4: The Snow Glows White on the Mountain Tonight...
"Light the fire?" Olivia pleaded.
Sasha obliged. Soon, there was a roaring blaze in the lounge at the House of All.
"Now I guess we wait for the others to turn up." Olivia muttered.
She had announced the Councillor meeting at breakfast, but so far it was only Sasha who had bothered to come to it.
The clock steadily ticked, counting the seconds of pure awkwardness.
She heard some noise in the background, was that... singing?
Oh great. Here they were. Singing Frozen songs. She blamed the weather.
"The snow glows white on the mountain tonight not a footprint to be seen,
"A kingdom of isolation,
"And it looks like I'm the Queen."
"Dramatic pause!" One of the singers (Ethan, by the sound of things) yelled.
"The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside."
The other six Councillors emerged through the door.
"Couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I tried..."
"Guys..." Olivia warned.
"Don't let them in, don't let them see,
"Be the good girl you always have to be.
"Conceal, don't feel don't let them know..."
"Seriously people. We've got a lot to talk about." Olivia no longer thought it was funny.
"Well now they know..."
More like annoying. "GUYS."
"Let it go, let it go..."
"SHUT IT!"
Olivia turned around. It was Sasha who had yelled the previous, and she had put so much force into it that the flames in the fire place rose about five feet before shrinking down as the targets fell silent.
Ethan, Rock, Pebble, Luke, Josie and Rachael all slumped down on various sofas.
Olivia resumed to her normal position in the armchair at the front of the room.
"Okay, guys. We've got two things to get through, plus any notices. Then you can sing Frozen songs to your hearts' content."
"Yippee!" Said Ethan. "I'm gonna try and rig up a device that lets me play Frozen songs all over the forest!"
Olivia gritted her teeth. "No. You. Are. Not. I don't care what you do inside Tech, but the wildlife has had enough disturbances is it is already.
"So, as you've clearly noticed, the..."
"Whole of Arendelle is covered in deep, deep snow..." Rock quoted.
Olivia tried to ignore her. "Willow Forest is covered in snow. The wildlife is struggling. I mean, the Emperor Penguin colony is fine, but..."
"Most others aren't." Sasha finished.
"The lake had fro- iced over." Olivia would have to try and avoid mentioning the word 'frozen' to avoid any more musical accompaniments. "We've melted that, so that's basically okay. Unfortunately, until everything else melts..."
"Ooh!" Rachael exclaimed. "Disney should so write a sequel called Melted."
"Yeah!" Rock agreed enthusiastically. "Or we could do a parody and put it on YouTube! All the ice could have melted, so now there are floods everywhere and everyone has to retreat to the mountain. And then a third one called Evaporated where there's a heat wave and Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna goes out of business, so Elsa has to freeze everything again in return for a life time supply of carrots for Sven!"
"Awesome!" Ethan joined in. "You guys all come over to Tech after this. We've got loads of equipment and special effects we could use."
"Coolio! Shall we animate it, or..."
Brambles suddenly grew from the carpet and snaked around the sofas.
"We could always film it. We've got enough people, a good setting, and I'm sure we could easily find an appropriate reindeer to be Sven."
Vines crawled up people's legs and entwined around them.
"We could get Emma to be Elsa. She looks like her, and has similar powers. Ooh! Ethan, could you make some robots for the trolls?"
"Would be my pleasure."
The vines finally gagged everyone except for Olivia.
Silence.
"Sorry about that." She said. "But you really, really ticked me off. Can I please continue, then I'll come and grow some pine trees for the setting. You can have a Wandering Oaken's Trading Post if you want. Just let me finish.
"All the animals who aren't adapted to the climate are in Nature." She grimaced. "Alice and Pippa need to check the crops. Without them, I'm, going to need a volunteer from each House to help me stop the animals from killing each other."
Sasha squealed from underneath her vines.
"Sasha, if you want you can send Alex Ferguson. But if he eats anyone else, I'm gonna hold you responsible.
"Also, there's that war game. We seriously need to finish it by Friday. It's taken us three months now."
Usually, each week at Willow Forest, the training hall at All, (which was absolutely huge as it extended far underground) was used for a war game every Friday night. Then, ages ago, the Councillors had planned a Hunger Games style, every-man-for-himself survival game which required transforming the training hall into a tropical rainforest. But construction had to be put on hold when Rock and Pebble were kidnapped by Felix and his Death Wolves, and Sasha went back up to Echo Valley to try and find them. Then Ethan decided that, with the necessary wires and electronics, he could use the war game footage in a video game, and then Olivia changed the design. So then everyone had had to strip what was already there and start all over again.
So, basically, the A of E was missing out on about fifteen weeks of war games.
"Okay. That just about summons the meeting up. Any notices?
Ethan shook around violently in his vines.
"Oh. Right." Olivia shrunk the vines and brambles back to the blade of grass that had come in on someone's shoe.
"Eve's got this awesome idea of a disco." Ethan announced. "Maybe, I dunno, a week from now? We could hold it in the dining hall. Ash volunteers to DJ."
"Sounds great." Olivia decided. Most of the others agreed. "Ethan, you see to that.
"Anything else?"
The other Councillors shook their heads.
"Okay then. Meeting disbanded."
"Hey, where were we?" Josie said as they got up from their seats. "Oh, the first chorus."
"Let it go,
"Let it go,
"Can't hold it back anymore."
This time, Olivia joined in.
"Let it go,
"Let it go,
"Turn away and slam the door."