Archive of Our Own

Anna was happy. You could see it in her smile, her laugh. The buoyancy with which she walked. The only color in the ballroom, radiant with youthful surrender. 

Her wine had chilled. Elsa sipped and stained her teeth. Are you happy? she thought. Is it another illusion? Bodies twirled with the music like blossoms on a disturbed lake. 

Now, at this late hour, her mask was slipping; Anna’s ajar from sneaking chocolate. The Queen was to wear a different face tonight. A blushing, coaxing countenance. An easy half-mask. She adjusted it, wondering at the point of the ceremony.

The party revolved with her as a pinned axis. Suitors with vibrant emotions carved deeply into their masks– distraught, ecstatic, terrified– made their kingdom’s case. Elsa was half-listening, occupied with the fire-tipped flashes of her sister in the crowd. 

Anna danced with the man with the ridiculous reindeer mask, a man Elsa knew. The last person Elsa had danced with had left with the first signs of frostbite.

She was outside now, on the balcony. The cold evening was immediate relief. It was snowing a little. She couldn’t reign it in all the way.

“Jeez! And I thought I had two left feet. That boy needs lessons if he’s gonna live in a castle. Well, I guess you should go ahead and sign me up for lessons too. I’m pretty sure we’re both bleeding.”

Elsa turned, smiling. “Anna.”

Anna smiled in turn, that same nervous hesitant smile, ingrained. “You okay? Are you drunk yet? It’s cold out. Are you scared?”

“I’m not drunk.”

Anna sidled to the railing. Her mask was pushed to the side of her head, a little wren divulging like a shapeshifter caught between forms. Fiery fly-aways spit from her braids like sparks. “You don’t have to wear the mask out here. It’s just me.”

Elsa removed hers. “What a relief that is.”

“There she is! You must be exhausted. I can’t imagine throwing myself back into the dating scene again. I got lucky.”

“You also got very unlucky, Anna. I want you to be certain.”

Anna’s smile tightened and Elsa hurried, holding up a hand. “I know! I know. You are. I know you are. I just–”

“Worry?” Anna said. The railing was furred with ice.

“I’m your sister. I’m always going to worry.”

Anna had lightly taken her hand, like a pretense. “You’re wearing your gloves,” she murmured.

“It’s just a precaution.”

“Elsa…”

“I’m fine,” Elsa said, looking at her. “Now who’s worrying?”

Anna tucked her tongue into her cheek. Behind her, antlers sprouted from her head. Kristoff closed the door. She let go of her sister’s hand.

“Are we all hiding out here? You can’t leave me alone with those people,” he said, tilting up his mask to reveal a boyishly clueless face. “They’re eating me alive.”

“You’re the esteemed Ice-master!” Anna said, poking him. “And the future Prince of Arendelle.” This was said with a degree of shyness, disuse.

“Your Majesty–” Kristoff started.

“We’re going to be family, Kristoff,” Elsa said. “First names, please.”

“That feels weird but okay,” he muttered to himself. “They’re going to unmask soon.”

“Well,” Elsa said, “we wouldn’t want to miss it.”

When she had blessed them, Anna had brightened with relief like a feverish Yuletide tree. To be able to bring her sister that kind of happiness was a newer, stranger power. They had sat by the hearth, drinking spiced imported rum and turning the damage of childhood into superfluous entertainment.

Midnight struck. Unmask, everyone cried, unmask. And the Queen revealed her true face, the face of reverential ice.

~*~

“Tensions continue to rise at the Northern border. Our scouts bring news of foreign unrest and reduced stability with our trade partners. The communication lines along the coast have been disrupted from the squalls too.”

“How prepared are we?” Elsa said.

“Not as well as we should be. The storms…”

“We’ll have to hold out till the winter solstice.” She was thinking, running barometric calculations. Her back was to them. The wary overseers. Things always got thin in the winter; her advisors stepped lightly on that frozen lake.

“Your Majesty, if I may, with negotiations at a standstill, a show of force could reinstate Arendelle’s might–”

“No,” Elsa said, turning. “Unprovoked displays could ruin whatever peace we have.”

“Please sit, Your Majesty.”

Elsa took a seat. The chair grated. She folded her hands in her lap. Pale wan noon light watered the long table. The sun wouldn’t be here for long.

An advisor cleared his throat. “There is also the matter of your upcoming engagement with the prince to the east. Then, at the turn of the month, our western neighbor invites her Majesty to celebrate the recent establishments in trade. Of course, the south cannot be ignored either; the king’s son is of age.”

Surrounded on all sides, Elsa thought. Visible breath poured from her advisor’s mouth like smoke on the mountain. Some of them wore scarves. They wouldn’t ever forget the bitter, bitter cold.

“My sister’s marriage falls on the winter solstice,” she said. “I can’t be disturbed on that day.”

Anna was waiting outside the boardroom like she used to do as a kid with their father. She peeled away from the wallpaper, falling in beside Elsa’s head-down preoccupied stride.

“How bad is it?” Anna said.

Elsa sighed. “We have enemies. Closing ourselves off for so long… its made people resentful.”

“We’re lucky,” Anna said, skipping a little. “We have a strong Queen to lead us.” 

Elsa smiled a little, but the small bloodless animal in her chest shivered. 

 “Hey, I just—” Anna tripped on a bump on the rug, went down, and came up with her braid free from the intricate spiral on the back of her head. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. For being so busy. With the wedding and everything, it’s like I can hardly breathe.”

Now she had Elsa’s full attention. “You don’t need to apologize for that. I don’t want you concerning yourself with anything but your vows.”

Anna smiled wryly. “I should really get started on those, huh?”

“I still can’t believe it’s so soon,” Elsa said

“You’ll be joining me if that mysterious eastern prince is handsome enough.”

Black dread crashed on a shore eroded by fear. Elsa searched for a breath that wasn’t there. Anna scanned her face. “You don’t have to rush into anything if you’re not ready, you know. I don’t know if true love exists but I think there’s definitely a right time and a wrong time to meet someone.”

“Are you the love expert now?” Elsa said. They walked, the faint wintry light trickling through the big windows like water-dilluted sunbursts.

Anna puffed up her chest. “I know my way around!”

“Maybe I’ll have you make the choice for me. I’ll regret my own decision no matter who it is.”

“Ohh, you don’t want that, trust me,” Anna said. “I’d stick you with one of Kristoff’s brothers.”

Elsa felt a sharp pang; she’d missed this. She would miss this when it was gone. The doldrums of the future battered any sense of sentiment. She could tell Anna was thinking the same thing. 

“It’s not like I’ll be going anywhere,” Anna said, like she was trying to convince herself. “You can’t shut me out anymore. I’m the recurring stress dream.”

