Author's Note: All of the names of the trolls in this, besides Bulda and Grandpabbie, are my own invention. Kudos to you if you can catch the reference to a certain 1987 film.

Tiptoeing Through the Trolls

Elsa waited until they'd passed the treeline before she said it. "I'm sorry."

Anna just grinned and shook her head. "That would be the fourth time you've said that. You're starting to sound a little obsessed."

Elsa sighed and hunched her shoulders. She couldn't just wrap her arms around herself while holding the reins, but she still felt guilty all the same. "I know," she admitted, "but that's because I still feel sorry." Beneath her, Njal gave a rumbling sigh and tossed his head, as if he understood and disapproved.

"So don't!" As if it were that easy. "I've already forgiven you, so let's just have fun, okay?"

"'Fun'? How do we have fun when we're off to-" She stopped when Anna shot her a look that was a cross between "let's not go there, Elsa" and "I love you dearly". This time her shoulders slumped. She looked down at her hands, curled over the saddle horn, naked as the day she was born, and her lips twitched slightly. It'd been a long, hard road to this day, the day when Anna had quietly stolen into her study and informed her under no uncertain terms that while it was all well and good that she was confident in her powers and secure in her sister's love, she would never truly forgive herself unless Anna's memories were restored.

She wished she hadn't been right about that, but Anna had a surprising talent when it came to figuring out the heart of the matter. Yes, she didn't wear gloves anymore, to the point where she had received an incredibly elaborate pair from the ambassador to Orenfall as a gift and yet had not worn them to the banquet that followed his arrival: something about them made her skin crawl. Yes, she and Olaf had developed a game wherein he drew her a flower on paper and she copied it in ice, the end result being she had greater fine control of her sculptures and Olaf had discovered a fascination with daisies. Yes, she had donated the majority of her wardrobe to the less fortunate, save choice outfits that were of special significance, and instead dressed herself in her hand-crafted garments that sparkled and gleamed with her magic, but in the end, it all came down to Anna and the pain she had caused her sister.

Which led them to today, the day when Anna had decided that the pair of them were going to have her memory restored so that she could enjoy "my sister's love AND magic" from the day of her birth, and Elsa's heart had warmed at the thought. Currently, however, it was beating to the tune of a nervous drummer against her chest, and Anna kept sneaking looks at her from astride her own horse as the pair of them made their way to the troll's homestead. Blackie, Anna's white horse, kept doing the same thing, and Elsa had to remind herself that animals were not actually capable of understanding the intricacies of human thought; otherwise, she might've told him to just leave her alone already. At least Njal knew how to be quiet, if she asked politely.

As one, both horses halted suddenly, their ears pricked forward excitedly and eyes wide. Blackie chewed on the bit, hooves prancing nervously, as Njal slowly turned his great head from side to side.

"We're here!" Anna slid off her mount's back and looped the reins around a tree branch, Elsa hastily copying her before following right behind her sister. Anna's steps were confident as she walked over the mossy terrain, and Elsa was extremely tempted to ask her if they could hold hands; Anna had yet to respond in the negative whenever Elsa tentatively requested some form of affection of other; but before she could do so there was a great roar, as if from a thousand different avalanches, and boulders all around them began to twitch, then rock, and then shoot forward with the force of cannonballs.

Elsa flinched and grabbed Anna's arms, brought back to a very different time, when the boulders were a lot bigger, but even now they filled her with a terror she could not describe, but knew the feeling bled into the ever-present guilt.

"Hey, it's okay," Anna said, stroking the sleeves of Elsa's ice dress, as Elsa shivered and moved closer to her. It felt strange, to be here, with Anna trying to comfort Elsa, and she quickly bit back a "sorry" before Anna could smile at her in that tender, if sad way that she did when Elsa couldn't stop herself.
The rocks popped up and became trolls, a vast array of them, with stringy hair and grass covered bodies and eyes, all those eyes, all of them on her, barely blinking, just staring and staring at her, at the evidence of her guilt, at her naked hands, at her powers, at her curse, at Anna, who was…

…smiling at her with enough force to push all of those thoughts away. Elsa blinked and straightened, and Anna squeezed her bicep once before letting go. She crouched and addressed the largest of the trolls, who had trundled forward while Elsa was too busy inside her own head.

