worth melting for ❅ elsa/celeste {cass}

[florentine, d4b ❁]

[presto]

celeste winters
seventeen
district four

[/presto]

---

TIE UP YOUR SCARF REAL TIGHT

---

The first time I sat in a wheelchair, I wanted to stand up and walk. It didn't matter to me that my legs were too wear or that my bones were too fragile; that I didn't have the energy to lift my arms, never mind hold my body. It felt like giving in. As though by sitting down and allowing myself to be wheeled around like a puppet on show, I was saying, "Cancer, you win, I'm not fighting anymore. I give up." It was a struggle, to convince myself that the wheelchair didn't take away my independence or freedom. it gave it to me on a silver platter when my sickness was cruel and stronger than I.  I turn the spokes of the wheels with pale and spindly arms. "You shouldn't go outside, it's cold," Maisy warns without looking up, no sooner have my fingers grazed the door handle. I hate that she has had to become my carer, and I her charge. "It's fine, I love the winter," I reassure her, because the role of a big sister is to kiss grazed knees and nag about wearing your coat, not to be told what you may and may not do. "I'm not sure..." she starts, looking up at me now. "I'm okay, Maisy, don't worry." She worries anyway, but she allows me to swing open the door, angle the wheelchair backward and escape out into the front garden. I slowly make my way up the garden path, slipping backward a couple of inches between every push. Every time I move closer I suffer a loss of progress, a little bit of my efforts slipping away. The journey to the front of our garden feels a little like my life in this way. I observe the flowers - their beautiful blooms and slightly overgrown petals. I smile at the weeds, admiring the way they have pushed up through the soil and made a life for themselves in a garden bed that they were never invited to, proving themselves stronger than any daffodil or bluebell. I hope my little sister grows up to be like these weeds - resilient and unable to be thwarted by any amount of poison.  The sky is blue, blue like the tips of my fingers and the end of my nose. I am shaking just a little bit, and I want to throw up my hands and sigh, for the weather doesn't wish for me to spend much longer out here amongst the roses. I gaze longingly at the gate and the streets beyond the confines of our garden, imagining what it would be like if I had it within me to keep on moving down the street, through the town, right to the other side of the district. I don't like to think about my chances of seeing those places again. (Home, the hospital, home, the hospital, that's me.) Just as I reach down to turn myself around and retreat into the musty jail of my home, a voice stops me.

REST YOUR HEART, REST YOUR LEGS

[cass]

E L S A                  A R E N D E L L E

It was the first time she had dared step foot outside of the castle she called a home. The first time in the longest time, she couldn’t even remember much about this world. All she had seen was what she saw through glass, her reflection more visible then the world before her. And her reflection was something she did not want to see. She remembers the things her father whispered to her, the way he had said she was a monster, and that she had to be locked up until she could learn to behave herself and control herself. And she had been so very scared, so fearful of her inability to control herself and what she could do. She was like a china doll, a fragile little thing, sitting on a shelf, growing dustier and older as time goes by and then forgotten all at once. No longer even an ornament she glance at, just a thing, slipped from the memory and away from existence.

It was the first time she had decided to walk away from her prison, although she did not view it as such, herself. To her it was a house; it was security and the only thing she had ever known. But to all those that used to know her it had become something of the sort. They were not allowed in and she was not allowed out. To them it appeared to be like a prison, but no one would ever voice such concerns. Her parents had called it her safe haven, her home – their home, but of course they were no longer there. They were dead, killed in that awful shipwreck and so in the end it was just she and Anna, those big empty rooms and those paintings.

Today she was going to visit Celeste.

Her childhood friend, a girl she had grown up with, played with and spent time with. Anna and Elsa and Celeste had been the best of friends. Her feet seem to stumble over the ground, rather unsure of them. The instructions that clung to the page that in turn clung to the skin of her hand were all she had, they were the only things that prevented her from getting lost and wandering away from the path she stuck to. They were all that remained of her freedom, for rules and laws bound her freedom. Follow them, get there see her and go home. Run, little dove, and right back to the hole you crawled out from. Quick, as fast as you can before anyone notices you are gone. For surely someone would have noticed by now, but she is not sure, not many people see her these days as she stays locked up in her room.

The gate swings open and she walks in, anxious to be both over and done with this, but at the same time to cherish what was going to happen. It was then that she saw the wheelchair and her heart skipped a beat. Was this the same girl? Was this her? She did not know.

”Celeste?” She asked, the words a timid call. ”It’s Elsa.” Was that enough? It had been so long, were names simply all that was required?

