frozen

The small town of Northuldra was interesting, to say the least. All of its necessity shops—food, clothing, and emergency services—fit on one block, which left recreational buildings and housing to another singular block of the town. A lake spanned out behind the library, though it was currently frozen over due to the winter weather. On the far side of the lake, facing the town, sat a small cabin that had held no residents for decades. None of the locals wanted to go in the old home since the daughter of the previous owner had left abruptly one night and was never heard from again. They all knew the place had been left to her in the owner’s will, but she never showed.

That old cabin, Elsa had learned not but a week before her departure for Northuldra, was rightfully hers as stated in her mother’s will. At the very least, she presumed, she would have a place of her own to stay during her (hopefully brief) time in town. It wasn’t that she hated the place, it was just that there were more important things she felt she could be doing for the company back home in the city.

Elsa sighed and rubbed her eyes for the umpteenth time that hour. Judging by the light, or lack thereof, streaming in through the library’s windows, it was late, and she was finding it hard to concentrate on the history books laid out in front of her. The librarian kept glancing at her when they thought she wasn’t looking, anyway, so Elsa decided to pack up her things and head home, in the loosest sense of the word. She collected her purse and phone before placing the books in the designated area to be collected and reshelved. Anna had told her something a long while ago about the number of books being pulled from the shelf correlated to how much funding a library received from the government, and Elsa was honestly surprised she managed to recall even that much in her current tired state of mind.

Elsa waved to the librarian as she left the library. The street lamps lining the streets were lit, but they didn’t stretch behind the library and towards the cabin to light the way. The grocer had told Elsa, on her first day in town, that the town council had seen no need to put street lamps in that expanse since no one lived in the cabin. Now, with nothing to guide her but the weak glow of her phone’s flashlight, Elsa wished the council had been a little more considerate to whomever ended up moving into the cabin.

It took until she was about ten feet from the back of the library for Elsa to realize that it had been snowing while she was reading, and now the ground was covered with several inches of freshly fallen snow. If her mind were clearer, Elsa would have cursed the fact that she had no idea where the edge of the lake ended and the solid ground began now. She stopped, briefly, and contemplated sweeping the snow away with her feet to make sure she wasn’t in any potential danger, but the urge to make the trip between the library and her cabin as short as possible won out. Elsa took two large steps to the side and continued walking.

The snow crunched under her boots with every step. Elsa allowed her thoughts to wander to Anna, back in the city with Kristoff, then to their mother. She had never talked about owning a cabin, or even the town of Northuldra, and Elsa couldn’t imagine why. Her best guess was that the town held bad memories her mother hadn’t wanted to confront again, but if that was the case, why leave the cabin in her will in the first place? The entire situation was confusing at best, and nothing Elsa read or researched brought her closer to a concrete answer.

Tiredness and not paying attention to your own footsteps resulted in a lack of coordination entirely, Elsa noted to herself as her foot caught on the other and sent her sprawling to the ground. She swore, perhaps a bit louder than she should have, and lifted herself up. If she was lucky, Elsa would get home before she froze in her wet clothes, but she doubted she would be that lucky. Her next step was met with a cracking sound. She stopped and listened, but when nothing else came of it, Elsa assumed she stepped on a hidden tree branch and shrugged it off. Another cracking sound filled the empty air with the next step. Already immensely annoyed with the sound, Elsa quickened her pace.

Then the ground underneath her feet caved in, and Elsa fell in the lake.

— — —

Honeymaren wasn’t usually one for late night walks, but tonight she just couldn’t sleep. She blamed her sleeplessness entirely on that new woman in town. Everything about her was intriguing and shrouded in a layer of mystery, but she hardly gave anyone the time of day. Maren hadn’t even had a proper conversation with the mystery woman, and she doubted she ever would.

