the next right thing

“Oh, Raphi!” Anna’s voice lilted dramatically as she picked her way through the flower shop, making a mental list of all the flowers that caught her eye. “No one ever told me how lonely writing a book would be!” Once she’d finally made her way to the blonde, a purple flower caught her eye, causing her dramatics to melt away and a soft smile take it’s place. “I’ve been so cooped up in my apartment that I’ve forgotten how to talk to other people--” Anna looked up-- “I just completely embarrassed myself with all my rambling to the guy working at the coffee shop down the street and now I can never show my face in there again!”

“Until global warming makes us rightfully perish, there’s always next year.” She sighed, starting to pick at the dry grass as a thought started to form in her mind as her eyes focused on Anna once again. “Let’s start small, the weekend’s on our heels… top of your head, if we took a bus right this second, where would it be? Not why nor huh, just where.”

“New Orleans,” she said quickly, her eyes trained on the grass as she did. After a pause, she looked up and smiled. “I didn’t realize that was gonna be the answer, but...I’ve always wanted to go to the French Quarter. Where would you go?”

Archie smiled, he related to her feelings, there were nights were he’d leave hours after the bookshop had closed, just to stare at his beloved books and read a few pages off them. “Well don’t forget to get the emplyee discount!” He replied happily, placing a box of new books behind the counter. “I’m gonna get a coffee, do you want one? Besides you’re the only one that can make the coffee machine work.” 

“I keep telling you that one of these days I’m going to go buy a new coffee machine so that you can actually get it to work.” Anna laughed and walked toward the backroom to the coffee machine. “Don’t let me forget to check those new books before I leave,” she called over her shoulder.

“I just think handwritten invites are much more personal,” Raphi shrugged as she pressed down a freshly licked envelope flap. She placed the black square on top of her almost-toppling tower. “I sure hope everyone can make it. New Years Eve is my favorite holiday, I think. It’ll be nice to spend it with everyone.”

Anna looked over Raphi’s shoulder, her eyes widening. “Remind me to rope you in for my next birthday invites, Raps! These all look so gorgeous!” She giggled and picked up one of the letters, trying to hold it up to the light to look through the envelope.

Archie smiled at the familiar fuzz of bright red hair. “Anna? Isn’t this your free day?” He asked, before noticing the small stack of books. “Ah, I see. Doing a little shopping?” He asked, giving her one of his rare smiles.

@redarendelle

If there was one thing Anna loved, it was books. It explained why she worked in a bookshop, why she wanted to be a writer, but most of all it explained why she’d spend her day off work in the same bookshop as a customer. She was currently wandering the shop with a few books in her hands, her eyes searching the shelves, when she heard Archie’s voice. “I just couldn’t stay away! I’ve been eyeing these for a few days!”

“You have maybe a one in two billion chance… but I feel like that’s basically like me tellin’ ya to go for it, ain’t it?” He chuckled. “Ya know, I ain’t never really understood the hype ‘round climbin’ mountains if we’re bein’ honest. M’mom would kill me and m’brother if we’d ever tried climbin’ anythin’ taller than the trees in the backyard.”

“Yeah, it kinda is,” she said with a wide, and slightly guilty, smile. “I mean, I understand both sides. It seems like it’d be fun, but I don’t know if I could really do it considering how clumsy I am--not that clumsy people can’t climb or anything, but you know, it doesn’t help--but who knows, maybe one day I’ll wake up and just decide to do it and see what happens, yeah?”

Elsa finally managed to dig out her gloves and hastily shoved them over her hands. Her mind was racing and she was having a difficult time calming herself; she knew that the more she allowed her emotions to run wild the worse this situation was going to get. Finally allowing herself to look down at the ice on the ground, she shook her head slowly as fresh tears welled up in her eyes. She could have hurt her sister again. Was there no limit to the amount of damage she would do? “I need to leave you because I’m only going to hurt you, Anna.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper and she hoped that the other would be able to understand what she was saying. “This isn’t normal, it isn’t something that I should be able to do. I’m going to end up hurting people because I don’t know how to control it and I don’t have anyone here to help me anymore.”

She watched her sister put on the gloves, everything coming together and making sense. She assumed her sister just had a thing about dirt, but now she realized it wasn’t just that. It was never about not wanting things to touch her--it wasn’t a fear of something hurting her, it was about her hurting someone else. “Elsa...This doesn’t mean you have to leave me.” Anna’s voice wavered a bit and she glanced down, searching for a way to step across the barrier. Realizing it would take a bit more maneuvering, she decided to focus on her sister again. “Maybe it’s not normal--it’s extraordinary, but that doesn’t mean you should close yourself off from everyone!” She extended her hand, palm up as an invitation, not wanting to reach for her and scare Elsa away as she silently prayed for the tears in her eyes not to fall. “You have me. I can help you.”

Trusty was shocked that the woman was speaking to him but chuckled at the enthusiasm in her voice at such a strange thought. “Hmm… I don’t think you’d last very long without a few months of trainin’ at least. I wouldn’t advise ya to go try it out or anythin’ like that. And ya outta luck: I have plans for tomorrow so I won’t be able to fly out there and try to do the impossible.” He laughed.

“So...completely hypothetically thinking, you don’t think it’d be at all possible?” Anna eyed him for a moment before laughing at his answer. “What--you don’t wanna be on a plane for almost 3 hours just to hike up a crazy tall mountain just to see if you can do it? That seems like a fun way to spend my time!”

