"But Elsaaaaa," Anna said. "It's not fair."
Elsa chuckled, covering her mouth with her hand. "Why are you so upset, anyway?"
Anna pouted. "I'm going to look like the Duke of Weaseltown."
"Weselton," corrected Elsa. "And of course you won't."
"How do you know?"
Elsa arched an eyebrow. "Well, for one thing, your hair is still attached to your head."
Anna giggled.
"And you are far more beautiful, inside and out, than that distasteful little man. Honestly, if you don't believe me, ask Kristoff."
"Kristoff has to be nice to me; I'm his girlfriend," Anna said.
"I'm your sister; doesn't that count for anything?"
"But Elsaaaaaa," Anna said, throwing herself dramatically backwards onto the settee, staring up at the blurry outline of Joan of Arc above her.
"Anna," Elsa said, hesitating only a moment before taking her sister's hands in hers, "don't you want the headaches to stop?"
"Well, yes, but -"
"And didn't you tell me your eyes were tired all the time?"
"Oh, come on -"
"Don't you want to know what Kristoff actually looks like?"
Anna's eyes snapped to Elsa's in horror. "Wait, what? What's that supposed to mean? Are you trying to tell me my boyfriend's ugly? Because you listen to me -" Elsa put her hand over Anna's mouth before she could build up steam - when Anna got going she could go on for hours.
"No, no; of course not," Elsa said. "But don't you want to know what you've been missing?"
Anna sighed. "I guess. What if he doesn't like the way I look?"
"He loves you," Elsa said with a shrug, going back to her book. "He'd love you no matter how you look. Just like I do. We're going to pick them up tomorrow and you are going to wear them, is that clear?"
Anna hated it when Elsa used her 'queen voice' on her.
"Fine," Anna grumbled. She squinted up at Joan. "I bet Joan never had to wear them."
"Joan never learned to read or write," Elsa said without looking up.
"She probably wouldn't look like the Duke of Weaseltown," Anna said.
Elsa rolled her eyes.
Olaf had been pestering Kristoff to play a game with him for the better part of the afternoon when Kristoff finally caved. They were in the garden playing "I Spy" when Anna found them. Kristoff smelled her before he saw her, that strange combination of chocolate, clean linen, and oranges. He smiled as she slipped her small hands over his eyes.
"Guess who!" Anna usually tried to disguise her voice. Today she went an octave higher than usual with an exaggerated accent.
Kristoff chuckled. "Hello Anna."
"Awww, how do you always know it's me?" she pouted, withdrawing her hands and flopping down on the seat opposite, worrying the end of one braid with her fingers. There was a definite note of apprehension about her - probably due to the delicate, round, silver-rimmed lenses that sat upon her freckled nose.
"You're wearing glasses," Kristoff said, sitting up.
Anna's face fell. "Do they look bad?"
". . . No!"
Olaf piped up. "You hesitated."
"No! No, I didn't, I just . . . I've never seen you wear glasses before. Have you always had them?"
Anna tucked a strand of copper hair behind her ear, avoiding his eye. "I just got them. Elsa took me to pick them up this morning."
"Hey," Kristoff said, leaning forward and taking her hand between the two of his, "you look so smart and distinguished and . . . and beautiful. You could be wearing a burlap sack with a lampshade on your head and you'd still be the most beautiful woman in the world."
Anna flushed. "You're just saying that because you're my boyfriend."
Kristoff shrugged and sat back, interlacing his fingers behind his head. "Doesn't matter if I'm your boyfriend because it's true."
"Awwww," Olaf said, clasping his stick hands together. "I love . . . Love!"
Kristoff chuckled, bumping his shoulder against the snowman affectionately, though a little harder than he meant to. Olaf shrieked as his body tipped forward independent of his head, detaching and rolling away.
"Olaf!" Anna cried, jumping up to retrieve his body. Once the snowman had been put back together again, Anna knelt beside him at Kristoff's knee.
"Whew!"
"Sorry! Sorry, Olaf," Kristoff said with a grimace.
"No worries." Olaf sat and watched the two of them expectantly. "So, are you two going to kiss or what?"
Anna blushed even more.
"Olaf, could you give us a minute?"
The snowman's face fell. "You guys are no fun at all." He slouched out of the garden, leaving Anna and Kristoff alone.
Anna looked up at Kristoff and stared.
It had started with the squinting.
Anna would have her nose pressed up against the paper as she penned a letter to her cousin, but she would go through fits in which she threw down her pen in frustration before taking it up to finish. Soon her letters became infrequent (which was no mean feat, since Anna was an inconsistent correspondent in the best of times). She stopped reading for fun, which was when Elsa noticed.
In a sisterly gesture of affection, Elsa had ordered a stack of fantasy adventures and gifted them to Anna. Anna was torn. She loved books and reading - in her teenage years of solitude, she spent just as much time lost in the pages of a book as she did causing trouble around the castle. The characters became her friends, heroes, confidants - all the things Anna wished she could have and be. And after such a thoughtful gift, Anna didn't want to let Elsa down, not when they had just become sisters again.
The squinting led to the headaches.
Several times a week Anna would retire to her bedroom after lunch with Elsa to lie down in the dark with a damp cool cloth over her forehead. It helped. But when Elsa found out, she forced Anna to tell her the whole story. The squinting, the headaches, how when things got close up everything was just a little blurred around the edges -
"Oh, Anna, why didn't you tell me?"
"You're the queen! You've got way more important things to think about than little old me. I just didn't want to worry you."
"I'm your sister - I'm always going to worry about you."
"Anna, why are you looking at me like that?" Kristoff looked decidedly uncomfortable.
"Sorry, sorry - everything just looks so different! Well, not that different, you look pretty much the same, there's just so much I never noticed before, like how your brown eyes have some grey in them, and the tip of your nose curves down and the way one side of your mouth curves up and you're gorgeous - wait, what?"
Kristoff laughed and swept her up in his arms. "I love you, Anna."