As she passed the library, Maren heard the telltale sound of ice breaking. She thought nothing of it, as the ice over the lake oftentimes did break due to the weight of the snow sitting on top of it, but something did seem off. She walked a few more paces before another sound met her ears: splashing. It stopped as soon as it started, but Maren couldn’t help but groan and round the side of the building. She wouldn’t feel right if she let an innocent animal freeze to death in the water. She drew her phone from her pocket and turned on the flashlight.

Maren quirked a brow when she saw some of the snow over the lake glowing. She wasn’t an expert in the weather by any means, but she was pretty sure snow wasn’t supposed to glow. Had one of the kids dropped a glow stick in the snow again? Against her better judgement, Maren slowly approached the glowing snow. Her quirked brow came down into a furrow when she saw a phone in the snow. She swung her flashlight around but didn’t see any other people on the lake. Who would just leave a phone in the snow, with the flashlight on no less?

Maren’s gaze trailed from the phone to a sizable hole in the ice. Sighing, she got to her knees, then laid down on her stomach, by the edge and carefully lowered her hand into the water. The cold was biting, but she would grit her teeth and bear it so some random animal didn’t die. She didn’t want another repeat of a few summers ago when a dead animal floated to the surface of the lake, terrifying everyone on the water and making more than one small child cry. Her fingers brushed against something solid, and Maren moved her hand to reach for it. Instead of finding fur or scales under her fingertips, she felt some sort of fabric.

A hand grabbed her arm.

On instinct Maren yelled and pulled her arm from the water. The hand fell away from her arm as it broke the surface and sank back down without further protest. It only took Maren a moment to realize that it wasn’t an animal that had fallen into the lake, it was a person. Cursing, she thrust her arm back into the water and fished around for the victim’s hand. She found it quickly and made sure she was holding it tightly before pulling as hard and swiftly as she could.

Maren made sure to shift up to her knees for more leverage when the victim’s head came above water. She dropped her phone in the snow and used her now free hand to grab them under the armpit. Despite it being completely irrational, Maren cursed the victim for risking their safety by walking over the lake. Everyone knew that the lake wasn’t safe to cross in the dead of winter like this. She finally pulled them completely from the water and sat back on her butt, holding them close both for warmth and to find out who they were. One glance at their face revealed them to be the new woman, and Maren groaned. Everyone else in town knew not to cross the lake, but she didn’t.

Another, vastly more important, thought crossed her mind. The woman was unconscious, and Maren needed to get her somewhere warm. Shit, what if she had hypothermia? Maren didn’t know a damn thing about hypothermia. But Ryder did, and he was at home where it was warm… Maren picked up both of their phones, a purse (Where had that come from?) she just then noticed nearby, and the woman as she thought through her plan. Would Ryder appreciate her bringing home a hypothermia victim at ass o’clock at night? Oh, definitely not. Did Maren particularly care? Also definitely not. Once the woman was settled in a bridal carry, Maren started walking as fast as she dared to her house.

It was only once she reached the front door did Maren realize that she didn’t have a free hand to open it. She deliberated on the best way to get Ryder to wake up for a moment before deciding a swift kick to the kick plate would suffice. Inside she heard the sound of someone falling off of something and held back a snort. It was just like Ryder to fall over at a sudden sound.

“Maren!” Ryder groaned out from inside. “What did you kick the door for?” He opened it and stopped. “Who is that?”

“Someone who might have hypothermia, now may I come back inside please and thank you?”

Ryder nodded once and moved aside to let his sister and the woman in. He busied himself with turning on the lights while Maren busied herself with… literally everything else. Her demands of warmth and where to put the woman all sounded like muddled mush in his still mostly asleep state. A quick shake of his head dispelled the remnants of his sleep, and he got to work.

“Here, put her in the living room, and—“ Ryder stopped his pursuit of a blanket and looked at the woman. “Is she wet?”

“Yeah, she fell in the lake.” Maren blinked. “What does that have to do with this?”

“Only the fact that you need to take her clothes off before they turn her into a human popsicle.” He shrugged at the gaping look Maren gave him. “Don’t worry, I’ll go in the other room. Make sure to wrap her up in a blanket once you’re done.”

