The white and blue patterned door creaked open slowly and a blue eye peered out. The coast was clear. The staff was sleeping at this time of night, and Anna would sleep until noon every day if she could - especially this day. Anna had come to Elsa's room after the funeral and knocked, but when Elsa didn't - couldn't - respond, Anna had sat on the other side of the door for hours crying softly. With the funeral over and their parents gone forever, Anna had nothing else to distract her from her grief. But Elsa still did.

Elsa hurried down the hall, her boots muffled by the rug and her conspicuous pale hair covered by a black hooded cloak. She encountered no one on the way to the stables. Elsa saddled her father's horse, Ibenholt, a proud black gelding who whuffed mildly as she struggled to slip the bridle over his head - it had been a long while indeed since she had gone riding. Elsa led him out the back gate before mounting up and they cantered down the narrow stone bridge toward the forested foothills outside of Arendelle.

Elsa had the tattered map tucked inside her bodice, but she had studied it so meticulously over the last ten years that it was nearly falling apart under her gloved fingers. Besides, she and Ibenholt had come this way before - a decade ago.

The wind was surprisingly brisk for late spring, whipping Ibenholt's mane around and stinging Elsa's eyes. As they reached their destination she felt tears spill over onto her cheeks and she brushed them away. The fingertips of her black gloves came away damp. It's just the wind, Elsa thought, and the thought sent a pang through her. I am far too cold to cry.

The stone plain was littered with various sizes of moss-covered boulders, nearby geysers hissing steam as she dismounted. Elsa glided slowly to the center of the rocks, toward the biggest boulder of all. The hem of her cloak whispered over the rough stone as Elsa rolled her steps from the outside in as she had been taught. This is how a queen walks, her mother had instructed her, and one day you will be queen. Elsa would be eighteen in a few short weeks and would not officially take the throne until her twenty-first birthday, but she had nothing to fall back on now. She was to be queen sooner rather than later, in name if not yet in duty, and she would act like it. Because she had to.

"I am the Crown Princess Elsa of Arendelle, the heir apparent to the Northern throne," she said, projecting her voice to sound as commanding as possible. "I have come to seek your wisdom as my father once did." She paused, revolving slowly on the spot to gauge any movement, but the stones remained as solid and still as ever.

"My parents -" Elsa took a deep breath. Saying it would make it real. "The king and queen . . ." But she couldn't finish. She closed her eyes. Don't feel, don't feel . . . Her hands fisted at her sides.

"I was here, do you remember?" she cried, her voice rising a few tones. Snow began to fall softly around her. "Ten years ago. You told me to control my powers, and I have. I've been a good girl!"

The stones did not react to her impassioned speech. Suddenly self-conscious of the light dusting of snow she had caused, Elsa lowered the cadence of her voice. "I've been a good girl," she repeated. Her shoulders slumped and her head drooped. The snow stopped, but the temperature around her had dropped at least twenty degrees. "My parents are dead, and I don't know how to control my powers without them." Elsa sniffed. "I feel so alone."

"I'm right out here for you, just let me in . . ." Anna's voice soared through her memory from the night before. Elsa had never wanted to open the door so badly as she had last night. It was getting harder and harder to protect those she loved.

"I'm alone," she repeated fiercely. "Tell me, what am I going to do?" Ice crusted the fingers of her gloves, but Elsa was done caring. She flung them off, as if the mere touch of them burned.

"Help me, damn you!" she screamed, kicking the closest rock and getting only a stubbed toe for her trouble. "I can't control it; I can't! I'm so afraid all the time! What if I hurt someone? What if I hurt Anna again?"

Elsa reached out to touch one of the inanimate boulders and cried out. Jagged icicles had burst forth in a semi-circle around her. Elsa jerked her hands back, balling them up close to her chest, horrified by what she had done. "I can't do this anymore! Please!"

Elsa's breath was coming in sharp bursts, leaving a puff of vapor in the air that vanished before her eyes. She could feel herself starting to panic, her father's cautionary words echoing in her head. "Calm down; getting upset will only make it worse." She shrieked as snow and ice exploded from her hands with each wave of fear, coating the stones around her in a thick layer of ice.

Elsa scrambled for her abandoned gloves, slipping and almost impaling herself on a fearsome stalagmite of ice. She jammed the gloves back over her hands before she breathed again. Conceal, don't feel. Elsa took a deep breath and gave the boulders one last look. She squared her shoulders and walked away.

Later, safely shut in her room, within the four frost-covered walls that were her world, Elsa paced. Her body ached with exhaustion, but each time she closed her eyes all she could see was her parents' faces. Elsa hugged her arms tighter around herself. She didn't dare take off the gloves, not even here. She was numb.

Snow hung suspended in the air like a snow globe. She slid down, her back against the door, drew her knees up to her chest and began to cry.

"You'll be fine, Elsa." They were her father's last words to her. But he was wrong. Nothing would ever be fine again.