water in the sky

by:zulka

Jelsa

Elsa didn't like Hans. Hans was like a snake, always slithering in, always shifting. It always made her nervous, the way he came and went. His words were often marble like and brilliant. Hans always knew what to say and when to say it. Often blinding those who heard him, veiling their eyes with his honey coated words.

No, Elsa didn't like Hans. But Elsa used to like Hans, she liked him the way you liked a cactus, with the understanding that if you were not careful you would end up getting hurt. All those little needles sticking in, fading into you, leaving a patch of tender skin.

But Hans was her boyfriend and not quite boyfriend. Hans was her fiancee and Elsa knew that in the future there would be a rose colored wedding. That was her destiny, the stars had foretold and her sister Anna would always go on and on and on about how romantic it was. How Elsa was so lucky. But Anna didn't understand. There was nothing lucky or romantic about her arranged marriage. She didn't love Hans. She didn't even like Hans.

Hans loved the power and the lands attached to her name.

Jack was a boy encased in glass.

Elsa decided one night, as she sat across from Hans at dinner that she would not get married. It was not because she was searching for love, she was not an idealist. That was Anna's forte, a girl in love with love.

She refused to marry Hans on principle. Hans was no prince charming. Hans was a snake and she knew that no amount of kisses would turn him into a man.

Jack dreamed in technicolor. Jack dreamed of wind and sky and sun.

But Jack was a boy encased in glass.

Then one day the fair came to town, with dazzling flowers and magic and light. Anna dragged her to the town, to the tents in silver, purple and black. Hans tagged along because he didn't trust her. He didn't want her to disappear into thin air.

Elsa knew that Hans didn't love her. She doubted Hans loved anyone except himself, the things attached to her name and his shifting words of half-truths. But still, she knew she had decided. She would not marry him. She would not wouldnotwouldnotwouldnot.

Then came the shimmer, a slight glare that hurt her eyes. She stopped but Hans kept walking and that was when she found him, a boy asleep in a glass jar. She frowned as she held the jar, and then his eyes opened and she drowned.

Jack felt the shifting of the glass, a slight tilt. He snapped his eyes open and found her staring at him. He frowned and tapped the glass with his staff, exploding patters of frost all around. "Take me with you." he whispered and she did.

"Who are you?" she whispered as she watched him float in his little jar. There was excitement dancing in his eyes, hungrily drinking everything around him. He grinned when he turned to look at her but said nothing. But she knew who he was, what he was. He was one of the spirits, the kind born of Winter.

She thought it was really sad to keep him confined, to steal his freedom. "Do you want to be free?" she asked him one night as she sat on her bed, the glass jar in front of her.

He looked at her with bright big eyes, his tiny hands resting against the glass. The expectation, the hungriness of his eyes made her heart hurt. He was a sprite caught in a trap, willing to gnaw off his own foot for freedom.

She stared at him for a little longer. "Goodbye." she whispered and opened the jar.

Jack felt the rush of air and lifted himself out the glass, his prison for so many years. He laughed as he twirled and then he turned to look at her. Blonde hair spilling over her shoulders, white nightdress almost transparent in the silver moonlight, she was watching him in envy, in sadness and he couldn't help but think that she was so beautiful in her tragedy.

He approached her and returned to his normal size, slightly taller than her, making her squeak in surprise. "My name," he begun, "it's Jack Frost." and then he kissed her and stole her breath away.

Elsa felt the coolness of his lips as they pressed against hers. She drank his gratitude, tasted his freedom and her heart ached. "Take me with you." she murmured pulling away.

Ocean eyes stared at her and she felt so silly that she turned away and she heard him flutter, flutter away. A sting of betrayal echoing in her heart.

Elsa wasn't marrying Hans. A ghost was marrying Hans. She didn't know who the blonde girl with blue eyes was in the mirror. She didn't recognize her at all. It was just a stranger, a poor stranger. But it was not her.

It was like she was watching her life through a mirror, everything was backwards and wrong. No, Elsa was not marrying Hans. He was marrying a ghost, a used to be girl, whose name had been Elsa a long time ago.

She stared at the glimmering dress, all crystal lace. The ghost will look pretty, she thought. Anna stood by her side with twinkling eyes, full of hopes and dreams and unrealistic things.

"You look so beautiful!" she had gushed and her words made Elsa cry because in a few more months she would marry a snake.

The leaves had begun to fall, all twisting in blotches of warm colors. Elsa watched them from her window and heard their crinkling laugh as the wind pulled them and pushed them away on the ground, blowing them to places unknown.

Hans had taken to kissing her hand, to kissing her lips. Her ghost would marry Hans in a few days. The wedding was to take place when winter arrived, as soon as frost could be seen on the ground.

It was on the day before her wedding that Anna came and said she was sorry and made Elsa cry again. Anna held her and consoled her, and told her to run. They could run away together that very same night and to spare Anna a future like her own she told her to run, to run and never look back and she would catch up with her in the morning wherever she was.

Anna left and Elsa stayed, encased in glitter and gold and crystal lace. She had lied and it made her heart hurt. But it had been for the best because Anna dreamed of love and it would be a horrible thing to not let her find it on her own.

It was then her window burst open with a gust of cold wind. She snapped her gaze to the window and there on the windowsill she found Jack Frost.

"You asked me once to take you away." He told her as he stepped inside, leaving ice flowers behind.

She said nothing and simply looked away, to stare at the stranger in the mirror covered in a crystal wedding dress. "She is to be married to a snake." she told him, eyes shimmering with water, like rain falling from the sky.

"I know." he told her. "It's a terrible fate to marry a snake. You never know if they love you or not."

He closed the distance between them and his fingertips traced her rosy lips. "I know your heart. It whispered to mine. They both beat like one that night." And that was when he knew that she was crazy for freedom, as crazy as he had been, enough to gnaw off her own foot.

She stared at his eyes, to the dips and exploding stars, blending electric blue on blue.

"Let's go Elsa." he whispered in her ear, sending delightful shivers down her spine.

"I'll take you with me, like you asked." He told her as he grasped her hand and led her away, to the window and to the coming winter wind.

"My sister…" she began but stopped when he smiled at her, all dazzling white.

"I know." he murmured and watched her rosy lips pull into a smile that made his heart hammer inside his chest and he felt it want to rip away from him to become one with hers, again.

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Notes: Thanks for reading.