Playtime came and went. It was a nice distraction, especially given a compelling storyline that had Elsa and Indiana fighting dinosaurs in some sort of wildlife park. Then it had mutated into some sort of magical adventure, but in a school, where Anna met another one of Bonnie's newer toys, a tough girl doll named Sunset Shimmer. The connections between the two plotlines were loose at best, but it's not as though Elsa was especially skilled in narrative criticism.
In the end, though, it did little to assuage the anxiety that roared endlessly through her. And after that came another painful, sleepless night.
The image of Anna's face in the box was there, that hideous blank stare. She was so close, it wasn't fair, it was cruel, why did it have to be like this - Anna -
She searched for the voice in her head, and it wasn't there.
She breathed, or whatever passed for it in her current body. Maybe it meant something, that Anna's voice was missing. Maybe it was transferring to her. Maybe she was getting ready for her to be more than just that voice...
Or maybe it was an all-new form of craziness, to add to the pileup.
She decided it didn't much matter. At this point, she was fighting an old adversary. The very same one that had kept her from Anna's voice so often.
Time.
A most paradoxical of villains, in that it can be defeated with little effort, yet the act of doing so can be among the most painful of all.
Bonnie's birthday had made attempts to move around very difficult, with the excited girl running in and out of her room so often that, after a few too many near-misses, most toys had resigned themselves to spending the morning frozen in place.
"Sorry we can't do much for you, Elsa," Woody called out from across the room during a brief Bonnie reprieve. "Back at our old house, we had an elite squad of toy soldiers who monitored all of Andy's birthday activities. But they didn't make it over here - long story - and we haven't been able to figure out a new system."
"They tried sticking parts of me all over the place last year to try and listen in," Mr. Potato Head chimed in. "And my ear ended up stuck on the kitchen counter for two weeks! Did not need to hear some of those conversations, if you catch my drift."
Elsa, laying on one of the shelves at the moment, couldn't see Woody's eye roll, but she could imagine in it from the brief shift in the tone of his voice. "Anyway... point is, we're just gonna have to wait. But I did hear that Bonnie's parents got a lunch reservation somewhere she likes, so there's a good chance she- down!"
Everyone dropped with seconds to spare before Bonnie burst into the room, quickly dropping a few boxes - and something else - onto the bed. She started to head back toward the door, but then looked back.
"Are you sure I don't have time to play first?"
The distant voice reminded Bonnie that we're running late, we have to go, we shouldn't have even opened those presents already. Bonnie huffed, picked up something, then set it back down and darted out the door.
After the sound of footsteps faded down the stairway, the toys began to stir.
"Alright," Woody said, "Bonnie hasn't left yet, so don't get too excited - Elsa!"
But Elsa had already rolled right off the shelves and was struggling to get on the bed. She jumped and grasped enough of the sheets to keep from instantly falling to earth, then repeated the act a few more times before she was on the covers.
She quickly darted around a large, nondescript brown box before finding an expected sight - another backwards-G Gisney box, much like her own. Only this one, she discovered, was empty.
"Huh?"
The word had not been Elsa's.
Beginning to hyperventilate, Elsa nearly stumbled on her own garb as she tore past the box to where Bonnie had set down what she'd been holding.
And there she was, just starting to sit up after having been laid down backfirst onto the bed. Green dress, red hair, the face she'd only so recently gotten truly reacquainted with -
But the voice, she knew all too well.
"What's happening, where am I?" The figure before her was looking down at the surface of the bed, feeling it with her hands. "There was a giant, and..." She finally looked up.
And the face broke into a smile that made Elsa's metaphorical heart feel like it defrosted a thousand times over. "Elsa! Oh thank heavens, you're here!"
Before Elsa could even react, she'd been tackle-hugged onto the bed, and caught in the warmest plastic embrace of her existence.
She was vaguely aware of the rest of the world in that moment. She could hear the door closing as Bonnie and her family left the house, and Elwood barking; out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Woody and some of the other toys getting onto the bed with them, a few gasping.
But in that moment, all there was was her sister.
There would be a lot of explaining to do. A lot of work to bring the newfound toy to terms with her existence, the way Elsa had with hers. With everything that being a toy entailed.
That was later. This was now. And now, in the moment, there was a simple truth that was the only thing that mattered.
Anna's real.
Anna will always be real.