"Hey there, I haven't seen you in a while!" she began, and the troll's rocky face broke apart into a wide smile that had Elsa boggling stupidly. "Usually it's Bulda, Finch, Twiggers and Ignacious who show up. Well, and the rest of you all," she admitted, and Elsa swallowed a nervous yelp as the group let out a great cheer at having been mentioned. "Not that it's not great to see you, Grandpabbie, especially since I have a favor to ask of you."

He chuckled softly, and Elsa was startled to see a warm light in his eyes; she knew that Anna and Kristoff spent time with his family (Anna always came back with a bunch of stories she tried to describe all at once, and Elsa didn't dare interrupt, while Kristoff was always nursing some set of bruises or other) but had not until now reached the logical conclusion that this must be the case because the trolls enjoyed their company. Her own memories of them had perhaps been tainted by the fact that she remembered little beyond her own pounding terror, shaking relief, and dawning horror: attaching those emotions to shapes and faces that should simply not be had been too difficult for her young mind. She had clung to her father's words and painfully hopeful expression for years: she hadn't the room to add in time-weary eyes that bespoke decades, perhaps centuries of experience that inevitably led to sadness and pain.

"Ahhhh, I had hoped this day would come, and something roused me from my slumber: you might call it 'hope', but I like to think of it as wisdom, eh?" His voice sounded like a wooden spoon scraping against the bottom of a bucket, drawing the last bit of clear, cool water to one's lips. He took Anna's hands and patted them. "It is good to see you so well, Princess Anna." She beamed and stood, straight and tall.

"Yeah, you look great!" offered one troll, who was standing atop a much fatter, grumpier looking troll.

"Positively glowing with health!" supplied another, who was jumping up and down, his footprints digging deeper into the ground with every bounce.

"As right as rain!" said a third, and this signaled the start of a cascade of compliments to Anna's health, good looks, strong teeth (?), lovely stature, and so on and so forth as Elsa leaned into Anna's side while troll after troll pushed closer and closer, tugging at Anna's clothes and smoothing her perfectly red hair, bumping into Elsa's legs that she hurriedly drew together, trying to disappear into her sister's side.

Anna laughed heartily. "Thank you, thank you guys so much! I really do feel great, and so does Elsa."

The eyes were back. Every single one. Elsa's own widened.

"You look amazing!" squeaked the tiniest troll she'd ever seen, and the temporary silence was broken by another barrage of "isn't she so pretty?" and "my goodness, how you've grown" and "I like your dress, sweetie!" that had Elsa's gaze whipping around the clearing in terror.

"How ever did you get your hair to do that?" asked one troll, who might as well have been any of them, though Anna hissed "that's Brownfoot" in her ear. "I…I just, I guess I use my ice on it? How do you get your crabgrass-I MEAN HAIR, to uh, to-" Elsa stopped babbling when someone tugged at her arm.

"Why do you wear ice?" the troll inquired, and Elsa was having a hard time believing this one was "Fat Obie", regardless of what Anna said, and so she hastily spluttered, "I don't know, why do you wear icky moss-I am SO sorry, I really didn't-" She let out a short scream as a troll landed on her shoulder – where on Earth had it come from? – and informed her that "I like your eyes."

"You can't have them," she mumbled, and Anna snorted before shoving "Brownfoot" off her. She blinked and jerked her head at her sister, who was trying and failing to conceal her grin. "But..I thought you said that the other one was Brownfoot!" She turned back to the clearing. "How many Brownfeet are there?"

"Yo!" shouted a whole group of trolls, raising their stubby little arms in the air.

