2

The light above Elsa's bedroom door kept blinking relentlessly. She ignored her sister's persistent tries to get into her room. Anna wanted to talk, as she always wanted to do, but Elsa had a certain math assignment for the following week, and she had failed to properly follow along the lesson.

And even back home, her concentration was not on math. But the colour blue.

The light above the door was blue. Her bed sheets were blue. The sky outside her window was blue. But nothing was truly blue. Not like the blue, she'd seen that day by the oak tree. Nothing would ever be as blue as his eyes.

Whoever that 'Jack' may be.

After another five blinks, the door opened, and Anna crossed her arms as she leaned up against the door frame.

"Elsa," she complained. "You know that whenever someone rings the door bell, you're supposed to answer." Elsa lay down her pencil, and looked up at her sister from the desk.

"Anna. You know that if I don't answer the door bell, that I'm otherwise engaged. In this case with a math assignment for next week." Anna's eyes flicked down to the paper in front of Elsa, which was ironically empty. Damnit, Elsa thought. I should have at least set up the equations to look somewhat focused.

"Uh-huh," Anna replied, slightly pulling her lips at Elsa's not very discrete attempt to lean over the desk to hide the empty piece of paper. "And what, pray tell, may this assignment be about? Geometry? Because I sure see a whole lot of white squares right there."

"That, as a matter of fact, is none of your business. Don't you have your own school work to focus on? High school's tough, you know?" Elsa picked up her pencil again and fiddled with the already crumbling eraser on the end.

"Yeah, yeah. Read these 50 pages about blah and write an essay about Freud's psychology-thingy and what-not. Why do we need to go through all this stuff? Not everyone wanna be this academic in life." Elsa sighed, turning her gaze towards the huge pile of school books on the other end of her desk. She'd asked herself that back in sophomore.

"Well… Isn't that a question for the teacher? I'm sure they'd be thrilled to answer."

"Funny jokes aside, Elsa, I need to talk to you. The craziest thing happened today." Elsa rolled her eyes, exasperated and threw the pencil back on the desk.

"What is so important that you have the need to interrupt my homework?"

"Well, for starters, Hans "McDreamy" Saunters Jr. spoke to me today! Oh, I'll never forget those words!" She dramatically threw herself across Elsa's bed, hiding her face in her arms. Though, the blush was visible all the way down her neck. She lay still, looking up into the ceiling, while continuing her tale.

"I was walking towards the cafeteria for lunch, right? And then the Mac 3 passed by me! And Hans, ya know the tall redhead with sideburns, looked straight at me! Then he smiled, oh his smile, so gorgeous! And then… then, then he… oh he said those three words…" Her hands fell on her face again, covering her eyes. Elsa knew, that if she'd ever get her sister to leave, so she could go back to try and concentrate, she'd have to wrap up that conversation.

"Wha' di' 'e shay?" Elsa's voice was rarely used, and only if she was not able to establish a connection through more regular means such as waving within one's periphery or touching the shoulder. The sound of Elsa's voice did its job, as Anna perked up from her laid down position on the bed and looked straight at Elsa.

"Step aside, Freckles." A goofy, far-off look spread across Anna's features, as if though she was pulled back to the moment in school. Elsa only scoffed and switched position on her chair.

"Really, Anna? He wasn't talking to you. He was commanding you. Bossing you around." Anna only shook her head and sighed deeply.

"You don't get it, Elsa. He called me Freckles! Nicknames are, like, basically second base! I can't believe this is happening to me!"

I can't believe this is happening to me, Elsa thought, and turned back towards her desk, grabbing her pencil to write down the first equation. A tapping vibration through the wooden floor stopped her, and she once again turned around to see her sister, now sitting at the very edge of the bed.

"That was not all, missy. I've got more news, and I know you'll like this! A certain someone updated their social media this morning. They arrived in the airport, fresh from Scotland." A knowing smile crept in on Anna's features as Elsa's eyes widened and shoulders shut up in surprise.

"Are you saying… Astrid's back home? As in… My Astrid?" Anna only nodded in confirmation, and Elsa tried to keep herself down, though squeals still escaped her throat. Only a matter of seconds later, the girls' mother, Dagmar, pushed through the door, a concerned look painted across her slowly aging features.

"What's wrong? Why did you shriek, Elsa?" A minute passed where the three women just exchanged glances, no one saying anything. Finally, Elsa spoke up to explain the situation.

"Well, mom, apparently Astrid's returned from Scotland today! She's been spending time with her uncle all winter, after Felton shut down. And now she's finally come back." The concern was immediately wiped off Dagmar's face at the mention of Astrid and was replaced with a warm smile. "Oh, Astrid Hofferson! Such a sweet girl. You must invite her over soon to celebrate her coming home!"

