Just a little idea I couldn't get out of my head. I adore Elsa-Olaf/Mother-son relationship. So yeah.
When Kristoff and Sven were out in the mountains, harvesting ice; and when Anna had gone with them, or was out doing something else, bored with being inside for too long - that was when Elsa could get her best work done.
Elsa was terrible with words. She had a hard time speaking from the top of her head, as was required by more social situations. However, she was also queen, and communication was key in ruling properly. So, when she was young and locked in her room, her father would teach her new words; vocabulary lessons. They would review every denotation, connotation, origin, and -well, you name it! If it was something they could find in one of their many dictionaries, thesauruses, and rarely in a history book, they would go over it and memorize it.
This, of course, did not help at all with Elsa's problem in verbalizing. But, her vast vocabulary helped her to focus more on the complex words when speaking, and it gave her an excellent writing voice. In their first lessons together, far before the "accident", King Agnarr knew that his eldest daughter had beautiful script. And after the accident, when Agnarr had to grant his pitiful first-born something to do to distract herself between lessons, he believed that words would serve her well. A queen must speak well, but if she cannot muster to do it with quick improvisation, having a list of words fit for a royal and a steady hand could do just as well.
Elsa was thinking all of these things on one of those nights amidst a week where Kristoff, Sven, and Anna had all gone to harvest ice. It was hard to think well of her father, as he was the one who locked her up all those years; but the fact that he'd been careful and thoughtful enough to observe the line between where Elsa's weakness and strength fell and prepared her for her career with the line in mind, was a redeeming quality.
"If I ever have children," Elsa began to think while signing her second-to-last letter for the evening (or morning, I suppose, as it was 12:14 at the moment), before she changed her path of thought."When I am auntie Elsie to Anna's children," she repaired, "I will teach them every word on the list Dad and I made, and then some." It wasn't that Elsa didn't want children, or didn't like them; because she truly did adore children. Rather, it was that, as much as she adored children, she thought "falling in love" was a curious idea, one that she was happy to observe as Anna explored it. Her majesty was far comfier with the single life. Initially, upon divulging this detail to her adviser Kai, the finely-clothed gentleman had thought it odd. Thankfully, however, there was no rule forbidding a queen from ruling without a king, and Kai was more than willing to cater to only the Queen's sister and whatever family the girl might have in the future.
Elsa added a small paraph and sealed the letter with wax and tossed it into her "To be sent" pile, before letting herself recline in the stiff old chair. She held back a yawn, and went to ready herself for bed, so she felt comfortable upon writing her final letter for the evening
She was in her pajamas, about to begin writing again, when a tiny knock came from the other side of her door. It was a similar pattern to the one Anna had come up with as a child, but different none-the-less. Na-knock, na-knock, knock knock, came this new pattern. Elsa easily replied to it, "Come in."
"Hi, Elsa," Olaf said, walking up to his maker. "You missed dinner again, and I wanted to check on you. But, um, I may have eaten all the dessert before coming up to ask you."
Elsa chuckled, "I don't blame you. Best to do it before the chocolate-saurus comes back from her trip with Kristoff."
"Yeah," Olaf said, his eyes dancing about the bright colors of the ancient furniture in Elsa's room. He was still enraptured by the bright colors he'd been denied his first few days of existence. "Say, what're you up to?" Olaf asked, coming and scrabbling onto the chair where Anna typically sat when she asked the same question during Elsa's "work hours".
"Writing a letter to Corona," Elsa said, scripting her greeting perfectly.
"Where's that?" Olaf asked honestly.
"South of here some way," Elsa replied, not sure how to explain it more than that.
"South?" Olaf inquired, looking down at Elsa's letter.
"South," Elsa restated, before looking up. "Wait... Olaf isn't even a year old- he couldn't know cardinal directions." Elsa responded to this thought by pulling out an old map of all the surrounding kingdoms and nations, and spreading it out on her desk. She pointed a thin finger at the compass that was printed on the page. "North, East, South, West," she named, pointing to each point on the star.
"How do you remember that? There's only that N up at the top." Olaf replied, and Elsa smiled that he already knew the alphabet in all entirety.
"Never Eat Soggy Waffles," Elsa named again, landing her finger on each point of the star as she had before. This sparked a laugh from Olaf.
"But waffles are good when they're all soggy with syrup and butter," Olaf said, not understanding the word game.
"No, Olaf. It's a way to remember the cardinal directions. Start at the top and go clockwise, and each of the starting letters are the same. Never- North. Eat - East. Soggy - south. Waffles - West." Elsa indicated again, and this time her quick-learner of a snowman understood.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, and began to laugh again. He brought his arms in to hug his laughing frame, when his elbow accidentally caught the bottle of ink Elsa was using. Thankfully, the ink didn't spill, but the quill that had been resting in the ink did, and left a dark spot on Elsa's nearly-forgotten letter. "Oops," he said, "I'm sorry, Elsa!"
