All Frozen in the Arendelle Front

Consequences

The Army of Arendelle returned to the Town precisely two days after the Battle of Vardeen, Queen Elsa commanded the troops as they entered the streets and they were received by the jubilant people with wild cries and chants of celebration everywhere.

It was a fantastic day for everyone, the families were being reunited once again, great parties were being organized and the bells would ring with great power to announce the final victory and the end of the war, but the mysterious absence of Anna continued and shadowed the celebrations for the Queen...

Elsa, Alice and Kristoff tried their best and explored every room and hallway of Arendelle Castle searching for Anna, but she was nowhere to be found and nobody at the Town had seen her since the day when the Army had departed for Vardeen.

The celebrations continued for several days, the people were ecstatic and Elsa honored the fallen troops in a special ceremony, but very soon the first official reports came about the casualties of the war and the people of Arendelle, shocked at first, tried to come to terms with the full cost and horror of what had happened:

According to the most conservative calculations, well over ten thousand Arendellan soldiers had been killed in combat at the combined war scenarios of Tannya, the Sammel offensive, the chemical attack and the fierce fighting at Vardeen.

Ten thousand more soldiers were injured, many of them missing a leg or an arm, and three hundred cases of shell shock were still trying to recover from the terrible illness...

At least forty thousand soldiers of the Southern Isles laid dead on Arendellan ground, which left the small Kingdom with a total of more than fifty thousand cadavers that were to be collected and buried accordingly during the following months.

It would take several years for Arendelle's resources and economy to recover from the consequences of the horrific war, but that was alright, they could deal with it... their dead would be honored and the Kingdom would recover, but the psychological damage that they had taken would be a completely different story.

The Guards and servants of Arendelle Castle soon became alarmed at the worried and sickly looks of Queen Elsa, she would stay awake through many nights waiting for her sister and the days were passing without news of Princess Anna...

Wherever that Anna had gone to remained a total mystery, and the search missions that Elsa sent repeatedly would never find any trace or clues about the lost Princess.

It was a night of early November when Elsa woke up shivering in cold, quite shaken after suffering through yet another nightmare about her missing sister... the Queen realized that she had kicked all of her blankets away while she was fighting within the dreadful nightmare, and the flames of her fireplace had vanished a long time ago.

"Calm down, Elsa" the Queen whispered to herself, breathing very fast and fighting hard just to sit up on her bed- "Calm down, it was not real! Anna is alright, she's going to come back one day and everything shall be perfect..."

Elsa looked all around at her dark bedroom for some time, she managed to brush away the awful images from her nightmare and then, some minutes later, she decided that trying to fall asleep again was pointless and that she could find something better to do.

The Queen then placed one of her favorite blue coats around her shaky shoulders, since Arendelle Castle was getting really cold now that the natural Winter was drawing closer with every day that passed...

"Where are you, Anna? I wish that you would come back home, where you belong..."

Elsa departed from her bedroom carrying a candle in her hand, happy to discover that all of the servants and even most of the Guards had gone to sleep already... the few Guards that remained patrolling the hallways would never ask any questions to her, especially since her severe nightmares had started two weeks ago.

Which would be the best place to visit, if you were alone within a vast and lonely castle in the middle of a freezing night?

Elsa would sometimes visit one of her favorite kitchens to prepare bread and cookies all by herself, a fun and simple activity that would always ease her angst and stress... however, that night she took a different path through the hallways and soon arrived before a great wooden door that she was very familiar with.

It was usually locked, so Elsa was quite surprised to see that the door was open that night...

The Queen walked into the Castle Library to discover that somebody was already there, and it was a young and disheveled woman sitting on the violet carpet and reading a rather old book right beside the fireplace...

"Hello, Elsa..."

Elsa became frozen on the spot at the sight of Anna, who seemed to have arrived back home in the middle of the night intentionally so nobody would see her. The Princess was just there, reading a book like nothing special had happened, and they looked into each other's eyes for a long time before the Queen could react at all.

Anna looked cold, weakened and sad, like she was ill or something, and also she had clearly lost many pounds from the lack of a proper diet all that time. She remained wearing the same Guard uniform and cloak from Vardeen, bloodstained and everything, and the royal sword of Arendelle laid on the elegant carpet right beside her.

The Queen fought hard to remain calm, to avoid crashing down in tears of joy at the mere sight of her sister... Anna's eyes returned to the pages of her book, and then Elsa simply advanced and slowly sat right in front of the Princess.

"Do you remember this book?" Anna asked, her voice just as burned and harsh as it had been since the chemical attack- "Mother used to read these Troll stories to me every time that I could not sleep..."

"Anna, where have you been?"

Anna became lost into the stories that she was reading, she seemed to be enjoying some of her oldest childhood memories and quite a long time passed before she would speak and look at her sister once again:

"Here and there" Anna said casually, giving no importance to the matter- "Elsa, I am sorry for having abandoned you like that... I needed... I just... I could not take it anymore! To be surrounded by death, I mean..."

Elsa realized that there was something strange in the blue eyes of her sister, not just sadness and despair but also grief and acceptance of everything that had happened... her eyes were just not the same anymore, but still there were light and sparks coming from the old Anna lost somewhere within all of that darkness.

"I know, Anna" Elsa replied, now displaying a soft smile- "To be honest, after having my own experience of battle at Vardeen I have no idea how you managed to resist everything before that... You are much stronger than I could ever be, and it's all thanks to you that we survived and won the war."

"I can see that you have not been sleeping well..."

"I have had my share of nightmares" Elsa explained, and then she turned her head to look at the bright and merry flames of the fireplace instead- "But now that you have returned, things shall start to be much brighter around here!"

"I love you, Elsa..."

All of a sudden, Elsa felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders by a magical and unbelievable force... her sister had returned, they were together, life was perfect and from now on nothing would separate them ever again.

Anna smiled at her with a hint of her old personality shining through the darkness, and after that Elsa, fearing the nightmares no more, just cuddled on the violet carpet beside her sister and closed her sleepy eyes at last.

"Sleep well, sister!"

Anna caressed Elsa's blond hair with the very best of sisterly love, the fireplace sparked and whispered beside them and after that the Queen easily fell into a happy and peaceful sleep...