fandomtownies | The Preserve [Wednesday evening]

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The Preserve [Wednesday evening]

Celia, who was still very much not dead, had made her way home for a brief post-class nap this afternoon before ferrying her way back across to the island for her meeting with Elsa. She wasn't sure whether to bring anything, and ultimately decided not to, save for a book to entertain her on the trip over -- if they really found themselves in want of something, she could always conjure it up.

She made her way to the preserve just as the sun was setting, and found herself a spot to sit where her dress wouldn't get dirty to wait. It was strange -- Elsa's magic was so different from her own, but Celia still had the utmost confidence that she'd be able to help, that if nothing else, she needed the other girl to understand the gift she'd been given.

(Even if, finally, Celia did understand why she thought of it otherwise. She would, too.)

[open for one (omg guess who) and SP! that the girls met is totally okay for broadcast, but what they're doing is not so much.]

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Elsa was, unsurprisingly, absolutely punctual for her meeting with Celia. She had her gloves still pulled on when she arrived, her skirt gathered up in her hands just slightly so that it wouldn't snag on any underbrush as she walked through the woods. It was funny, the last time she'd been out here, she hadn't been entirely herself. But it was a peaceful place when there weren't machines tearing apart the island and creatures trying to eat people...

"Celia?"

It was easier to think about all of that than about whatever it was they were going to do out here. She was nervous already.

"Over here," Celia called, standing and brushing off her skirt before waving to Elsa. "I figured we'd best work somewhere where no one's going to stumble across us accidentally, if that works. We can go somewhere else?"

She had no idea. She'd never helped someone who was secretive about their powers, before.

"No, here's just fine," Elsa promised, picking her way through the trees. "It's far enough out that nobody's really going to stumble across us, which is important..."

It meant the only person in any real danger here was Celia.

"It'll be easier on me if I just have to shield myself," Celia offered gently, smiling a little. "And the trees have been through winter before. They'll be fine."

Not that she was a botanist, but she thought they would, anyway.

"Are you still sure about this?" she checked. "We can postpone if you don't want to try tonight." Even if she privately thought it'd be good for both of them.

Elsa's shoulders hitched upward a little, and she rubbed her hands against her elbows, trying to will some nerve back into herself.

"I'm never going to be sure about this," she pointed out. "The sooner we do this, maybe the sooner it will be before I can stop being afraid of trying?"

"Good girl," Celia said softly, her smile widening. "That's the spirit. Now, here, to make you feel a bit more secure -- "

She lifted a hand, splaying her fingers, and concentrated. A faint shimmer appeared in the air about a dozen feet out from them at all angles, like the sheen of a bubble or pavement on a hot day. "Nothing's going to leave this area without really trying. Or enter it."

It was one of her favorite tricks, making the air solid. She never had enough reason to use it, and now, thanks to Rinoa, she'd learned to call it shielding and to give it form.

Elsa hesitated a moment as she watched the air shimmer, clearly fascinated.

"May I touch it?"

She had to see for herself that this was solid, that this was safe.

"Of course," Celia nodded. The solidified air would probably yield to cutting or a very sharp poke, but otherwise would hold as well as a malleable shield around them. "I can make it stronger at a moment's notice if we need to -- I'm just trying not to use all my resources first thing."

"That makes sense," Elsa agreed, running her fingers over the surface in front of her. "It's still a huge relief to know that you can do this. And I'll be aiming away from you anyhow, so it... shouldn't get too dangerous?"

She hoped? Probably?

"You won't hurt me, anyway," Celia said, waving a hand. "Or if you do, it won't be lasting. I've been healing my own broken bones and cuts and scrapes for years. A bit of frostbite won't do me in, now."

Magic frostbite might be another thing entirely, but Celia wasn't exactly planning on letting anything hit her, either.

"The gloves contain it, right?" she asked, nodding to Elsa's hands.

