Chapter Text
Anna’s breath fogged the tower window. She leaned closer and pressed her forehead to the cool glass. Springtime had cleared the mountain passes, but it couldn’t fend off winter’s lingering chill. Anna smiled, somewhat. Namorn had a habit of holding onto that edge longer than most places.
Her smile tapered off as she watched the road through her window. As the noon sun rose, it stole the frost from the grass. Still, in the shadows of the manor’s retaining wall, a dusting of white remained. Perhaps the frost would know Elsa was close before Anna did.
She closed her eyes. They hadn’t meant to miss that first, essential lesson. If nothing else, most children in Namorn learned the rhythms of the cold, of the ice and snow and the power they held. They learned fear, and through that, caution.
Parents whispered to their children to take care in the winter, for the frigid air could snatch the breath from their lips and freeze their fingers past blue. Anna’s parents had attempted to impart that same caution to her hat-covered ears, but the words never took, never lingered long enough before she ran outside to join Elsa in the snow that seemed kinder to them than to other children.
As a girl, it had never occurred to Anna that the lessons needed learning. She was never apart from her sister and, with Elsa, the most bitter season was always a bit more pliant. When they were children, it all seemed like coincidence, how the mildest flurry would turn to a short-lived blizzard if she giggled to Elsa, “Lessons are boring. Can we skip tomorrow?”
In contrast, fierce storms would cull themselves if Elsa was determined to build a snowman. The snow would drift round their manor, leaving a small eye of calm for them to amuse themselves. For miracles of that sort, they both assumed that the trickster god of the Syth had heard and capriciously answered their prayers. It never occurred to Anna that their fortunes, like the weather on the Syth, that tempestuous lake, were changeable at best.
Anna pulled away from the window and made her way downstairs. The servants were all busy, preparing for Elsa’s arrival. Thankfully, when she caught Gerda’s attention and pointed to her study door, she understood.
“I’ll let Kristoff know where to find you,” she called back with a nod.
“Thank you, Gerda,” Anna replied automatically.
She slipped into the study and was grateful to shut the door behind her. Normally, she would get swept up in the manor’s preparations with everyone else.
Anna plopped down in her father’s old, comfortable chair and automatically reached for the farthest left stack of paper, where Kai sorted documents of relatively low importance. She felt too distracted to deal with anything that would involve budget issues or petitions, but idle paperwork was doable.
She approved a few minor repairs on their lands and was re-reading a request for a kitchenmaid to go on leave for her brother’s wedding when her mind began to wander. Anna sat back in the chair and closed her eyes. She’d avoided thinking about everything for so long. Half her life, really.
For the first half, it had always been coincidences. Just coincidences with the two of them and the cold. It never occurred to Anna that it might be magic because nobody ever thought of magic as something merely convenient. At least nobody wise. Anna learned that lesson, at least. Magic was something learned and studied, a talent they’d both been tested for, and for which they lacked the aptitude to learn.
At the time it had seemed ridiculous to Anna. Elsa learned everything deftly and Anna could hardly imagine that magic could be different. The thoughts hadn’t lasted. Anna had been distracted by Elsa’s newest trick, how she could hold out a gloved hand and invariably have a perfectly shaped snowflake drift right into the center of her palm.
“Who cares about magic,” Anna whispered after the testing. “How come it always lands right there?
“Shhh,” Elsa said, still smiling at the snowflake. The flake was larger than any one Anna had seen before, its pattern visible and beautiful. “I dunno, Anna. I just... I get winter, and it understands me too.” She grinned. “I just hold out my hand and, in my head, ask for a snowflake.” Elsa gestured with the snowflake in her hand. “And look, winter gives it to me.”
Anna had looked at her skeptically. “Winter isn’t something you can talk to, Elsa.”
Elsa shrugged. “Maybe not, but look at this!” She slipped her hand under Anna’s and held their hands out flat.
After a moment, a flawless snowflake drifted to the center of Anna’s mitten. Her eyes had widened. “Wow, Elsa...”
Anna reached for a report on her desk. She kept holding off on filing it, just to re-read it again and again. A missive had reached the manor a week prior that Elsa had crossed the southern border from Olart on the newly-clear mountain passes. Anna re-read the notice with more attention than she’d managed to give her actual paperwork. If her journey had proceeeded apace, Elsa was due to arrive, well, that afternoon.
Back home for the first time in almost nine years. Checking the date, Anna winced. In fact, it was nearly nine years to the day that their parents’ deaths had triggered the events leading to Elsa’s long separation.
“Lovely timing,” she murmured, taking the missive and standing up. No point in re-reading it when Elsa’s arrival would render it out-of-date. No point in re-reading it and getting stuck in the past.
