Left Shoe on the Wrong Foot

Chapter One

Author's Note: This fanfic treats the Disney movies Frozen and Pocahontas as being historical fact. I know what really happened in Pochontas' time, that she was twelve years old when she was forced on a ship and taken to England and later married John Rolfe. However, I like seeing Disney movies have connections and though Pixar movies tend to take a different tangent from Walt Disney Animation Studios ones, I like to think that in the perfect world they can work together rather than against one another. So in this story the events of any Disney movie could be labeled as historical fact.

Long, long ago, in a far off country called Norway, back when your great-great-great grandparents still had yet to walk the Earth, having not been born yet, there was a queen of magnificent beauty, who was born with an extraordinary gift, the power to make ice come out of her fingertips.

She wasn't always a queen of course. But on July 17, 1846, a week after her twenty-first birthday, Elsa became queen.

However, the people of her kingdom, Arendelle, did not know she had ice powers. No one knew, not even her sister. Her parents had known, but they were dead. Had been gone the past three years, having died in a shipwreck on the ragins seas.

Anyway, that night Elsa ran away from home, for people had witnessed her shoot the tall icicles out of her fingers, and then she made an ice sculpture without intending to. But she didn't know that she could imbue life into something, not then.

However, on her way up the mountain where she would take refuge, she created a snowman. Now this snowman was given only two emotions, an abundance of Joy, his dominant one, and a slight twinge of sadness, which would be activated whenever anything terrible happened to Anna, the sister Elsa cared for so deeply. The reason for these two emotions appearing in the snowman was that Elsa felt relief and happiness that people knew now and that keeping it in was all over. But with this joy came an undercurrent of misery which Elsa could perceive only as the thought, "I'll never see Anna again."

The above was a note to Riley from Gill, a fellow student in her English class. Gill had handed it to her on one of her bad days, saying, "This will surely cheer you up."

She had intended to toss it in the garbage, and at the end of the school day she held it aloft over the trash can with that in mind. But some of the ink bled through the page (Gill was old fashioned and wrote a lot with pen and paper rather than typing everything). Sadness had been alert then and she saw herself mentioned there and as Riley had been feeling sad quite a bit recently, she pulled the lever which induced Riley to read it over.

Now it was the day after she read it, and she was itching to speak to Gill about it, but she had to wait till after class. Ugh.

Mr. Rambles was discussing The Time Machine, which they would be reading over the weekend. "H.G. Wells' story wasn't the first ever time travel story. Mark Twain had one before him, and there are quite a few other older ones. But in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, the titular character doesn't have something which H.G. Wells brings to the table, giving time-travel stories an extra-dimension. In all previous time travel tales, the person doing the time-traveling had no choice in the matter. They were dragged into it. But in The Time Machine we have a character who devises to overcome this oddity and invent a device that will allow him to go to when he chooses, and he gets to decide when to start it up. No one holds a gun up to his head saying, 'Get in or I'll shoot.' It is all of his own volition. And this is what I want you to keep in mind when you're reading this weekend…"

Riley felt a daydream coming on. She was on a mountain watching a young woman with platinum blond hair make swirls of snow form by waving her hands. A snowman appeared, though admittedly he was missing a nose. Really freaky.

"Riley? Earth to Riley!" Gill said. He was holding a paper for her to take.

"Huh?" Riley said. She reached for the slip, thinking it'd be further details concerning Elsa, the snow queen of Arendelle. "Oh, thanks," she said, taking the sheet and blushing. It was a list of questions to answer regarding The Time Machine. Due Monday morning.

"Did you read the letter?" Gill asked.

"I did," Riley said. "You should really think of making a living, telling stories like that.

"It was a true story, actually," Gill said. "Actually happened and everything."

Inside Riley's mind, there was a buzz of activity. Everyone was getting ready for the next thing that was coming up, so Disgust decided to take matters into her own hands.

The cute green emotion pulled the lever, causing Riley to say, "Yeah, that's what true stories tend to do."

"Disgust!" Joy exclaimed. "What did you do that for?"

"I felt it was necessary," Disgust said with shifty eyes.

Joy pulled at the lever. "That's a fantastic story," Riley said. "Tell me more about Queen Elsa."

Gill seemed excited to finally have a listener. "She was gorgeous, with long blond hair. Though at the time she made Olaf it was all done up, for she had never been allowed to let her hair down…"

"This is all great stuff," Riley said, urged by Fear, who had pulled the lever with Joy leaning on his shoulder to make sure he didn't make Gill walk off annoyed. "Tell me more at lunch, okay? I don't want to be late for history."

"Oh, you'll love it," Gill said, his eyes twinkling. "Elsa's sister, Anna, is the hero of the story. True as glass." Then he walked off.

Sadness began crying.

"What's up, Sadness?" Joy asked, ever the emotion to cheer up her friends.

"Riley doesn't have any siblings. She's an only child. And that makes me so sad, to hear about two sisters who loved each other…"

"It'll be worth it," Joy said. "I bet it's the most exciting story ever! And Gill knows all about it."

"We could research it," Anger said. "In the library, if it's a true story."

"Yeah, we'd have to sift through a ton of books on Norway, though," Fear said.

"Norway? The country with the happiest people on Earth? I say it'd be rockin'!" Joy exclaimed, pumping her arms in the air.

"Except for the fact that we don't have the Dewey Decimal system memorized," Fear said. "And it'd take awhile to do so. Riley will be in college by then."

"Well, right now she has to learn about colonial America, so we'd best be alert," Joy said, as Riley sat down in her class behind a girl named Cammie.