Anna walked over in a haste to join the conversation. "We'll throw her a homecoming party! Just us and the guest of honour!" Elsa nodded in agreement, reaching out for her phone.

Math could wait a few hours. Right now, she had an important FaceTime call to make.

OOO

Jack went through the events of his lunch break that day multiple times in his head. First, he headed out to look at the oak tree. Then he thought about his sister, and suddenly, he stood before the huge tree. And by the second glance, he saw an objectively beautiful girl sit by the roots, far off in some fictional world. Confusion ensued as she did not respond to his calls, only for him to find out she's deaf, and then not knowing what to do with himself. He tried what little sign language he could remember from summer camp with his old friend Sander years ago, but there must have been something wrong with it, for all that the girl did, was turn around and leave. She didn't even look back once.

"You okay, Jack?" His fellow classmate and ice hockey buddy Harold "Hiccup" Haddock sat beside him and had paused the video game. "Dude, you're out of it today. Anything happened in school? You couldn't even hit the pluck right at practice." Jack shook his head with a sigh, putting the controller down on the bed sheets beside him.

"It's not something serious, really. I just… something happened out by the gigantic oak tree behind the school yard." Hiccup put down his own controller, turning towards Jack in his seat. "I know of that tree. What happened?"

"Well, I was gonna check it out for my little sis, and when I got there…" He proceeded to tell Hiccup of everything that occurred by the tree, down to the details of the girl's radiant blue eyes when she bore such confusion and… intimidation almost, in her expression.

"Wait, wait, wait… so you saw the deaf girl sit out there? Hmm… I can't remember her name, but I've always wondered where she runs off to after our History class."

"Yeah, well it seems she goes out there every day. The place she sat in almost looked like it was sculpted to fit her tiny figure. I just can't get her big, round eyes of surprise and confusion out of my head. Have I done something wrong? What if I've scared her away from her refuge?"

"Refuge? Isn't that a little… I don't know… dramatic?" If anything is dramatic, Jack thought, it's your over-gesticulation of every word you say, Hiccs. Charming as ever.

"I don't think so," he said instead. "She really looked like she was a million miles away in that book of hers. I think that's the only place she can escape everyone around her." Hiccup sighed and turned back around, looking at the frozen game, though not picking up the controller.

A silence followed Jack's comment, as the tv screen in front of them kept lighting up the room as the outside world grew darker and darker.

OOO

"Jack, please pass Pippa the potatoes." His mother's voice cut through his reverie, and brought him back to the tiny dining table, where he, his mother and sister sat, in the rundown kitchen of their old three-bedroom-apartment. Pippa sat expectantly to his left, and his mother across them both. Their mother could give the potatoes to Pippa just as well as Jack could, but she worried about the distant look on Jack's face throughout the entire dinner.

"Eh… What? Oh, yeah. Sure." He grabbed the bowl and placed it beside Pippa's plate, so she could help herself, all the while, Mrs. Frost kept a sharp eye on her son. He picked up his fork and pushed his peas around his plate, not really paying much attention to anything around him.

"Jack's thinking about girls!" Pippa exclaimed, and Mrs. Frost turned her head sharply towards her youngest child.

"Pippa! You know you mustn't tease your brother! Just as he mustn't tease you." The child's eyes immediately went down and found her steaming potatoes rather interesting. Her ears turned red through her nutbrown locks, and she had nothing more to say. Mrs. Frost looked back at her son.

"Jack?" She spoke softly, trying not to shock him out of yet another reverie. "Jack, is there something wrong? Please tell me if there is." Slowly, Jack's head turned, and he finally met his mother's gaze. He saw concern, but above all confusion, and it brought him right back to the tree.

Back where he had seen a girl he didn't know. Back to a girl with whom he couldn't communicate, and it made it him feel at a loss with himself. He'd never thought he would meet other people without a voice like Sander, but even though she could not speak, her eyes bore such emotion. Such radiance, and he didn't know how to respond to that.

Most of all he remembered the blue eyes and the confusion. Confusion, which now he saw in his mother's eyes.

"Jack, you're scaring me. Please, just say something." He blinked a few times, shook his head and everything before him became much clearer. He looked back at his mother.

"Sorry, mom. I'm just really tired. It's been a long, eventful day, and I think I'm going early to bed." He gave both his mother and little Pippa a reassuring smile before he excused himself and went upstairs.

Though he was tired, those blue eyes kept him up for quite a while.