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English
Series:
Part 4 of Frozen Realities , Part 1 of Immortal Elsa , Part 1 of Monster in the Mirror
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Published:
2020-05-12
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2,735
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1/1
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32
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111
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1,067

Like Falling Snow

Summary:

Elsa never expected to find a unicorn. Amalthea never expected to find a human with magic.

A chance encounter between two beings born of magic. Two beings intimately familiar with the joy and sadness of love. Two beings more alike than not.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

The world was filled with more wonders than could be counted. Elsa knew this from her books, from stories and the histories that she’d read throughout her life. But knowing and doing were different experiences.

Freedom could be terrifying. The freedom to choose, the freedom to be, the freedom to explore a vast, wide world. It was all there, she just had to reach for it.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Yelana had told her. And it was true; they’d gotten along without her before the fog, and they’d be fine without her now. But there were a lot of old habits that Elsa had to ignore, not the least of which were feelings of responsibility.

She’d taken on a role and she meant to fulfill it. But first, but first … There were places she’d always wanted to see and places she’d never heard about.

So Elsa traveled, for two years, maybe three. From Corona to Avalor to the timeless forests of North America Elsa found a world filled with magic and mystery and creatures of legend.

Elsa saw the wonders of Egypt and Greece. She visited Paris and saw the cathedral from a book she’d loved being restored there. Across the Atlantic was a canyon so huge that she could barely see the other side. But most of all, what she discovered was that in the New World and the Old, there were spirits everywhere. And they were all so different.

A fire spirit from the Enchanted Forest was different from one that lived among the Potawatomi people, who lived along lakes as large as that canyon. There were air and water spirits too, a fact that gave the Nokk much consternation and Elsa endless amusement.

It was back in the Old World, in Europe, that they rode into a lilac wood, seemingly locked into spring despite the snow at its borders. The hairs on her arms stood on end as she felt the magic that permeated the forest. This was an old place, an ancient place and she found herself surreptitiously glancing around, with a strong feeling of being watched.

It wasn’t a feeling she was afraid of, though there had been places that had scared her. Elsa felt calmness and curiosity, and felt an ache in her chest that she couldn’t quite place.

Slowing, she stroked the Nokk’s neck, “Do you sense it too? There’s something here.”

Guiding the Nokk off the path, Elsa looked around as they drifted deeper into the woods. There was a stream, and here she dismounted. The Nokk splashed into the water and played, refreshing himself as she looked around.

“Who are you to tame such magic?”

The woman’s voice was beautiful, hauntingly so. Elsa tried to find where it had come from, but the forest itself seemed to be trying to obscure her vision. Until she saw something sparkling, shimmering in a ray of sunlight. And then there she was, standing just out of reach, staring at her with weary, violet eyes.

A unicorn! Elsa lifted a hand to her mouth, blinking away tears. In all her travels, of all the mythical beasts, she’d never expected to see a unicorn nor did she ever expect one to be so beautiful. Elsa thought of snow falling on a moonlit night, and that there could be no way she could ever mistake this beautiful being for a simple horse. Too elegant in shape, thin and wild and graceful though there was a sadness to her that felt painfully familiar.

Her horn was thin and there was a pattern like a star or flower on her brow.

Realizing it had been the unicorn that had spoken to her, Elsa bit back the thrill of it and answered, “I’ve tamed no magic. The Nokk and I are partners, friends. Besides.”

She tilted her head and smiled mischievously, then twirled her hand until snow began to fall around them. “I’m born of magic. Like you, I suspect.”

The unicorn pranced on her cloven hooves, turning her head this way and that to take in the snow and the sparkling lights that Elsa called up with her power. “It has been long since I’ve seen magic from a human. This forest was my home, but I have spent so much time away. Yet you are the first with magic I have seen in countless years.”

“My name is Elsa,” she said, placing a hand over her chest. “I’m from far to the North of here. The spirits … I don’t really have a way to explain it. I’m human, but I’m one of the spirits too. Like the Nokk.” She nodded her head in the direction of the water spirit, who had stopped playing and was watching them. Elsa could sense no alarm from him, simply a curiosity and supposed the unicorn passed muster.

Turning back, she saw that the unicorn had stepped closer, close enough to touch. Her mane looked soft as silk and a bit of snow made her fur glisten but Elsa kept her hands to herself. One simply did not touch a being such as this without an invitation. “You may, if you like. We are more alike than different.”

Elsa swallowed, and gently ran her fingers down the unicorn’s neck, “May I ask your name?”