"They've held it in better than anything before them have," Elsa agreed, nodding. "I've actively tried to use my powers while wearing them - Barry asks me to, in order to check up on whether they're working - and I haven't managed so much as a light frost."

Which was exactly the way she preferred it, thank you.

"Do you want to try with taking off just one, first?" Celia suggested. "Ease into it a bit?"

Because while she was sure she could contain it, she didn't want to shock Elsa's system with the sudden lack of both gloves.

"One at a time certainly does seem like a good way to do it." Elsa looked down at her hands, opening and closing them a couple of times before taking a deep breath and pulling the glove from her left hand. It was... odd, to see her fingers standing bare against the greenery of the woods. She stared for a moment before looking up again at Celia, biting her lip. "Half the hands, half the power?"

Since the gloves were sort of a reverse-heat-sink, that seemed to make sense. It wasn't that she wasn't using her powers with them on, it was that the ice had nowhere to go.

"That's how I'd imagine it'd work, unless -- is it only your hands, then?" Celia wondered with a curious step closer. "Because if it's evenly distributed between the two, then...yes, that makes sense."

This was fascinating, truly.

"Do you want to try doing something?" she offered. "Or at least...letting go? Not holding back, and seeing what happens with just one hand?"

"I... could try," Elsa agreed, though tentatively. "I haven't done much on purpose since I was small. A little, here and there..."

But not around anyone she could really hurt, not if she could help it.

"Should I try doing something in particular, maybe? A focus, so that it doesn't get too out of hand?"

Celia tilted her head thoughtfully. "What was your favorite thing to do when you were small?" she prompted. "That'll probably come most naturally, honestly."

Elsa didn't let the wince show as the answer came to her, as naturally as anything.

Build a snowman.

"I'd cover the floor in ice so that Anna and I could slide around on it," she said, instead. "I'd... I'd use my foot, for that."

She reached down, hiked up the bottom of her skirt, and then stepped down with one foot, sending a spiral of ice twisting out from where she'd stepped, frosting over the forest floor directly around them.

Celia watched the ice spread with a careful eye, just in case it got out of control, and smiled brightly at Elsa. "That's amazing," she said softly, genuinely. "Look how fast it spreads."

She glanced up from staring down at the ice. "I didn't know you could use your feet, too. Is it less of a control problem than your hands?"

Elsa nodded a little as she looked down at the ice. It spreading quickly wasn't actually a good thing, if you asked her.

"I've never had it spread unwittingly from my feet," she explained. "But my hands have a habit of surprising me. I think it's because my hands are where the magic wants to be channeled. I have to focus a little more to use my feet."

"That's good," Celia said, reaching out to first strengthen the shield so the ice wouldn't spread too far, and then gesturing down towards her feet. Within a few seconds, she seemed to grow about two inches, and her boots had been replaced with ice skates.

It seemed like a good idea.

"The nice thing," she continued, "is that you seem to know where your magic wants to come from, internally, and what it wants to do, as you put it."

She tilted her head curiously, looking at Elsa's ungloved hand. "And I'll note that nothing's gone awry since you took that glove off, by the way. Maybe your control's better than you think?"

"It comes and goes," she acknowledged, looking curiously down at Celia's feet. "I'm putting a lot of focus into not letting it go, right now. And mostly, when it creeps out, it's when I'm touching something. A windowsill. A doorknob."

She bit her lip and brushed her hand against a tree trunk, and a thick icing of frost spread up from her fingertips.

"Even when I'm not trying, it'll do this as I touch things. I haven't quite mastered... not."

"And that's why we're here," Celia pointed out, nodding. "When I was still mastering control, it was -- horrible. I went through a long period where I hated my magic. I hated its unpredictability, I hated the spectacle of it, and most of all, I hated the way my father taught me precision."

As most people probably would have, given his methods.

"But the thing that made it better was using my magic for myself. That's why I'm so good with colors and textures and making lovely little trinkets out of nothing, because it was always for me."