“Wait, Ryder—!”

“Chop chop, Maren!”

With that, Ryder left the living room. Once again, Maren cursed the woman. The last thing she wanted to be doing was undressing someone who was unconscious, but it wasn’t like she was going to let the woman die either. Maren allowed herself the luxury of a final groan before moving to the couch. She laid the woman down, discarding the purse somewhere to the side, and undressed her as quickly as she could. The sooner the woman was undressed, the sooner Maren could cover her with a blanket and call her brother back in. Though, she did have to admit, the woman was kind of hot.

No! Maren scolded herself. This woman is in your house! Potentially dying! Get a grip!

Finally, after too long, in Maren’s honest opinion, the woman was undressed and wrapped up. She knew her face was hot and flushed, and Ryder would never let her live it down. He could not come back until she got her face under control. Though, Ryder apparently did not care. Maren’s only warning that he was coming back in was a knock, a respectable pause, and his appearance in the doorframe.

“I made hot chocolate,” he said, gesturing to the mug in his hand. “Though you should let it cool down first. How’s she doing?”

“Uh.” Maren looked at the woman. “I think she’s doing okay? I’m not sure, I’ve never dealt with hypothermia before.”

“Okay…” Ryder said slowly. “How long has she been unconscious? You should try waking her up.”

“Right, okay.” Maren sat next to the woman and gently shook her shoulder. “Ma’am? Uh, you need to wake up.”

After a minute of shaking the woman, Maren looked up to her brother with a look that could only be described as “Now what?” He sighed and set the mug down on the table.

“Keep trying to wake her, I’m going to call someone about the lake.” Ryder gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “So…”

Maren waved him off and sighed, thumping her head back on the headrest. “Ugh, what—“

“Call who?” a weak voice asked.

Maren sat upright immediately and looked at the woman. She was awake, thankfully, but looked as though she may fall back asleep at any moment.

“My brother’s going to call someone about that hole you made… in the ice.” Maren coughed to give herself an excuse to shut the fuck up. “Uh, here. He made hot chocolate. Careful, it’s… hot. Duh.”

Maren lifted the mug to the woman’s lips and held it there while she drank. Okay, this was good. Right? Right. She was awake, and drinking something warm, which sounded like the right thing to be doing for someone experiencing hypothermia. She brought the mug away from the woman’s lips and waited. For what, Maren wasn’t sure.

“Call…” her eyelids fluttered, fighting to stay open, but ultimately failing. “Anna.”

“No, hey, wait, stay awake.”

It was a fruitless request, and the woman was asleep again. Okay, so, she was calling Anna. Who was Anna? At a best guess, Maren would say her sibling or cousin, maybe a concerned friend if she was feeling sad. The only way she was going to find out was by calling, so she withdrew the phone from her pocket. Maren frowned when she saw it locked.

“Sorry…” Maren muttered as she pulled the woman’s hand free to unlock the phone. “Okay, Anna… Anna…”

She skimmed the (surprisingly few!) contacts and found the person in question, listed ironically as “Anna - ICE.” She wondered if Anna would even pick up at this time of night, which read as past midnight, according to the woman’s phone, but she had to try. Maren hit dial and took a breath.

“Ugh, Elsa, it’s past midniiiiight,” a voice on the other end whined.

Elsa. So that was the woman’s name. Maren guessed the person currently groaning into their phone was Anna.

“Um, hi, is this Anna?” Maren tried.

“You’re not my sister,” Anna said. “Why do you have her phone? Oh, spirits, is she so sick that she’s loopy? That’s happened to her before.”

“Loopy? No, no, she’s not…” Maren paused. “Well, she might be sick. I’m not sure.”

“Might be?” There was silence on Anna’s end for a moment. “What’s going on? Where’s Elsa?”

“Elsa, uh… Okay, so I don’t know all the details, but I think she fell through the ice on the lake.”

