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The shadows were growing steadily longer as the afternoon wore on. Outside the windows, it was warm and sunny with the turning leaves of the mountainous forests in the distance seeming to sparkle as they moved in a gentle breeze, and their coniferous, evergreen counterparts standing out in ever-increasing relief. Even on a day-to-day basis, Elsa considered as she climbed the stairs to the top floor of the castle proper, she swore she could see the difference, and since she remembered watching the change of the seasons from her bedroom window as a child, she also idly wondered at how it might be to see summer truly fade into autumn this time - not only from a much higher point with a full, all-sides view thanks to the balcony she'd have access to from the new chambers, but with the additional pleasure of Anna's company.
Of course, chances were that the ever nature-loving princess would rather observe the result of the turn of the year from in the forest rather than from a man-made tower, but if that was the case, they'd just have to work out a compromise that let them do both, the queen decided, and then smiled when she realized how good of a mirror of the two of them the entire notion was. Elsa knew herself to have a greater appreciation for the bigger picture overall, and had learned as part of her duties to generally leave the details to others and take on the part of the overseer more than anything else. Anna, meanwhile, was very much the kind of soul who immersed herself fully in whatever she was doing, and tended to give the process of cleaning a horse's hooves as much attention as she did arguing with the city's trade council over taxation, though she certainly enjoyed the former more than the latter.
In fact, Elsa decided as she turned a corner and continued down the empty hall, the reason that two of them made such a good team for guiding Arendelle and its people was probably because they usually managed to balance each other out. As they'd grown closer, Anna had learned to come to her with items she'd gotten stuck on, and - after a little pointed needling from the younger woman - Elsa herself had started doing the same.
Now, if she could only find her so they could spend some time together at the festival, that would be even better. She hadn't seen her sister since breakfast, and even that had been a brief glimpse since they'd both been almost horrendously behind that morning. Anna had only eaten at her insistence - though her cheeks hadn't bulged that much since the triple-chocolate cake at Elsa's 7th birthday - and shortly after had torn out of the castle at a fast clip; heading for the city in her workaday clothing to oversee (or more likely help with) the last preparations for the festival, and presumably scaring the guards out of a few years as she went.
Anna was always so full of life that even the hardest heart would smile just to look at her, and Elsa was sure that served her well in her dealings with both the castle staff and the city leaders. First of all, it made her a decidedly unusual politician (rare as it was to find of those that you just couldn't stay annoyed with), and secondly it made her the kind of person everyone wanted to please at the end of the day, just because of the way she was.
It didn't hurt that she did everything full-out, either, Elsa decided as she entered the queen's chambers, and quickly covered her mouth with one hand. If there was indeed such a thing as sleepingenthusiastically, Anna was doing that right now; laying as she was on her stomach with her upper body perpendicular to side of the mattress, one boot on the floor and the other still on her foot, one knee on the bed and the other dangling a few inches off the hardwood, arms caught behind her back in the sleeves of her only halfway-removed jacket, simple ponytail a semi-mess of escaped copper, head turned to the side, lips parted and a fine thread of drool hanging from her mouth.
I seem to remember her saying something about me working too hard, she considered as she somehow managed to keep her chuckles silent, and moved closer. At least I always managed to get out of my clothes before falling asleep.
Anna, of course, was hardly privy to the queen's amusement in her unconscious state, but still managed to react with uncanny timing. At first, her arms twitched. Then it was her face, and then finally her legs, which was sadly enough to shift the balance of her body weight and send her to the floor in tangle of flesh and fabric, with dazed, turquoise eyes blinking up at the ceiling about a half dozen times before they sharpened and then settled on Elsa.
"Hey!" Incredible, really, that she could change from completely sleep-drunk to wide awake so rapidly. "There you are."
"Here I am," Elsa agreed, and folded her arms as she surveyed her grounded sibling and tried to find a hand to offer her own to somewhere beneath the fiery hair and simple clothes. "Are you alright?"
"Huh?" Anna frowned at her, and only then seemed to notice where she was; pale eyes flicking from the bed to the floor and finally back to the queen before she chuckled sheepishly. "Oh. Yeah, I'm fine. Guess I needed a nap."
"Apparently." Since a hand was still hard to identify, she forewent that entirely and instead managed to grasp Anna by the elbow as the younger woman sat up. "You were looking for me, I take it?"