You’re in my nightmares. I can’t ever reach you in time. 

“Don’t be silly,” Elsa said. “You are only ever my good dreams.”

Anna’s eyes sparkled like tinsel. “I like that. Can I use that in my vows?”

The encroaching snow-laden clouds swallowed the sun, the hall in shade. Elsa’s crown stabbed into her scalp like crystalline spicules.  “It should be your own words.”

“You’re such a sap. Everyone’s got it backwards about you.”

“Have you been listening to the rumors?”

Anna twisted her lips. “It’s all the same stuff they’ve been saying since you were born.”

They entered the grand hall. The floors had been freshly waxed, the knight’s armor polished. Still, the winter darkness eclipsed the room and the lanterns were far and few between. Their boots produced hollow echoes like a decimated army.

Elsa reached and touched her crown. Anna’s eyes followed.

“Oh. You messed it up,” she said. “Here. Let me—” She was reaching, and Elsa moved away, protectively. 

“Anna. Leave it.”

 Anna’s hand grasped and they were children again, playing keep-away, give it Elsa! “Just— look—if you let me—”

“I said don’t touch me!” Her voice was shrill with fear. Anna snapped her arms back to herself in arrested hurt. Still not fear. Never fear.

“I’m sorry,” Anna said. “Please don’t freeze Arendelle again?” She tried for a smile. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

Elsa pulled her crown out. Ice-brittle, spines like a stiff dead insect. Her glove closed around it. Her braid fell.

“It’s alright,” she said. “Just—”

“Don’t touch,” Anna said, palms up. “Got it.”

Elsa’s body hummed. Tiny frantic animal claws scrabbled in her chest, burrowing for heat in an inhospitable drafty shelter. 

“We have to be careful,” she said. 

Anna let out an exasperated visible sigh. “I’m getting married, Elsa. I’ve only got a little time left to not care.”

Elsa swiped her hair back into shape and pinned it with her crown. 

~*~

The storms come again, splintering ships and washing away sea walls with gleeful carelessness like a baby bashing their toys in a good-natured tantrum. Elsa listened to the winds thrash the fjord and thought of the plots of their enemies.

Feral masks– screaming, sobbing, laughing– pitched their conspiracies, begging her to save them. In her mind, the suitors amassed, a many-faced squirming entanglement. She couldn’t extricate any individual body. 

Her feet spread icy tendrils. She was sleepwalking. That was her pretext for being up so late. Treason, whispered the cold ghosts. Anna had lifted the mask to kiss him.

She passed the windows; they cracked, all moisture turned to tremulous frozen strain. The wrath could flatten the land, overturn the kingdom.

Anna’s room was open a crack, like an invitation. Her sister had a rat’s nest, and the white was all tangled up in there like an invasive species. She shivered, drawing her blankets closer, and Elsa moved on.

She didn’t flee up the mountain this time. The woods wailed with the gritty northern wind. Pines bent stiffly, almost breaking. Snow howled and branches grated, the collective sound and the godly fury like a terrible wagon crash. Elsa stood among the white wrath. She overlooked the jagged plates of snow-draped earth that carried trees down the ravine. 

The storm was in her head. Her night clothes whipped around her. Nobody should be out in this weather. Carefully, Elsa removed her gloves.

One of the first things they did as sisters after their estrangement was each other’s hair. Elsa remembered sifting through the fire-river, combing neat bundles and crossing them into the intricate patterns that they learned separately, in different rooms, from their mother. 

She remembered Anna’s hands in her hair too, fingers scratching her scalp. The involuntary tears had stung her eyes like hard crystal, her heart loosening and sagging in a watery melt.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Anna had said, cooing. “I guess we have to get used to being sisters again.”

“I’m sorry,” Elsa said. And she was.

The clouds darkened like ink blots in water. The wind was a continuous scream. Snow arrows reversed direction. Firs broke their bendy durable spines as they bowed to their Queen. White flurries whorled in violent gusty wakes. The baby had cried and the mother storm was here, quaking the forest with terrible maternal interference. 

Daggers of frost spiraled from her feet and Elsa caught her breath. No ice. Just white noise. The exhilarating power was taking her a little. A deleterious wind ravaged everything she could see and beyond. Ripping out trees, their roots like crazy cracks in the sky, sticking them back into the ground like a wicked palisade. The plates had scattered, broken, in an adult tantrum. 

The woods screamed. She was twisting them, torturing the structures and joints until they groaned, pained and half-alive. Snapping the limbs, clipping the wings, chasing the animals from their collapsed burrows. She might’ve laughed. 

Murderous mother. Her fingers blackened with winter. She conducted with her arms, sweeping swathes of destruction. Treacherous daughter. Unmanageable. 

Elsa brought both arms down and the wrath culminated in huge blizzard banks that rolled over the ruined forest like eraser clouds. When it settled, she was alone, breathing a little hard, but not overly exerted. 

She turned, dismissive already. 

~*~

When Old Man Winter comes knocking at your door /  he’ll eat your kids and barf them on the floor. 

Knock, knock, don’t come in / knock no more.

She found Anna by tracking Kristoff. He left big clomping bear-footprints wherever he went. Voices from the barn, laughter and light seeping out. 

Inside, she was met with a festive scene, lanterns hanging and burning, the rafters nearly on fire from the strings of balled crumpled paper with quaint stars inside. Mistletoe dangled like poison darts. Opened presents clustered around a tiny tree decorated with red ornaments like a yew berry bush.

The reindeer that Kristoff and Anna reclined on wasn’t the only animal in the room. A fat squirrel ate grain from her sister’s palm. A family of bunnies nursed in a corner. Two foxes chittered and chased each other, excited by the enclosed space. There was a snowy owl perched on the rafter. 

Then, Elsa noticed the suitors. The masked faces, white and curious, with all-black alien eyes. Wary, they slinked at the edges of her vision. 

“Aren’t they adorable?” Anna slurred. In her other hand, she held a mug of thick sloshy eggnog, and her eyes were dim and heavy, her body mush against the hot flank of the reindeer.

“Stouts?” Elsa said. “Where did they come from?”

“The grove near the ravine,” Kristoff said. “That freak storm last night displaced a lot of the wildlife around the area.” He raised his eyes. He was not drunk. “Strange, huh? It’s like a twister tore through.”

“Yes,” Elsa said uncertainly.

“Stay! I’m so happy you came,” Anna said, raising her mug. “There’s no one I’d want to spend a holiday with more.”

“Ouch,” Kristoff muttered. Sven nickered: “aw, she didn’t mean it! I’ll spend the holiday with you, buddy.”

Three of the ermines sniffed curiously at Elsa’s boots and she stepped away. 

