We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"Frozen Again: 'Faith, Hope, and Love"

Act I

Chapter 20

"Digging for Diamonds in the Rough"

In the midnight's overcast dearth of light, the gorgeously tanned and well-sculpted muscular physique of a shirtless man pauses in his unpalatable forced toil to stare down at his two painful hands.

The scrapes and blisters he had 'manned up' enough to endure the past few hours spent in the difficult job of employing a shovel through hard permafrost encrusted soil that had not been broken for the past three hundred years were now splitting and bleeding incessantly.

Despite the cold evening chill, the salty sweat that had been stinging both his already bruised black eyes now trickles down his exhausted bicep muscles along the popping veins of his well-formed arms and across his still-half frostbitten extensors until, by bad luck, his own body salt and acids burn at his freshly opened wounds.

"Owie! I don't see how you pirates expect the delicately refined skills of these talented hands to pick any locks to your precious secret treasure in this state. Damn, that stings!"

Tossing down the heavy shovel to display the bleeding scratches on his chafed palms, not to mention his already beaten and battered body from his failed mutiny attempt of the Pearl Lady, Flynn Rider now bewails his painfully blistered and bloodied palms as his yet arrogant voice calls up from the hole he had been digging himself into.

Literally.

Since their clandestine arrival under the cover of darkness some five hours ago after the previous night's secret reconnoiter of the area, a beaten down Flynn had been an unwitting and unwilling participant in. Then accomplished thief had unhappily had his back put to work doing one of his absolutely least favorite tasks, his tall form bent over an endless amount of dirt to break ground in such tough soil, digging.

And boy, five hours into their happy jaunt, Flynn's exhausted back was sure aching.

"I don't do 'dirt.' I don't even like potted plants! Never mind that garden Blondie always plans for us to plant in the castle's backyard." In a whiny voice, Flynn grimaces aloud under his breath in the dark at the packed dirt crater he had spooned the soil from one exerted shovelful at a time until he was physically six feet under—

No, scratch that. That sounds bad—I'm six feet down in the dirt.

"If ye're hands be worthless, thief, ol' Houtebeen's sword might be amiable to relieve ye of zem all together so ye have no more complaints mumbled under ye're breath." The sneering patch-eyed pirate's ready face, made even more sinister and hideous by the lamplight he was holding, had been looming over the two meter wide pit Flynn had excavated. Houtebeen was so close and full of eager curiosity that the thief could smell the foul odor of the aged pirate's putrid breath through the captain's rum-soaked beard wafting over him.

Ewww…everything about this guy reminds me of the color of mud.

He looks up at Houtebeen's sneering red face lording down over him.

I really hate mud…

With shifting, sunken black eyes, Flynn dejectedly wipes the filthy sludge old Houtebeen's dragged pegleg had just catapulted at his eye sockets and cheek—and even some into Flynn's opened mouth at eye level, to which he spits out, disgusted at the thought that this wasn't just plain dirt. It was the dirt of a graveyard where age-old bodies had decayed within.

Yuck. I need a good gargle.

"So which be it, thief?" Houtebeen cruelly removes his cutlass from its scabbard hovering threateningly closer to Flynn's hands, as the exhausted man leans them against the cool dirt wall he had created for support.

"Did I mention I suffer from claustrophobia? Ever since the orphanage when the bigger boys locked me in that old, smelly trunk, which, by the way, as a kid of four years old, was good incentive for teaching myself some pretty nifty lock picking abilities. Handsome little devil I was, if I do say so myself." Flynn rattles near the end of his response with a somewhat quirky smile, remembering the lonely days of a little, abandoned whelp left at the front doorstep of the orphanage—who didn't belong to anyone, anywhere, except to himself.

And that's who taught him how to survive.

"Enough of ze mumbling, thief!" Captain Houtebeen's redheaded temper explodes. He had had just about his fill of Eugene Fitzherbert's 'fond' childhood memories.

"Who's mumbling? Was I mumbling? You must've been hearing this grave's former occupant's final gasp, angry at us for invading his hallowed space. No complaints here from me though, Cap'n. Just connecting with old terra firma here." Patting the unsettlingly disintegrating dirt wall, Flynn smooth talks his way out of the dicey situation. Then he grabs up the discarded shovel in quick hands to industriously return to his tunnel burrowing down through some poor deceased's uprooted gravesite in the eastern rear side of the Nidarosdoman's cemetery of consecrated grounds.

