Second Best

Chapter Eleven

Elsa slammed shut the door to her bedroom, sighing in relief. Thank goodness that Eric had eventually given up on chasing her through the twisted halls and corridors to her small, out of the way bedroom.

She walked over to the window, placing her hands confidently against the frame in order to watch the muted colours the sun spread across the clouded sky as it sank below the horizon. She was transfixed for a moment, eyes caught on the pretty colours of pink, orange and purple as the blended together to create something beautiful. It looked so effortless, and she wondered why it was that that level of perfection was not possible for mere human beings to achieve. Instead all it seemed that they were capable of was causing each other pain. It wad a sad state of affairs, but as Queen, unfortunately Elsa knew that tough decisions had to be made so that not everybody would be happy with her. She had to do what was best for both her country and her people, and that was a hard balance to achieve. There was nobody to teach her, everything she was learning was through trial and error, and she knew it wasn't going to get any easier either.

There were two soft knocks at the door. Perhaps it was Olaf? She certainly hoped so. She needed someone like him to jolt her out of morbid thoughts, before she did something irrational.

Turning away from the last remnants of the setting sun, she went over and opened the door, at first seeing nobody, then she looked down to indeed see Olaf smiling up at her, the little sweetie.

"Elsa! I've been looking for you for ages, where have you been?" Olaf said excitedly, squeezing past her and into the room.

She turned to face him as he walked on his stubby little legs toward the window she had been looking through not a minute before he arrived. Climbing up onto the sill the way he always did when he visited her, he gazed out the window for a moment, then turned to face her again.

"It's gone!" he pouted at her, and she tried not to laugh, as the serious expression on his face was honestly the most adorable thing she'd ever seen. "You were watching it weren't you!" he pointed a twiggy finger at her, seemingly accusing her of something.

"What?" she managed to get out between her laughter, as she found herself unable to hold it back for a moment longer. "What's gone?"

"The sunset, silly," Olaf told her, plonking himself down on the windowsill, facing toward her now that the sun had well and truly set and there was no longer anything to see outside the window.

"Right. Other than that, was there anything in particular you wanted to speak to me about?" she knew she was reverting into Queen mode here, but she was tired and she wasn't quite up to her nightly chats with Olaf, even though he did usually manage to improve her mood quite significantly.

She instantly felt bad when she saw Olaf's  face fall, clearly disappointed.

"But I wanted to talk..." Olaf hopped down from the windowsill, shuffling toward the door with his head down. "I thought we were friends," he mumbled as he passed through the door.

Elsa felt her conscience berate her, but was unable to summon the energy to go chasing after him. Quite frankly, she was exhausted, and no longer really cared if she was hurting everyone she loved.

She was lying of course, but she had bigger things to worry about at the moment. Like the fact that there were other elemental mages like herself! If there were fire mages, did that mean that there were more ice mages too? This required a significant amount of thought, if only she wasn't so tired, she'd love to stay up late ruminating on all the possibilities!

Closing the blinds over the windows, she changed into her pajamas and climbed into bed, trying not to shiver in the cold. She'd never realised how cold the temperature was in this room before, being previously unbothered by the cold, ice mage that she had been.

She wondered if her powers would ever come back at all, if there was a specific reason that they had disappeared in the first place, or if they just had an expiration date and that there was nothing she could do to regain them now that they were gone. In all honesty, she didn't much mind at the moment, at least it meant that she was physically unable to hurt the people around her. Of course, that wouldn't prevent her from scarring them emotionally, as proven by the way poor Olaf had just left, the poor thing. She felt bad for what she'd done, but there was nothing she could do about it now. She couldn't take back the words, or take back the pain that they had caused.

This feels too short, but I don't know what to add to it, so enjoy. If you have any suggestions for where it should go from here, feel free to comment or be brave and send me a pm! :) promise i don't bite! ;)