“They’re more scared of you than you are of them,” Kristoff offered. Anna was sloppily pouring Elsa a mug of eggnog. Elsa sat in a rickety rocking chair. Around the languid animal-heat of the reindeer, with a warm drink in her hand, things were more tolerable.

The boys didn’t stay for long. Sven needed a walk. With a groan, Kristoff rose and his reindeer sprang up too. They grumbled out the door after Anna pecked his youthful pink cheek. Then she flopped down in the hay, angel-spread, sighing, obviously inebriated. She looked at Elsa, who was quietly sipping her eggnog.

“You look tired, Elsa,” Anna said. “Have you been sleeping?”

Elsa said nothing, using her drink to stall.

“I haven’t been sleeping great,” Anna confessed. “Too much anticipation. The closer it gets, the more unbearable it becomes.” Her hair fanned out like a coral crown. The ermines were curious, nosing at her scalp. One held the uniquely white strand in its paws like a ceremonial drape.

“It’ll feel better once it’s over,” Elsa said, “and you’re settled in your new life.”

“'A new life.' I hate that. Nothing's gonna change.”

Everything will change.

Anna had gotten up, the squirrels darting at the grain that dropped from her flower-stitched dress. The owl cocked its head at her, ruffled its wind-tossed feathers. The lights were on her face, in her hair. She spun and the second revolution carried her effortlessly, naturally, into Elsa’s lap. 

Elsa spilled some of her drink. She spread her thighs a little to accommodate Anna. Her sister sat sideways, legs over the armrest, kicking her boots.  

“Hi,” Anna said shyly. Her throat bobbed with that nervous ingrained hesitance. “I’m okay here?”

Elsa giggled. “You’re okay.”

“Next time you can’t sleep, can you wake me?” Anna asked. 

“I don’t want you around me during those hours,” Elsa said. 

“I have nightmares too,” Anna said, pouting a little. “It’s not just for your sake.”

Elsa tried to take a sip to stall and Anna caught her hand. “Come on! We’ll be careful. We’re not kids anymore.”

“Okay,” Elsa said, thinking you’re still a kid.

“Really?”

“Did you expect me to say no?”

“Just thought I’d have to do more cajoling!” Anna’s face was fixed to fall into laughter at any moment. The ermines wound around Elsa’s foot like yarn. In her arms, a weightless kid-weight.

“Look, they like you,” Anna said.

“Are you happy?” Elsa said looking at her sister’s sweet smiling face. The face scrunched, thinking, bitter flavor.

“Not as much as I thought I’d be.” Anna looked into her half-empty mug and tilted it back and made it fully empty. “I am now!”

Elsa tucked a leaf of auburn hair behind Anna’s ear and the girl’s eyes took a while to focus but when they did: snap! Elsa’s own face, captured in the bloom of the pupil. They rocked slowly in the chair.

“Take off your gloves,” Anna said, almost whispering.

Elsa hesitated. “Anna—”

“Now I’m cajoling.” She blinked twice, their old code across the dinner table: please?

Pursing her lips, Elsa set down both their drinks on the ground. She carefully removed one glove, and then the other. 

Facing her now, sitting on the end of Elsa’s thigh, Anna took her Queen’s bare hand, marveling. Tracing circles on the death-cold palm, playing with the fingers. Then she interlocked them with her own, her hand as warm as the eggnog.

“Isn’t that nice?” Anna murmured.

Elsa hummed. She moved, shifting, and gathered up Anna into her arms, rocking gently, the chair creaking, the myriad animals chittering around them like a rookery. Anna nestled closer, radiating sleepy drunk warmth. Her sister was nearly snoring.

The owl was tracking. Roving eyes, poised hunch. Flash of white movement– it was diving, claws outstretched for one of the bunnies. 

Elsa had moved too. The owl tore away, veering, awkward with its end-feathers severed and pinned to the wall by a wicked bolt of ice. Anna snuffled, snoring briefly disturbed, before the rhythm resumed.

The barn door opened. Kristoff and Sven came in, shaking off snow. Elsa rose, scooping up Anna. She carried her over to him.

“You’ll get her to bed?” Elsa addressed him, not the reindeer.

He took her weightless weight, carrying her the way he would the animals in the barn.

“Of course,” he said. “Sure.”

The lantern light slipped over the ice like gold patinas. The suitors watched her leave with their curious round eyes.

~*~

Black sea, black sky. White caps and skinny lightning veins. Atop the swells, she could see the lights of the ship, now winking tiny, now gone.

Marooned alone, kicking to keep afloat. Waves boiled and surged around her and there was seawater in her mouth. There was some in her lungs too, only a little.

The horizon was a million miles away, lost. No shore, no preserver. Fatigue weighed her limbs. She couldn’t keep treading water forever.

Wind cut her face and whistled in her ear, a storm pressure. The endless ocean tossed like tumbling fabric, folding and careening into itself like entropy.

The ship wasn’t coming back.

Elsa woke just as her strength began to fail. This nightmare had sapped her, left her muscles sore with shivering. Her cold sweat had crystallized and frost flecked her sheets.

She could see the suitor’s eyes behind the masks. Sunken deep, staring out like smiling hungry paradoxes. Crossing the hall, like sleepwalking, Elsa found herself outside spring-patterned Anna’s bedroom.

When Old Man Winter comes knocking at your door…

Elsa was a draft through the castle; she blew gently on her sister’s face until Anna shivered. Her eyes fluttered open. Then she groaned, rolling over and taking the entirety of the covers with her.

“Five more minutes,” she mumbled, hair in her mouth.

Elsa went to leave, making it to the door before Anna remembered. She was up, barefoot and saluting. 

“I’m at your service, Your Majesty,” Anna said, yawning. Her eyes were still closed, fair eyelashes tangled together.

“You’re barely awake, Anna,” Elsa said, hesitating now.

“You had a nightmare, right?” Anna rubbed her eyes hard, and blinked twice. “I can help this time. Let me help?”

Without any strength left to swim, Elsa was permissive. Anna dressed in the dark, draping her nightclothes over the paper-swan winged privacy divider. Bare kicks of legs. Feet like small baby mammals.

She was all bundled up. Winter coat, scarf, furry gloves, and thick boots. Elsa gave her a look.

“It’s cold out, Elsa,” Anna said. “Normal people can’t wear a slip in negative twenty.”

“You’re saying I’m underdressed?”

“I mean,” Anna looked her up and down. “You pull it off.”

Snowmelt, lush petals glimmering with dew. Elsa smiled. “Thank you. Your layers are endearing.”

When Elsa turned, Anna made an amused noise. “Wait! Your hair. Ugh. Not again.”

