The chest is open. She lifts a shaking hand—to close the lid, but it falls instead on the gloves.
It's different now, she tells herself, you don't have to—one bad night, it doesn't change anything. It's different now.
But her hand stays where it is, and her head echoes: the metallic scrape of a sword, Elsa?
The stillness, after.
Different now, she tells herself again, but her hand might as well be frozen there in the chest, the last safe place—
The bedroom door slams open. "Elsa!" Anna says. Breathless and alive. "Elsa, Kristoff brought—trolls—crashed into the—come on, come on!"
Her sister pulls her out into the hall, and Elsa rolls her eyes, and complains about paperwork, and what have you broken now?
And her hands are bare.