"That be better, ye cunning scoundrel. Enough of ye're fast-talking mumblings." The unctuous Houtebeen angrily growls. "Job! Ye keep an eye on zis unscrupulous blackguard while ye're captain has a look around zat zere river to make sure we've not been followed."

As cued, the dark Caribbean man swiftly appears from the shadows had had been almost totally swallowed up in, save for the whites of his cynical eyes.

"Hi there, tall, dark and—" Flynn takes a sweet talking approach in an attempt to beguile the bristling, taciturn man who had previously beaten him to a pulp to perhaps garner some—

"Just dig, t'ief." The quiet, sullen, dark-skinned first mate grunts out the three terse words. He was clearly able to spy the wily conniver's sketchy dishonesty in the lamplight he was passed.

"Fine. No one cares if I have morbid fear of dying in confined spaces. It's only me…" A sighing Flynn gives up with one final mumble, mainly because it reminded him of this pretty girl with seas of green eyes he longed to swim in again.

The same girl who cared for him way more than the no-good crook ever deserved.

So Flynn damns the pain of his raw blistered palms and manfully continues his now more dangerous shoveling as it angles beneath the top soil turf through the cold, grimy clod with an undaunted smirk that had her plucky name mumbled upon it.

"Rapunzel…"

Come on, Blondie. Shine that magic of yours to light this thief of yours way out of this mess he's gotten himself into.

Flynn thinks in the pitch darkness as he steels himself to the task, not only physically straining, but also risky. The innate human fear of being buried alive should his tunneled squirreled out hole collapse around him, and end all of Flynnigan Rider's swashbuckling daydreams once and for all.

But Eugene Fitzherbert, once he got past the blustery bravado and cocky smooth-talking, knew that he would miss most of all his greatest treasure hunt's most brilliant jewel to surpass all other precious gemstones he'd ever tried to steal before—his little piece of sunlight named 'Rapunzel.'

But if I close my eyes, I still can see your light…

Flynn stalwartly plunges forward as he chunks out the packed dirt to his left like an intrepid mole burrowing his way blindly, as the cold, dark world starts to shudder and shift above his head frightfully...

"Eugene…"

Almost like she heard her husband's thoughts come to her across the miles, the soft words hanging on the lips of the slumbering girl was full of longing and trepidation—and above both, love.

A calm Elsa, with eyes full of compassion, within the quiet parked Vis-à-vis coach, shares a glimpse with Pascal seated next to her on the bench opposite to where Rapunzel was stretched out, resting with arms dazedly hugging herself in a fetal position.

The soulful eyed chameleon alters his light greenish scales to a more melancholy grayish shade whilst Elsa comforts the lizard with a soft stroke of the head.

Arendelle's Queen, too, was meant to be sleeping, but while the horse-drawn sleigh had spent most of the night following the one in front of it, they had circumnavigated the Orkla Fjord, leading through the more eastern provinces of Skauva and Vinjeora. Then they began weaving their reindeer and horse trails through the many small fjords that dotted this northeastern section of her kingdom's scenery, all whilst cousin Rapunzel's grief was eating away at her.

She loves him so…

A sympathetic Elsa tries to put herself in her brave cousin's shoes. Though the two girls wore vastly differing styles, there was something fraternally familiar about their men.

…My man…?!

Though she was as yet having a difficult time wrapping her bewildered mind around the fact, a part timid, part terrified, part thrilled Elsa could still hear Olaf's question from earlier—from when their epic journey was just at its start.

And she had been pondering its mysteries ever since.

Is he a good bad guy…or is he a bad good guy?

But aren't we each born of Man's sinful nature? It's what we all must strive to overcome—every single day, made easier to achieve in our walk with Him. Right?

And if the Lord can move mountains, how much simpler a human heart?

Queen Elsa feels God's bright morning sunlight begin to break through the dark night's lengthening shadows that the sun's rays were slowly dispelling over the vulgar mountain ranges.

But now closer in the periphery, those grayish, dusty peaks were actually– if you looked with fresh, not jaded, unsullied eyes—glowing glorious, awash in the purple majestic glow of a new day.

Yesterday was a lot to digest for a young man just starting out in his new life, with a new bride, a new home, new responsibilities—and now new problems and worries that came along with those new predictions of impending danger and doom that he had been told he himself would somehow be instrumental in defeating.

Me? But how? With this thing?

