many thanks to my two betas Rose Starre (who fixed my adverb addiction) and Faulty Paragon (who helped me think outside the emotional box)!

1. many magics

Elsa stands alone in the entryway of her palace and stares at the large ice doors Anna left through. Her eyes chase the up the latticework of ice and down the edges of stylized snowflakes decorating the lintel. The magic that only hours ago brought her such pride has once more become the bane of the existence.

Still, she hovers at the doors.

She doesn't know what she's waiting for. A knock, probably. Anna asking to make a snowman. Neither comes. After her last outburst, Anna must understand that Elsa is dangerous… Which is what she wanted, Elsa reminds herself. Even if it means that she never hears her sister's sweet voice and deft knocking again. This is what she's sown, hurting Anna with her ice again and again.

There's a rap on the door.

Elsa scrambles to open it. A berating comment and an apology are formed in each side of her mouth. She finds herself wordless when she sees a brunet boy standing where her sister should be.

"Hi, Elsa!" That strange boy from earlier. Sora, or something. She feels exhausted and frustrated by her own expectation.

Elsa turns away. "What do you want, Sora?"

Sora blinks and frowns. "I thought I'd knock 'cause you're a queen. Am I supposed to bow, too?" His bow is quick and wobbling.

Elsa stares.

"Do you see a crown on my head? I'm not a queen. Not anymore." She clenches her hands, feels the power building again, feeding off her negativity. "I'm just this now."

The ice gathers in her hands the moment she thinks of it. She looks at Sora. Hurting him isn't her goal, but he shouldn't be so comfortable, so at ease with her when she has this power at her beck and call… and sometimes beyond that.

"Oh, cool. I mean, I can do magic too." Sora's weapon appears in his hands. "Blizzara!"

Elsa watches an ice projectile, less elegant but no less powerful than her own, blow past her head and amass a small ice structure against the wall.

She stares at him and then at the ice.

Elsa walks over to the formation and touches it. The branches are pleasantly cold. She has always been able to tell the difference between ice she makes and ice from the sky. Sora's ice has a different feel than either, but something closer to her own, she thinks.

He's like her. At least a little.

Something must show on her face because he smiles, spins his weapon.

"Step back, 'cause that's not all I got!" She steps away and makes a little translucent shield. Another incantation and fire sprouts from his weapon and dissolves his ice and part of her castle. She stomps her foot to reassemble the structure while her mind races.

She's never met anyone else who could use magic, let alone opposite elements.

"You can use magic, too," she says. "You're a sorceress like me."

Sora frowns and tilts his head left, then right.

"A sorceress?" Sora hums. "I think Donald called me a wizard once, but I don't actually know the difference. Yeah, I'm a sorceress too."

Wizard, she thinks the word to herself. Her parents didn't read her fairytales involving magic, and she never had the stomach to investigate the magic heritage buried in history books. Magic has existed in Arendelle before, but rarely, and with plenty of fear and evil surrounding the occurrences. No one talks about it.

She knows words about sorcery and magic, but wizard. Another word for a person who does magic. As if there needs to be more than one title.

Elsa watches the other magic user in the room. They are the same, then, but the difference between them feels vast. The word sorceress weighs Elsa down, a mantle to call her burden, but that same mantle Sora shrugs on like a roomy coat.

The odd, tower-like weapon in his hand turns to light and dissolves with a single gesture and Sora starts swinging his arms. He seems so at ease with magic, like it doesn't interrupt the air to talk about it. More than that, he has words for it, language to talk about it and its users.

She opens her mouth to ask more, to inquire about how deep his knowledge goes, what does wizard mean— but she closes it again.

Elsa has been trying to let things go —her shame, the burning fear in her stomach— but despite her resolve, the negative emotions might just have a place, considering how she keeps hurting people. As much as she wants to be free, as long as she has these powers, she's dangerous.

She cannot forget that.

"You should leave. It's not— it's not safe for you here," she says, trying to focus on what matters and not dwell on meeting her first sorceress.

"Why?"

As her frustration builds so do small ice spikes around the ground.

"Oh right," Sora says, seeming to remember now that she had almost speared him before. She tightens her hands and halts their growth. A deep breath in and out.

"I can't control my emotions and consequentially this happens." She waves a hand and smooths out the spikes into the immaculate flooring.

Sora seems unbothered by the display. "You just need training is all."

"Training?" She's never met anyone else who does magic, but she's realizing that perhaps there are more people like her out there than she thought. People who might fill the role of instructor and as a former-queen that is a familiar concept. She learned from many people the ins and outs of rulership in lieu of her parents' guiding hands.

"I was trained by a wizard named Merlin. Donald helps me too, but he's a court magician, not a wizard... I also don't know the difference between those two."

