"It's a kid!" Anna gasped loudly, managing to pull the body that had been afloat onto the sandy beach. Elsa had initially began to follow Anna into the water when they first saw the body, and now she was rolling her back to shore with her skirt hiked up. Anna finally pulled the body far enough away from the shore and let it gently flop onto the sand. "I-Its a kid...looks like she's sixteen, maybe?"
"Perhaps." She heard Elsa say before she got on her knees and pressed two fingers to the underside of the young woman's chin. The girl looked only a few inches shorter than Anna and Elsa, had on a strangely familiar blue dress emblazoned with designs, totally unruly/ poofy red hair and a very slightly oval shaped head. Thanks to the wet clothing, one could tell instantly that she probably hadn't eaten much in a while. That, and her left shoulder was out of place at an odd angle. "She's n-not breath-thing-g!"
Anna gasped worriedly and placed her hands on the girl's stomach, pressing down hard on the sift abdomen to try and get any of the water out. But there was no response from her at all...Maybe she needed air to go in first? "I...u-uh...I think one of us has to...'give her air'."
Had this not been a dire situation, Anna would have laughed at the strangely disgusted look on Elsa's face. "Excuse m-me?"
"You heard me! You gotta do the thing!"
"I'm n-not gonna k-kiss her!" She responded, giving the girl a sympathetic look but not moving. "That's disgusting! "
"I'm not asking you to make out with her! Just breathe into her mouth! Simple as that!"
"If it's so simple, th-then why haven't y-you done it?"
Anna opened her mouth to retort, but closed it. Elsa had a good point there, and besides: the girl didn't have time for them to be arguing over kisses of life. Her eyes nervously darted around before they fell on the young guard standing near them at the ready, as if he would run off to get aid should they say so. Elsa had noticed him too, and had since given Anna a certain look.
"...why are you both looking at me like that?" The guard asked them nervously.
Anna merely smirked and pointed a finger at the girl's thin lips that were parted ever so slightly. The guard eventually put two and two together before anyone could elaborate on his job. His face turned bright red. "With all due respect, your highness-"
"Oh come on! Just a quick, huge breath and she'll be fine! It's like a date, only you skip all of the starting stuff and get straight to the good part-"
"The p-point is: we need you t-to do this." Elsa gave him a pleading look. Anna was certain that she could have just commanded the young boy to to it, but figured that Elsa wasn't very comfortable with commands.
The guard looked down the girl hesitantly, before taking a huge swallow and walking a bit closer to her. He got on his hands and knees before reluctantly looking down at the girl's face. The guard inhaled a bit and slowly leaned down to begin breathing air into her mouth...and then she threw up on him. Anna gagged when the young girl suddenly vomited at least a pound of water and other items straight up at his face, which made him reel back while his hands slapped at his face. The girl coughed violently as if something was lodged in her throat, before throwing up again. During this, she'd sat up almost completely straight, and the guard(who'd wiped his face) was holding her up with a hand to her back.
"*wheeze*...*wheeze*..." The girl seemed to slowly become aware that she wasn't alone and turned to face the guard, who'd coincidentally ended up very close to her face. She flinched at the sudden sight of the blushing boy, before she turned towards Elsa and finally Anna. The girl shot up from the ground at a surprising speed and glared at them. "HEY! Waht's th' beg Ahdea then?! Standing arown' lahk a pack of THIEVES?!"
Anna raised an eyebrow. What kind of an accent was that?
Elsa helped herself to her feet and unintentionally seemed to tower over the girl, prompting Anna to get to her feet as well. "W-we're sorry if we frightened you ma'am-"
"I wasn't frahtened! " The girl warily kept her distance from them, her heel occasionally being touched by the ocean waves. "I was stahtled. Ets a beg difference."
"Not really, but anyways:" Anna gestured to herself with a single hand, smiling brightly to leave a good impression upon her. Not that anyone ever said that she wasn't fine to begin with. "I'm Anna! Princess Anna of Arendelle as a matter of fact! I'm the gal who pulled you in from the water!"
The girl skeptically glared at her, crossing her arms the way a teen would. After all, she was a teen. "Es tha' a fact?"