"Well, I was going to." Fabric rustled as Anna shed her jacket, and then folded her legs under her without bothering to remove her remaining boot. "Feel asleep first, though." A grin, and she was resting her chin on one loosely curled first and peering up at the queen from above the sleeve of her practical shirt. "Not that I remember that part."
"With how I found you when I came in here, I would imagine not," Elsa noted amusedly, and perched on the edge of the bed. "You looked like you'd passed out a few seconds after starting to change, and only landed at least somewhat on the bed by pure chance."
Anna blushed, but laughed easily enough. "Sounds about right," she conceded wryly, and started to untie her tangled hair. "There was a lot of last-minutes to take care of today, and I'm still kinda wiped from the night before last."
"I told you so."
A stuck-out tongue was the reply to that, followed by a now-loose hair tie bouncing off her forehead. "Aaanyway," Anna then drawled. "Totally worth it, and today was even more fun, because there's a lot of out-of-towners here now, and with me dressed like this-" She indicated her clothes with one hand, and smirked. "-none of them had a clue who I was. I was ordered around like a common apprentice - it was pretty funny."
"The Princess and the Pauper?" Elsa hazarded with a smile, and then hid a giggle behind one hand when the pale eyes rounded.
"I forgot about that story!" Anna jolted onto her knees and grabbed her sister's hands; peering up at her earnestly. "Do we still have it?"
"I think so." She chuckled at the princess's unruly appearance, and tried to smooth down a particularly stubborn lock of fiery red to no avail. "At least, I don't see why it should have been discarded."
"Awesome." The copper head plopped down into her lap and stayed there, and a content sigh could be heard. "Read it to me later?"
"Last time I read you that story, it was because you were barely able to read yourself," Elsa reminded her dryly. "Please tell me you've improved since then." No verbal reply, though there was a distinct, pinching sensation on the front of her thigh that made her start. "Did you just bite me?"
"Of course not!" Anna's expression was perfectly haughty as she sat back, and sniffed. "What a preposterous notion - biting the queen. Utter tosh, I tell you!"
"Quite." She regarded the younger woman with an arched eyebrow, and then used a single finger to lift the section of her skirt that now had tiny - but unmistakable - teeth marks in it. The fabric was of a pale enough shade of violet to let the slight moisture left behind show in vivid relief. "Care to explain these, then?"
A shrug of the shoulders under their white, linen covering. "You're the one who said I was drooling when you came in."
"Which you were," Elsa agreed, and squinted a little as she poked her sister in the nose. "However, I said no such thing."
"Really?" Anna got to her feet and brushed herself off, then plopped down on the bed next to her. "I could've sworn you did."
"Then that's two things in favor of your memory being faulty."
"Fine, so I bit you." A shoulder bumped her own, and there was a distinct, mischievous sparkle in Anna's eye when she leaned in just a fraction further. "I could always do it again."
All Elsa managed at that was an odd, half-choking noise, and even as she heard her sister start to laugh (presumably at the absolutely gobsmacked expression she was currently sporting), she could do little more than just stare; painfully aware of the fact that she was blushing hard enough to make the tips of her ears burn, and probably looked as if Anna had just whapped her upside the head with a codfish.
She might as well have. While Elsa had settled on subtle, cautious pushes, 'Anna' and 'subtle' really weren't two words that tended to belong in the same sentence. Where Elsa knew herself to be insidious and even somewhat elusive in their recently acquired, on-off habit of flirting, Anna was forward and blunt and sometimes downright brash; a characteristic of hers that Elsa found hopelessly charming, even if it also had a tendency to knock her for a bit of a loop at times - such as now.
Narrowing her eyes, she turned lightly onto one hip to better face the laughing redhead and - when Anna met her eyes - placed her entire hand over the other woman's face and pushed.
"Mmph!" Anna fell back onto the mattress with a flail of her arms, though her merriment didn't dwindle in the slightest. Her cheeks were tinted a bright, autumn-apple red and her eyes tightly shut; chest heaving and arms wrapping protectively around her midsection as she all but howled with laughter. "Oh, God... y-your face, Elsa!"
The face in question scrunched. "I'm glad you're amused," the queen replied dryly, and rolled her eyes as her sister continued to laugh. It was, she considered, times like these where she wondered if Anna said things like that because she meant them, or because she got such a kick out of the way Elsa herself reacted to them.
