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Elsa had only the vaguest memories of her sister as a baby. She had only been four years old. It had been quite some time ago. They’d had a lifetime to replace that time with new memories. But she did remember some things. Just a few fleeting moments, mostly feelings and impressions than actual memories. She remembered lots of tears. She remembered the whole castle being shrouded in what felt like oppression, or maybe that was just her imprinting her later isolation on her earlier childhood. She remembered shadows and silence, her nanny hushing her. She remembered her mother’s distress.
But she also remembered a healthy baby girl. Rosy cheeks and fluffy, sparse brown hair. She remembered a love so deep and immediate she couldn’t understand it at the time, but she missed it desperately after The Incident, and she clung to it now that she had her sister back.
In her strongest memory of Anna as a baby, she remembered Anna’s painful, terrified wails. She remembered a dark brown cradle, gently swaying. She remembered moonlight. She remembered Anna’s first giggle. The calming of the storm that had been Anna’s first few months of life. All it had taken was a little magic.
Anna’s first child, a girl, was Anna through and through. She had the same rosy cheeks. She had the same fluffy hair, more wisps than strands, unable to be tamed on the soft baby head. She also had her mother’s propensity to scream at all hours of the night, unable to be satisfied, unable to calm herself.
Anna and Kristoff were left exhausted, sleepless and stressed at their daughter’s unending distress. Elsa didn’t wait so long this time. She was queen now. She was sure of herself. Confident in a way she had never been allowed as a child. After the first week of sleepless nights, and the firm refusal of hiring a nanny for the baby, Elsa ventured into her sister’s wing of the castle.
She took the crying child from Anna’s arms as Anna sobbed a thank you and collapsed in exhaustion. She stood by the window, the moonlight streaming in, and hummed a tune their mother had sung to them when they were small. Elsa, far more confident with her powers now than she was the twenty odd years ago when she did this for another colicky baby, raised her hand and waved into existence a beautiful, single snowflake. The baby quieted some, but tears still welled in her big blue eyes. Elsa smiled and raised her hand, a cascade of snow swirling around them.
As her mother before her, the baby stilled, reached for the snow, and giggled her first giggle.