Elsa chuckled and looked at the spot as it grew, "Don't be, I hadn't even started writing it yet." The ink spot began to spread out and expand and Elsa watched it closely. When it finally settled into the paper all the way, Elsa chuckled again. "Erinaceous," she stated.
"What does that mean?" Olaf asked confusedly. Elsa gave him a gentle smile as he tried to pronounce it for himself, "Air-uhn-shush?"
"Er-uh-ney-shuh s," Elsa repeated, "It means it looks like a hedgehog." And do demonstrate her point, she added a tiny nose to the tip of the ink splatter. "See?"
"Are hedgehogs the prickly guys Anna brought in from the garden and didn't want me to tell you abou- oops."
Elsa's eyebrow raised lightly and her lips puckered, producing her slightly irked face. "I think you'd be correct, though I'd have to see them to be sure," Elsa sighed. "Thank you for telling me, even though it wasn't intentional."
"Hey, no problem!" the bouncy snowman said, eager to please. Elsa gave him a smile and gently patted his twig-hair down. They were quiet for a moment as Elsa grabbed another sheet of paper and cleaned her quill's tip so her words wouldn't be affected by it's drop. "So, what are you writing to Corona about?" Olaf asked.
"Well, you know how much people in Arendelle love to fish?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Well, people in Corona like to eat fish, as much as we like to catch them. But the people in Corona aren't good so much at fishing, as they are at mining salt. And people in Arendelle are growing tired of the gabelle, so I wanted to see if I could lower the price of the salt we get from Corona by letting them pay less for the fish they buy from us."
"What's a gabelle?"
"A tax on salt."
"Oh," the tiny snowman pondered. "Cool!"
"Mmhmm." Elsa quickly scripted her greeting again, and worked quickly on the body of the letter, with her cold little creation watching over her shoulder.
"Hey, Elsa?" Olaf asked curiously, in the midst of Elsa's second paragraph.
"Yes?"
"Why don't you and Anna make slides out of the set of stairs that go from the second to the third floor?"
"They're halfpace stairs, and if there was even one mistake, it would really hurt."
"Halfpace?"
"At the big step, you turn and go the exact opposite way from which you started."
"Oh! Yeah, that would hurt," Olaf agreed thoughtfully. "Hey Elsa?"
Elsa sighed a bit, before looking again to her favorite little man in the whole world (It was obvious that Kristoff was Anna's favorite. Elsa was totally allowed to have her talking snowman be her favorite), "Yes, Olaf?"
"How do you know all those words? I've never heard Anna use them before." Olaf sincerely asked. "And they're all nifty and cool!"
Elsa chuckled, "Well, you know that my parents were scared for Anna after the accident - just as I was. So, they locked me in my room. But, I still had to learn things and my dad combined that with my need for a lack-of-boredom, and he started teaching me odd words whenever he would come talk with me."
"Really?" Olaf said, wide-eyed.
"Yeah," Elsa gave him a smile, "I can show you my list, if you want, after I finish this letter?"
"Oh! Of course!" Olaf couldn't keep his excitement hidden, and it only made Elsa admire him more. Learning these words had been the only thing she looked forward to as a child, and though Olaf had many other things to look forward to, it seemed learning would be one they would share.
Elsa quickly finished the letter, signing it and sealing it. She grabbed a huge scroll from the cabinet in her desk.
"I used to hang it on the walls," she informed Olaf, before unrolling it. "Six hundred and twelve words- I only learned one or two a week."
"Can I read it?" Olaf questioned.
"Of course! I don't have any definitions written, though. Dad said once I learned it, I learned it. And if I forgot, I could ask him next week."
"And you remember them all?"
"Only had to have a reminder twice," Elsa recalled, sitting down on her bed.
"Whoa!" Olaf giggled before jumping onto Elsa's bed and cuddling into her side. The pair looked at the list, and Olaf mouthed each word he read. "Can I learn them all?" Olaf asked with bright eyes.
"That would be lovely, you can learn some whenever you want, and we can learn a bunch whenever it's just us two here," Elsa replied, and they began to delve into the list.
"Kakorrhaphiophobia, is how you pronounce that one. It means a fear of failure."
"All the ones that end in -phobia mean it's a fear, then?"
"Yes, sir."
"Right, right- now what's this one? Ox-ter"
"That's another word for armpit," Elsa said, tickling the snowman's for emphasis. Olaf giggled, but was determined to learn more.
"Macrosmatic," he pronounced correctly on the first try.
"That means having a good sense of smell."
"Am I macrosmatic?" Olaf asked.
"I think?" Elsa chuckled. "You don't have to sniff too hard to smell those lilies in the pond, do you?"