“WHAT?”

Maren had to pull the phone away from her ear. “Yeah. Don’t worry, I pulled her out, and she’s at my house. My brother and I think she’s okay, but she said to call you, so I… did.”

“Um, holy shit? How long was she in the water for?”

“I’m not sure. Not that long…?” Maren chewed on her lip as the silence between her and Anna stretched on. “Anna? You okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m…” Anna sniffed. “Sorry, I just… Elsa asked me to come with her for another perspective or whatever, but I said no because it overlapped with my anniversary with my boyfriend, and I just… I feel kind of like an asshole.” Another silence stretched between them. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry about that. Jesus Christ.”

“No, it’s okay. I understand you’re probably really upset about all this.” Maren cringed. Now she was the one who sounded like an asshole. “I, uh, I’ll call you if anything worse… happens. I’ll do everything I can for Elsa, okay?”

“Thank you, seriously. I’m glad Elsa has at least one friend out there.” Anna sighed. “I’m really tired, so I’m… gonna try to go back to sleep. I’ll call you again in the morning. That sound good?”

“Sounds great. Goodnight, Anna.”

“Goodnight.”

Maren ended the call and set Elsa’s phone down on the coffee table. Well, that went about as well as she could have hoped for a conversation about someone almost freezing to death in a frozen lake. Maren leaned her head back again and closed her eyes. She just needed to rest her eyes for a minute, and then she would be good to go. Just… one minute.

— — —

When Maren woke up the next morning, she found she was still on the couch. She supposed her “just a minute” rest ended up being much longer than that. The soreness of her neck urged her to sit up and stretch out. Once properly stretched, Maren looked over at Elsa and was not surprised in the slightest to find her still asleep. Still, it was—Maren looked at the time on her phone—nearly ten in the morning, so they both needed to get up and eat something.

“Hey, Elsa,” Maren said softly as she shook Elsa’s shoulder. “Time to wake up. You need to eat something.”

Elsa roused much easier than she had the previous night. She blinked a few times, peering intently at Maren standing over her. Her hand came to rest on her collar, and Maren watched as her face morphed from shock to understanding to horror.

“I’m naked,” Elsa said matter-of-factly.

“You are,” Maren replied.

“Oh my God. We didn’t…” Elsa gestured between the two of them. “Because I’m not that type of girl, and I was just really tired last night.”

“What? No! No, we didn’t.” Maren hated that she knew her face was flushed (again). “You fell into the lake last night, so I brought you back here and took your clothes off so you wouldn’t freeze. I’m, uh, Maren, by the way.”

“Oh.” Elsa frowned and furrowed her brows. “I don’t remember that, just that I was walking home from the library and I was suddenly really, really cold.”

“Yeah, cold water will do that.” Maren mentally kicked herself. “Uh, are you hungry? I got you to drink some hot chocolate last night, but then you fell asleep before I could ask you anything else.”

“I am, actually, but I don’t want to—“ Elsa’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, Anna! I have to call Anna!”

“Woah, hey, it’s okay. You told me to call Anna before you passed out again. They’re all caught up.”

“Thank you. She would have killed me herself if I forgot to call her about something as important as falling into a frozen lake.” Elsa sighed and closed her eyes again. “Some business trip this is turning out to be.”

“You’re here on business?” Maren asked, sitting back down at Elsa’s side. “Northuldra isn’t the kinda town you think of when someone says ‘business trip.’”

“I know. I’m here to learn about the town and its history, as well as how it’s currently being run and such, for an article about the oldest towns in Norway.” Elsa opened her eyes and looked at Maren. “That, and I’m trying to find out more about that old cabin and my mother.”

“Your mother owned the cabin across the lake?” Maren didn’t know whether to be surprised or relieved that someone finally claimed the place. “It’s been empty for years.”

“It was left to her in my grandmother’s will just like it was left to me in hers,” Elsa answered.

