Author's Note / I'm reading over my old material and my eyes are bleeding and I'm asking myself if I was really that stupid way back then...

ANYWAY.

I've jumped into the Frozen bandwagon, because Elsa. Okay? No other explanation is needed. *sobs quietly*

Ivories

and elsa was indeed exactly like the piano music she played: deceptively simple on the outside, but an absolute enigma beneath the surface.

[prologue]

Arendelle was one of those places that cartographers would likely forget to put on the world map. While the European country was extremely rich in its history—it included, after all, some crazy queen (whose name was long lost to time) that had creepy ice powers and set off an eternal winter in the kingdom—its modern counterpart would be classified as anything but "remotely interesting."

Anna could swear that time had stopped in the dreary capital city that was Evigvinter (it was named in some awkward kind of homage to the aforementioned eternal winter, and quite possibly the most unimaginative capital city name there was in the big and wide world), where she lived, because every single day was so mundane and set and simply predictable. Anna herself was much more of a spontaneous kind of girl, prone to rambling as well as giving in to whatever demand that was tossed at her if chocolate was involved in some way, shape, or form.

The country was also laughably tiny, measuring only perhaps a few square miles larger than the United States' Rhode Island. One of those small kingdoms back in the Medieval Ages, Arendelle's small stature had evidently carried through into the modern times, until it was pretty much only a speck of land compared to neighboring Norway. It didn't help that the Norwegians were terribly snobby about it, too.

Really, it wasn't the size, or the regularity, or even the sheer boringness of Arendelle that, if Anna had a choice, she would hightail out of the country as soon as she could. For all its shortcomings, Arendelle actually had a very nice performing arts university; one of the best and most highly selective in the world, if its boasts were to be taken as true, and Anna was indeed hoping to get into the Arendelle Institute of Performing Arts for the violin.

But then, she'd have to contend with the whispers. The conversations. The gossip. And it was always centered around the same person.

Always.

Elsa. Fucking. Vinters.

Indeed, there were always conversations about Arendelle's golden girl. Anna couldn't go two steps without hearing about her: the world-famous concert pianist, rose from humble beginnings "right here in Arendelle!"; hailed as the most promising young artist of the age; one of the youngest contenders in this year's International Tchaikovsky Competition.

Oh, Anna was absolutely sick of hearing about Elsa Vinters. Arendelle's apparent claim to fame, treated as one would probably act in front of fucking royalty, even earning herself the name of "Ice Queen." As far as Anna could tell with her limited knowledge on the pianist, Vinters was some tight-assed diva bitch who had about the emotional range of a teaspoon—never once had Anna seen Vinters crack a smile or even a frown when not performing, and Arendelle's limited set of TV channels seemed intent on competing amongst each other to see who could possibly give Vinters the most screen time—and that she rarely ever granted interviews, or something along those lines.

Yet she was still talked about as if she was the gods' own savior to men. Vinters was practically revered as a goddess in Arendelle, in every single respect but name.

Marshall (more commonly known as Marshmallow), Anna's brother, was an insufferable fanboy.

"She can't have an emotional range of a teaspoon," he had said, quite befuddled when Anna had expressed her vehement opinion of Vinters to him one day, almost smashing her beloved eight-thousand-euros violin against the wall in her adamant insistence of Vinters' idiocy, "have you ever seen her perform on stage?"

"Of course I did," Anna scoffed. "She's as stiff as a board."

The blatant truth was that Anna hadn't collectively seen more than ten minutes of Vinters playing in her element, but that was a mere technicality and technicalities weren't supposed to matter at all.

After a moment of disbelieving silence, Marshall barked out a laugh. "The fact that you say that shows that you've not," he said. He began to get misty-eyed. "Her playing...it has so much...emotion. I mean, have you ever heard her rendition of Rachmaninoff's prelude in C-sharp minor?"

"Can't say I have," Anna said airily, brandishing her bow around before slamming it down angrily onto her strings and producing a god-awful tone as a result. "Whatever, it doesn't matter."

Marshall rolled his eyes at her in a "holier-than-thou" attitude and promptly walked out of the room.

Anna's practicing that night was the worst it had been in about six months.

—

Apparently, Anna had laid hands on her first violin when she was only three, and then she and the instrument had been inseparable ever since.

There was simply something that was so wonderfully intimate about this stringed instrument that immediately appealed to Anna, that coming out of a keyboard the sound would be impossible to produce. Anna didn't quite scorn the piano (although whether this was truly her own prejudice or one birthed from her irritation against Vinters, she couldn't make the distinction), but she had no desire to have anything to do with it, either; she preferred to stick with her trusty violin in her hand.

She practiced whenever she could: as far into the night as possible without her parents or Marshall shouting at her to stop playing at around two in the morning. Hand shivering, adding a small swell to the note with a wide and warm vibrato. Practiced until her left fingers bled, her hand curling up the delicate swoops and curves of the varnished instrument and then back down again. Right wrist rising in synchronization with her up and down bows.

It wasn't simple. It wasn't stilted. It was just right.

It was natural. Anna was a voracious speaker even in the worst of times, and they said that the violin was the closest instrument there was that mimicked a human voice. In the rare times when Anna could not express herself with words, she'd be able to talk through the sound of the violin.

And to her, that was extraordinary. Wonderful.

Something ethereal.

Something beautiful.

—

The world ended on a Thursday.

Anna remembered this very clearly, because she had practically hit the woman in the pelvis with the end of her violin case, something that was undesirable in the best of times, but Anna had been seeing flyers and advertisements popping up all around town for the whole week, cheerfully announcing the arrival of this particular human being into Arendelle for a mini-good-luck-on-your-upcoming-competition-homecoming-celebratory-party concert.

And so, Anna would forever remain guilty of the fact that she had once almost smashed a violin case into Elsa Vinters' crotch.

"Wait," Marshall said.

They were eating a light lunch that consisted of sandwiches and a salad. Anna was attacking her food with a vigor whose likes would probably never be seen again in ten millennia, while a piece of lettuce pathetically dangled off of the ends of Marshall's fork.

"You're telling me that you banged into Elsa Vinters—"

"—well, yeah, I'm actually very proud of the fact—"

"—almost broke her pelvis—"

"—you're not insinuating anything, are you?—"

"—oh my god—"

"—it was an accident—"

"—Jesus Christ, Anna—"

"—I said I was sorry!—"

"—if anyone ever asks, you and I are not related—"

"—you're making a fucking mountain out of a molehill here—"

"—out of all the places to hit—"

Anna stabbed at her salad with such ferocity that the whole tin bowl upended and sent the contents flying into Marshall's face.

"...Oops."

"Anna!" her mother's voice called from the sitting room. There was the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, and then Idun came bursting in, her slightly lined face alight with victory as she waved four strips of cardstock around in the air.

"I got tickets!" she exclaimed excitedly. "From the workplace!"

Their mother worked at the music hall in the center of Evigvinter, which doubled as a theatre sometimes.

"Tickets to what?" Marshall asked curiously.

Anna froze, her sandwich halfway to her mouth.

Oh, gods, please no.

The gods did not take pity upon Anna.

"Elsa Vinters' concert, what else?"

Right after her proclamation, there was a dull thud and a muffled shriek as Anna's head cracked against the dining room table:

"...Why."

End Notes / huhuhu, Harry Potter references ^^