Fun stuff, yo.

4. Wild Ride

She followed Jack's instructions to the best of her ability, but he refused to reveal the purpose of what she was building.

"I don't trust my ice to hold here, so we're going with yours. Just do exactly what I tell you and it'll be perfect."

The ice palace was now encircled by a narrow strip of ice, two or three feet in width, that looped and swirled like so many miles of glittering ribbon. Heedless of his own safety, Jack clambered all over the structure as she shaped it, adding a layer of his own frost to coat the outer surface. "Make this higher," he ordered, or, "Tilt this part that way more, right about...there.

"It would take me two seconds if I were doing this this," he grumbled.

One end of the ribbon was anchored to the highest castle tower; the other he had her cut off in a dramatic upwards swoop out over the frozen bay. After casting a critical eye over their creation, he told Elsa, "I'm going to get some supplies. I'll meet you up on the highest tower."

From her vantage point, Elsa could see the entire expanse of the winter which blanketed the kingdom from hills to coast. Apart from the stony crags of the mountains and a few splashes of color in the village, the whole of Arendelle was dressed in pale shades of blue and lavender. Between the old castle and her new palace of ice, she could see a small dot making its way across the bay.

Jack took another couple of minutes to retrieve his load and drag it up the spiraling tower stairs. His head of white-gray hair poked through the trapdoor, followed by a thick bundle of fabric that he heaved partway into the small room. Elsa helped pull the bundle all the way through, shaking off the accumulated ice crystals as she did so.

"Remind me to never, ever take the wind for granted again." Jack flopped down. Elsa shook the last of the frost from the embroidery and held up the cloth at arm's length.

"Jack," she said in a low voice, "this is the Arendelle flag."

"Really?" He rose from his early grave. "Looks nice. Got lots of cool flowery stuff. I like the purple, you don't see a lot of purple flags... Could use some stars, though. It's not a real flag without stars."

Centuries of flag etiquette quailed under the brute force of his cheerful sacrilege. Despite her weak protests, he ripped off two strips and used them to tie the corners of the flag around her shoulders. "This is what queens do, right? Wear flags? So you're just following tradition. Besides, this is just...insurance."

The remains of the once-proud symbol of Arendelle fluttering behind her, Esla let Jack maneuver her to the narrow window. She looked down; a couple feet below was the beginning of the ice chute.

A sickening realization dawned. "You can't possible be going to - " she began.

"GO!" Jack shouted happily. Then he shoved her out the window.

Fortunately, the chute's downward slant saved Elsa from landing on her face. Unfortunately, it meant that as soon as she belly-flopped onto it, she started sliding downwards. There was a soft thump as Jack dropped onto the ice behind her. She automatically reached out to stop her descent, but her fingers scrabbled uselessly at the slick surface. There was no way to stop her from sliding faster and faster.

She tried to throw up a barrier even though hitting it at this speed would result in tri-toned skin, the other two colors being black and blue, but nothing happened.

"Good thing I added my ice, huh?" shouted Jack behind her. Elsa twisted around to scream at him, but the words vanished from her mouth at the sight of him.

Jack was whizzing along at the same screaming pace as her, except that he was on his feet - and wearing an earsplitting grin. The chute made a shard turn, making Elsa's neck crack. Jack laughed but stayed upright, leaning in to counter the curve.

As the chute reached an impossible angle, Elsa had to cling to the edges of the path to avoid flying off. He's not going to make it, she thought in panic. No sooner had the thought entered her mind when Jack yelped. One minute he was behind her, the next he had disappeared, thrown off the ice by the force of the turn.

"Jack!" she began to scream, but was cut off by was a sharp clack. At the last minute he had latched the crook of his staff onto the inside edge of the ice. The slender length of wood was the only thing keeping him from hurtling to his death. Clinging tightly to his improvised lifeline, Jack swung around the curve and landed back on the path, still superbly balanced and without slowing down in the least.

"I told you that part needed to tilt more!" he shouted over the howling wind.

The slide seemed to go on forever. The wind blew her hair into a tangled nest, but she spared not a thought for it. After a series of hairpin bends came the loop-de-loops, one after another. When Elsa survived the first one without mortal injury, she kept her eyes open for the rest, marveling at how the world spun around her. There were no more close calls after that first terrifying curve; the ice path was always just wide enough, just banked enough to keep them from flying off. Still, Elsa was relieved to see the surface of the bay growing nearer.

Then she remembered.

"Here it comes!" yelled Jack.

Directly in front of them, the path veered into a vertical strip of ice. It seemed certain that they would crash right through it, but Jack's engineering genius proved itself once again, and they sailed smoothly up the sheer path. Through it Elsa could see the distant shore, rippling as the icy window flashed by.

"Alley-oop!"

The ice beneath her vanished, and Elsa flew.

There was nothing around her, no ice, no snow, and no frost. The thousand tendrils of frozen power she had sent creeping through the kingdom were suddenly cut off from their source. They fell away all at once, leaving silence in their wake.

In the silence, Elsa could hear the voice of the wind.

It rustled in her ear, as faint and silvery as a strand of spider's silk. It fluttered once, twice, trying to tell her an unfathomable secret, and then it vanished.

Elsa was falling. The wind tore at her clothes and hair, but the ground pulled harder, and she might as well have been falling through cobwebs. She felt a painful jerk and the flag tied to her shoulders billowed like a full sail. Although it slowed her fall, the bay was still approaching too quickly for comfort, so she stretched out her hands and conjured up a thick snowdrift.

"Good thing you had insurance, huh." Jack's head popped out of the snow beside her. Suddenly she was reminded of his disastrous foray off the balcony...

"You knew!" she gasped. "I told you I didn't want to fly and you still - "

He held his staff out in front of him, prepared for the possibility that icicles might start flying. "It almost worked. You were catching serious hang time! If we just give it one more try - "

"Never again," said Elsa though gritted teeth. "Never. I'm not like you. I am a queen. And I will not fly around like a - like a vagabond."

Nothing could change her mind, no matter how enticing he tried to be. Frustrated, Jack finally gave up. But even though he'd resigned to the fact that in the future, both Elsa's feet would be staying planted firmly on the ground, the matter wasn't over yet.

The ice chute resisted all her attempts at removal and remodel. She couldn't even put a scratch on it. "Take it down," she ordered Jack, who was watching in barely-concealed satisfaction.

"No can do. What, do I look like my name's Jack De-frost? Besides, even if I could, I wouldn't. That thing's a masterpiece! You've gotta admit that the ride was fun."

"Fine," she relented. It wasn't much of a choice.

The twisting ribbons of ice added a certain grace of their own to the spires of her palace, anyway. It looked as though she'd just gained a new landscaping feature.

Jack's more of an ad hoc sculptor, he doesn't really go in for Elsa's cathedral-raising theatrics. He does, however, have a natural instinct for the physics of building giant ice slides, thanks to all that flying around.

And once again, this fic is not dead! Updates may be slow but they are coming, I promise you! Status of chapters posted on profile page.