Meg was a bit startled as the girl sat up, finishing the gulp from her smoothie before trying to answer. “The what in where now?” She hummed in thought. “I’m always up to try a plan with the undertone of a deathwish, but…” Her mouth did a little pop, finding a dry spot of grass to sit on. “Maybe the problem isn’t really found within the climbing aspect, as much as trying to get back to solid ground.”

“Mount Rainer in Washington,” Anna repeated with a laugh. As Meg sat down next to her, she relaxed against the grass again. “The problem might be with having to fly all the way to the other coast anyways too, so I don’t think we could do that today.”

Wendy laughed as she shrugged. “It really depends on your…stamina. Climbing a mountain like that without training would be very difficult and near-impossible, but I suppose anything could happen. Do you feel like straining your legs today?”

Shock stared at her, not doing or saying anything for a while. Then she finally quirked an eyebrow and cleared her throat, somehow managing to make the noise sound sardonic. “Huh. I don’t know. Might lose a finger or two. Maybe some mental capabilities.” She responded, moving to sit comfortably and extend her legs. “Or not. Those things are full of safeguards now, so you might not have the greatest time in the harder parts but you’d probably make it.” She snorted. “Right, just ditch everything and get on a random plane to climb a mountain?”

“‘Probably make it’ doesn’t exactly sound like a ringing endorsement, but I’m kind of tempted to do it anyways, you know?” Anna giggled just a bit, thinking over what the other had said. “I think I’d like to keep my fingers and toes, but you know what this means--it’s hypothetically possible for us to do it without training. We’d obviously be better with training, but it’s not impossible.”

Raphi shrugged. “I mean, this is NASA we’re talking about. They’re very serious, and businesslike.” 

“I don’t know, Raps, I can be pretty convincing.” She giggled. “But, if you don’t want to try...” Anna trailed off, her eyes looking away before darting back to the blonde. “Unless?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Raphi said with an exasperated sigh, pacing from her laptop, to the window, and back to the laptop. “I missed the deadline to send my name on the rover to Mars! That’s a huge deal!

Anna glanced up from her food, her eyes widening. “Well, do you think you’re able to email them and have them just...slip it onto the end of the list or something? Oh! I bet if we make a really good case, they’d make an exception!”

Elsa flinched when she felt Anna’s fingers and pressed her hands to her chest. She shook her head and took a step backwards towards the door but became frozen as her sister began speaking again. “It was my fault Anna and everyone covered for me but you should have known.” She angrily wiped at the tears that were obscuring her vision, angry at herself for not only allowing her emotions to get the better of her but for even coming here in the first place. “I don’t hate you, I could never hate you, but you’d hate me if you knew what a monster I am.” She shook her head, disbelief written across her face. “You know that isn’t true.” Her voice came as something hardly louder than a whisper. “You cannot blame yourself for what happened - that was not your fault! You weren’t simply being a clumsy little girl and it’s not your fault our parents were on that plane, that whole day was entirely my fault.” Without thinking Elsa threw up her hands as a way to indicate that she was finished with the conversation, but instead the movement caused thick shards of ice to create a barrier between the two women at their feet. Overwhelming fear trickled through the older woman as she registered what had happened and realized how close she’d gotten to accidentally hitting her sister. She automatically began scouring through her bag for her gloves, her shaking hands making the task a hundred times more difficult.

“I refuse to believe that!” When she heard her voice raise, she took a shaky breathe and looked down. She wasn’t angry at Elsa, she didn’t hold anything against her, but the fear of being left behind again pushed everything to the surface and she stop herself. Anna wiped the tears from her face as she watched the ground, her voice soft as she spoke again. “I refuse to believe that you’re a monster, Elsa.” She looked up again, not caring that tears were still streaming down her face, and ready to argue some more, but then there was ice between them. With one movement of her hands, Elsa had caused a literal barrier to form between them. “I-I...” Anna pulled folded her hand against her chest, her eyes darting between the ice on her sister. That day came back to her as she struggled to even her breathing--how her bike had skidded against some ice before the bike crash had plunged her into the frozen water. “Ice?” Her tears began to slow as she finally focused on Elsa, watching her look through her bag, searching for something. She stepped closer to the barrier, shaking her head. “W-Why didn’t you tell me,” she asked softly, glancing down at the ice again before searching her sister’s eyes. “Is this why you try to keep leaving me? Because...because you think I wouldn’t be okay with this?”

“I don’t think I can.” Elsa grabbed her things and crossed to the door, intending to walk out without another word for fear that she’d make the wrong move, but the sound of Anna’s voice made her stop and turn back around. She could tell that her sister was hurting and she couldn’t stand knowing that it was her own fault. “You didn’t do anything wrong Anna. I did. I hurt you and I didn’t mean to but I did. You could have… you could have died and it would have been my fault. We can’t ever be like we used to be because of it. I have something that I can’t control and you’ve already been hurt by it, I can’t risk it again.”

As soon as Elsa moved toward the door, she followed after her, reaching for her hand. Just as her fingers brushed Elsa’s, her sister turned around and she pulled her hand back. “You hurt--? Are you talking about the bike ride? Elsa, that wasn’t your fault! I’m clumsy, we all know this, it was an accident. What’s hurting me is you continually pushing me away like, like...” Anna searched for the right words. “Like you can’t stand me!” Her lip trembled as she stared at her sister, just trying to understand what was going through her mind. “Is it because of our parents? They never would’ve been on that plane if it wasn’t for me being in the hospital, right? So you blame me? Because if that’s it, I need to know. I need to know why you keep abandoning me...Why you hate me...”