“Oh…” Maren frowned. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“It’s okay, she died years ago.” Elsa waved her off, if a bit sadly. “I’m done mourning.”

“Still.” They sat in silence a moment. “You actually scared the shit out of me last night.”

“I did?” Elsa raised a brow. “How so?”

“When I had my arm in the water the first time, you grabbed it, and you scared me. I was kind of expecting an animal.” Maren laughed. “It was like being in a really shitty horror movie.”

Elsa laughed as well. “I’ve never really liked horror movies, anyway. All of the protagonists are so dumb. I mean, who runs into a dead end when they’re being chased by a murderer?”

“Then I guess I’ll have to show you Scream sometime. The protagonist of that movie is actually pretty smart by horror movie standards.”

“I think I would like that.”

Maren blushed slightly when she realized she had basically invited Elsa to hang out. Or was it a date? No, it wasn’t a date. But was it? Surely not… right? Ryder knocking just outside the living room saved Maren from her own thoughts.

“Hey, I heard you two talking, so I figured I’d go ahead and make you some breakfast. Are you decent?” he asked.

“Uh…” Maren glanced at Elsa. “No.”

“Your clothes are on the table,” Ryder said. “I washed and dried them for you this morning.”

“You didn’t have to do that, but thank you,” Elsa said.

“Anytime. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

Ryder’s footsteps grew quieter as he walked away, and Maren took it as her cue to cover her eyes and look away. She may have already seen Elsa naked, but that was out of necessity for her safety. Besides, she had practically fallen asleep on top of her. Maren very much so did not want to make this any more awkward than it was.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Elsa said after a moment.

Maren turned back around to find her dressed and holding her phone. “Great. Let’s go get that breakfast.”

She led her guest, if you could call someone who unknowingly spent the night sleeping on your couch that, into her kitchen, where Ryder was standing at the stove. He pointed behind himself to where a stack of pancakes was waiting on the counter.

“I didn’t know if you were vegan or vegetarian or whatever, so I didn’t make any eggs or anything like that,” Ryder said, never taking his eyes from the pancakes currently in his pan.

“Oh, I’m not, but thank you for the consideration anyway.” Elsa took the plate Maren handed to her and put some food on it. “My name is Elsa, if you don’t already know.”

“Ryder,” he replied. “You feeling any better this morning?”

“I am, actually. Thank you both for helping me out. I… probably would have drowned if it weren’t for you, Maren.” Elsa smiled sheepishly. “I hope we—“

She was cut off by her phone ringing. Caller ID said that it was Anna, and it was then that Maren remembered that, oh yeah, Anna said she was going to call. That was probably something she should have mentioned earlier.

“Oh, sorry, I was supposed to tell you that she was going to call again this morning,” Maren explained.

“It’s okay. I’m just going to go take this call. Be right back.”

Maren’s eyes trailed after Elsa as she left, but she would never admit that she missed the other woman’s presence immediately. She caught Ryder smirking at her in her peripheral vision and turned to him.

“Uh oh, I think you like her!” he teased in a sing-songy voice.

“Oh shut up,” Maren remarked, shoving him lightly. “I just think she’s cute.”

“Mhm, just cute.” Ryder turned the stove off and turned to face his sister. “Ten bucks says you end up confessing before her business trip is over and she leaves town.”

“Real mature, Ryder.” Maren rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t stop a blush from spreading across her cheeks. “You’re on.”

Everything was completely fine up until Anna’s most recent visit to the Enchanted Forest.

Well, no. Elsa wouldn’t use the word ‘fine’ to describe it at all. What she meant was that things were manageable up until Anna’s most recent visit. By manageable, she of course meant “I can and will ignore it until it physically hurts me.” By things, she meant Honeymaren.

Elsa didn’t know when the traitorous feelings had taken root in her chest. One moment she had been helping Honeymaren tend to the reindeer, and the next Elsa was wondering just how long she could hold the other woman’s hand before it became odd. Almost desperately Elsa had chalked these weird and new feelings up to gratitude over having a genuine friend so far away from her birth kingdom. Anything that couldn’t be explained away by this gratitude was stuffed deep, deep down in her heart and locked away indefinitely.