[florentine, d4b ❁]

[presto]

celeste winters
seventeen
district four

[/presto]

---

TIE UP YOUR SCARF REAL TIGHT

---

"Celeste? It's Elsa," the voice calls out, and my heart skips several beats. I tense up in my wheelchair, simultaneously glad and ashamed that she has arrived while I am like this. I know that in truth there is no reason to be humiliated by the metal contraption that gives me life, and yet her seeing me so weak and unable and sick is truly awful. I wanted to be strong for her, give her smiles because they come so easily to my lips and she struggles to drag them from her heart. I want to be her warmth, because although we spent winter after winter of her childhoods by the fire, she always worried than deep within she remained cold. I'd reassure her over and over that she was as good a friend as any other - in fact, she was my very best friend, my favourite - but it was as though she didn't dare place trust in the good things in life. We were always opposites, and I suppose that is why I've spent so much time sitting right at the edge of my universe, looking out, hating the confines that hold me in while she has purposefully locked herself up and built her own prison. He grew apart, with time, from laughing schoolchildren to teenagers who have both loved and lost. And our difference was that I smile despite everything, and she never could. "Elsa! Oh, my gosh! I'm so glad to see you."  I want to reach out and greet her, hug her and kiss her cheeks. I want to be friendly, but my sickness works as binds and chains and I am held down, unable to do as I please. Stuck to the chair, I instead settle for a grin and a wave. I do my very best to will the blood into my cheeks and I hope that the permanent green-gray tinge to my flesh (the colour of death, don't you know) is somehow not visible in the light. I don't want her to know exactly how much I'm suffering at the moment. She'll only worry, and it's nothing that wont pass. (Just a touch of cancer.)  "It's been so long! Are you doing okay? Tell me, how is Anna?" I am a flurry of questions and intrigue. I want to know all the beautiful things that have been happening in her life since we last met, every single thing that has made her laugh since we were close. But I don't want her to know about me and Maisy. I am not ashamed, I am not ashamed, I am not ashamed. I am ashamed, in a way. The sight in the mirror sickens me, because it resembles everything I never wanted, everything I will never have.  No, no, no. I will live to see summer, and dance in the fields and work, and get a little fishing boat and perhaps snorkel like we used to before we turned twelve and the world started to disintegrate around us. Things will be okay again. There is a bee buzzing beside my ear, and though it is trying to whisper it's condolences. It promises that things will get better. They always do. "I'm sorry, how rude of me! Do you want to come inside?" I attempt to wheel myself toward the house, but I struggle, my arms too weak to manage the job.  If there is one thing I hate more than the wheelchair, it's asking for help.

REST YOUR HEART, REST YOUR LEGS

[cass]

elsa arendelle

She’s the opposite of everything Celeste is, where she is warmth, light and joy, Elsa is coldness, the shadows of the night, everything one tries hard not to fear. She was never that warm spot, the one that everyone went to, to light up there hearts, to keep them warm when the nights turned cold and long. She was those cold long nights, the lightless darkness that drags you to your death. She was ice, Celeste was fire, and they were totally opposites in mind and personality. But right now they were both as frail as the other, as broken on the outside as they were on the inside, although Elsa had a way of showing it in everything she did.

She looked broken, you could see it in the haunch of her shoulders, the dark rings beneath her eyes, the shaking hands. In complete contrast for a girl sitting in a wheel chair Celeste was life. For someone so obviously broken she did not look it and it was an odd thing.

”Elsa! Oh, my gosh! I'm so glad to see you." And it is hard not to smile, when there is just so happiness in that one sentence. Elsa looks like a china doll, a girl who is going to break simply from smiling, but she does it anyway. Thankfully no cracks appear and she sighs, knowing that this visit wasn’t going to be everything she thought it was. Part of her had hoped that she’d be a little bit less like ice, and more like the sun, like this girl before her, but she was too cold to be anything else.

"It's been so long! Are you doing okay? Tell me, how is Anna?" The string of questions catches Elsa by surprise, it shouldn’t have, though, she should have expected this, after all Celeste was hardly one to let a conversation die out, or rather, to do exactly what Elsa did, which was never talk.

”I’m good, Anna is well also. She wanted to see you, but I wanted to come by myself. How-“

"I'm sorry, how rude of me! Do you want to come inside?" She didn’t mind being interrupted; in fact she was rather pleased. It meant she’d have a few more minutes to grab her thoughts and confidence before they started talking again. Nodding her head once she moved forwards, but she hesitated, watching as Celeste struggled to reach the wheels, her thin arms unable to do what they should. Moving forwards she grabs the handles behind the young girl, ”here, let me take you inside.” She offers.

The chair was hard to get moving at first, but that was greatly due to the fact that Elsa was probably as weak as Celeste, but once she got going she found it easier. And they moved off.