"A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship."
~Markus Zusak
Merida looked into the sky. She always loved the snow and how it would get all caught up in her crazy red curls.
"Merida, get inside. You are going to catch a cold!" Queen Elinor told her daughter.
"Ok, mother!"
She ran by her mother's place a soft hand on her daughter's head. Merida's father, King Fergus, came up from behind her and lifted her into the air.
"How is my wee daughter doing today?" he asked her, tickling her side.
"Stop it, that tickles." Merida snickered, holding her side.
"Fergus…" Elinor uttered.
"Don't anger me. You're next," Fergus joked to his wife.
Fergus put his daughter down and started wiggling his fingers in his wife's direction, taunting her with every movement.
"Oh, don't you dare," Elinor said, slowly taking steps away from her husband.
Merida chuckled at the sight of this.
"Not another step further, Fergus," Elinor warned.
Fergus disregarded his wife's warning and began to attack her with his tickles. Elinor chuckled and snorted. During this time, Merida became unaware of her parents and was more interested in the flakes tumbling from the heavens. A single flake landed on the child's extended tongue and it made her shiver with delight.
"Fergus! Stop, we have company coming!" Merida heard Elinor cackle.
Fergus stopped tickling his wife just as Merida began making her way back to her parents.
"Who's coming mother?" Merida enquired, her bright blue eyes widening in excitment.
"Well, Merida. We know you are still a wee lassie, but you are a princess, and a princess has certain duties. We are having a Viking from another village come, to make an alliance," Elinor told her young daughter.
Merida being only five didn't understand a word her mother was saying. She looked up at her father, hoping he could tell her what was going on.
"We are having a young lad come over so you can be friends." he explained to his daughter.
For some reason she couldn't explain, this angered Merida.
"I don't' want to meet him! I don't want to!" she moaned.
"Please, Merida…"
Elinor tried to reason with her daughter, but she wouldn't listen.
Merida ran back out into the yard and sat on the snow covered grass.
Elinor started to go after her, but Fergus held her back. At that second, a royal guard came into the room.
"Queen Elinor, King Fergus, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III and his father Stoick are here," he announced. Then he retreated out of the room.
A mere three seconds later a young boy and his father entered the room.
"Yer majesty," the father said while bowing. He slapped his son on the back when he didn't replicate. "This is my son Hiccup."
"Pleasure to meet you Hiccup." Elinor said to the young boy.
She studied the boy. He had a head that was too great for his scrawny body and it was covered with long brown bangs. He smiled a buck-toothed smile at her.
"Nae much ay a vikin'," Elinor thought. She stared at her husband, slightly nervous. Was this the boy who her daughter was destined to marry?
"Hiccup is really excited to meet your daughter. Aren't you Hiccup?"
Hiccup swallowed hard and shifted his weight.
Fergus smiled at the boy's sweet awkwardness. He was only 4 and probably had no idea what was going on.
"Merida is in the backyard. Hiccup, you can go out there while we speak with your father."
Hiccup nodded and walked out the back of the castle into the snowy landscape. The voices of his father and the King and Queen became muffled and distant the farther he walked away.
The patches of snow crunched under his bulky boots. All of his clothing seemed to be too oversized for his small frame. In a field of white flakes, the thing that stuck out was the head of wild crimson curls. Hiccup walked the mane. Underneath that amass of locks, a pale girl was weeping into her hands.
"Merida?" Hiccup wondered if he was speaking to the princess. His hazel eyes stared at the mass of untamed spirals.
"Aye…" she sniffed. Then she removed her large head from her dainty hands. Her bright blue eyes looked up at the doofy boy in front of her.
"Och it's you," she scoffed.
A frown cloaked Hiccup's face.
"I don't wanna be here either," he alleged.
A slight smile developed on both of their faces.
"Let's go play," Merida told the young boy.
He began forming a snowball, but before he could throw it, Merida had already thrown one in his face.
He giggled, "Good aim."
"Thanks Hiccup," she replied, hurling another snowball at his head.
The two children broke out into a snowball fight.
"As I was saying, they may be opposed..." Stoick uttered. Fergus walked away from the conversation to look out the window to see his daughter laughing and tickling Hiccup.
"Stoick, I think we'll be alright." Fergus announced.
Elinor and Stoick gathered beside him, seeing the children playing.
"I think we'll be alright."