The tall blonde sitting on a large boulder under the dawn's early light that had fallen over the peaceful glen they'd set up as camp for the night, stares incredulously at the wooden long bow that had been handcrafted and passed down from generation to generation of Saami warriors—from father to son, for hundreds—maybe thousands—of years in the rite of passage of the enigmatic Juoska.

So what's all that got to do with me? Were those old Saami people back there saying I'm a part of their Clan? I really do have Saami blood in me, then? I know I've never met any of my real kin—with my parents being killed in an accident when I was just a little fella. The ice harvester mountain men took me in then and they seemed to be intimating that I was at least part Saami —but whenever I asked, those guys were never much on conversation. So I never heard much else about who my real folks were.

But they did teach me the valuable lessons of having a good work ethic out there in the frozen tundra areas, where I learned that a hard honest day's toil gave a man dignity and self-worth. I'll always be grateful for that.

Kristoff's musing mind heeds his own thoughts. He stands from the rock perch he had been seated on, in deep contemplation of what to do with the foreign device that he had been gifted by those mysterious three people last night.

Oh yeah, last night…

Kristoff allows himself the hint of a silly wistful smile in recollection of how his little ray of sunshine—his sweet, little Anna— had somehow mistakenly convinced her spirited mind that he and she had had their first fight as a married couple, over the dumbest thing he couldn't even recall now.

However, to reassure his emotional new bride that he was truly not vexed with her, the fun of making up the argument after a several long tedious hours' drive, in the sleigh for the first time was memorable enough to convince her.

Once the other sleigh and a dropped off Olaf was securely placed for the night in the quiet mountain base location, Kristoff directed Hans to make camp while he and Anna went on ahead to 'check out' the safety of the perimeter surroundings.

But that wasn't all the newly wedded couple, bursting with youthful hormones, were checking out under the soft, pale summer moonlight, beneath a pulled up tarp cover so that all unobtrusive Sven had to deal with were sound effects of Anna being quite a giddy, forgiven giggler.

Crazy Anna! There was nothing to forgive. Though I did enjoy the benefits of you thinking there was...

Ahem! The big and tall man still possessed the sweetness to clear his bashful throat loudly.

Right. Let's do this!

Slapping his hands together, a red-cheeked Kristoff, with his adrenaline well pumping by now, stretches to his full six foot, five inch height as he grasps the long bow bequeathed him in one strong hand and the quiver bag full of various pointed honed bone arrows with his other.

He raises one of its thin shafts up to the bowstring as he had imagined he'd seen one held by the hero of a children's storybook. Now to fulfill his own tall tale's 'destiny', Kristoff draws the length of bowstring to arrow shaft ratio as the purple and pink hues of the dawn rise over the mountain peaked horizon.

Boing!

But the young man whose hands had never picked up, never mind shot, this type of weapon in the entirety of his life finds this simple enough first step to be a tad too demanding—what with all its strange foreign taut strings and sight crosshairs parts going all awry under his inexperienced hand.

"Oooh, this thing doesn't like me…!" An aggravated Kristoff angrily murmurs to himself in vexed disappointment as the wooden compound bow with the heraldic markings on its well-notched, tried and true curvature, drops to his depressed side.

He had been trying all morning, since before the first light and with all those inspirational speeches of him being some 'chosen Golden one', 'Saami legendary hero', 'Spirit whisperer' and the like, the sweet, innocent young boy that still yet lived within Kristoff Bjorgman's untainted heart wanted to believe that he would just magically become this ultimate, mystical archery master with his first flown arrow.

Reality check, Kristoff. You get nothing for nothing in this life—and you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

The humble young man mocks himself, for ever entertaining the far out fantasy that he—a nothing ice harvester, mountain man, orphan boy who may even now claim some Saami roots— two groups of the Norwegian working class's poor outcasts, would ever be considered as more than the low rank in society he was born to.

But that never bothered him one iota before.

Kristoff had always lived an honest life, true to himself for himself. The confident man found much pride in the sweat of his brow and the work of his hands. There were no false vanities nor delusions of grandeur that he could ever aspire to anything more than his station in life.

Not that he ever wanted to anyway. It was just by luck that the girl he fell in love with just happened to be a princess of the kingdom.

Did that matter to down-to-earth Kristoff Bjorgman?

Nope.

He would've married Anna if she was a poor fisherman's daughter who washed windows for a living.

