Spaces Between

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•Chapter Thirty-Five•
Oh Crap........I'm Elsa
(EARTH)

My eyes flashed open. Bright, blinding light filled my vision, I squinted—my head pounding. I gasped trying to clear my vision by blinking.

The floor was metal—frozen metal—but I wasn't cold. For some reason, despite the trails of dedicate frost across the floor, I was not cold. I pushed myself up, slowly casting my gaze around the room. Metal shelves, all filled with boxes. The lights on the ceiling were cracked over with ice and sent out an unearthly white light.

I was in a freezer?

I pressed my hand against my forehead. How? How d-did I ge...

As I pulled my hand away from my face as slowly as possible, I knew.

My skin was blue. Both of my arms, hands, legs, feet—everywhere. Darker blue lines accented my fingers and when I reached back up to my face—I could feel the faint raise of even more on my forehead and cheeks.

I flinched, a whimper bubbling in my throat. What...what happened to..to me?

"Lorien."

I jumped, scrambling around at the voice. It was Alrekr. Relief flooded through me—then embarrassment and guilt, then panic. Where was Käro? I trembled, watching Alrekr's shaking form and blue lips.

I felt water welling in my eyes, "w-what is happening to me?"

Alrekr shook violently, wrapping his arms around himself. "R-relax, Lore."

Relax?

"Y-you're freezing," I murmured, inching closer. Alrekr jerked away, I went still.

"You...you can't touch me," his teeth clattering. My face fell, a pit forming in my stomach.

"W-what?"

Alrekr shook his head, "it's not you. It's your s-skin. You'll burn me."

I couldn't breathe, "what am I?"

Alrekr shuddered again, lips blue and frost tipped his hair. He was going to freeze to death and I couldn't even touch him.

Alrekr's brown eyes were hard, "I...I think you are a Frost Giant. Or at l-least half."

I stared at him. What?

"You...you never knew...knew your parents, maybe..." Alrekr cut off, biting his lip from shaking so hard. He pushed his head against the wall behind him as a rather vulgar Asgardian curse tumbled from his mouth. I don't know how long I was out, but we had to have been in this freezer for quite a while.

I shrugged off my jacket. Slowly I reached out to hand it to him; part of me feared that he wouldn't take it, that he wouldn't want to touch something that belonged to whatever a Frost Giant was.

I remembered how he reacted when he heard them in the woods.

They were feared in Asgard.

Alrekr peeled his gaze back to me, his eyes narrowing on my jacket. For a second he only stared at it, before stretching his arm out to take it from me. He looked back up at me.

"Thank you," he stammered. It would be to small for him to put it on properly, and much too thin to provide much warm—but he threw it over his shoulders regardless, shivering. I was still shaking too, but not from the cold.

"I'm like the two that jumped us," I murmured. I dropped my gaze to floor, unable to look at him. "Aren't I."

"Perhaps one...one of your p-parents were. Do...do you...you know which you...you s-share w-with your brother? Does he know?"

I shook my head. Neither of us knew, or if Loki did, he never told me. But I couldn't imagine. I'd never seen Loki's skin turn blue. He never acted, or claimed that he wasn't anything but Asgardian. Maybe he...

"I don't know."

The room went quiet, my mind racing. I didn't know what happened to Käro. I didn't know if he had been taken too, or if they had left him. If the others went looking for us, would they find him? I could still feel him—or whatever it was that told me he was still okay. And he wasn't dead, because that would be my mark would disappear....

No. I couldn't think like that.

"On Asgard, we were told s-stories of the Frost Giant's since we...we were children. Terrifying stories to scare us from wandering off at night." Alrekr suddenly started and my jaw locked. "They come from...from Jotunheim; a d-dark world of ice and s-snow. Centuries ago, they pillaged the other Nine Realms. There were...were great battles until f-finally the Allfather struck a treaty with...with their King, King Laufey. The Asgardian's took the object they wielded that gave them so..so much of their power.

"They w-was peace for the l-longest time. Then nearly a decade ago, King L-Laufey was killed and the Bifrost destroyed most of Jotunheim. We thought them near extinct."

I felt sick when Alrekr stopped speaking. I wrapped my arms around my waist, tears pricking at my eyes.

"I'm not s-scared of you," Alrekr said and I think I stopped breathing. "I was not before, and I am not now. Perhaps you have Jotün blood in your heritage, but that does not change how I s-see you."

I started crying. Alrekr hummed softly, "you are not your ancestors. You make your own path."