A year used to be a long time. A year used to be forever. Time stopped and started in the ballroom with Anna, and it's been making up for lost time faster than ever.

For so long, Elsa was made to be ice and wind and jagged, cold things. But now she's no longer drifting, lost and lonely on the wind. She's anchored by the things that give her life meaning: her family, her kingdom, her people. Ice is clear and empty on its own but water takes the form of whatever holds it and Elsa is shaped by many things now; she floats.

For so long she had been what she thought others wanted her to be, blindly accepting their choices as her own. Not much has changed, but everything is different. She still has routine, structure, and responsibilities, but she's learned to make them her own. To make room for herself in all of them. For too long she'd sacrificed herself for the good of others to no avail. She knows better now; Anna had shown her that. She couldn't be a sister the way her parents showed her to be. Or a queen the way people expected her to be. She can only do both the way she knows how. No good comes from hiding from the world; the best way to love it is to be a part of it.

She understands now that she isn't just one thing, that she is so much more than one thing, that she is Elsa: sister, daughter, friend, queen. She isn't shoved into her roles anymore, without choice or autonomy. She chooses to be who she is - all of who she is - and that makes all the difference in the world.

It's been years and she still catches herself sometimes, hesitant to reach out to Anna. It happens in quiet moments, when things slip into how they were - crossing the corridors after dark and walking past the door to Anna's room, where her sister sits curled up with Kristoff and a book by the fire in one of her rare quiet moments. That filter is still there, and for the tiniest second Elsa's breath hitches and her heart clenches. But as the moment stretches, it relaxes and deflates, and Elsa can smile once more. She'll never stop knocking because she never has to wonder if Anna will answer.

She has a brother now, and Elsa weighs the broken fiction that Hans left behind against the rooted integrity in Kristoff. It was Hans who looked more like their father, but it's Kristoff who acts like him, with quiet loyalty and loving smiles. Lies are figments but truth is grounded and a life can only grow from things of substance.

Elsa's never had the chance to live a normal life and though Anna scrunches her nose at state affairs, Elsa relishes the chance to do what she was born to do, was trained to do, and loves to do, without fear or favor.

Her work grounds her; familiar, but altogether new. The treaties and council meetings are the same, but now she is a true ruler, part of her people as much as they are a part of her.

Every summer there is ice skating in the courtyard, one of Anna's new traditions that Elsa loves. It's the perfect celebration of her presence among her people, and there is no more distance. No more hiding.

She knows who she is now, that she is Elsa, and just like a snowflake, reflects the entire spectrum of light: of life and love, of the world around her and the people within it. She has been shaped by cold and brutal circumstance and atmosphere, but crystallized into beauty, made sharper and stronger than before.

There is beauty in snowflakes, now, and Elsa no longer fears the wind. She trusts it to take her exactly where she was meant to be.

And it has.

Elsa is on firm ground, and she is solid.

The End