Now there's a scary thought…

Kristoff amuses himself in envisioning his accident-prone girl dealing with fragile glass on some rickety old window ledge several stories up.

But his knowing smile deepens with the assured thought that his strong arms would still always be there to catch her when she slipped.

"The arrow, with a proper fletching, does tend to fly better when its spine is held perpendicular to the nock point between the bow's riser."

Oh…that all-knowing voice again.

Kristoff's already ruddy face from all that morning's exertion reddens even deeper at being caught only half aware, daydreaming, when he was supposed to be practicing with his new sharp tipped 'legendary toy.'

"Good morning, Mr. Bjorgman." A polite Hans didn't intend to sound overbearing, but he couldn't help himself in the tease upon watching, for the last several minutes, while he was feeding the horses, how poor Kristoff was proving so inept with his new bow and arrow.

The man doesn't even know how to hold its anchor point properly!

Now Prince Hans, formerly of the Southern Isles, more than any of his twelve older, begrudging brothers, just happened to have some awards back home on archery that attested to his own mastery of it.

Hans Westergaard was declared an uncanny natural at archery, even at an early age. Although deemed too small to stand taller than the standard long bow's twenty-eight inch curved height, the eager to please boy took it up anyway, as if the red-headed lad had archery skills in his blood running straight through the Scottish heritage of his veins.

After awhile, he was even able to hit moving targets, right on the mark astride his galloping trusty steed, Sitron, all through his childhood, pleasing many an approving audience, though never his cold, uncaring father, nor entourage of jealous brothers watching, still, even in his memories...

"Oh, it's you...'Morning." A brusque Kristoff remembers how Bulda had ingrained some degree of manners, though his salutation came out rather too gruffly due to his own frustrations.

Hans nods at the greeting, albeit late in arrival. Mr. Bjorgman had his shirt off despite the cool chill of mid-northeastern breeze, displaying his ample muscular build's peak physical fitness.

From Kristoff's tight eight-pack abs of rectus abdominius, transverse abdominus, external abdomens and tendinous inscriptors, to around his well built external intercoastals and seratus anteriors, up to his finely sculpted pectorals, then back down to his deeply carved abdominal obliques, the burly blonde had every bit as much musculature as all the pored-over encyclopedias on human male musculoskeletal anatomy a thin and bony Hans himself had always envied since he was a gangly teen.

It's no wonder Princess Anna would ridicule me, if this is her standard.

Kristoff looks at the strange way a smirking Hans was eyeing him. The big blonde grows self-conscious as he fumbles with his bow to hold it more…

What was that? Perpendicular…?

"What are you looking at?" Having enough, a ruffled Kristoff finally confronts the man whose eyes were boring holes in him beneath the purplish cloud strewn sky.

"Oh, do pardon me." Hans clears his embarrassed throat. "I was merely considering your lack of form—in archery, that is. A proper posture is essential in achieving success with your aim." The Danish prince smiles encouragingly from years of learned experience.

"What are you? Some kind of bow and arrow expert, too?" Kristoff scoffs as he defiantly lobs off another volley of wilted arrow shafts that traverse the air not more than a few feet in either direction from where he was standing.

"Modesty forbids me to say, but it may aid you in that I have much hands-on knowledge in this field, since the early days of my youth. Believe me, archery is a difficult sport to delve into if you have no prior experience or helpful instruction, at least. It's as if I could just be able to pick up some ice tool and instantly know the learned skill of splitting or cutting or lifting ice as perfectly precise as an experienced harvester, such as yourself." In animated expression, Hans was doing his best not to sound too conceited or lordly, for his diplomatic studies had given him a heads-up on fragile male egos as well.

But fortunately for him, Kristoff was too utterly good to own much in that ignoble bumptious self-intoxicating area linked predominantly with alpha male types. The fair-haired man was too fair and level-headed by nature, and at times, near angelic, to sink to those all too mortal, faulted pitfalls.

"I can just see you doing that." After hours of trial and mostly error with his bow, Kristoff pauses in his exasperated attempts to afford Hans a crooked smirk. He then turns to try just one more arrow. But when the latest one shoots so far askew in left field that it bounces and skitters across the ground like a bunny rabbit, his confidence follows suit.

"Ohhh, darn thing! Okay, I give up…!" Kristoff sinks to his knees in total frustration, flopping to his back and covering his frazzled face with a bent arm over it, though the wooden Saami bow was still tightly gripped in the other. He just lies there still on the ground, feeling defeated.