"Sure is! And that astonishingly beautiful woman there:" Anna gave her sibling one of her patented smiles; topped with a loving atmosphere. As expected, Elsa smiled ever so slightly and blushed. "Is my sister: Queen Elsa of Arendelle...and that's our guard, Bob right?"
The guard, who looked entranced by the mystery girl, gave Anna an incredulous look. "Bob?"
"I'm sorry! I have terrible memory!"
"I've never even remotely given you my name!"
"Very well, then! Merida Dunbroch's mah name." The girl introduced herself after a moment of obvious distrust. "...,Well. Ah suppose Ah should thank yoo for ...thaht."
She seemed a bit ungrateful, but at least the girl actually said thank you for it. The last thing Anna wanted was a girl with a hurt shoulder that she'd saved from drowning doing nothing but walking right past her. Common courtesy is what it's called; people should use it. "You're welcome! And you'll also be welcome once we fix that huge hump in your shoulder!"
"Hump? What...oh." Merida swallowed at the sight of her shoulder, shown as a bulge in her dress. "Thaht... es a reeeeeally dislocated shoulder."
Elsa gestured back the way that the trio had cone initially and began to walk off. "Guard, l-lets get her b-back to the castle before that s-shoulder problem g-gets worse."
Anna discovered that Elsa hadn't stayed with her in the doctor's office, where a very reluctant Merida was being treated for her injuries. The princess peeked outside of the doorway, but didn't see anyone there in the hallways. She journeyed down the corridors more, passing by the windows of various places in the castle. She passed by a huge room that the castle owned and spotted familiar silvery hairfar off on the otherwise of the room and in front of a wall of books. Why would Elsa go to the library at a time like this?
"Uh, Elsa..." Anna approached her when she got inside the library. "Whatcha doin in here?"
"Hm?" The Queen looked up abruptly from a large stacked up book, apparently not expecting Anna to be there. "Oh. Anna...I was just doing some searching around. Looking for information."
"Information on...?" Anna slowly put two and two together. "Oh! That big meanie smoke guy: uh, Dude lockin?"
"Dod Luften." Elsa corrected promptly, and tugged out a heavy book with the words 'Arendellian Folklore' inscribed on the cover. "When he was...inside my head, He mentioned something about the net, remember what I told you? I'd accidentally lifted a net off of him when I thawed out Arendelle. "
Anna nodded, remembering her words on the beach. " Yep. But shouldn't we be finding out more about him than a fancy net?"
"I intend to research more on him if he's in here. But first I must find out about this 'mystical net'. He was trapped by it once before...He can certainly be trapped by it again. If we have this net then we can stop him when...if he comes back."
"Oh yeah...good thinking." Anna tapped a fingernail on the book Elsa was holding and raised an eyebrow. "Folklore is a weird place to look for a net, Sis."
"Well there isn't exactly a book on nets around here." Elsa countered confidently before opening the book and skimming through it. From what Anna could see from her place in front of her, the book contained many large black/ white pictures and larger paragraphs full of descriptions and explanations. She only caught a fraction of a glimpse of a few pictures, and she spotted a familiar looking item between the flipped pages. The princess gestured for Elsa to stop and go back to the page she'd passed. It had what looked like a sort of dark red spider-web only bigger and somewhat man-made.
"What does it say about this?" She pressed a finger to the image.
"It's called the 'Bermudan ghoul snare' Embued with magical properties that entrap violent ghosts, so it says...Yes, this is the one. " Elsa frowned pathetically at Anna;in fact guiltily. "It mentions a weakness when in contact with anything of wintery origin. "
Decideding to disregard her sister's useless guilt, Ann's looked down at the picture. "So he's a ghoul or something?"
"No ordinary ghoul." Elsa peered closer at the book. "It says that legend has it the net was used on an ancient spirit that thrived off the life of any it possessed and despised love. Men with ties to mystical helpers created the net and trapped Dod Luften there."
"What kind of mystical helpers? Are they still alive? And where's the net?"
"It doesn't say anything about all your questions. Rats..." Was the frustrated response. The book was closed and tucked under her arm. "We'll just have to find out. Maybe-"
"I thought I'd find you here, your Majesty."