She had done a considerable job keeping her feelings in check the past few months. Not once did Elsa slip and make it known to anyone what was raging inside her heart and mind. Elsa had planned to keep it that way, to take these feelings to her grave. Until Anna had come up for a visit, and she toppled those plans as if they were made of sand.

“You know, I try to visit as often as my schedule allows, but every time I come up here something new takes me by surprise,” Anna said to her sister on the second night of her visit. The two were seated by the campfire in the center of the Northuldra camp.

“Oh yeah?” Elsa asked. “What surprised you this time?”

Anna gestured to where Ryder and his boyfriend—his name eluded Elsa, she would have to ask Honeymaren about it later—were busy leading the reindeer along the edge of the camp. “You don’t see people like them in Arendelle too often.”

“…Northuldra?” Elsa asked, puzzled by the vagueness of Anna’s statement.

“No, Elsa, I mean men in love with other men.”

Oh.

Elsa opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came to the forefront of her mind, so she shut her mouth. She wasn’t surprised to see people like Ryder and his beloved up here. Men being with men (and by extension, women being with women) were as natural to the Northuldra people as breathing or blinking. They hadn’t known that people could hold it within themselves to be so bigoted and hateful about love, and so they had been shocked when Elsa told them same-sex marriage was iffy in Arendelle. By iffy she meant that it was really on a ruler-by-ruler basis how the topic was handled. She wondered sometimes how same-sex marriage had never been brought to the metaphorical table while she was still the queen.

The king before Elsa, her own father, King Agnarr, had been fairly impartial towards it as a whole, as if he couldn’t be bothered to give it the time of day. This impartialness didn’t prevent Elsa from seeing the way particularly nasty citizens looked at or treated those couples of two men and two women. She heard whispers, before she had hurt Anna, before she was shut in her own room for thirteen years, of how those couples were dirty and wrong, and that they should be punished for loving who they did. With nothing much else to do (other than cry and be fearful) within the confines of her bedroom, Elsa took to turning over those whispers in her mind day after day, month after month, year after year. Eventually she had taken them to heart, but instead of the whispers being projected back outwards, they settled into every nook and cranny of her brain like a horrible infection.

Now, sitting here next to her sister, the whispers attacked her mind full force. Logically, Elsa should have found Ryder and his boyfriend revolting—that’s what those citizens believed, and who was she if not a woman of the people? However, she couldn’t bring herself to hate them. Ryder was a good man, and she loved him like a brother. Elsa found herself allowing the buried feelings about Honeymaren to resurface, and instead of ignoring them, she picked through them, dissecting what could be dissected. She compared the two of them to Ryder and his boyfriend (Why? Why was she doing that?) and only grew increasingly alarmed when the similarities kept stacking up. Elsa couldn’t love—or not even love, like—Honeymaren like Ryder loved his boyfriend. It was wrong, wasn’t it? That’s what the whispers told her every time she considered it.

Elsa was pulled out of her thoughts by the realization that Anna was gazing at her, her eyebrows knit together in concern, eyes searching hers for some sort of answer to her prolonged silence. Suddenly all logic and reasoning that had previously been in use were gone, replaced only by a panic and fear so primal it could only have been animal in nature. Irrational thoughts of all sorts filled her mind, with the most prominent one being that Anna had somehow seen into not just her mind, but her heart and soul, and now knew of the shameful considerations deliberating in Elsa’s entire being. That thought snowballed into the fear of losing Anna, again, before transitioning into something less primal and more instinctual—the need to escape.

So she did.

“I… I have to go,” Elsa stuttered, standing up too quickly and jankily for it to have been natural. “I’ll see you in the morning, Anna.” She turned on her heel and walked (just slow enough for it to not be considered jogging) off into the forest, paying no attention to where she was actually going.