After a few moments spent in silent self-pity in the dawn's early light, Kristoff is called back to his senses when a handsome silhouette covers the illuminating sunrise in the east over him.

"She is too fine a lady to surrender her so easily. You only have to learn how to hold her and stroke her gently—like a lover—and believe me, she will respond in much the same manner." A coy eyed Hans whispers to Kristoff as he kneels beside the prostrate young man. "But you would know more on this subject than I." He adds rather bashfully with a slight blush tracing his high cheekbones. Hans then holds out to Kristoff the six spent arrows that had been strewn across the field he had gathered for him.

"Stroke her like—" Kristoff repeats, as he removes the arm flung over his eyes, quite intrigued with Hans' interesting analogy concerning this new bow clenched in his big, brawny rough hands, that couldn't find the delicacy to handle.

"—you would tenderly hold your new wife." Hans' smile was wily, yet soft, in his underlying rudimentary meaning, not in the terms of technical names for the instrument's many intricate parts or titles of honed archer skills, but in basic, guileless ways that Kristoff could connect with.

"…Hold this bow…as if it were Anna?" It was like a light suddenly switched on in Kristoff's brain as his legs, almost unconsciously, leap his body up to his full, tall height. He was now cradling the wooden bow in his arm.

"Here, you'll be needing this." Hans takes this opportunity to slide onto Kristoff's left wrist and lacing it securely, a leather armguard bracer he had crafted from some excess parts of horse tackle that he'd gleaned from Iriserende's well-pouched saddle she'd come with.

"Thanks…" Eyes concentrated forward on his goal, Kristoff doesn't question the 'professional' archer's protective leather strap after the more experienced man had laced it to his wrist.

As the day breaking world suddenly goes starkly silent around him, and feeling a new surge of confidence within a daze, Kristoff thoroughly focuses on the same target on a tree, fairly far in the distance, that he had hung earlier, though no previous wilted or misdirected arrow had even come close to assailing it.

But this time, against the craggly grey mountain backdrop, with Anna's sweet smile in the forefront of his mind, Kristoff Bjorgman raises the golden hued, handcarved spruce and willow compressed bow. He gives it a fond stroke to its curved limbs at exactly the correct height over his head, exactly the correct placement of arrow shaft to nock point, exactly correct draw length on the bowstring between the riser through his sight window, until, as if in an out of body trance, he pulls the perfectly strung arrow in a skilled finger pinch technique, with even more precise aim to release—

Zzzzing!

The sharpened stone point cuts straight and true through the crisp morning, still air beneath the purple billowing clouds, directly in line with its objective goal and—

Bullseye!

The Saami arrow whistles through the air until it finds its target, dead center, so precisely zeroed in, that even Hans was impressed, especially after an invigorated Kristoff now swiftly loads and reloads, shot after perfect shot of arrows, until the target on the tree was replete with perfect bullseye hits.

Clap clap clap!

"Wow, Kristoff! You've got really good aim! Who knew? We thought you were just good at delivering ice, and painting birthday signs. I bet I could shoot arrows almost that good if I had rippling muscles on my chest like you do. But I don't even have muscles…or a chest. So you don't have to worry about competition from me. Heh heh he. Hee hee." Olaf's inane giggles and clapped together branches loudly call attention to the impressive scene as he waddles from the camp over to the modest man, who was looking down at the bow in his hands, amazed at himself for abilities he knew he never had before.

Maybe those old Saami weren't kidding.

Kristoff snorts a chuckle to himself as he gazes at his destined, legendary bow in eye-opening astonishment.

"By the way, Elsa sent me to tell you guys that it's time for—" Olaf begins to convey his original message when a loud, boisterous voice rings through the skies in his place.

"—KRISTOFF! BREAKFAST TIME!"

His little wife's big voice cries out from around the meadow's bend with her demanding, rustic beckon and banging clamor of pans.

Sometime after Hans had left the camp earlier, after he had already started the campfire before seeing to the horses, Elsa and Pascal had climbed from their covered sleigh to take the initiative and begin cooking the team's early morning breakfast.

And it looked like head chef Elsa was handling their 'frying pan'—now makeshift 'griddle'—very well indeed. Her platinum blonde hair done up in a neat bun, Elsa had become pretty deft at mixing up some flour, sugar, and water, plus the secret ingredient of finely chopped potato slices that she had found in their replenished food supply basket. She cleverly made her best quick spur of the moment recreation of one of the recipes a certain prince had taught his 'scullery maid' in their time together aboard that pirate ship.