Elsa had lifted her hand self-consciously. “What is it?”

“Ha-ha!” Anna kept her hands to herself. “You have a knot bigger than the Southern Isles. Usually it’s me with the bedhead.”

“Oh.” Elsa sat on the bed and angled her head away. “Can you get it?”

“Oh! Oh— yeah! Of course!”

Anna’s uncertain weight creaked behind her. Moments later, she felt gentle tugs and teases at the tangle on the back of her head. She closed her eyes, thinking of their mother.

When she had frozen her sister’s heart, Anna’s hair had been a shock of white, like a grandmother, like a thousand-year-old witch. She had stolen the color.

“All done,” Anna chirped. Elsa’s hair fell in a loose braid.

“Thank you.”

The castle was quiet, never silent, and there were a couple hearths always burning, producing drowsy heat. Elsa and Anna warmed their clothes and then braved the winter. The night was nasty, wind cutting their faces like clean shaves.

“Jeez, Elsa! Is this you?” Anna said, hiking her shoulders and rubbing her arms.

“I don’t know,” Elsa said honestly.

“At least it’s waking me up…”

They walked to the stables, where their horses rumbled in recognition. Cold steam vented from their noses. Anna removed the big horse blankets and saddled them up, more accustomed to riding due to her proximity to her soon-to-be husband.

The trail took them along the escarpment flanking the shore. The wind fought them, but the higher they got, the more determined they were to reach the summit of whatever this was. Restlessness. Stir-crazy escape. The lanterns inflamed the snow drifts and the horses were high-stepping.

“What was your dream about?” Anna said over the wind. 

“Mom and dad, I think,” Elsa said.

Anna winced sympathetically. “That’s a rough one.”

“The worst ones are about you.”

Anna said nothing. The shadows and the lantern light flickered uneasily like dark doorways. Devastation from Elsa’s last tantrum littered the forest floor like shattered woodwind.

Eventually, they stopped at the bluff overlooking the fjord. Pines feathered the mountainside. The water was dark with black ice and the whole forest was alive with dark unseen wind like wild ghosts. The ghosts were in their hair, blowing loose strands and undoing bottoms of braids.

“You think it’ll storm again?” Anna asked.

“Maybe,” said Elsa.

Then Anna squinted. “What is that?” She dismounted. Elsa could see it too; a formation like ducks in the water, slicing silently through the thin crust of ice. 

Elsa got off her horse and approached the cliffside, the wind crueler and torrential at this altitude. Loose stones rolled into the spangle of roots on the understory of the cliff. She could see Arendelle and their ships sleeping in the harbor.

“Are we expecting a shipment this late?” Anna wondered.

“It’s not a shipment,” Elsa said. She recognized the fleet’s intentions. She recognized the colors of war. “We have to warn them.” She had put her foot in the stirrup, when Anna said, “wait.”

Unsure determination furrowed her sister’s brow. “We won’t make it in time.”

“We have to do something,” Elsa said. “They’ll blockade the harbor and destroy our fleets. Then, they’ll bombard the city.”

“I know!” Anna fidgeted, casting her eyes up. “But you could stop them.”

Elsa removed her foot from the stirrup.

Anna overturned her palms. “Couldn’t you? Make them unfit to attack?”

“I… don’t know,” Elsa said. But she was taking off her gloves. 

“Can you try?”

Elsa’s body was humming again. The storm roiled in her head. She thought about the insurmountable swells of her dream, rising to the black ripped-open sky. White water and ice floes.

The wind howled in beastly death throes. Black clouds spun around a central point, like twisting a thumb in wet laundry. Their clothes flapped and whipped. The horses whinnied nervously and Anna tended to them, calming with a soothing voice. Nothing to be scared of.

Wrath blackening her fingers. Wrath blackening the world. Seawater in her lungs. Her hands closed.

The first ship was a hundred meters in the air, speared by a hateful sparkling ice like a body impaled on sharpened stakes. Twenty meters below was the second one, encased in an exhibit of crystal and glass.

Icy patterns bloomed on the third ship; men were on the ghost deck now, manning stations, trimming sails, but the vessel was slowing in frostbitten torpor, a winter dream, the crumpled hull folding from pressure. Elsa made a fist and it imploded, folding like a paper boat.

The fourth and fifth were aiming, returning fire, bursts of white hot artillery blazing the air. Anna was yelling reassurance at the horses over the whistling of cannonfire, trying to keep them from bolting.

Like fat fireflies, the return volley hovered in the air, momentum halted. Elsa’s hand was an outstretched claw. She flicked her fingers and the wind reversed, sending the volley back in the direction of the fleet.

Ice split and wood crashed and splintered, and the ships were sinking, the men like frenzied jumping ticks as the water reclaimed their decks. 

A gash opened in the black ice and a spire of ice thrust between the ships in the rear, fractaling into exquisite weaponry, adopting halberd blades and mace spikes, replicating the ancient models of violence and warfare. Then, the spire plunged down and the weaponry clawed the ships down to the depths of the fjord. Cavitation swept the wreckage down in a neat swallow.

Drown the children. Rip off the roof and let the wind in. Kiss him and feel like you’re real.

“-sa! Elsa, it’s done!” Her sister was screaming. She had been screaming. The horses were gone. Elsa’s chest heaved. At her feet, an unfurling flower of frost radiated down the cliffside, spiraling death-petals reaching far into the mountainside. 

She turned, tripping on a root. She hiked her dress, unsteady, head and heart empty. Anna didn’t move. Her hands were under her armpits as if to preserve warmth. Her cheeks, red with cold.

“You… you…” Anna said.

“I stopped them,” Elsa said, amazed. Her fear was gone, razed.

“I thought– I thought you’d blow them out to sea,” Anna said, and Elsa couldn’t recognize the girl standing here.

Pines groaned like a great monster in the woods. A light snow was on the wind, soft powder. In her sister’s face, there was only fear.

~*~

“Regardless of intention, this was an act of aggression, Your Majesty. We’re at war.”

“We were attacked,” Elsa said. Her hands were folded behind her. She was standing. “We defended ourselves.”

“Your display will be a deterrent—”

“It wasn’t a display.”

“Please sit, Your Majesty.”

“I’m fine standing.”

Her advisor sighed. “We should prepare the border for siege and amass our forces.”

Another spoke up. “We’re not ready. Our supply lines would be crippled.”

“If the storms had held…” Twenty faces looked to their Queen. The implication hung, wrathful. 

“Only when they are at our doors, will I use this curse for war,” Elsa said.

She was still thinking about the unladylike prospects of war as she tucked her half-mask into place. Her suitor today was a son of a far-away king, boisterous and nettling.