“I…” The unicorn tilted her head, confusion and distant memory swirling in her eyes, “I was given a name. Long ago.” She stamped on the ground with one of her hooves, “I had a name. It was given to me. Given to me by a friend.”

There was a sadness that tasted like regret. Gently, Elsa stroked her, “If you do not wish to tell me, I won’t be offended. I know that some things must be kept close to our hearts.”

“Amalthea,” the unicorn murmured. “He called me Lady Amalthea.”

“Your friend?”

Amalthea dipped her head in a slow nod. “I remember now, and I cannot say that I am glad for that if I cannot recall their faces.”

She held Elsa’s gaze with one of her eyes, and continued, “It would not have mattered, before I knew them. Before I knew what it was to be human. To love and fear and regret. But it matters now, that I cannot see them. I cannot see Schmendrick or Molly or…” Her voice became the sort of quiet that love stories were written about, “Lir.”

“Would you like to see them again?” The question was in the air before Elsa could think the better of it. To offer such a thing to an immortal, to one who has lived long enough to forget these things, felt almost cruel.

A shudder ran through Amalthea, and her eyes glistened. “Of course I would. I remember their scent and the timber of their voices, but their faces have faded with time as all the long years run together. I lost so much for them and because of them, but I gained even more. Can one regret and not feel sadness at that regret?”

How long had she lived that the faces of the past were no longer clear? But then, Elsa could no longer recall with full clarity the faces of her parents. Paintings could help, but only so much; the vivid, living memory had faded. In ten years, in thirty, would she only remember how they looked in the paintings?

“Think of their voices, and their scent Amalthea,” Elsa said, slowly guiding her to the stream. “I know a secret. Water has memory.”

And she knelt next to the stream, dipping her fingers into the slowly moving water. Amalthea’s friends had not come here, she didn’t need to ask to understand that. But the unicorn was magic. More magic than Elsa was, more like the Nokk than any human.

Elsa’s magic crackled, forms rising out of the water and suddenly coming into sharp relief as they froze.

There were three; two men and a woman. The woman was shorter than Elsa and middle-aged, with lines around her eyes and mouth that spoke of a life-time of hardness. But there was something in her eyes, something joyous, as though she were looking upon Amalthea even now.

One of the men had a pointed hat, and a jovial look to him, though like the woman his life had been one of hardship and sadness. And like the woman, there was that joy in their eyes.

And the last was a prince, but no less ragged despite his station and with that same joy.

Elsa could scarcely imagine what these people had gone through, but she knew one thing for certain, “They loved you.”

“Oh,” Amalthea cried, circling and nuzzling each of them in turn, and Elsa learned that a unicorn could cry.

Perhaps only one unicorn. Perhaps only this unicorn, but she shed tears.

“Schmendrick was a magician, and not a very good one at first. But he learned, and he got better, and he was sorry for making me human but I forgave him that. And Molly, dear Molly... “ Amalthea nuzzled her again, “She said I came too late in her life, but she was wrong. It was never too late.”

“And that is Lir?” Elsa asked, folding her hands behind her back and kneading at her palm.

“Yes,” Amalthea said simply. “I loved him.”

Three words, three words for a depth of emotion that words could not convey. Elsa thought of Anna, and Kristoff and Olaf. I love them could never do her feelings justice, and it seemed like Amalthea wasn’t going to try.

“I understand,” Elsa said.

“No.” Amalthea stepped out of the water, approaching Elsa, “Not yet.”

“Would you like to meet my friends, my family?” Elsa asked, thinking not just of Anna and Kristoff, but the Northuldra too. Of all the people she knew, they would understand Amalthea the best. They might not be magic, but they could respect it. And maybe a part of her wanted to impress Honeymaren.

“I would like that. This forest can do without me for a time, and I have had a wanderlust since those days. So much so that this is not really home for me.” She looked back at her friends, the trio staring at them as if they could all see each other across the centuries. Amalthea turned back, dipping her head as if she were about to touch her horn to Elsa’s chest. And then she stopped.

“Amalthea?”

“No, not yet,” Amalthea said, almost as if to herself. She lifted her head, “You have given me a gift and in return this shall be my gift to you. But not today.”

Elsa raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t press. Amalthea deserved her secrets and she knew the answers would come in time.

🦄

Birdsong greeted Elsa as she walked through the lilac woods. Closing her eyes, she took in the sounds and the scents, memories of her last visit flooding through her. When she opened them, she was no longer alone.

