Let It Go

You pause on your hike up the mountain to turn your face up to the drifting snowflakes. You glance behind you, but your footprints have already faded in the storm.

You are no less alone than you have always been. Your one big day, the one time you had to risk mingling with other people...and you are still isolated.

And yet...everything has changed.

Your heart is still pounding with adrenaline. Your cheeks are burning with anger and humiliation and the bite of the wind. You have been clutching your secret to your chest for years, and three minutes was enough to reveal it to every dignitary and common celebrant in Arendelle. On your Coronation Day, no less.

For just a moment, your control slipped. You couldn't keep the storm behind your eyes. And once that door opened, you couldn't close it before the wind slammed it open. You could feel the avalanche poised to crash down on everything. You had to run, to escape their eyes and yourself. Even if they've already seen.

Everybody knows.

And that means...you don't have to hold it in anymore.

You tried. For so long, you've tried to follow your parents' wishes, to be the good girl they wanted you to be. To hold it in, not to feel, not to let it show. To protect Anna and everyone and yourself by locking away that part of you. By wearing your gloves and staying inside and not letting yourself get angry or scared or anything that might set off the storm.

Not that it did you any good in the end.

You look up at the sky, marveling at the expanse that you haven't seen in a long time. Everything looks different bounded by the arch of your rarely opened window. The world is so much bigger than you remember.

There's no point in holding back anymore. You sacrifice your remaining glove the the howling wind, and spread your bare hands.

You suddenly have to know what you can do. You've never tested yourself. You haven't pushed yourself since the time you failed Anna. You know your powers have grown stronger in the intervening years. What can you do, now that you don't have to hide?

People are going to think what they like, anyway.

You're not going back. They'd never take you as you are. What does it matter what they might say? You feel the burden of royalty lift from your shoulders as you release the clasp of your purple cloak.

Snow and ice swirl around you as you recall the things you did as a child. Dancing snowflakes, hills of snow, building snowmen, creating an ice rink out of the ballroom floor.

The castle you grew up in sits like a toy in the distance. Your fears are fading, shrinking.

You gesture the bottom of a staircase into being. When you plant your foot on the first stair, it transforms from frosty snow to gleaming ice. You stretch your hands toward the railings on either side and dash up toward empty air. More steps form just ahead of your feet until you reach a plateau.

You are one with the snow, with the wind, with the sky. You are so much more than a scared little girl enclosed by dark stone walls.

You lift your chin to the night, twirling and dancing across the ground. You take a stand and plant your foot again. Ice branches out in a fractal.

You turn in place again, eyeing the space around you. Can you?

You stretch out your arms, palms up, and lift as if you were going to raise the mountain. And the ice obeys as you spin your soul into the air. First spires, then walls and doors and floors spiral up around and beneath you. You create a palace of ice, not to block out the dawning light but to transmute it.

You have no need for the castle of your childhood. No need for a crown or a silk dress. You send the golden tiara spinning into the night, then free your hair from the confining pins of your imperial coiffure. Your power transforms your dress, making it a more appropriate ice-blue. Whimsy gives you a transparent cape that trails on the floor behind you as you glide toward your new balcony.

In the first light of a new day, you take a deep breath of the icy air, taking it into your lungs and your soul.

You can't undo the past. You can't be the person you were yesterday. You can't be perfect.

You let it all go.