She quirked a brow, smirking very slightly. "So give me a reason to conjure a cloak, now. Have fun with it, Elsa. Make something beautiful. You're not going to hurt me or anyone else, here. I promise."

"Have fun with it," Elsa echoed, sounding dubious. "I don't... I mean, I haven't used it for fun in a very long time, Celia..."

She held out her hand all the same, and tried to focus on doing something. A small burst of snowflakes shot upward from her palm, hanging in the air for a moment before drifting down around her hand again.

"Little things like this are easy, at least."

"Try something with your other hand?" Celia prompted, looking askance at the still-begloved hand. "I know you're not used to having fun with it, Elsa. That's why we're trying. But think back to when you were little, and the sorts of things you'd do then."

She offered a small smile, gentling a little. "We're not children -- I know to stay out of the way, and you've got a better idea of just what your magic can do."

Elsa frowned down at her other hand, still tucked away in her glove. So much for taking it slow?

"It's difficult to separate those things," she offered, softly, "from the things that went wrong. If I make snow drifts, I think of Anna falling. Even the ice... I slipped on it, that's how my attempt to help her missed and hit her, instead."

She hesitated for a few moments more, and then tentatively pulled the second glove off all the same.

"But maybe something new," she murmured, holding her hands apart and conjuring a simple snowball. "Something small, and something new, while I get a feel for using these powers again."

"It's through practicing things that remind us of things we'd rather forget that we get stronger," Celia offered quietly, watching Elsa. "You can't linger with your old pain, or you'll never move past it."

She glanced down at her own hands before adding a soft, "Take it from someone who knows better than most."

She shook it off, though, turning her attention back to Elsa's bare hands. "Can you give it more form than a snowball?" she asked, trying to keep her tone gentle. "Keep it small, but make it more intricate?" If she was right, then that would at least exercise Elsa's long-underused magic muscles, so to speak, without overtaxing her.

If she was right, anyway.

Celia was getting a curious look from Elsa, but before she could speak, she had shaken it off, and Elsa was loathe to drag her back to question.

Something to remember for later, perhaps.

"I can try," she settled on, looking back down at the snowball, wondering how in the world to make a ball of snow more intricate. She frowned thoughtfully, and then willed ice to form around the ball in a sort of shell, spreading in delicate fractal patterns, like frost forming on a window.

"Lovely," Celia remarked softly, watching the fractals form. "Your control with small things is quite good, Elsa. It took me much, much longer than that to learn such a delicate touch."

She smiled over at the other girl, adding, "It's hard. I still break things, when I'm taken by surprise, and I've been working on my control for over ten years, now. But...for not being used to being without your gloves, I'm impressed."

"I'm just letting the ice do what it wants to do," Elsa replied, blushing faintly. "It has shapes that it wants to make, and paths that it wants to follow on its own, and I'm... letting it. Suggesting a form for it to strive toward, but allowing it to do what it wants to do has always been the easy part."

Not letting it out when it wanted out, that was the trick.

"From what you described, I was wondering if I'd have to battle some sort of snow monster, or face eternal winter," Celia teased lightly. "Does your control get worse based on your emotional state? Mine does. It seems to be a fairly common problem amongst magic-users."

Elsa's control over the snowball stuttered momentarily, and creeping fractals turned, for a second, into a few short, sharp spikes of wicked looking icicles, crawling from the snowball's surface.

She balked, jumped backwards a little, and the snowball fell to the ground, shattering as it hit the ice there.

"... That... would be a yes," she replied, pulling her hands to her breast. "Some of the legends back home have a prophecy of eternal winter. It's hard to shake that worry, sometimes, that it's about me."

Celia watched, skating over a little closer tentatively. "You were doing well up to that point," she noted, wincing. "Sorry for the eternal winter bit. That was a joke, but...I didn't know it'd hit so close to home."