“—thinking to myself, it’s about time Arendelle came out of her shell. My father always said that there was a power here, unrealized. Your gift is an indication of a strong bloodline,” he said.

“Is that right?” Elsa said, putting her wine to her lips but not drinking.

He had a strong nose, accentuated into a goshawk’s beaked mask. Festivities were afoot despite it all, children running down the streets with paper lanterns. Streamers hung between buildings and smoke piled merrily from chimneys. Softened unfocused blue evening, lights spreading easy like water. Curfew was in two hours now.

The tree was up in the square. Massive; it had taken four lumberjacks to fell. It would take the whole town to light it. Children hung lights from the bottom. Adults climbed the scaffolding ringing the tree to find a place for their lights.

Snow fell softly, fuzzing things into a warm evanescent holiday. Behind the town, beyond the kingdom, the wicked spire of ice with the dead impaled ship loomed like a petrified pine. Gulls flocked the frozen carrion.

Streamers were flying and a fiddler had broken out a tune. People were dancing, just kids at first, the adults clapping along, but soon everyone had joined in. Celebrating the newfound might of their nation.

“May I have this dance, Your Majesty?” The king’s son had a hand extended.

“Oh, I don’t dance,” Elsa said. Then she caught sight of a little wren in the crowd, face split horizontally anonymous, instead of vertically like her own. Switching partners, laughing as the reindeer-man was dragged away from her.

“But I’ll make an exception this time,” Elsa said, putting her wine down and taking the suitor’s hand.

They twirled; he was a much better dancer than her, embarrassingly so. She knew how stiff she was. As rosy as a corpse. The spin’s second revolution carried her to the next partner.

Spinning around the orbit of the Yuletide tree, gaining momentum and instability, and the wine roared in her belly, making her brave, the fear expunged. 

There she was, the fire-tipped reverie, dancing gingerly with an old man. A kid was in Elsa’s way. A flash of underhanded magic and the kid had slipped on an ice puddle, sliding away on his butt. The old man released Anna into a spin and–

They were nose to nose, hands clasped.

“Hi,” Elsa breathed.

Behind the mask, Anna’s eyes were darting and stricken. Her lips formed Elsa’s name.

“Um!” she squeaked. “Hi! You’re dancing!”

Elsa laughed, swaying them a little, trying to loosen Anna and maybe herself. “I am.” 

Anna gulped, stepping in with the beat, keeping pace, Elsa leading. They fell in the natural gravitational orbit of the dance like stirred leaves. Between them, between their animal half-masks, they had achieved full anonymity. 

The kids were running with streamers and the Queen and her sister were dancing and everybody was watching, the streamers twisting and twirling into colorful braids that Elsa and Anna ducked and weaved through like pressed silky flowers in hair. 

People were grateful, a little hysterical with gratitude. They danced until their soles turned to fire. They had survived the storm their Queen had harnessed to ravage their enemies, and now the victorious relief seeped into their bearing and children.

Anna tripped on her feet, almost bringing them both down. They ducked another streamer, the braids tautening into a dazzling infinity.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Elsa said.

Anna tucked her head away. This time they jumped a low-hanging streamer, landing on clippy-cloppy shoes, teetering. “I’ve been busy—”

“There’s no reason to lie.” Elsa spun them so that Anna was walking backwards, nearly stumbling.

Eyes trained on where she was putting her feet, Anna said, “why are you acting like this?”

Now Elsa paused; they were at a tricky part of the dance but they stalled, swaying. “I’m not acting,” she said, somehow surprised.

Anna looked at her miserably. “My life is changing all around me. You— you gotta be steady for me right now!” 

“I am. For this kingdom.”

The braids were raining down like color bombardments. The fiddle twanged, bright and goofy. 

Crescendo, faster feet, feet on fire, the braids thudding the dirt like thick jump ropes, Anna’s fiery hair in her mouth and face, Elsa spinning her round and round like a storm-blown weathervane.

The song ended, Anna with her foot kicked to the sky, Elsa holding her. They were two actors, exposed by their half-masks, betrayed by their countenances. A tender moon sat behind them like clever stagework. Silhouetted against it, the ghastly ship.

~*~

The festivities were over. Curfew stiffened and the streets emptied. Children watched the ice vines scribble on the windows like cryptic cursive warnings, until their mothers drew the curtains.

Snowed-in houses, heavily fortified with white armor and glazes of ice. Bad weather bearing down like history, piling in the eaves and gutters. Storm-dark castle, staticky wind hissing. 

“We’ve been hiding. Afraid of the foreign threats on our unknown horizons. When we opened our doors, we let the wind in.”

Armadas of dreadful black-sailed ships. Gleaming rows of cold steel. Faces washed with wrath. Arendelle got dressed for battle.

“Now our kingdom is untenable. There are holes in our trade networks, our relations. Our neighbors grow as cloistered as we were. This winter will be spent in solitary isolation.”

Impatient suitors, scurrying to get an answer before the solstice. The princess would be married on the eve of war. The Queen would wait for the one that makes her happy.

“On December 14th, at the third hour after midnight, we were nearly killed in our sleep. There will be no impunity. Arendelle will rise to the expectations of her enemies. I will do what it takes to protect my family.”

Her address was over. No longer was she the cringing coward of the past, nor the naive prospect her sister hoped she could be. At the edges and fingertips, her dress and gloves blackened, nipped with subtle damage.

She turned and her castle gates closed behind her and she was as alone as she’d ever been.

“Elsa,” said Anna. “Elsa.”

“What is it, Anna? I have a war council to attend—”

“War?” Anna was nearly shouting. The halls echoed her disbelief. “What do you know about war?”

“We’re adults.” Elsa kept her hands folded peaceably behind her. “We both have our burden of duties now.”

Anna picked at her dress. They stood five paces away. “I feel like this has to do with me. It's my fault and I know you’re slipping through my fingers.”

“It’s not yours or anyone’s fault,” Elsa said. “I’m tired of levying blame.”

“You think you can protect us like this?” Anna said.

“It’s one thing to be questioned by my council,” Elsa said. “It’s— it’s different when it’s my sister.”

Anna bunched her dress, strangled spring-flowers. “If I call off the wedding—”

“No, Anna—”

“—will you stop?”

The sleet thumped the big hallway windows like suicidal locusts. Elsa unclasped her hands and wrung them.

“I can’t stop,” she said. “And you can’t stop from loving him.”

“I don't know what else to do,” Anna said, clutching her chest in an open beseech. “Just— tell me what to do, okay?”

A perfect hush came over Elsa’s heart. The skin-and-bone feral thing in her chest stilled. She was close now. Anna raised her eyes, spine straightening a little, posture always correcting in the presence of her sister.