Anna groaned in annoyance and Elsa timidly swallowed. "O-Oh...O-Octavius. I w-wasnt expecting y-you."
"Of course not." The man spoke sharply, his usual expression still plastered to her face and his arms still folded behind his back. He nodded towards the heavy book knowingly. "You and the princess were quite distracted by your searches."
"Look, wise guy! You better not be down to pull that Queenly and Princess-ly duty stuff again! "Anna served him a freshly made Sassy glare. "In case you can't remember, we have a very life threatening ghost after us...well, Elsa! But same thing...I think. Yeah! It's... I-Its the same thing...Is it Elsa?"
Before Elsa could even give her a quizzical look she was interrupted. "As a matter of fact I was not here to criticize your time wasting, but to see how things are progressing. This ghoul is a very serious matter. I'm glad to see the two of you are handling the issue as well as you are with the limited information."
"Oh." Anna cast a quick look at her sister. "How outdated are these books anyways?"
"Most of them are actually quite recent. We only leave the books involving folklore and other such rubbish because there's nothing to update them with." Octavius explained swiftly, turning around and beginning to walk off. "In any case, I simply must he going. I wish you both good fortune in your actions."
"...Hmmm...Well, he was nicer today than before."
"I'm c-certain he means well, A-Anna...We'll have to research locations later and try them out. " Elsa gave the princess a frown after a moment or two. "Um...what would y-you like to do now?"
Anna stood straight with a start, shaking her pigtails at the sudden movement. "Uh, M-me? Oh yeah..?Uh...you wanna do something with me? Oh wait you just asked! Right. Ummmmm...I was going to go check in on Merida. See how that shoulder of hers is doing."
"Et feels like a roasted Turkey giblet thrown en a fire."
"...Eh?" The sisters saw none other than Merida herself walking into the castle library as if she didn't have a bandaged up arm. In some strangely comedic way she was carrying a small basket of apples with her injured arm and with her good hand she was holding a half eaten green apple. Elsa gave her a slightly narrowed gaze and a huge frown. "Why are you out of bed?"
"Becawz et's eeechy. An' totally uncomfortable." The redhead explained with a wry grin and took an unbelievably large bite out of the apple in her good hand, before chewing noisily on it. While Anna covered up an amused grin with her hands, Elsa raised them to dust if the saliva particles flung at her whenever Merida talked. "Ehnyways! Th' Dawctah sehs Ah shood make a swift recovery from mah arm. He also sehd tha' Arendelle wood pey fer mah...Mehdeecal Beel, whateva that means. Es that th' name-a this kingdom, then?"
"It sure is!" Anna answered happily. "Like we said: Princess Anna and Queen Elsa of Arendelle!"
"Ah riiiiiight. "Merida gazed down at the apple core she had left and tossed it into Elsa's hands. "Hold that fer me willya ma'am? Ets an interesting place! Mah castle haws awksess to better apples unfortunately, but they'll do."
Elsa held the apple core reluctantly by the stem. "Our apples aren't bad at a-"
"So, Ah guess Ah'll be stuck here fer a while...seeing as how I don have mah boat. An the dawctah sehs Ah'm naht fet ta trahvel."
Elsa raised her eyes to Merida. "You're walking perfectly fi-"
"Weth thaht en mind, Ah was hopin to request a leetle somethun to remind me of home until I get home! Do you guys have eny bows an' arrows by eny chance?"
"Bows and A-Arrows?! Th-Thats completely unladyli-"
"YOU HAVE A BOW AND ARROW?!" Anna squealed like a little girl and hopped on her feet. "That is so cool! Do you shoot anything?!"
"Do Ah shoot enything?! " Merida seemed only slightly less excited than Anna, as she wasn't jumping up and down like her and was squealing too. "Does a a whil' boar truffle truffles to truffle the groun'?!"
"Truffle the grou-"
"Oh my gooooosh! You must be great at shooting a bow and arrow! " Anna exclaimed rushing towards the door and pulling Merida along. "I wanna watch you do it! We might have some bows around here!"
"Why are you both interrupting...me?" Elsa asked, but by that time they were already out go the door. With a groan of exasperation she began to trudge out herself.
Sorry for the short chapter! I hope you still like it!
