The Invisible (Jelsa)

Chapter LII

It may have been the excitement, or it may have been the feeling of sleeping in a bed once again, but Jack woke at the time that he would have woken if he still lived with Elsa.

The bitterness hit him like a ton of bricks, and he breathed in too deep, and ended up coughing. Air. That's what it felt like to feel alive again, huh? In fact, he felt more palpable than he had in years. And...he felt hungry.

He stumbled out of the bedroom, nearly tripping over the seemingly psychotic tabby (the cat hissed and clawed at his feet, but unfortunately he did not bleed from the cuts) before scrambling away to glare at him from behind a couch. Pfft.

He was the only one up at dawn, it seemed. Anna was always up with the sun, he recalled. Usually, if given the opportunity, all of his frost like children and wife would sleep into the night and wake during the dark. He wondered, because Lila resembled Anna, if she would be up now or later, because of her hair?

His stomach growled, and he opened the ice-box. He was immediately overwhelmed with a thousand different oddly named things, things that surly didn't exist when he was a king. It took him forever to find just an orange-nothing fancy about it, some cold milk, and a couple eggs to scramble. Then he turned to the stove, and realized that eggs would be much more difficult than he previously imagined.

It took him a full hour figure out how to work the darn thing, and he was REALLY hungry by that time. Soon, though, he had the eggs sizzling on the pan.

"Oh! Jack, it's you." He hadn't heard Ingrid enter, and turned, waving.

"Hi! Hope you don't mind. I didn't want to wake any of you just because I was a little hungry."

"No, no." She sat down, dazed, "That's perfectly fine...I just..." She scrutinized him. Jack gave a little laugh.

"Didn't expect me to be real." He surmised wisely. Ingrid blushed hard, as if she had offended him.

"Am I that transparent?"

"No, I'm just good at reading people." Jack shrugged, "Been around a bit, yeah?"

"Of course." Ingrid ran her fingers through her hair, "Do you want some coffee?" She asked.

"Mhh, yes please." Jack recalled the deliciously addicting brown liquid from his castle days. He was very much intrigued by the machine that made it though, the binging and the steaming and all.

"Never seen a coffee machine?" Jack wordlessly shook his head, without turning away from it. He watched it up until it was done, and she placed the cup in his fingers. It was warm, and better than he recalled.

"Coffee machines are nothing new." Ingrid said carefully, "In fact, ours is as old as crap."

"I didn't...It's been awhile. I lived in towns, but I didn't live with people. Didn't really care about learning about their world. Not even Jamie's." He added softly.

"This all must be quite the shock to you, then?" She asked, and he nodded, cooling the drink a little with his frost magic. Ingrid's eyes followed.

"Have you seen a cell phone yet?" She asked. Jack nodded.

"Yeah, creepy little box things. Jamie has one-to think! It used to take days to sent a letter to someone and now you could text someone half-way across the world and BAM! Its just there! I don't know...I think I prefer the old hand written letters, wax seals and all that royal stuff." He winced.

"It can be a bit scary when thrust into this world." Ingrid agreed.

They chatted about the 21st century for a bit, Jack asking her all the questions that Jamie had brushed away to do something more exciting. Teaching a winter spirit about how a toaster functions was clearly not on a sixteen-year-old's priority list of things he wanted to do with his time. Ingrid, on the other hand, was more than willing to show him everything in their kitchen, and beyond. Jack felt as though he'd missed 1000 years, not just 100. There was so much to learn, so much that for once, he wanted to learn. Anything to feel closer to Elsa again, her world instead of his world of loneliness.