ADRIEN, MARINETTE ET LA REINE DES NEIGES

VII. Ce qui s'y passa chez la Reine des Neiges, et ce qui arriva ensuite

"What might Adrien be doing, all alone in this vast fortress?" Marinette asked herself as she entered the immense palace gates. She reached the Snow Queen's palace and slipped inside the jagged, frosty Gothic-style gates. The walls and floors of the cathedral-like fortress were of polished ice, and from the ceiling hung vast chandeliers, each made from hundreds of glittering icicles.
The girl did not know yet that her beloved friend, whose skin had turned blue in the earlobes, fingertips, and the tip of his nose with cold, was frightfully busy trying to assemble a curious puzzle of ice shards on the floor of the cavernous throne room, before the empty throne. If he wanted to recover his freedom, he had to form a sun with a heart glowing inside it, but, up to that moment, he had not been able to do it.
In the vast throne room, Adrien was sitting on the floor, which was a frozen lake, shattered into countless pieces; he sat before the empty throne, trying to solve the complicated challenge that the Snow Queen had given to him. If he ever contrived to make the shape of a sun, with a flaming heart in its centre, with those pieces of ice, he would recover his freedom; if not, the Queen would keep him as her winter prince, for both of them to coat the warm world together in a new ice age, and she would make him once more his own lord and master of himself, and give him half the frozen world, aside from a pair of brand new ice skates as a plus. But, no mattter how much he tried, Adrien could not succeed in reassembling his sun. He could barely think, let alone work out how to do it.
Luckily the throne was empty, for on that endless Arctic night, the Snow Queen had flown off in her icy blue troika towards the warm countries, in order to bring the winter down south once more, leaving Adrien alone in her throne room. Half dead with cold, the lad pondered and pondered all the time on how he could be able to complete the puzzle.
When Marinette entered the vast hall, after wandering through empty ballrooms and chilly corridors lined with countless ice mirrors, all of them perfectly austere and bereft of colour and feelings, she saw Adrien sitting before the throne in despair. Upon seeing her reflection on the throne room floor, he felt a sense of déjà-vu, and he looked at that reflection (not at the girl herself) with a fixed expression, casting doubt on all she had to say - he did not know her, it seemed.
The maiden burst into tears of joy when she saw him, and she could not resist the urge to embrace him. Shedding tears of elation, she ran across the frozen lake and affectionally clasped the lad in her arms:
"Oh, Adrien, my darling! At last I have found you!" she said, rushing over to him.
But he could barely hear her. He was so frozen into the Snow Queen's power that nothing else could move him. He stared at her blankly, the light quenched in his green eyes, with that fixed expression, casting doubt on all she had to say...
Marinette wrapped her arms around his slender waist, and burst into tears. "I have walked through fire and ice, I have come across the wide world to take you home, Adrien..." she sobbed. "I love you more than anything."
Suddenly, a tiny light appeared in the boy's lightless eyes. Marinette held him tighter, and warmth seeped into his body. As she clasped Adrien, her hot teardrops fell upon his chest, and, seeping through cloth and skin and flesh and breastbone, sank down to his heart. Within an instant, the ice that shackled the inside of his chest, and was strongest where the shard had lodged within the heartstrings of the left ventricle, was thawed, expelling the shard of crystal, which a heartbeat tore away into the bloodstream.
Then Marinette began to sing a nursery rhyme, and roses bloomed in his pale cheeks, and Adrien... turning towards his friend... looking at her with green eyes that recovered more and more of their light, he burst into sobs, trying to remember the lyrics to the same tune, which both of them used to sing in happier days. He shed so many tears that the mirror dust, which had dissolved into the bloodstream, left his system through the eyes with that fiery flow, and fell upon the throne room floor.
Only then did he recognise his beloved, adorable girl-friend. All at once, he remembered everything. He looked up at Marinette and saw his best friend standing there.
"Marinette... my darling Marinette? What ever happened to me? And where are we? How vast and cold and lonely is this place! How could I have forgotten you...?" he whispered, his eyes filling with tears. The warm love in his heart had melted the ice splinters that had lodged inside him. At last, Adrien was back to his old self.
He put his arms around Marinette and squeezed her tightly, lest she should leave him on his own. And Marinette squeezed him even more tightly and they both burst out laughing. Their innocent laughter rang out across the hall, making the icicles chime and the great shards of ice sing in harmony.
She told him everything and, together, with four hands, they assembled the puzzle. Then something very strange began to happen. The elation of both young people was such that, when they placed the last piece of ice on the frozen surface of the lake, they formed a sun in whose middle beamed a flaming heart. There was no need to worry anymore.
Now both of them were free, and the masters of their own destiny. Adrien was free to leave, for the Snow Queen would no longer retain any power over him.
"Marinette, I'm free..." said Adrien, too stunned to utter the words properly.

"Then, what are we waiting for?" Marinette replied, pulling him to his feet. "Come on, quickly. Let's go home!"
The two friends ran out of the hall. Hand in hand, Marinette and Adrien left the Snow Queen's palace. In the northeastern skies, the darkness was giving way to the warm, rosy light of the dawn; soon, all the good things that springtime brought would return to the Arctic. At the edge of the garden where the battle had taken place stood their sleigh, now with two reindeer pulling it and stamping on the snow with impatience, tethered to the holly bush, waiting for the passengers.
Marinette and Adrien hopped into the reindeer-pulled sleigh and returned home. During the journey, they dropped by to take their leave of all the friends who had helped them. Luka and Juleka met them on the port village of the Far North, and, after a joyful reunion, sailed them in the royal yacht, which now belonged to the siblings, back to the southern coast.
"We have decided to found our own crew, with Luka for a captain and Yours Truly as first officer, and travel the wide world and the seven seas," Juleka told them, as coldly as usual, during their first supper on deck. They told their story with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks, over bowls of warming soup.
"You're quite the rambler indeed," Luka said, cupping Adrien's cheek, when they landed in the seaport from which Marinette had first set sail. "I wonder if you are really worth having a friend who would gladly head to the ends of the Earth in your pursuit..."
"So do I," his sister nodded in her matter-of-fact tone. But Marinette only nudged her side and laughed, and then Adrien chortled as well, in his old innocent way, before the two friends took their leave of the pirate siblings, watching their yacht sail away until it disappeared into the horizon.
Passing by the royal castle, Adrien and Marinette met Alya and Nino, who looked pretty smart in their brand-new uniforms post-promotion, and told them that the princess and her prince were travelling through foreign countries, on their honeymoon. They also promised to send the royal couple Marinette's and Adrien's regards.
"Someday you will meet them, Adrien; they were and are very kind royalty..."
As they advanced further down south, the two young friends saw springtime unfurl in their wake, the ribbit of frogs and the chirp of finches increasing as the crocuses of March gave way to the periwinkles of April, and then to the roses of May. When they finally reached their home, so many years had passed by that ostensibly nothing had changed in the village, but it was not until they reached the pond for a drink to quench their thirst, and saw their reflections in the mirror of water, that they noticed that Adrien had become a dashing young man, and Marinette a beautiful young lady.
A lot of time had passed since they had been away, but the warm seasons had come again. They found that the roses and the narcissi were just coming into bloom.
As they stood there, holding one another's hands and locking eyes, they forgot the past and all their adventure as one forgets an unquiet dream upon awakening, and it seemed that they had never left home. Everything was exactly as they had left it, but they were now at least a little older and a little wiser.
There they stood, all grown up yet children at heart, and it was warm, lovely springtime. The Snow Queen's palace was nothing more than a distant dream, for before them there was spread, generously, all the springtime and summer of youth.
FINIS.