Later for that, though. Right now, all she wanted was to see darkness fall and torchlight glitter in Anna's eyes.
"Come on." She curled a hand into the front of the white shirt and pulled, and both felt and heard the soft, startled snort that was the reply as she yanked her sister to a seat - or at least into less of a reclining position. "You're going to giggle the entire night away if you keep this up, and we'll miss the festival completely."
"Heheheheh." Anna was winding down to chortles as she settled on her elbows; pale eyes still bright with amusement - and mischief, Elsa noted. "What? You don't like me in what I'm wearing right now?"
This time she had an idea of what was coming, and so managed to stay her reaction to merely a slow smile and a lazily arched eyebrow. "Believe me, sister dear," she told her, and trailed a feather-light touch over the curve of a freckled cheekbone. "I always find you absolutely-" Beautiful? No - too innocent. "-ravishing. What you happen to be wearing has only a fraction to do with it."
With that, Anna was the one to flush hotly; eyes wide and jaw unhinging a little. That was only fair, though, because if they were going to play, then Elsa was certainly going to play to win.
"Aside from that," she then went on, perfectly poised as she rose to a stand and smoothed down the skirt of her dress. "I was of the mind that perhaps you'd rather not be mistaken for a carpenter's apprentice again this evening - dashing though you look in your pauper's clothing." A lazy hand waved towards the vanity, and the dress that had been left on a hook next to it. "Though if that's what you prefer, don't let me stop you."
"Eh." Speech seemed to have returned, and Anna's nose was scrunching a little even as a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Nah - it was fun and kinda nice to be sort of anonymous for a while, but I wanna see if I get recognized in my real persona, you know?" The smile became a full one, and she sat up with her elbows resting on her knees and her hands folded. "'Specially since a lot of them thought I was male."
Elsa just stared at her. "Male?" She was aware of her eyebrows rising sharply as she studied her sister. From the clothing alone, she could understand it; the combination of pants and a shirt was male dress traditionally, but Anna was hardly shaped like a man. Was, in fact, noticeably curved, and the shirt she currently wore was nowhere near loose enough to hide that.
"Male," Anna replied in perfect seriousness, and the corners of her eyes crinkled when she grinned. "I think I know why. Hang on."
Then she was on her feet and collecting the rogue boot, her crumpled jacket and the hair tie that had landed on the floor after bouncing off of Elsa's forehead, and before the queen could blink she'd disappeared around a corner into the sitting area. Elsa remained where she was for a few heartbeats, and then shook her head as she strode over to her closet and pulled it open, as always smiling at the sight of Anna's clothing mixed in with her own.
It made for a rather tight fit, but that would be rectified soon enough, she decided as she took a step back and tugged idly at her lower lip as she surveyed her options. There were plenty of light dresses stored in here for summer, and by color alone it was easy to tell which ones were Anna's (greens, pinks, gilded browns) and which ones were her own (blues, violets, silvers). She had a vague memory of a lesson on finding colors that complimented coloring from somewhere in her childhood, and that somehow set her to wondering what her sister might look like in a brilliant red. The resulting vision was enough to tint her cheeks a similar shade, and she pushed it away with a sigh.
A foolish notion, really - scarlet clothing was for... well, scarlet women, so to speak. Much like white was for brides, even though Anna would probably look equally alluring in that. It would certainly deepen the faint bronze of her skin, and maybe add an additional touch of blue to her eyes, the way snowy surroundings did.
The soft sound of someone clearing their throat drew her from her circling thoughts, and she turned first her head, then her entire body as she brought up a hand to cover her smile.
"My Queen." Anna was doing an admirable job of deepening her voice as she bowed fluidly, and did admittedly look quite a bit like a young man at the moment - one that didn't shave yet, at least. Her smudged, tan trousers - now that she was standing - fell in a straight line down the length of her legs, and therefore managed to hide the distinctly feminine flare of her hips. The likewise narrowing of her waist was concealed by the rough, brown jacket she'd put back on, though Elsa wagered that the 'disguise' could really only be efficient when viewed directly from the front or back - she couldn't see it somehow removing the swell of her chest, after all. Further adding to the effect was the fact that Anna had tied her long hair back and removed some of its length by making more of a loop than a ponytail, and also added a flat, gray cap to the top of her head; it was a little crooked, and pulled down enough for the brim to shield her eyes.