She frowned thoughtfully down at the fallen snowball, then glanced back at Elsa. "D'you really think the prophecy's about you? I'd like to say our lives are our own, but I know that's not the case. Worrying about it might make it come true, though, in spite of whether it's really about you or not."

"Well, there isn't exactly a wealth of people with ice powers back home," Elsa pointed out, softly. "Ignoring it probably won't help, either."

Almost certainly.

"But is it about a person causing said eternal winter?" Celia asked. "Or just eternal winter, conceptually? I'm not saying to ignore it, but -- speaking as someone who has her own unfair fate already laid out for her, just gloomily accepting it, or fretting, rather than being the most prepared you can be is...well, it hasn't worked well for me, anyway."

"A person," Elsa clarified, shaking her head. "Though... who knows? Perhaps it's simply a coincidence. I could have gotten any sort of power, and if you look at enough legends, sooner or later there'll be one that corresponds to it."

Maybe? Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it was something that Elsa had been telling herself for years, now.

"You, though... you're doing better now yourself, right?"

Celia shrugged a shoulder. "Someday in the future," she shared, "I shall have to magically battle some sort of mystery opponent." She held out her right hand, to show Elsa the scar on her ring finger. "I was bound magically when I was five, and I've been training ever since."

She colored slightly, and admitted, "That's why my control's as good as it is. I've been training for this thing for eleven years, with the assumption that it could all be relevant at any moment."

She sighed, shaking her head, and looked curiously at Elsa. "But, that's neither here or there. Your situation is unfortunately more nebulous. Powered people aren't exactly common where you're from, by the sounds of it."

"I've never met another person with powers before coming to the island," Elsa replied, frowning. "I mean, except for trolls. But... trolls are a slightly different situation."

Being, you know, trolls and all.

"I've never even really heard of another person like me, back home. I can't imagine what it must be like, to be in your situation, to have to worry about fighting one."

"If it helps," Celia offered, "before I came here, the only other real magicians I've met are my father, and the man who's training my opponent, briefly. We're a rarity where I'm from, too. Though we don't have trolls, far as I know."

It was always possible.

"There's loads of charlatans, though. Magic shows and the occult are quite popular, back home. It's how my father makes his living -- and eventually, I probably will, too."

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "But...maybe I'll get out of it. And maybe the person causing your prophesied eternal winter hasn't even been born yet. Even things that seem fated can change."

"Maybe they can," Elsa agreed, nodding faintly as she looked down again at her bare hands.

So odd, looking at them this way.

"It would be nice, I think, to have even the faintest clue as to how to go about changing them."

"Be prepared," Celia advised, shrugging slightly. "Be prepared to be able to use what you have, and not be afraid of it. If you know your powers inside and out, they're a gift, and not just something you're stuck with."

She sighed deeply. "As much as it pains me to admit it, the only thing we can control is ourselves. And while you're very, very good at containment, it's dangerous to be...afraid of yourself. It's too easy for someone to take advantage of."

"Take advantage?" Elsa looked a little puzzled at that. "Back home? Back in Arendelle I am literally the only living human who knows about my powers. The gate to the castle is closed, Arendelle has pulled back its relations to neighboring kingdoms. Who out there is there to take advantage?"

"Are you going to keep the gates closed forever?" Celia asked softly. "Not to mention that the island hasn't proved to be utterly safe at all times. I just -- I've had what I can do turned against me, by people who I should be able to trust. I'd hate to see the same thing happen to you."

It was as simple as that.

"It won't," Elsa replied, trying to sound reassuring, and mostly just sounding unconvinced and maybe a little stubborn. "Here... here is different, granted. Here there actually are people I trust."

But she was going to be Arendelle's ice queen, someday, both literally and, if she had any say in the matter, figuratively.

Don't let them in.

"There won't be anybody in Arendelle that will ever be in a position to try."

Don't let them see.

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The Preserve [Wednesday evening]

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