The wind howled, whistling eerily, a vicious draft gusting through cracks and crannies in the castle. The shutters on Elsa's window banged repeatedly, knocking against the reinforced wooden bars as though someone wanted to come in.

This has to be a dream, Elsa thought. There's just no way this is real.

"Elsa, we were so worried about you, darling," her mother said. She slipped up onto the side of the bed, and just like when Elsa was small, pressed the back of her hand to Elsa's forehead.

There was no way, but she felt real.

"You still feel feverish," said her mother. A voice she hadn't heard in three years, it had become a distant memory. But at that half familiar tone, Elsa was wrenched back in time. She felt eighteen again. "I'll get Gerda to bring some medicine up. How are you feeling?"

There was no way, but she felt real. Looked real. Sounded real.

"I—" Elsa choked out, the words spongy, sticking to the back of her throat. "I don't—"

"Elsa, you're shaking," said her mother. The concern tucked into the corners of her mouth broke Elsa, the words she was attempting shattering into pieces.

A ferocious gust of wind slammed the shutters against the bars with a bang.

"But, you're both supposed to be dead," she managed to gasp. Silence greeted this pronouncement. The Queen looked over her shoulder at her husband, who wore an expression just as baffled as her.

"She was saying a bunch of stuff like that when she woke up," Anna said nervously, hanging back. "I didn't think it was this bad though."

Against protesting muscles, Elsa pushed herself up into a sitting position on the bed, pausing when the world span violently. Anna rushed to her side to steady her, her mother building up her pillows she could sit comfortably.

"Elsa, please rest. You're not well," said her father, in that tone she never would have dared disobey as a child. But Elsa shook her head, tears burning her eyes. "No," she said, and when the word left her in a hoarse whisper, she tried again. More strongly. "No. You died. I mourned you. Anna and I, we grew up without you. I—" her voice faltered and failed, tears dividing the world into pieces of cloudy kaleidoscope.

And Elsa felt warm arms close around her. She blinked away tears, to find herself staring at the detail on the sapphire broach cinched at her mother's neckline. Her mother pulled her closer against her, fingers ghosting through her hair.

Her father laid the comforting weight of his hand against her shoulder. "It's okay, Elsa. It was a just a dream. It's over now," he said.

"We're right here," said her mother, voice close to her ear. "We'd never leave you and your sister. You know that, right?"

Anna plonked herself down on the bedspread by her feet a squeezed a comforting smile. "It's all going to be fine, you big dork."

There were too many questions that needed answering, but Elsa couldn't hold it back anymore. Even if this was a dream and in a few minutes she'd wake up, her parents were alive. There were right here, flesh and blood, by her side.

For weeks after their death, she'd clung onto this hope. That one day she'd wake up, and things would be back to normal. That her parents weren't really dead. That it'd only been a dream.

Elsa allowed herself to think: maybe it really had.

She squeezed her mother, her mama, with every fibre of her being, burying her face in the crook of her neck. The tears she'd been holding back streamed freely down her face.

She still wore the same forget-me-not perfume.

"You're back," she sobbed into her shoulder. "You're really back. Mama. Papa." She was a helpless, gross sobbing mess— salty tears soaking into the material of her mother's gown— but she didn't care, as long as her mama kept stroking her hair. As long as they stayed with her.

She didn't know how much time had elapsed before her mama gently pulled away. It was a struggle not to cling to her like a child, afraid that once she let go, she'd vanish. The Queen pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at Elsa's eyes. She struggled to get a hold of herself. This was a happy moment. She shouldn't be crying.

"Sorry," she managed out. Her throat felt hoarser than ever for all the crying.

"It's alright. You've been sick for a long time, Elsa. It's natural things might be confusing for a while. You need to rest."

Elsa found herself nodding. Gerda arrived then with a bottle of medicine, the same sickly sweet stuff she remembered from her childhood.

"It makes my heart glad to see you back safe, Princess Elsa," she said. "We were all so worried about you."

Anna sat cross-legged on the end of the bed as they chatted about mundane things: the new maid, Hilda, and her romance with one of the grooms in the stables; plans for the celebration for the 25th anniversary of the King's coronation; some renovations to the throne room. Mostly, Elsa kept quiet, watching, remembering all the little details that'd been leeched away by time. Like the mole on the back of her mother's left hand. The way Papa touched his chin when he laughed. When he finally rose from his seat, announcing their intentions to check back on her later, Elsa couldn't help but exclaim, "Wait!"

Her parents waited, hovering by the door.

The words teetered on the tip of her tongue. The ones she'd always wished she'd said on that morning, three years ago. "I love you," Elsa said.

They both smiled, her papa putting a hand on his wife's shoulder. "We love you too, Elsa. You have no idea how glad we are to have you back."

It took everything in Elsa not to burst out crying again. The emotion was a tight bottle stopper in her throat as she managed out, "Me too, Papa."

For the next few days, every time Elsa woke she was disorientated to find herself in her room in the castle. She kept waiting for the dream to end. For her to wake up.

But she didn't.

Little by little, her fever began to subside. Her pains faded to aches. She could talk again without it hurting. Outside, the storm raged unceasing, wind and snow lashing against the walls, hail slamming against her window like a battering ram.