"Oh- no! I can smell those from the kitchen!"
"Then you, my dear, are macrosmatic."
"What's nudiustertian?"
"The day before yesterday," Elsa smirked. Olaf looked awestuck.
"There's a word for that?"
"Mm-hmm," Elsa chuckled. "I found a few words just for Anna- those are the ones in green."
"Blatherskite. Vagarious. Concinnity. Panurgic." Olaf read off,
"Blatherskite: being very talkative and not making much sense. Vagarious: being unpredictable or erratic in behavior. But I prefer unpredictable. Erratic has such a negative connotation. Concinnity: artistic elegance. Panurgic: up for anything," Elsa informed, proud of her list.
"What's the ones done in red?" Olaf asked innocently.
"Um, those are the ones I found on my own in the dictionary," Elsa replied unsteadily. "You don't need to look at those. I mainly found the longest ones..."
"Pauciloquent?" Olaf asked, unaware of Elsa's hint.
"...Of few words."
"Athazagoraphobia?"
".. The fear of being forgotten," Elsa said, her gaze turning away from the list.
"Aspergillum?"
"A replacement for sprinkling holy water." Elsa informed with a flinch.
"Peely-wally? Heh, that's a funny one?" Olaf asked hopefully.
"It means pale and sickly," Elsa informed.
"Comminatory?"
"Threatening."
"Minacious?"
"Threatening, again." Olaf nodded, before moving on.
"Rawky?"
"Foggy and cold."
"Floccinaucinihilipilification?"
"Being found worthless in value," Elsa sighed, but gave a small smile, as it was the end of the red words.
"Elsa?"
"Yeah?"
"Why did you write those words, really?" Olaf asked. Elsa sighed again, and gladly held the snowman in a hug after he crawled onto her lap.
"I wasn't the happiest girl when I was finding my own words, instead of learning them from dad," Elsa said carefully, but in a monotone that implied she didn't mind so much.
"I wish I'd been there to give you a warm hug," Olaf said. "I'm really sorry, mom."
At that, tears sprung into Elsa's eyes, though these weren't sad. She stared at the sincerity in her little snowman's eyes, and pulled him in closer. "I do, too, sweet-heart." Elsa chuckled, "You give the bets hugs, Olaf, you know that? They're perfect. They don't make me overly warm like everyone else's, though you'd never tell auntie Anna that, right? Because I do love her hugs, too."
Olaf giggled, happy that she wasn't upset at his "slip up". Was it a slip up? It felt right. Truly, Olaf didn't care whether it was a mistake or not. He was hugging his favorite lady in the whole world, and she was hugging her "favorite little man" in the whole world. He was making her feel better, and she was making him feel like he belonged. Belonged to her, in a sense, in a way he'd always wanted.
Elsa set the scroll aside, and yawned. Olaf gave her a smile and asked, "Do you want to go to bed? I can go to my room if you want?"
"No need," Elsa said, stretching, "I want a cuddle buddy tonight, if you wouldn't care?" Olaf's smile couldn't have been any bigger, and he snuggled up to his cool-skinned "mom". She kissed his forehead goodnight, sent a sprinkle of snow to extinguish her candles, and the pair dozed off under a thin sheet.
The next two days, Olaf would sit beside Elsa while she worked, and having him there reminded her to take short breaks. She began to teach him to make script letters, like she was taught when she was young. The little guy took to it like a fish to water. And when Elsa finished all of her work, they would relax in bed together and Elsa would teach Olaf more words. There were a few days where Elsa could only teach him one or two, because she wanted to make more free time for after Anna and Kristoff came home.
When Anna and Kristoff finally did get home later that week, fifty new words were added to Olaf's vocabulary. He could hardly stop talking at dinner, showing off his new words. Anna and Kristoff shared some confused looks at a few of them, like when Olaf complained to Elsa of borborygmus when he got hungry. Or when Olaf told Elsa he didn't mind at all that she was a bit clannish. Or when Olaf referred to Anna as his modrige.
But other than the oddities that Anna and Kristoff found popping up in their everyday dialect with the little snowman, both found it very sweet how close Olaf and Elsa were growing. Especially late one night, when Anna happened to peek into Elsa's dimly lit room at just the right moment.
"Mom," he began in the nickname he reserved for when he and Elsa were learning words. "What's this one written in blue?"
"The most recent one I added, actually. Right after the thaw," Elsa smiled at him, holding him up in her lap.
"How do you pronounce that? Disenthrall?" he questioned.
Elsa gave him a nod and smile, before replying, "Set free."
Olaf looked to his "mother" and couldn't help but smile. And Anna couldn't help but squeal at them, as a little tear fell down her face.
Alrightie, guys! Here it is. Hope you liked it. Review, please, it always makes my day. Tell me if you want more or whatever. :D
~Ciao~