winter and noise
characters: elsa
ships: none
rating: K
Two things were constant in Elsa’s life: winter and noise. No matter how she tried, she could never stop either of them. Three years old. The scream of a newborn baby. The splat of a snowball against the door separating it from her. Sometimes she could make them go away for a little bit, but eventually the cold would seep back into her veins and voices would resume ebbing through the walls. Five years old. “Anna’s moving into my room, ‘kay?” Their mother chuckles. A light frost falls on the flowerbox. There are times when the sound is pleasant and the chill is welcome, usually on a summer day when the birds fly above the courtyard. More often than not, though, she wishes she didn’t have to deal with them. Eight years old. “Catch me!” The soft thud of a tiny head on a shallow snowbank. “What have you done?” She knows she has no one to ask about the cold, but she wonders if everyone else has the same voices running through their heads. She’s too shy to ask anyone. Thirteen years old. An energetic knock on her door. The ice reaches the knob before her hand does. It’s a lot to deal with, being the crown princess and an accidental sorceress. Sometimes she isn’t sure that she’ll be able to handle it. The voices in her head tell her she’s unworthy. The frozen tears agree with them. Eighteen years old. “You’ll be fine, Elsa.” She sleeps on a bed of snow for three months. The world of her bedroom is not an exciting one, but it is all the world she thinks she deserves. She would like her sky to be bright, open, and filled with stars; instead it is dark, constricting, and dotted with water stains. She wishes on those stains for an escape from her prisons. Twenty-one years old. “Monster!” The fjord cracks beneath her feet. “You can’t run from this!” The harsh wind whips against her ears, but god, does she try to. “No!” A sword shatters. So does her heart. It is slow, yet sudden, the first time she feels warmth. Two arms reach down to wrap around her shoulders, two arms that belong to her sister - who is smiling and starry-eyed and alive - radiate a gentle, welcome heat. There is warmth in her sister’s words, too. “I love you.” She thinks it back, but doesn’t say it. She doesn’t trust the crack of her voice any more than she trusts the crack of her ice. They hug, and there is quiet. It’s different, she thinks, but a good different.
