herself to be twirled — until she felt her towel begin to slip down away from her chest. "A-ah!"
"Oh my God! I'm sorry!" Anna let go of Elsa and swiftly covered her eyes, her cheeks a flaming red. "I swear to God I didn't see anything!"
After sputtering a moment, Elsa was able to snatch up the towel and hold it against her chest. "N-no, I- this is my fault, I w-wasn't thinking, I-" Tutting, she turned away to grab up her bra. "I'm sorry, Anna, th-that was so thoughtless of me to forget I was only wearing-"
"It's okay, seriously!" Anna said, still keeping her hands firmly over her eyes. "We both got lost in the moment and forgot, that's all! I- I should get ready, anyway." She turned on her heel and marched towards the bathroom… only to smack into the wall three feet away due to the fact that she hadn't uncovered her eyes when she started moving.
"Anna, be careful!" Elsa warned, struggling to right her straps and turn the bra around to face the front. So flustered was she that it seemed she couldn't even get her stupid bra on correctly! How was it that this silly redhead she had known all her life could still throw her off so badly, even now? The redhead's equally red blush deepened and she uncovered her eyes just enough to find the doorknob leading into the bathroom, darting in and shutting the door so enthusiastically that it slammed shut.
"I'm inside now!" she shouted for extra measure.
"I'm not the one with the eyes covered, you goof!" Elsa couldn't help but laugh, even as she was still shaking from the near-miss.
As she finally righted her bra and began to pull on her other clothes, she pondered her relationship with Anna. Whereas the night before, she had been dreading it and worrying about her own mental health, now she was beginning to consider it exhilarating. So what if it was technically taboo by modern standards? As long as no one else knew what they were doing, and they didn't go so far that they violated God's laws about sex before marriage… what would it truly matter if they shared a few kisses, snuggled too close?
It would matter a lot to them, though. Being able to be that close after all that time apart was worth the risk.
Anna took nearly twenty minutes to shuffle out of the bathroom, fully clothed in a more modest set of clothing compared to the borderline scandalous style she had been wearing up to this point. "Well, that sure was a way to wake up," she giggled. Her legs looked to be a little shaky and she had one of her hands tucked into the pocket of her pants. Sweat was running down from her forehead, and she still looked flushed despite it being so long since they had their weird moment.
"It was?" Elsa glanced between her sister's legs and her hand, her face, and she frowned in some concern. "Are you alright? I didn't mean to make things awkward…"
"Nah, it's fine!" Anna said almost a tad too chirpily, "It was an accident, that's all!"
For a moment, Elsa accepted that readily. Then she cleared her throat and said, "Because, um, you seem really upset for some reason."
"I-I'm not upset." Anna smiled nervously. "Trust me, I'm far from upset."
"Then why do you sound… so…" Something niggled at the back of Elsa's mind. This behaviour seemed familiar somehow, or like she was missing an incredibly obvious social cue. Was she? All she could think of to ask was, "Did something happen in the bathroom? Hurt yourself?"
The flush deepened again, turning Anna's face the same colour as her hair. "Just… washed my face… and my hands. You know, the usual. Why do you ask?"
Maybe she really was imagining things. Shaking her head, she smiled sweetly and whispered, "Nothing, I guess." Then she stepped closer. "Um… ready to go?"
"Ready as I'll ever be!" Anna took Elsa's hand with the one that had been in her pocket, the skin still slightly damp, before she seemed to realize and switched to the other, much drier hand with a laugh that was a little too loud to be real. "Sorry, wrong hand!"
"It's okay. Let's go before we're late."
But as they breezed out the door and up toward where they would meet up with their campers, Elsa couldn't help but glance down at her free hand. The one with slightly-dampened fingers. What did she mean? A niggling possibility flared up in her mind about why they might be more damp than the ones on the other hand, but she decided to ignore it. If she wasn't sure, and knew she was far too gunshy to ask Anna, there was no sense driving herself up a wall.
To Be Continued...