"Whose court does he serve?" She's struck by the realization that while she has cast off the mantle of ruler, that doesn't make her worthless in the larger political scheme.

Her suspicions grow deeper when Sora rubs the back of his head and looks all the world like he's said something he shouldn't have.

"He doesn't live here. Anywhere near here. Like, I couldn't point it out on a map if I tried, and I'm pretty good at geography and maps and stuff."

Sora's graceless recovery is enough to make Elsa snort. If Sora and Donald are part of some nefarious plot against her, it isn't well constructed. She still makes a note of it in the back of her mind and thinks about writing it in her royal journal where she writes all of her political plans and potential threats against the kingdom.

In her solitude, sometimes the only thing that brought her any pleasure was seeing the political plans from her journal enacted and watching on parchment and through the window as Arendelle prospered from her decisions. She remembers that she had planned to start a holiday on her anniversary of her parents' death that would also give a spotlight to the wheat farmers, whose products were losing out to the new influx of trade goods from the Western Islets.

Then she remembers that she isn't the queen, only has a kingdom of ice, and the journal is back in Arendelle far from her grasp.

She can conjure an ice journal, can write anything she wants on the mountainside, alone as she is. But that journal was passed on to her by her parents, inherited down the line through generations and can only be opened by Arendelle royal blood. The journal is her parents' handwriting, curves of their letters guiding her own hand as she made plans for five and ten years down the line.

She realizes she'll never see it again. Never enact another law, never see everything she's known all her life…

…never see Anna again.

It's for the best, she reminds herself, stomach knotted and awful.

"I know you need to figure things out on your own," Sora says, looking troubled. "But, but that doesn't mean you can't lean on friends while you do!"

His eyes are wide, and the blue is more intense in the aquamarine lighting of her castle. She unclenches her hands, realizing she's revealed too much of herself and that he is more aware than she gave him credit for.

She thinks about all the things and people (person— Anna, Anna) she never got to say goodbye to. Even if she never gets to return to them, it still can't hurt to try and gain a little control of her powers, in case someone wanders up here again.

Sora was just a teenager out of place in the snow and yet she almost…

Her ice is all sharp edge and seething chill. If she could curve those points, ease the intensity and make it just a little safer for others, well, that would be nice.

"If you think you can help…" She straightens her spine. "Then very well. We shall attempt it. Although, Sora, you really must be careful around me. Don't let your guard down for even a moment."

Almost in reaction to her words, his hands slide behind his head and lace together. His smile unfolds, open and easy.

"If that makes you feel better, then sure thing! You don't have to worry about me though. I'm a sorceress too, after all."

Elsa snorts. He's so convincing… but he's right that he's strong at least. His aptitude with fire magic is something that Elsa can't fathom. Ice is so ingrained in her, but even dual-wielding his fire was strong enough to melt some of her fortresses. The floor sagged as the wall evaporated and the staccato dripping of water…

Her eyes go wide.

"Sora! Your fire magic melted my castle."

Sora winces.

"Uh, I'm sorry about that. Donald's always saying I need to be more careful—"

"No, I mean." She runs a hand through her mussed hair. "I mean, could you do it again, on a bigger scale?"

"Huh? Why?"

"Anna said I accidentally started an everlasting winter."

"You mean it's not always this cold?" Sora says.

"It's summer," Elsa says and winces when she sees Sora's bulging eyes. She continues, "I want it to stop, but I— I don't know how to melt it. I can only freeze things."

Sora pauses again. When he does talk it's almost under his breath.

"Maybe if Donald and I do it together… and I use some grandmagic…" He shakes himself and says to her. "We can always try! And maybe if you get control of your powers, you'll figure out how to do it yourself!"

She can't help the doubt that wells up. Her only ability is to freeze, to suck warmth, to hurt those around her—

"There's a lot that magic can be," Sora says.

Elsa gives him a wan smile.

"Regardless of how it happens, we should head to Castletown and try… at least around the outskirts."

If that gives her an opportunity to catch a glimpse of her sister and make sure she's okay, then so be it. Her heart twinges, aching with the old pain of contrasting desires and she brushes it away with a deft hand, focuses on Sora's earnest gaze.

"Right, we can work on your control along the way. It's going to be dangerous, so you'll have plenty of practice."

Elsa remembers the dark creatures so unlike the wildlife around and frowns.

"I'll be ready," she says.

She glances around at the chandelier and her perfect doors and prepares to leave her exile much sooner than she expected.

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THINGS FIXED:
Elsa and Sora have actual dialogue.
Sora gets inside the damn castle.

FUN FACT: One person uses the word 'sorceress' in the film "Frozen." Witch, wizard etc is never used.