“Elsa?” Anna asked. She stood and made to follow her sister. “Elsa, wait!”

Elsa did not wait. She kept walking, and Anna’s following only increased her anxieties. Here she comes, her mind whispered in its wicked way. Here she comes to disown you forever for wanting another woman. She picked up the pace.

“Go away Anna,” Elsa spat. “I don’t want to talk.”

“Elsa, please. Is it something I said?” Anna’s voice was no farther away than it had been previously.

Something she said. Elsa wanted to laugh. That was the entire reason she was in this predicament right now, because Anna had said anything at all. Patches of ice started to form at her feet as she walked—an effect of her fear that she hadn’t yet been able to shake. Snow flurries started to swirl around their creator, working to obscure her from Anna’s line of sight.

“Elsa, whatever’s bothering you, I promise we can work it out together!” Anna said, her voice raised over the whipping of the snow flurries.

Yes, you can work out how she will completely banish you from Arendelle forever, Elsa’s mind hissed.

“We can’t! Just leave me alone!” Elsa begged.

Without looking, Elsa shot a spike of ice behind her. She didn’t aim to harm Anna, she just wanted to slow her down at the very least. Anna gasped when the ice jutted up around her feet, but instead of driving her away, her gaze hardened.

“Elsa! Running away won’t fix anything! We’ve done this before, and we both suffered because of it!” Anna shouted over the now howling flurries. She clambered over the ice to continue following. “Just tell me what’s wrong!”

Elsa shot a path of ice a few feet in front of her. With a running start, she hit the path and slid down the length of it, hoping to put more distance between herself and Anna. Her heart was pounding in her ears, but Elsa was still able to hear a second set of feet land on the path. She had to give it to her sister, Anna was damn determined (and stubborn enough) to follow her.

“Talking won’t fix—“ Elsa bit her tongue to prevent herself from saying ‘me’. “—it either!”

Try as she might, Elsa was unable to shake Anna. Every time she formed a new ice obstacle or diversion, Anna avoided it with a natural ease. Perhaps it was all those nights spent playing with Elsa’s powers as children coming back to her aid and Elsa’s chagrin.

Eventually the sisters found themselves at a cliff that sat above a body of water, with Elsa’s back facing the cliff’s edge and Anna approaching her slowly, hands held up as if she was soothing a spooked animal. The flurries had transformed into a small storm isolated solely to the cliff and the sisters. Anna squinted against the snowflakes attacking her vision. Elsa only very briefly considered flinging herself off the edge of the cliff and hoping that either her powers, Gale, or the Nokk would catch her.

“Why do you keep running away?” Anna shouted. “I just want to help you! You’re my sister, I love you!”

Anna loved Elsa now, but would she—could she—love Elsa after learning about the feelings buzzing about in her chest like angered wasps? Elsa was terrified of knowing. She had already lost too much, and she refused to lose Anna (again) as well.

“I’m scared,” Elsa found herself admitting, sounding much more like a child than one half of the Fifth Spirit.

The look of hurt on Anna’s face could have killed her where she stood. “What are you scared of?”

“You,” Elsa whispered, and the storm came to an immediate halt, leaving the snowflakes suspended around them. “Not loving me anymore.”

“Elsa…” Anna breathed. “I will always love you. Nothing you do could ever change that.”

“Do you promise?”

Anna wanted to cry. She wasn’t sure what had her elder sister so terrified, but she hated it. She hated that something could make Elsa feel like this, could make her cower like the small children they once were.

“Of course I promise.” Anna took a tentative step forward. “You can tell me anything.”

Everything inside of Elsa was screaming at her to bolt in that moment. Another voice in her mind, this one much more panicked than the first one, yelled that she had to leave for her own safety, or else. Elsa knew what the ‘or else’ was, but running away again wasn’t going to work. Her heart beat so furiously that she wasn’t sure which would happen first, Anna arriving at her side or her passing out. Speaking of, Elsa took a step back, desperate to keep some sort of distance between the two of them. It seemed, once again, that distance was the only thing she had control over. She looked behind herself when Anna gasped and sucked in a breath when she realized that the cliff ended abruptly behind her.

