The Invisible (Jelsa)

Chapter XXXIX

It began so simply. With colds.

Jack was in denial. Elsa never got colds. She got ill, she threw up, she caught little bugs the children caught, but never in her life had she been reduced to sneezing or sniffles. How could he have not seen it. How could have been so blind when she began to carry a handkerchief in her back pocket, and she always inhaled, pulling back her muck.

After that, she just wanted to sleep. "I'm just tired Jack." She said with a yawn.

"But it's the council meeting." Jack said weakly, "You never miss those."

"I've attended for fifty-six years. One day won't let the town burn." She said, and turned back over and curled up. Yet, one day turned into more until she was so tired that her bed became the place to find her most often.

And lastly, it all came together and Jack was so blindsided by it all he couldn't breath. How did he not know?

FROZEN

That day, Anna sat in her house. She was clutching her coffee so violently she wondered how the glass had not shattered yet. The squeal of children came from beside the fire place, where Xanthe tended to all those who were too small for this day, too innocent. She did not mind the task, because deep down, she felt Xanthe was there for her mother more than anything.

Kristoff sat across from her, his gaze vacant. He had a thick gray beard and eyes that held years of knowledge, and his hands scarred and calloused. He was looking over her shoulder, and Anna knew where his eyes led him. Sven's area.

It was naive to believe that Sven would live forever. Even so, he lived longer than the average reindeer. And it wasn't like it was totally recent that Sven had passed, decades indeed. He had lived a happy life, and had died of natural causes, to be buried in the royal graveyard- a happy end for such a friend, Elsa had proclaimed. It had been years since Kristoff had allowed himself to let himself be sad; it was just a reindeer. But it wasn't.

Anna studied him, how empty he was. How his shoulders sagged and his scars seemed to gleam in the lamp light. She sipped her cold coffee.

"Kristoff." She whispered. He looked at her and she saw something in his eyes she had not seen many other times in his life; tears. Oh, but they weren't all for Sven. Today hit him harder than most, and he was not afraid to admit it.

"Should we..." He looked at the door, his voice cracking.

"And do what?" Anna shook her head, "There is nothing to be done. We're better off here." She only half-believed her own words.

In that moment, Anna realized time was infinitely spinning away from her even though it danced across the pads of her fingers, so close, but yet so unpalatable.

"I love you." Kristoff said hollowly, and forced a smile out. It was so endearing and all that Anna momentarily forgot everything but her husband.

"I love you more." She said almost automatically, and Kristoff gave a genuine grin back this time.

Everything was going to be okay, wasn't it?

Yet from across the room there was a startled shriek from Eloise's five-year-old daughter and a gasp from Xanthe. Olaf was in a puddle on the ground. Xanthe quickly revived him before he was totally gone, but he did not greet everyone with his warm hug mantra per usual. Instead, he looked at Anna who was just frozen, half-way off her chair, fingers grasping the edge so hard her knuckles turned white.

"I felt it." Olaf said, the understanding so strong that it broke Anna from her daze. She got up so quickly that the chair was thrown back against a wall and the doorknob may have broken by her forceful swing. Kristoff was behind her, with Xanthe but they all fell back in the maze of castle corridors.