"Nice chip in your teeth, Riley," Cammie said, turning around. "Did you get punched in your old hometown?"

"How would you like it if Riley punched you and gave you a complimentary chip?" Anger said, reaching for the lever. Joy held him back. "Hey, we're about to discuss Pocahontas. This is no time to be plotting hurting another person."

"And Squanto. Don't forget Squanto," Fear put in.

"One day in class we'll be discussing the Trail of Tears," Sadness said, looking more depressed than usual. "Those poor Indians!"

"I believe the politically correct term is 'Native Americans'," Disgust said, filing her nails. "Though I don't care all that much for being politically correct."

"Pocahontas had a friend among her fellow tribespeople," Riley's teacher was saying. "Nakoma was her name. She cared very deeply for Pocahontas' well-being, and so when she thought Pocahontas might be falling under the spell of an Englishmen, she alerted Kokoum to the trouble, and he came on his swift feet to rescue his darling."

"That's pretty touching," Joy said.

"Sounds like the Englishman was a bad sort," said Fear.

"Wait till we hear more before making a judgment," Anger said.

"Then Nakoma disappeared. She didn't come back for five years, and by then everyone had given her up for dead. And she looked just as she had when she left, having not grown much older at all."

"There's nothing strange about that, Ms. Tuck," Cammie said.

"No, perhaps not," Ms. Tuck said. "But then she vanished for another fifteen years, and when she came back she still didn't look any older."

"You're just trying to spook us, Ms. Tuck," said Cammie. "No way is that story true."

"Nah," Ms. Tuck said, with a wink. "The truth is that Nakoma died not long after her second return, and she never married. "No way is that story true."

"Nah," Ms. Tuck said, with a wink. "The truth is that Nakoma died not long after her second return, and she never married. It didn't help that her best friend was off in England, now wedded to John Rolfe. She had a sad life."

"I think I'm going to have a lie-down," Sadness said. "This is too depressing for me."

"You do that," Anger said. "I find it ridiculous that a history teacher would make up such tall tales. If she can do that, how is Riley supposed to believe Gill, who is after all, a preteen boy, and as unlikely to be the authority on anything that isn't Nike or football as a sand dollar is to be an authority on thority on anything that isn't Nike or football as a sand dollar is to be an authority on thority on anything that isn't Nike or football as a sand dollar is to be an authority on thority on anything that isn't Nike or football as a sand dollar is to be an authority on rhythm and blues songs."

"I don't know," Joy said. "Maybe their both telling the truth but since it sounds so farfetched to the ears of most people they're toning it down as much as possible."

"Seriously, time-travel?" Anger snapped. "Next you'll be asking me to sway Riley to a daydream about her visiting some future where a robot goes around healing people."

"Or harming them, more like," Fear contributed.

"Dr. Robot sounds like a character from a video game," Disgust said.

"Maybe one with a blue hedgehog," Fear supplied.

"Good thing people can't read Riley's mind," Disgust said. "They'd be revolted at the idea that that blue hedgehog that shares its name with a drive-thru fast-food chain is even in her mind at all."

"Better him than that pink elephant with whiskers," Anger said. "I hope to never see him again."

"Riley hasn't thought of him since she was four," Joy said. "I think we're good."

The bell rang and Riley stood up, shoving stuff in her backpack. She headed for the door, and there was Gill, waiting for her.

"Shall I take you to lunch, then?" he asked.

"Only if you're going to tell me about Queen Elsa," Riley said, guided by Joy.

"I'll do just that," he said, smiling. "The Tale of Two Sisters is what I'd call it, though, if I were to ever make a fictional account of it. For Elsa would not have said it was her story alone, but that of her and her sister, Anna, who showed her how to love."

"This boy seems to be obsessed with love," Fear said. "Don't you think Riley's a bit too young for that?"

"He's referring to familial love," Joy said. "Not the romantic kind. I think it's all fine."

So Riley and Gill headed for the lunchroom. On their way they passed a poster of a snowman. "Did the one Elsa made look anything like that?" Riley asked.

"Well, you're got to remember that they didn't have photographs back then," Gill said. "There are portraits that include him, however, and relative to the size of the sisters, he is quite small. Something like two feet tall. And not very broad. Sort of like a tiny snowman, about the size of a human toddler."

"Sounds interesting," Riley said, prompted by Joy. She was allured by the smells of tacos wafting from the cafeteria. "San Fran school lunchrooms make better food than I got back home," Riley said.

"I'm glad to hear you like something here," Gill said.

"It's a great place now," Riley said. "But I wasn't very happy about coming here originally."

"As long as we suit you fine now, everything's good," said he.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Riley snapped. Anger had shunted the lever to dangerous levels.

"Anger, why? He was just being kind," Joy said.

"Kind? He's ridiculing Riley's old hometown by insinuating that she'd obviously like San Francisco better."

"You're looking too much into what he said," Joy remarked. "I've got to rectify this."

She gave the buttons to the right of the lever a sequential tap.

"Sorry, Gill," Riley said. "I may've snapped at you a bit hard there. I miss my hometown, you know?"

"I understand," Gill said. "It's all good. But if I'm offending you…"

"No, it's fine," Riley said. "So, which line should be go in? Homestyle or the other one?"

"I feel like tacos, if that's okay with you."

"Sure, as long as they don't have broccoli on them," Riley said, which caused Gill to laugh. They took their spots in line, and Riley felt anxious with the thought that soon she'd hear about Elsa and Anna, who both sounded fascinating.