“Anna, I…” Elsa couldn’t meet her sister’s eyes, so she instead focused on the frost spreading around her feet rather quickly. “I believe… Or, no, I don’t believe, I-I think…” She couldn’t have been imagining how her vision tunneled in on her hands clasped to her chest. “I think that I may want a relationship like Ryder and his beloved have.”

There, she had said it. Now Elsa just had to wait for Anna to declare her undying hatred and leave her sobbing on the cliff.

“But Ryder and his boyfriend are gay,” Anna said, her confusion written on her face.

Elsa snapped her gaze up from her hands to Anna’s face. Just the simple act of someone saying the word sent her heart and mind into a tizzy. Half of her still wanted to run, while the other half wanted to melt into the forest floor. Anna’s facial features were drawn together, trying to decipher what Elsa had said. For the entirety of the silence that stretched between them, Elsa was sure she didn’t breathe. Something in Anna’s expression eventually shifted, and she met Elsa’s gaze, though still speechless.

“Anna…?” Elsa prodded gently, her voice small.

“Elsa,” Anna replied, “are you gay?”

“I…” She threaded her fingers through her hair so she would have something to abuse to ease her fears. “I… Would that… be a problem?”

The tears Anna had been fighting back finally fell free. “No! No, of course not!” She sniffed and opened her arms. “Elsa, you know I love you no matter what. You being gay wouldn’t change that.”

A weight the size of an impossibly large boulder lifted off of Elsa’s shoulders, and the suffocating pressure on her heart eased immensely. Anna… would still love her. Anna would still love her! Tears escaped Elsa’s eyes as well. The suspended snowflakes fell to the ground with a muffled wump!. She removed her hands from her hair and lunged into Anna’s arms. Once there, she sobbed.

“I was scared, Anna,” Elsa cried. “I was scared that you wouldn’t love me anymore, and that I was dirty and wrong.”

“Elsa!” Anna gasped. “Who told you that?! I’ll have them arrested as soon as—“

“Nobody!” Elsa interjected. “At least… not directly. I heard whispers, when we were children, before they closed the gates, and I… I took them to heart. I believed for years that if I… if I thought about another woman that way, I would be a disgrace to not just our family, but all of Arendelle.”

“Hey…” Anna said softly. She gently clasped Elsa’s face in her hands. “Don’t you ever think you’re a disgrace. You’re my big sister, and I look up to you. I’m honored to have someone like you as my sister, Elsa. I love you.”

Another sob escaped Elsa, but this time it was a happy one. “I’m so relieved. Thank you, Anna. Thank you so much.”

“You don’t need to thank me for loving you. That’s what a family is supposed to do, and if they don’t,” Anna shrugged, “then you need to find a new family.”

Elsa managed a laugh. “I feel like such a fool now, being scared over something like this.”

“Your fears were justified,” Anna said. “As much as I hate to admit it, there are people in Arendelle who hate people like you, and Ryder and his boyfriend.”

“But not here, with the Northuldra,” Elsa said, and the verbal reminder filled her with a spot of hope.

Anna smiled. “No, not here with the Northuldra.”

The two stood for a moment, Elsa basking in this first bit of acceptance since her self-realization while Anna held her steady. After a few minutes, or maybe it was a few hours, she couldn’t tell, Elsa sniffed and spoke again.

“We should head back to the camp. We left pretty suddenly.”

Anna dropped her hands to Elsa’s. “Of course.” She paused, as if considering her next words carefully. “And, Elsa? I’ll always support you, no matter what. You may be different, but you’re still my sister, and family always comes first.”

Elsa squeezed Anna’s hands. “What did I ever do to deserve a sister like you?”

“That’s easy,” Anna said, “you were yourself.”

And with that, they started back towards the camp.