Still Tuesday

I couldn't believe what I had done.

No...

All that time hiding it from him, all of that effort, wasted.

No...

I could do nothing other than back away from him, repeating that phrase over and over again, that denial of what had happened.

No.

Please, please, no.

He looked at me, puzzled, and I felt my heart shatter even more, knowing that I would soon have lost him as well.

He hadn't realised, I noticed as I stood, trapped by his gaze, those bright emerald eyes that I had noticed a lifetime ago.

He saw that my gaze was fixed on him, and he looked down.

He saw it; the snow that covered him from where my control had finally abandoned me. How could I have broken down like that? Look what had happened because of it.

One moment of weakness was all it took; a lesson you'd think I didn't need to spend the rest of my life learning.

He looked at me again – he had such expressive eyes, I noticed – with amazement on his face, fumbling for his phone. "Elsa?" he asked. I didn't reply. "Elsa?" he repeated. "Did you do this?"

I nodded, eyes downcast, waiting for the shock, the horror, the fear.

Instead I was lifted off my feet as he swung me around in a wild hug, a huge grin on his face. "What?" I gasped, but he didn't notice.

"I knew it!" he said, and, although the voice of his phone was emotionless as ever, I could almost hear the exultant triumph in that voice.

"K-knew what?" I stammered. He had known? How had he known?

"I knew that there must have been others like me!"

I was shocked into silence. The effect that that had on me is beyond description. He was like me? I had always believed that I was alone, but here was someone who could also create ice and snow. I felt a smile work it's way onto my face, half at Taelor's grin and half at the triumph in my own heart. Then he paused, and turned to me, now completely serious.

"I'm not exactly like you, though," he said. I frowned.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I..." he paused, and I felt cold fear grip my heart once more. "I cannot create ice and snow as you can," he said slowly, as though he feared my reaction, a fear I understood completely. "My powers go in a different direction." I smiled.

"What can you do then?" I asked, my heart still full of this triumph I felt. He paused, and again I felt that strange surety that he was fearing my reaction, a fear that puzzled me as much as I understood it.

This. At first I didn't understand, and then I realised that his hands were holding mine tightly and his gaze hadn't faltered from mine. He hadn't touched his phone.

"Taelor?" I asked uncertainly.

This is my talent – my gift.

He wasn't speaking to me. He couldn't be. And yet I heard his words as clearly as I heard Anna. This fact was undaunted by the equally true fact that I hadn't heard his words. I just knew them. I listened to him without hearing him.

And it terrified me.

Elsa? He asked.

"You can read minds?" she demanded, pulling her hands out of mine. I frowned.

I wouldn't call it that, exactly... I temporized, but it was too late. All she could hear was her own fear.

"Have you read mine? Are you reading it now?" her voice was rising in a panic I didn't understand.

I have, kind of, but –

"What about privacy?" she demanded. I gestured helplessly, noticing the frost growing beneath her feet.

I try to respect the privacy of others, yes –

"Try? Try? What if they had something to hide?" I sighed in frustration, running my hands through my hair. How did you explain the structure of the mind to someone who was so obviously close to hysterics, as demonstrated by the sudden appearance of snow?

You don't understand, Elsa. Please, listen to me. It's not what you think, I pleaded, trying to get her to stop, to calm down, to listen, but she was backing away, fear in her eyes again. Only this time, it was fear of me.

I felt my heart crack at that fear I could see, and the fear that was rising in her heart, the fear I felt as my own. She turned and ran, through the now-thickly-falling snow.

ELSA! I shouted. I knew she heard it. I heard it resonate in her mind, felt it tug on frozen heart-strings. She ignored me, and quickly vanished.

I fell to my knees, wishing now more than ever that I had a voice to shout with, to scream with. I could have run after her, but what good would it do? She had reacted as I had always feared – with fear and horror and not taking even a moment to listen.

Could she not see that my power was the same as hers – that it could be used to help as well as to hurt? That it was not necessarily evil, nor was I for wielding it.

I turned my face up to the sky and mentally cursed in every language that I knew.

Then I got to my feet. I turned the way Elsa had gone, and stared after her, as though the longing in my eyes, as though the intensity in my gaze, could bring her back.

Then I sighed, turned and slowly trudged through the snow, hands hanging by my sides, staring at nothing but the ground in front of me, with my heart shattering into a thousand splinters in my chest.

I hadn't realised how much her good opinion had meant to me, but the fear in her eyes! It haunted me, that terrified, wide-eyed, fear.

I'm not sure about this chapter. Let me know what you think?