“You don’t have to do anything but obey,” Elsa said. “I’ll act for the both of us.”

Anna startled when Elsa’s gloved hand brushed her cheek. How was she not expecting it? Had it been that long? She blinked, her eyes a blue wonder.

“Is that okay?” Elsa said, firming her hand on her sister’s jaw.

“Yes,” Anna said, her expression loose, heady. Her fingers closed around Elsa’s arm as though to hold her there.

“Um,” Elsa said. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, my Queen,” Anna whispered, lips formed around surrender.

“Good girl,” Elsa said, and she tucked some of Anna’s bangs in like their mother would. “You were always the good girl. I could never be perfect for them.”

Color flushed those cheeks, a turning-back of the season. The velvet-lined glove was close to her sister’s mouth. Anna’s slack lips molded slightly from the roll of Elsa’s thumb, the digit almost inside. The heat of her breath brought some color back in the gloves.

“You’ve never asked for much,” Elsa said. “I was so withholding.”

A rusty whine trembled Anna’s throat. Keening at the end, like metal sleigh runners on ice. Her hands were gripping Elsa’s arm, stay here, stay please.

“Not anymore,” Elsa said and leaned in. Anna’s eyes slammed shut with an audible rustle like dead leaves. 

All of the candles went out. It wasn’t Elsa’s doing this time. The main door opened, letting in the wind. 

“Your Majesty,” the advisor paused, seeing them, then blustered on. “You’re needed in the war room.”

Elsa removed her hands from her sister’s face. Anna chased them a little, a whine sticking in her throat. She can’t speak. Elsa hasn’t told her she can speak yet.

The man cleared his throat. “It’s urgent, Your Majesty—”

“Silence,” Elsa said and her voice was like her ice, trembling. Missed piano key, the air quavering with absence.

Her advisor’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t speak further. Anna could’ve been part of the drapery. Cut frozen windows like a flawed diamond.

“You’ve interrupted,” Elsa said. Gross wet heat in her chest, bundle of fur. Fear and silence in her sister’s face.

“I–I— I apologize, Your Majesty, I was merely—”

“Apologize to her. Use her title.”

The man bumbled, breath visible like nervous vices, turning to Anna and bowing deeply. “I apologize for my rudeness, Your Highness.”

Anna squeaked, face red. Her eyes went to Elsa’s. Elsa dipped her head.

“It’s— it’s fine, really! We weren’t doing anything, um, important! Just talking! And not one of those super serious talks that determine the fate of the kingdom or anything, just a normal sister-talk—”

“You are dismissed,” Elsa told him.

Smoke wove from the extinguished candles. On the windows, perfect shattered snowflakes, cracks of controlled externalized pressure. The door shut, the draft contained.

“Go to bed, Anna,” Elsa said, softer. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

She turned, and before she could break into a million pieces, strode back to her chambers.

~*~

She woke shivering. The cold had been in her dreams, bone-deep. She’d been weak, the hibernation of winter pulling her into a chasm. In her dream, the reindeer had been warm, and she’d plunged into it blindly and the hot guts steamed and gurgled around her, but she could never escape the cold because it was inside her heart. 

Her blankets were as stiff as corpse clothes. Shifting positions almost beheaded her; jagged needlepoints of lethal ice like crystal clusters aimed at vulnerabilities. They didn’t keep things out this time. They kept her in.

Outside, the wind rose to a whiny summit. It was the night of the winter solstice. Snow whipped past the window like white ragged lace.

Elsa had never been cold, but now the curse blackened extremities and beat her sore. She curled up to preserve warmth. 

Anna would look radiant in her wedding dress. When she would kiss him, she’d linger. When she would dance, she’d forget. Only in the solitude of her room, with the spinning wine and a dark slumbering lump in her bed, would she remember.

There was something in her room. A light, tickly feeling, like being enticed by the lights in the woods. Moving shapes, winding through the impalements. The storm had knocked out all shelter, stranded the small. Her subjects crowded the bed, mousing over her limbs with wet little noses. 

She was cold, but she still had a living body. Warm blood and breath. The furry squirming tide poured over her like a wooly blanket. Burrowing into her hair. She warmed her suitors with her body and they warmed her with theirs.

Her father tucking her in. You’re going to take care of all of Arendelle, one day. It’s up to you to decide what kind of Queen you want to be. Scratchy small mustache kisses on her cheek like the suitor’s.

Warming up, like the pained felled reindeer, struggling to keep its burst belly off the ground, bellowing white mist in absolute zero. There was only one source of warmth and it was through the putrid tunnel.

In the dark and sharp and cold, different animals clung to each other while the storm blew outside like a protest.

~*~

Weddings weren’t a winter business. The conspiring wind was apt to blow under the bride’s dress and carry her away. Barren trees like snapped fingers in rigor mortis. Company sparse and red-nosed like a funeral attendance.

The winter solstice had arrived. Although the moon was still up, Elsa woke on some unknowable impulse. Heavy head, weighed down by her braid. She had slept in the intricate spiraled blossom at the back of her scalp. That’s why it was so matted and tangled.

But no, her braid was alive, writhing, a snarled amalgamation of small horrors. The knot fell to her shoulders like a great coat, like a wedding veil, claws scrabbling in her hair, hopelessly entangling themselves further.

Elsa cried out as they twisted one direction and then the other, swimming through thick cascades of witchy tangles. Her scalp felt tight, smarting. She sat up and then stood, swaying as the cradle pulled and squirmed. The ermine’s tails were interwoven with her braid.

She walked her room and in a projection of bright sorcery, had a delicate crystallized mirror, sharp with artistic execution. Fearing what she’d find, Elsa looked in the mirror.

Ermines draped her, hanging like they were strung up in a snare. A squirming litter of white threshing bodies, tucked under and over, black eyes blinking like souls caught and stitched from disparate cultures into one grievous article of breathing clothing.

Elsa took her half-mask from her dresser and slipped it on. She was no longer weak. Her movement betrayed no hesitancy. She was her own suitor.

She licked her teeth, smiling with half a face. The room was still dark and violent, but the storm had eased a little. It was still cold. It couldn’t get much colder. 

The halls darkened and lightened with the passing of snow clods. Intermittent shadows floating like sails. Candles extinguished, the wind howling like a nightmare.

Her living coat pulled, chittering with panic and urgency, and Elsa followed the colors of spring in her head. She got to the door just as Anna opened it.

Her sister’s eyes gaped. Pupils dilated. Cheeks paled. It was a breathless scare, the kind that kept the scream trapped in your chest. A gasp quivered her throat.