"…oh, right, sorry; that was Papa Brownfoot; he's the leader of that clan, see, so he takes the clan name." Anna chuckled apologetically. "Right, anyways…" She knelt, pulling Elsa down with her, and took up Grandpabbie's hands, placing Elsa's in them. The other woman was startled; she had expected them to be coarse and rough, like, well, a rock, but his palms were smooth, as though they'd been weather-worn for years. He smiled encouragingly at her.

"So, you have come to replace your sister's memories." She frowned. "Replace…?"

His eyes twinkled. "Oh Elsa, did you think I had simply erased them? One cannot cover up roots with earth if the roots are gone: they must come from somewhere. Why do you think she needed you here?"
Elsa's jaw dropped as she understood. "You…you put her memories…inside of me?"

He nodded silently. Beside her, Anna's finger came up to close Elsa's mouth.

"Yes; you see, I needed a vessel to place her memories within. I could've used something inorganic, like a rock or a stone or a pebble-" Elsa was beginning to sense a trend "-but I could feel your heart crying out to be close to your sister, even as you shrank away, and knew that you would keep them safe in the way that an object could not. Now all that needs to be done is to return the original memories to your sister, and all will be well."

Elsa looked down at her knees. "I guess," she whispered. Something nudged her, and she slowly looked around. The trolls had all creeped closer, somehow, and now she was surrounded by them. Some sat, leaning against her thighs, while others stood atop one another, stroking her arms and shoulders, others pressed into her back, with a solid line of warmth against her side signaling Anna's presence.

It was the strangest hug she'd ever experienced, and with Anna with her these past few months she'd had a good deal of experience with hugs.

"Now then, without any further ado..." He touched her forehead; she shuddered; and then he touched Anna's forehead, and she smiled.

Elsa straightened. She didn't feel any different, and Anna was beaming at her, which was normal, and yet Grandpabbie looked exhausted, as though something had happened. "Did…did you already do it?"
He nodded silently. "But…but…wait was it really that easy? All this time I've been fretting over coming here, and it was just that?"

He shrugged. "It would have been more difficult if you did not wish for your sister to be whole, but when the subject longs for whatever it is the spell does, then the magic comes more easily." Elsa suddenly remembered how simple crafting her palace had been, and she blinked rapidly. "Oh." She glanced guiltily at Anna, who had folded her arms and was smirking now.

"Uh…I guess I should've done this earlier, then? I'm so-"

"Don't say it," Anna replied, in a sing-song voice that gave no room for argument.

"Sor-okay. Okay, I won't say it." Elsa drew in a deep breath and let it out. The trolls did the same, which wasn't really helping her anxiety any, but it felt oddly endearing.

"Uh, so…now what?"

Grandpabbie sat down with a thump that Elsa felt in her bones. "Whoosh!" he said, shaking his grassy mane, "I've forgotten how hard it is to mess with people's minds. Magically, that is." She didn't think now was a good time to ask why a troll would be messing with people's minds.

"I don't know about you, but I'm feeling like I could eat a whole duck, ducklings and all," Anna supplied, copying Grandpabbie's position, and Elsa tilted her head as she examined her sister. A troll hopped into Anna's lap, and the girl laughed and tugged gamely on one of its ears as it squirmed and giggled. "What are you guys cooking?"

"Ah, Anna, I think we've asked more than enough of-"

"Rock soup!" said Brownfoot, or at least, a Brownfoot, and Anna perked up immediately. "Oooh, that's my favorite!"

"Rock soup?" Elsa asked, incredulous.

"Oh yeah, it's kind of a delicacy here. You'd think it'd sort of be like cannibalism-" Elsa's eyes bulged "– but actually they really like it. Would you like to try some?"

"Well…" Elsa said, looking around at the group, which appeared to be suffering from a small, private earthquake, if their excited shaking was any indication, "I suppose I could try it." She chuckled softly. "I might even like it," she said, hesitantly, and the trolls cheered happily.

It REALLY wasn't anything to write home about.