Searching for a Perfect Day

Puppets on a String

Chapter 19: Puppets on a String

The muffled cries blaring through the cellphone speakers wash between them, the roaring in Elsa's ears drowning everything in near silence. Turquoise eyes lock with her own, consternation, anguish, anxiety—a plethora of emotions dancing amongst green-blue irises. 

What garners her attention is the topmost emotion: fright. Anna's scared. 

Anna's scared. 

The finality and sternness of her inner voice is what wakes her up. She breathes a deep inhale, wraps her fingers around the smaller girl's wrist which gathers her attention, and pulls her towards the long corridor, the voicemail cutting off by itself. 

Their steps are long and hurried, curious eyes giving them sidelong looks as they go from power walking, to jogging, to sprinting across the airport terminal, their carry-on whining against the ground as they dodge incoming and outgoing foot traffic and the disembodied voice of airport speakers blare out indiscernible words behind them. 

Elsa's not sure when Anna's fingers began gripping her own mid-sprint, but she does notice the noise—not a dull murmur of a crowd of people in the same place, but something a bit more planned...controlled. The bulbs of a thousand cameras go off at once, the sudden flashes shrinking her eyes reflexively. 

"Are you kidding me?" 

The rhetorical question comes from her sister, but her grip on that hand merely tightens, Anna following suit. 

She dials Kai's number, glaring at a camera a half a foot from her face and looking away just as another click and flash emit from that direction. 

There are bodies...everywhere. Yelling. Questions. Queries. All of it all at once, and absolutely nothing is assimilating. What does assimilate is panic, and the overwhelming sense to protect. 

"Miss Elsa!"

"Where are you?!" 

She's quite aware that she's never sounded so angry at her charge before, but with Anna next to her and the vultures coming closer and closer and closer—

Shit.

Her eyes flash towards a man in a suit with a microphone elbowing his way towards her sister. There's maybe a foot between them and everyone else—the majority of the vultures are at least giving them that much, but she knows this flimsy invisible shield won't last, and this is how it always starts. 

She lets go of her luggage without another thought, strafes to the left so that she's standing in front of Anna and extends her hand, her palm colliding with a chest momentarily. Generic brown eyes widen at her, the man stepping back by only a half a foot from sheer surprise. 

"Back off." 

It's silent as soon as she growls the words, looking at the man and only him. Something in her tone or stance freezes everyone in place, but really, that's all that she needs.