Anna wore a green nightgown, ivy patterns crawling in hypnotic swirls. A new pattern appeared, an uneven streaky slash. The pattern got darker, rivulets sprouting like wild-flowers dripping with snowmelt. 

There was a pattering noise, loud hiss, the puddle at her feet seeping forward. Anna stood frozen, hand over her motionless heart, eyes staring but not comprehending. She held a plattered candle that gave the hall monstrous shadows and tarred the writhing cradle in Elsa’s hair.

Was she still wearing that hideous smile? Elsa fixed her face, and recognition flew in Anna’s blown pupils. Like a fawn slick with womb fluid, she started to shake violently. Her exhales rasped, white with cold.

“O-oh,” Anna said. “I-i-i–it’s— it’s just y-you.”

“You must be cold,” Elsa said. Her voice didn’t come out right, like an instability in glassy ice.

“A-a-actually,” Anna stepped, pinching her soaked dress; steam curled from the puddle. “I– I’m pretty w-warm at the m-m-moment.”

“Will you allow me?” Elsa said, hand brushing her sister’s red cheeks. Embarrassed tears rolled down Anna’s face. But she nodded.

Elsa tilted her mask up slightly and kissed her with half a face. Her lips, warm like her tears, like her wet clothes. Anna wasn’t married yet. The moon was up and nothing was real.

Elsa deepened the kiss and deepened the transgression. 

The suitors scrabbled, reaching with little star-claws, hooking into Anna’s face and hair. Elsa angled her head to explore. Her bare feet touched liquid. She walked them back like in their dance so many days ago, flicking her wrist, a savage wind shutting the door behind them.

“Elsa—” and got a nibble. “—gosh, I—” rapid gasps like reviving the dead. 

“Are you warming up yet?” Elsa said, drawing back, letting her acclimate. She rubbed Anna’s arms, ermines swaying like a hunter’s fruitful harvest.

Anna’s eyes went to the stain on her gown. She was still worrying with it, bunching clammy handfuls until the fabric was all wrinkly. Her cheeks reddened again.

“A— a little,” Anna said shyly. She wouldn’t look up now. That was a problem. “Jeez. I haven’t— that hasn’t happened to me since forever, I—” She balled her dress, clenching her fists.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Elsa said. “Are you still scared?”

“Of you?” Anna laughed weakly. “Nah. You’re having a really bad hair day though.”

“Let’s get you out of those wet clothes,” Elsa said and Anna sat on the edge of the bed, the wet patch on her gown shining translucent like insect wings. 

“I was on the way to the lavatories,” Anna mumbled, looking away, shoulders hiked like a wind-ruffled baby bird. She still held the candle in a lopsided slant; wax dribbled down the plate.

Elsa took it and set it down on the dresser, where the flame danced and trembled, quivery yolk of light on the wall. Anna unceremoniously stripped. Velvety thin-skinned fawn belly, naval blinking with her shivering. Her underwear was pale green, the bottoms transparent like sea glass.

The swarm wriggled and squealed, a hundred terrified hearts quickening. Elsa held her hand out, ring finger extended, keeping her wrist gracefully loose. Anna took it, raising it to her lips, pressing a somber kiss to the clothed knuckles. Then she pulled the gloves off, one by one.

She raised her eyes, asking, okay? Elsa dipped her head. Moisture glistened on Anna’s thighs. Elsa sat on the bed next to her and kissed her again, her greedy suitors latching onto flesh and kissing along her neck.

Winter would slim the abdomen, make the ribs stand out like a broken capsized ship, and the courtships and mating would stop and the doors would close and the unseen deprivation would drive the animals into the first hot sweet thing they could feast on.

“I really am a coward, huh?” Anna gasped as cold hands cupped her breasts like a mortician’s. “Look at you. Being all brave.”

“I think I’m just a heretic,” Elsa said. “But so are you.”

Anna snorted. “Well, yeah, duh. A sorceress has got her witchy hands on me.”

Elsa had hooked her fingers in Anna’s waistband, coaxing the damp fabric down. Anna groaned in mortification, hands over her face. But she lifted her hips obediently and kicked off her panties at Elsa’s cue.

Anna’s thighs shook with nervous energy like cocoons bustling with metamorphosis. Her teeth caught her lip, scoring white splits. Nipples peaked like rose thorns. Though she was Queen, Elsa was kneeling.

She had the slim meat of Anna’s thighs braced on her arms. Her hair flailed and rolled in frantic seizures, and the smell of piss drove the suitors into even more of a frenzy, like they needed to claim their territory.

“I live with a man who eats boogers and even he’d be grossed out by this,” Anna whispered.

“I don’t think it’s gross,” Elsa said. “If he does, he should not be marrying you.”

There it was. Out in the open, thundering. Their eyes met, through the mask, the animal face.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Anna said.

“You looked so happy,” Elsa said. “It– I wanted to keep that happiness at any cost.”

“For yourself?” Anna had that knowing, naive hope in her eye.

“Kristoff is good for you.”

“But will he make me happy?” She put a hand to her head as though fevered. Ermines strangled each other on the juncture of her pelvis. Elsa parsed through the fine fiery red hair, blonde at the ends. She touched and Anna was hiking her shoulders, grounded bird, stomach flexing away like a heave.

“Oh, oh-oh-oh—” Anna bit her lip hard, face trembling in unbroken panic. Mask askew, Elsa dragged her tongue down Anna’s shy tucked-in slit and watched her sister cry. Needle-tipped weasel-teeth nicked her inner thigh.

Anna threaded her hand through the scrambling agony on the back of Elsa’s head, feeling hair and fur, white and bright. 

When the snow melted, the balmy bodies would lay exposed.

“You were this deprived for so long,” Elsa said, speaking into her pussy.

“Ah–! El-sa—!”

“Tell me.”

Anna looked at her, propped on weak, jittering elbows, the candlelight like a shock in her eyes. Her eyebrows were knit, gasping down at what was happening, like a child confined to watch their favorite toy destroyed.

“Take me,” Anna said, and the storm was silent in Elsa’s head. She grabbed Anna’s ass and rose, lifting. Anna squeaked, legs slamming shut, before they remembered, tenderly spreading.

Their bodies contorted in a frantic agony, twisting together, entwining like warring weeds leeching what they could from cold dead earth. Elsa was still clothed, the thicker cotton chafing. Above, she muscled her only hot-blooded pulse-point down roughly, and below, legs spidered, arm braced, Anna weathered the storm. 

Shadows as tangled as the dying reindeer in hopeless effigy, dark antlers spiraling and snagging a darker fate. The suitors dangled like a beautiful mane. They were inextricable from each other.

