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Once, Anna and her sister Elsa had been the best of friends. Back when they were kids they had played together all the time. They had gone skiing, tobogganing, snowboarding. They had had snowball fights and built snowmen in the back yard.
Anna’s psychologist had never actually used the words ‘delusional nonsense’ but she was fond of pointing out that it had never snowed in Melbourne during Anna’s lifetime. Anna was certain, though. She definitely remembered playing in the snow in the back yard of the house where she still technically lived with her parents and sister.
Anna technically lived with Elsa in the sense that Elsa technically lived in the family home. But Anna had barely seen her in years and years, over a decade now. Every second Elsa was awake, she was working at the family ice creamery.
It was rare, too, for Anna to visit the family store. When he had been a kid, she had begged and begged to go there when her mother picked her up from school. And sometimes she’d gotten to go, but not often.
When she’d been old enough to make her own decisions, theoretically, her parents had always shooed her out of the store when she turned up. They still did, in fact, even now that Anna was eighteen and living on her own.
Still, Anna tried to visit as often as she could. She wanted to see her sister, even if only long enough for a smile and a little wave. But she was busy, of course. There was her part-time job as a toffee-maker, and there was university, where she studied the arts of making hot food.
Secretly, Anna had hoped that her parents would be disappointed in her life choices, but they didn’t seem to care. They were always too busy at their damned ice cream shop, the most popular and successful ice cream shop in the whole of Australia. And yet, only Agnarr, Iduna and Elsa worked there.
Even the little toffee shop where Anna worked had about a dozen employees. And no one worked there all week, open to closing. Yet, Anna’s very own sister was expected to work the whole week without stopping.
And apparently her parents were always shouting at Elsa, too. Anna had never seen it herself, since her parents were usually too busy shouting at her, but she’d read the reviews.
‘Rapunzel
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
The ice cream is great but the owners were always shouting at this girl called Elsa who runs the machine in the back or something. Very bad vibes.’
Anna was furious. She had to free her sister, and she had been working on her plan for years. And finally, she had everything she needed. To be fair, she could have gotten everything she needed years ago, but Anna had never bothered to check if it was legal to buy climbing equipment if you were under 18, and had just assumed it wasn’t.
That very night (don’t worry about the date or anything, it was that very night), Anna crawled into the cooling ducts of the family ice creamery. She had scaled the side wall to get to the roof, hence the climbing gear, and she was wearing a jumper now that she was in the AC (she’d had the jumper since she was 14, in preparation, and it was kinda too small).
From the ducts, Anna could hear her family closing up the restaurant below. Or, as she knew from watching the storefront with binoculars for years, she could hear Elsa closing up the restaurant while her parents complained that she wasn’t going fast enough.
Elsa muttered something, but it was too quiet for Anna to hear from the vents. Agnarr exploded, though. ‘YOU WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!’
Elsa muttered something else that sounded very like ‘never mind, sorry for saying anything.’
‘IF YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE A SINGLE SECOND OFF FROM THIS SHOP, YOU’VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING YOUNG LADY.’ Agnarr continued to shout.
Elsa muttered.
‘AFTER ALL WE’VE DONE FOR YOU?’ Iduna joined in. ‘YOU THINK YOU DESERVE A BREAK?’
‘A BREAK? YOU’RE NOTHING BUT AN ICE CREAM MACHINE. ICE CREAM MACHINES DON’T GET BREAKS.’
With a crash, Anna rappelled in through the AC grate above the dining room. ‘How dare you say that to my sister!’ she shouted, and pointed for extra effect. ‘Elsa, you’re not just an ice cream machine, you’re a human being with needs and wants and all that sort of stuff. And I love you.’
Elsa looked between Anna and their parents as if she didn’t know what to do. But here expression hardened, and she nodded. ‘You’re right, Anna, I am a human being with needs and wants. And I love you too, in a romantic way.’
Anna nodded seriously. ‘Yes, that’s what I meant as well.’ (it hadn’t been, but she wasn’t going to complain)
All of a sudden, ice and snow burst forth from Elsa’s hands and washed over the dining room of the ice creamery (don’t worry about there being a dining room when they only served ice cream, alright), immediately freezing Iduna and Agnarr.
Elsa rushed to her sister and Anna wrapped her in a tight hug. ‘I’m so proud of you for standing up for yourself, Elsa,’ Anna murmured into her hair.
‘I couldn’t have done it without you, Anna.’ Elsa said, rubbing Anna’s back.
There was an awkward pause.
‘Can we kiss now?’ Elsa asked.
Anna shrugged. ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’
And they did kiss, and it was good.
They also convinced the police that it had been a freak accident with the ice cream machine exploding (they had dragged it into the room and blown it up to help with the story), and no one cared enough to look into the matter further.
Anna moved back into the family house with Elsa, and they lived happily ever after. And they kissed a lot. And held hands. And that sort of thing. You get it.