Amalthea stood beneath a tree, shadowed by the canopy but somehow glowing from hidden light. A smile crossed Elsa’s face as she stepped off the path and towards the tree. “I almost expected you to not be here. You told me once that it wasn’t your home.”

“I told you that you would find me here again the next time we met,” Amalthea reminded her. She moved out of the shade of the tree, letting Elsa run her hand down her neck. It was almost a lover’s caress. Perhaps, if Amalthea could change into a human form at will, it could be.

“How have you been? Did you travel more after you left the north?” She fell into step as Amalthea started to walk, content in her presence and no less awed by her than the first time she’d seen her.

“Some. There are other parts of the world, other unicorns, other immortal beings.”

“Did any of them understand? The joy and sorrow that it is to be mortal?”

Amalthea’s eye turned, gazing at Elsa’s face. “Only one.”

Elsa came to a stop. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. Her voice quivered, “Did you know, back then? When we first met?”

“I said we were more alike than different.”

Magic, Elsa had thought, at the time. The realization that Amalthea had also meant immortal would not come for years after that.

“How is your friend, the Nokk?”

“He’s frolicking in the Enchanted Forest,” Elsa replied, unable to quite look at her. “It’s harder to travel by magical means these days. People have forgotten what it was like to have that kind of wonder.”

“They would see a stallion,” Amalthea reminded her, almost gently.

“Just like they would see you as a mare. Or my powers as an unseasonable flurry.” Elsa tapped her foot on the ground, watching frost and ice spread and for the first time in months could feel the full strength of her powers.

“Elsa?”

“Yes, my friend?”

“I promised you a gift.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Only for mortals.”

Elsa laughed, folding her arms and wrapping them around herself. “I’m still much closer to my mortal years than you are to yours.”

Amalthea seemed to accept that, but she turned, leaning her head down and touching Elsa’s chest with the tip of her horn.

There were so many faces. Family and friends and the women she’d loved but it was Anna’s face flashed into Elsa’s memory like fire. She was younger than the great-grandmother that was most fresh in Elsa’s mind. Maybe thirty at the most.

It was a family gathering, Elsa and Honeymaren fresh off their wedding, surrounded by the half-dozen nephews and nieces that Anna had given her.

To see Anna’s face again as it had been and not through a painting or old photograph, was enough to bring Elsa to her knees. She remembered Kristoff’s beaming face and big hugs, the sweet taste of Honeymaren’s lips and the smile reserved only for her. And Olaf … as the years had gone by she’d realized he’d been the closest thing she’d ever have to a son.

For the first time, Elsa understood the pain she’d caused Amalthea by reminding her of her long dead friends. Here and now, she could remember her sister and her brothers and her wife, and the large family they’d built.

There they were again, ten years later, Elsa still not a day over twenty-five. And ten years after that and after that, until Anna had at last passed away and Olaf with her, and Elsa was alone, the family myth of the immortal Snow Queen.

Another face, Céleste in France, in 1942 and despite her vow to not let herself love again … she had.

Elsa held her hand over her heart. Amalthea’s voice rang in her head, Can one regret and not feel sadness at that regret? “I understand.”

“Yes,” Amalthea said, not unkindly. “Now you do.”

Turning around, Elsa could see the stream. Nearly two centuries ago she’d given Amalthea the faces of her friends back. Today, Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, Honeymaren and Ryder stood, remembered by the water, joy in their eyes. Elsa approached them, touching each of them, Anna last. She caressed her sister’s face. Of all the regrets of all the grief, Anna cut the deepest.

“Most immortals hold no regret, because they have never known love,” Amalthea explained. “Because they’ve never been human. To be human is to regret.”

“To be human is to regret,” Elsa repeated, then shook her head. “No. Not … quite. To be human is to love. To have joy. To have sadness too. I would never give up the joy I’ve had to take away the sadness of their passing. But Anna lived a full life, all of them had. It’s one of the things I take the most comfort from.”

“Will you stay for a time?” Amalthea asked.

She sounded so lonely that it gave Elsa pause. “Yes. Of course. It’s nearly time that I reinvent myself again and I’ve missed you.”

“Then I’ve one more gift for you.” Amalthea turned her flank towards Elsa, and bent her front legs slightly. Elsa started, then rested her hand on the unicorn’s side as she understood what she was being offered.

“Oh.” No unicorn would ever let a human ride her. But Amalthea was no ordinary unicorn and Elsa no ordinary human.

Notes:

Sometimes you don't know where something comes from you just need to write it