“I– ah,” Anna huffed, frustrated; she pitched and jerked in uneven choppy motions. “It’s not working— I can’t get the hang of it—”

She canted her pelvis awkwardly, the hard hot nub of her hipbone like a candle wick stub. Elsa slowed, still keeping up a slow rotation that just smeared fluid on her gown more than anything else, thinking. She knew she wasn’t infallible, that the Queen had the whispers of past council to consult for any lacking information.

“How did Kristoff figure it out?” Elsa asked. Remote sadness flickered in Anna’s gaze.

“Um,” she said. “We never really got around to it?”

Elsa had stilled. The hush over her heart burst, the storm in her head like deafening noise. She couldn’t hear anything. She couldn’t hear her own breathing.

“I’m,” Elsa said, the mask falling like a false face. “Your– this is– you haven’t been… deflowered yet?”

“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds a little pathetic,” Anna said. Her nervous smile fell too. “Elsa? Are you okay? You’re shaking…”

Elsa clawed her shoulders. “Cold.” Felt like her fingers had blackened, like her nose had rotted off.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Anna said. “You have to finish this. It’s your duty, right? As my Queen?”

Elsa took a breath. Where their thighs touched, frost burned Anna but she didn’t say anything. Looking away, at the storm-darkened window, face hot, body cold, reaching under her gown, Elsa moved her panties to the side. 

They put their blonde-red furs together. Elsa’s living hair fell over her face in a matted tattered veil, squealing as they tumbled off the cliff of her scalp. 

“Make it all go away again,” Anna whispered. “Put the thoughts outta my head.”

Sitting atop her sister, Elsa conjured the magic that had frozen both their hearts. She fashioned the wrath into something she could use. Sharp as daybreak, the dagger of ice drilled from the ceiling. Anna watched as it sang downwards, stopping inches from her glistening eye. 

Wetness on Elsa’s thigh; a little trickle of warm pee blurted from Anna’s dewy pussy. Fear was never anything but the black shore in which you waited on to let the ship sail off, never getting further, always fixed on the same distant horizon.

The bright sharp ice hung.

“You don’t have to think,” Elsa said. “You’ll never have to think again. Not about him. I will command your existence. I will be all.”

Anna closed her eyes.

“I’m going to kill what resists me,” Elsa whispered, driving herself down on Anna. “Are you ready?”

Anna nodded. 

The icicle dropped. Her face seized.

Then she gasped, blinking. Her face was wet, as wet as a flower at dawn. The ice had melted, pure and clean. 

As the shock chased the fear, Elsa finally let them have peace. The last of Anna’s bladder emptied with a seep into the blankets, her toes curling, face tucked in her shoulder like a shy portrait model. Sobbing a little, like saaa, saaa… It was all thawing and Elsa’s braid was coming undone.

Elsa gingerly laid down, careful of the mess between her legs. Now, without their festivities, she could hear the high wind keening outside. Anna’s shoulder shook, used to comforting herself, containing the hurt deep and swaddled. Elsa rolled her over into her arms and Anna laughed wetly.

“Mean,” she said. “You stinker. I thought you’d let me cry myself to sleep.”

Elsa tucked her closer, unable to reconcile her past self.

“I love you, Anna,” she said instead.

“I love you, too,” Anna said, and she looked happy. 

She had reached behind Elsa’s head, combing a little, coming to knots and detangling with deft fingers. The suitors chittered quietly, limp and exhausted from the heart-thumping struggle to extricate. Now, with the help of Anna’s patience, they were unpuzzling their tails.

Elsa sighed as her braid loosened. Ermines scampered down her shoulders like a magician’s cheap tricks. Anna’s hands felt good in her hair. Too good. She was going to cry again.

“You don’t have to bear it,” Anna said. “It’s not yours anymore. It’s— it’s mine too.”

The wild wild wind caught in Elsa’s lungs and she couldn’t breathe. The spring-thaw was here and water gushed from the pores of everything beautiful and everything wretched.

Outside, it was nasty and mindless. Terrible for a wedding. 

She cried and let the fingers who could be anyone’s tease the tangles in her hair free until morning.

~*~

The early morning sun pinkened the mountaintops and hazed the fjord in a flush of lavender mist. From all cardinal directions, wrathful dark clouds circled, but in the gape of Arendelle, the sky remained clear. 

“Does it exert you?” Anna asked her. “To use your powers constantly like this?”

“No,” Elsa answered honestly. “It hurts more to keep it in.”

Anna hummed. Her face was plainly unafraid in the daylight. The sleeping town spread below. Lockdown and snow piles kept the shutters and doors barred.

“How did Kristoff take the postponement?”

Anna sighed. “He wasn’t too surprised.” She gave Elsa a sly look. “Said I got cold feet.”

Elsa stepped lightly to the edge of the battlement. In the distance, pink clouds swirled around the ship in the sky like a dream ambassador. A crew of iron-hulled icebreakers were clustered at the base of the ice tower, ropes and ladders and ice picks, salvaging what they could.

“Just another disaster on the horizon, now,” Anna sighed. Her hair was braided and she wore Arendelle’s colors and formalities.

“The future is never certain, is it?”

“Nope,” Anna said. “Neither is the weather. We’re going to be sailing into the unknown.”

“I’m afraid, Anna.”

“Do you want to hold my hand again?”

Elsa slipped her hand in Anna’s. Of course it was warm. Warm as dark animal hearts. Sunrise was on their faces like too-bright romances. Anna was smiling a little to herself.

“What?” Elsa said.

Anna started to lower herself, clasping Elsa’s hand in both of hers.

“Elsa, will you–”

“Anna!” Elsa hissed, cheeks flaming. “Get up! You can’t marry the first person you had sex with!”

Anna laughed at her expression. “You can if it’s true love!” Elsa rolled her eyes, pulling Anna to her feet. Higher, atop the castle wall, the destabilizing wind buffeted them with insistent pushes like a mother with picturesque children.

“When I first thought I was in love,” Anna said. “It was the happiest night of my life. But it wasn’t real. It was like this veneer of cheap paint. I know what it really feels like now. It’s so scary. And confusing, and it feels like you’re wrong, but you’re not wrong and your heart knows it, and it’s terrifying because you know you can’t shut it out anymore.”

Elsa swallowed. “I am familiar with the feeling.”

Anna looked at Elsa’s bare hands. “I guess you are.”

Elsa had kept one of the suitors. A slim, handsome white-fur. He was already learning tricks and he slept beside her at night.

“You’re my Queen,” Anna said. “But you’re also my sister.” She tilted her head. “And I’m your subject.”

“Yes,” Elsa answered, with everything in her heart.

Anna turned to walk the castle wall. Behind her, her braids shed fire in the burning morning light like sparks spraying from a dragging sword.