Papa would come to perch on the end of the bed and ask how she was feeling. Mama would visit and comb her hair. Anna rarely left, lounging on the bed and chattering from dawn to dusk. One day, when the storm was particularly fierce, slamming the shutters repeatedly, Elsa said, "That storm sounds terrible. I don't think it's let up since I woke up."

"Oh boy," sighed Anna.

"What is it?"

"I really hope you get your memory back soon," Anna said. When she saw her baffled expression, she carried on: "That storm is, well— actually, it'd probably be better if I showed you. Do you think you'd be okay to walk a bit? We'll take it slowly."

Elsa quickly agreed. After spending so long confined to her room, she felt like she was going to start running up the walls soon.

Anna fetched her slippers out from under the bed and Elsa attempted to ease into her dressing gown. She was still stiff from the heavy bruising all up her left side and shoulder, marked an ugly blotchy yellow colour. When Anna saw she was struggling, she rushed to her. Elsa flushed as their skin made contact, Anna helping her thread her arms through the right holes.

"Oh hey, Elsa. You must be getting better. You've got a lot more colour in your face now!" Anna said, voice bright and chipper. Elsa burned even hotter, and Anna's beaming smile begun to twist into a concerned frown. "I hope your fever's not coming back," she said, placing her palm over Elsa's forehead.

"I'm fine," said Elsa, twisting away with embarrassment. "Let's just go."

Anna's touch reminded her too much of the hedge maze. Anna's hand upon her face. Say it with me: you won't hurt me.

Elsa reminded herself: None of those things really happened. Here, her and Anna's relationship was sisterly. Proper. Just as it should be.

If she still felt a pang of loss when Anna's hand fell away, it was just going to be something she'd have to deal with.

In the castle, everything looked exactly as she remembered. Though there was a certain gloom to those corridors and hallways, all the shutters barred against the raging storm. It reminded Elsa uncomfortably of her childhood, those years after her eighth birthday when all the bright airy windows of Arendelle Castle had been closed. There was a similar kind of musk to the air that pulled her back to those days— a kind of shut-up, dusty sort of smell, that to Elsa had always tasted of unhappiness.

"Anna… did Mama and Papa… every try to separate us when we were younger?" she asked.

"Why would they do that?" Anna asked, looking over at her in confusion.

The dusty taste left a tight feeling in her throat. "To protect us."

Anna's hands tightened around her arm. "Our parents love us. They would never do something like that," she said.

Elsa swallowed, hard. What did that mean? That their parents, in that other place she remembered, didn't love them?

Despite the shut up windows, nothing else reminded her of those years. Even closed up, the castle was bustling with staff. Passing them in the corridor, maids curtsied and greeted them warmly: "Great to see you feeling a bit better, Princess Elsa."; "Glad to see you up and well, Princess!"; "We're so happy to have you back safe, your Highness."

As Anna took Elsa further, she began to wonder where her sister was taking her. Twice they stopped to rest, Elsa finding she was still running out of breath easily.

When they reached the bottom of a steep winding staircase, Elsa figured out where they were going. "The north tower," she said, and her lips quirked into a smile. "Didn't Papa ban us from coming here when were kids after you tried to toboggan down from the top?"

"In retrospect, it was probably about as smart as riding our bike-for-two down the grand staircase," Anna said, grinning.

"Just remembering that hurts," Elsa said, as she cringed. "Why is it that my little sister was the bad influence? Surely that's the wrong way round."

"We always had fun though, right?"

"Yes, I guess we did." It was always Anna that nudged her into their more wilder adventures. Sometimes she'd have to cajole or beg Elsa into it, but they always ended up having fun.

And without Elsa's powers, those games never would have had to end. Elsa never would have hurt her. They never would have been separated. Their parents would never have taken that trip to Corona to try and learn more about controlling her powers. They never would have been orphaned.

She and Anna would never have grown up isolated, alone.

And though her powers might have come under her control, Arendelle thawed, their relationship would never have been so irrevocably charged and changed.

Elsa started back to reality when her foot, waiting for another step, met air. They were at the top of the tower. Elsa blinked at the sudden light that filtered in through the windows on hexagonal walls.

Had the storm ceased?

Anna led her out onto the balcony, and a strange feeling of vertigo hit Elsa.

"The storm… it's below us," she said, fingers gripping hard to the balustrade. Her words were lost in the twisting tempestuous fury of the snowstorm. A thick ring of clouds, it circled the castle like a wedding band. Further out, there was nothing but white, and the blue horizon.

Arendelle wasn't below the blizzard. It was the blizzard.

"We call it the Everstorm," Anna shouted, voice rising above the whistling and groaning of the wind. "Sometimes it parts, or slows. But never never ceases. Not ever."

"Ever? But what about-" The wind ate the words, and raised her voice: "But what about the rest of Arendelle?" she shouted. There was no way the people in their kingdom would survive an eternal blizzard.

"Arendelle? You were there. That's where the search party found you," yelled Anna.

That frozen tundra.

Elsa's voice cracked as she said, "This— this is terrible."

"Why?" shouted Anna, slipping her hand into hers. "The storm is here to protect us. Nothing can get in, and nothing can get out. We're safe here." There was an intensity in Anna's eyes that she was drawn to, away from the writhing mass of the storm. Anna squeezed her hand. "You and I, we'll never lose anything else ever again," her sister said.