Filing the paper in its proper place, Anna tried to keep her thoughts in line. Struggling with the memories, she finally let them loose. Elsa would be arriving soon, after all, and with her the past and potentially more frost. It had kicked up behind her horse on the day she left, the way dust ought to.
Anna made a mental note to keep her sister away from the crops. Taxes were bad enough as it was.
Elsa had been twelve when their parents died. It was a late-spring storm on the Syth that capsized their ship. Later, huddled together in their room, Anna had watched that same storm whip itself into an out-of-season blizzard centered around their townhome in the capital.
The timing was not lost on all. She’d stayed in the room with Elsa for the most part, but the one time she left it, she’d overheard Gerda reprimanding some servants, forbidding them to say the word, ‘cursed’ in reference to the girls, to the older one in particular.
After the funeral, they attempted to return to daily life, adapting to a household without their parents, lessons without parental guidance. That’s when the coincidences had turned nasty. Ice slicks on stairs when Elsa didn’t want to leave and warm bathwater that chilled in a minute.
By the time their great uncle, Saghad Weselton, finally arrived, a new, semi-permanent member of the household to manage their lands and affairs, it was painfully clear to everyone that Elsa had.... something.
Anna had giggled nervously when their great uncle brought in a specialist. She’d walked with them up to Elsa’s room only to find the lock had frozen in the door.
Three proper knocks sounded at the door of her study and Anna blinked out of her reverie. “Come in,” she called.
Kai opened the door and bowed slightly, always so formal. “Kristoff has arrived from the border of the estate,” he said.
Anna swallowed the lump in her throat. “Is... is she here?”
A nod. “Yes, Lady Anna. Elsa has arrived.” Kai paused, measuring her expression, and Anna managed a feeble smile. “All will be well,” he said eventually, softening his tone. Less ‘House Arendelle Senechal’ and more ‘long-time teacher and borderline family.’
“I’m certain of it, Kai,” Anna said, managing a weak smile. “It’s just that there’s a lot of matters. Issues. With her arrival. And that’s not even including the personal aspect.” The corners of her mouth tightened. “This is a delicate political situation, and I have no idea who she is.” After a moment, the tension fell from her face. “She’s my sister,” Anna continued softly, “and I have no idea who she is.”
“If I may be so bold,” he said, “I would venture to say that everything will have changed, and nothing will have changed.” He bowed and stepped out of the room. “Kristoff will have cleaned up a bit. As much as he’s able anyway.” Kai sniffed. “I’ll send him in to tell you what sort of person he welcomed at the border. It’s not much, but it might help assuage your anxieties.”
“He’s clean enough for me, Kai.” Anna smiled, stronger this time. “And thank you.”
“Of course, Lady Anna.” He shut the door.
Anna looked out the window of her study. Snow had started to gently drift through the air. Not unusual for spring in Namorn, but she couldn’t help but wonder if it had to do with Elsa. After the testing, she’d been whisked away to this Winding Circle temple in Emelan, apparently ‘the very same school as Sandrilene fa Landreg attended’ for this same brand of ‘ambient magic.’
Just like that, and Elsa had been packed and spirited away within the week, gone south through the same pass that Sandrilene just had come north through. Anna had tried a dozen different ways of sneaking herself along and ultimately failed.
“I’ll come back, Anna. I promise,” Elsa had whispered. “I’ll learn about magic as fast as I can, so I can come back as soon as possible.”
“I know you will, Elsa. I’ll be waiting for you.” Anna had given Elsa one last hug before she mounted her horse, then dutifully reached out so Gerda could hold her hand. Saghad Weselton (who did not take well to Anna’s suggested nickname of “Uncle Weasel”) had given her strict instructions not to let Anna out of her sight until Elsa was a day’s ride south.
Elsa rode out of the gate with their guards and a small cart with her possessions, and then she was gone. Nine years gone.
Two rough knocks sounded at the study door, a bit over-loud. “Come in, Kristoff,” she called. She knew it was him because nobody else knocked like that, because she rarely heard any other servant’s footsteps before they knocked, and because she knew the rhythm of her friend’s movements. She saw him every day.
Before Elsa left, she would have known that and more about her sister’s every step, about the way she swung her arms while she walked if she wasn’t trying to move like a lady ought. She used to exactly remember how Elsa squinted over her schoolwork. Everything. Which way her smile pulled and which eyebrow she raised more than the other.
Anna blinked. Elsa really had squinted a lot. Maybe she’d gotten glasses in her time away.
Kristoff shuffled into the room and nodded, a half-remembered formality that referenced the bow he never did, at least not when they were alone.
“Tell me about her,” Anna breathed as the door shut behind him. “What’s she like? I know you never met her before, and that you only met her for a few minutes before coming here, so you might not have much to share, but tell me? Tell me everything.”