"Alright." Elsa wandered closer with a faux-critical expression on her face. She smiled at seeing the streaks of dust on her sister's face when Anna straightened, and deduced that she'd probably added those from the surface of her jacket or suchlike while in the other room. "I suppose I can understand why some thought you to be male," she allowed. "Though they can't have taken too close a look, to be honest."
Anna laughed. "Probably not," she agreed cheerfully in her own voice, and again, the queen found herself wondering at the way warmer colors - like these browns - somehow made the turquoise eyes greener in the same way that cooler colors made them bluer. "But who'd take a second look at a lowly worker?"
Swiftly, blue eyes chased themselves up and down the commonly clad form, and Elsa decided not to answer that.
"Well, of course you would." Apparently telepathic perception was a talent of Anna's - that, or Elsa was becoming increasingly easy to read. Maybe it was a bit of both. "You'd recognize me no matter what I look like."
It was said in such a matter-of-fact tone that there was no room for questioning it; for questioning her sister's belief that Elsa would not only recognize her, but also - if she was reading between the lines correctly - look for her.
Not that she wanted to question it - or that she disagreed in the first place.
"I know you," Elsa said simply, and straightened the slightly scratchy, woolen cap on the fiery head only to have tanned fingers settle it back the way it was. "Or at least I'm getting better at it."
"You know me," Anna assured, and aimed a joking scowl her way when she tried to straighten the cap again. "Though her Majesty shouldn't go around adjusting the garment of her subjects." Another attempt earned her a roll of the pale eyes, and her hand was caught and clasped in a warmer one this time. "Leave my hat alone, wouldya?"
"It's crooked," she accused, and made a third try with her free hand only to have Anna hold her other one tighter and lean back far enough that Elsa had to set herself to keep from being pulled forward.
"It's quirky," came the amused argument as Anna continued to hang back with her free hand in her pocket and only the queen's arm keeping her from falling to the floor; perfectly at ease. "Or maybe jaunty. Either way, I like it the way it is, so you're just gonna have to deal."
"Fine." Elsa tugged, and the pauper-looking princess agreeably pulled herself back to stand under her own power. "You do need to change, though - and I'd recommend a bath first."
"You saying I stink?"
"I'm saying that you smell a touch more... earthy than you usually do."
Anna stuck her tongue out, but didn't release her hand. "Ever the diplomat," she needled gently, and yelped when Elsa this time pulled the brim of the cap down until it hit the tip of her nose. Then she started giggling. "Hah! You literally just pulled the wool over my eyes!"
"God above..." The queen was the one to roll her eyes this time, though she did have to bite her cheek to hold back a snorting laugh. "There's no talking to you when you're in this mood."
"Nope," was the unconcerned agreement, and Anna's eyes held a definite twinkle when she adjusted the cap enough for them to be visible. "See? You know me."
Elsa smiled when she leaned in to kiss the freckled cheek with a chuckle, and it only grew wider when she felt the twitch beneath her lips that meant that Anna was smiling, too. "I suppose you're right. I'm even growing intimately aware of what you smell like when you're all sweaty," she returned dryly.
"I can't do physical labor without sweating," her sister reminded her, and squeezed the hand she held. "Unlike someone else whose name I could mention, but won't."
"I'm perfectly capable of perspiring - it just takes more effort for me."
"As Her Majesty says." Anna's voice had dropped into a lower register again, and she had taken a step back to bow while brushing her lips over Elsa's knuckles with a smirk. Then, just like before, the theatricality fell from her demeanor like water tumbling over a cliff-side, and she was pulling off the cap and brushing the back of a wrist over her forehead. "So you prefer the princess over the pauper, huh?"
"No." Elsa tilted her head as she studied the younger woman, and smiled when a copper eyebrow arched in question. "I prefer Anna over anyone else."
"Ah." Anna was grinning now, though she was trying to diminish it by worrying at her lower lip with her teeth. "Even when I'm all stinky?"
"Yes." She released the warm hand in favor of a dusty chin, and heard her sister's breath hitch when she kissed her cheek again - this time far closer to the corner of Anna's mouth. "Even if you were covered in mud and a pig just farted on top of you."
"Wha-" Turquoise eyes rounded, and then Anna was slumping forward to lean heavily against her; shoulders shaking with the force of her laughter. "Elsa! What an image!"
"I thought you'd appreciate it," she chuckled, and slipped her arms around her sister for a loose hug.
Anna just snickered into her shoulder.
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