A few minutes later, Anna had stumbled from her sled bed beside the furry neck that a tired Sven had extended into the sleigh for her to use as the fuzzy pillow she had been drooling on when, either (A) Anna had heard a suspiciously happily humming Elsa up and at'em at this crack of dawn by the campfire already, where Anna would not let her big sis and that Westergaard go totally unsupervised. She could just imagine the pair cooking up something rather intimately at the roaring fire with that man in Elsa's hair again.

Or (B) Anna's own adorable hungry nose had scented the tasty aroma of toasted flapjacks and she would offer to kindly help her big sis set their picnic blanket table for the breakfast meal.

"Could that really be Potato Lefse my pleasured senses are all detecting? Please, allow me say, I am continually fascinated by your limitless aptitude, Queen Elsa. Good morning to you." From the nearby glen's target practice area, wearing his Arendelle cloak well, Prince Hans returns to the campsite to have eager eyes and rewarded nose be greeted by the lovely pale-skinned woman's tasty ministrations of flipping hot cakes of Denmark's most favored morning treat on the new griddle pan (AKA remastered, remitted, remalleated former Kransekake cake pan) upon the campfire's flames that quick-to-skedaddle Pascal had volunteered to crawl under to light the fire for the Queen of Ice.

"Good morning, Sir. I do hope I remembered all the amounts of ingredients to keep true to the original recipe you so kindly instructed me on, Prince Hans." A doe-eyed Elsa can't help but blush when Hans can't help his stray fingers from brushing those 2 pesky strands of loose hair from her coiffed, back-bun do.

"I am certain they will be all the more delicious if created by these delicate hands." Now not just symbolically brushing the back of Elsa's trembling hands that were still busily a-flipping hotcakes, Hans drinks in the girl with the meek wide eyes attempting not to glance up at his touch. But his undeniable oozing over charm was far too attractive for any girl not to be drawn into it for long, as Hans responds by gently smoothing those stray bangs again that a frazzled Elsa was attempting to blow back away from her forehead out of her eyes.

The hair again! You just have to have a thing with her hair, don't you, Red?!

"—KRISTOFF! BREAKFAST IS READY!"

'Good hostess' Anna practically growls her banshee-like screech so close behind the pair she was covertly skulking behind that Elsa is so startled she pulls away to toss a mid-flipped lefse straight up in the air. But fortunately Hans' quick reflexes grab hold to catch the steaming hot pancake in his hands.

"Hot! Hot! Hotcake!" He was playacting of course, chuckling as he passes the fresh off the presses flat potato cake between his two hands until the jocular redhead comically manages to land the escapee breakfast fare back into Elsa's well-aimed fry pan.

All to which causes the highly entertained Ice Queen to join in his lighthearted laughter before leaning down to blow some swiftly formed ice vergles and snowflakes in her super-cooled controlled hands over to his impishly waggish, teasingly feigned scorched ones. The chilled ticklish action of which, both soothes and entices Hans simultaneously under her cool breath's touch over his fingers.

"Ooh!" Secret observer Anna stomps a sabotaging furious little foot to the hard-packed grassy ground. But in her usual clumsiness, goes slipping and sliding along the wet dewy grass blades of morning.

And again, as per usual, Kristoff appears just then from around the bend of the glen where he was still pulling a shirt back over those admired rippling muscles for sociable decency's sake. He swoops in to stabilize his spinning like a ballerina/top out of control sweetie doing awkward pirouettes wearing her Scandinavian designed olive green frock beneath her puffball trimmed cape draped over shoulders bobbing in the cool morning breezes.

"Is breakfast ready? Why didn't you call me, Anna?" Kristoff was uncharacteristically full of himself with more than a full measure of the tease as he glances down to his breathlessly dizzy girl from where she was laid out in his arms tensely.

He was right. Holding that bow gently is how I hold Anna gently. Kristoff's face had a quirky grin pasted all over its bemused twisted lip as he squeezes her skinny arm, with fingers soft yet firm.

"You didn't hear me?! Why do I even bother?!" Anna throws her hands up in the air in exasperation until her short attention span catches sight of that new 'wedding present' of a longbow clutched in her hubby's hand as he sets it on the ground beside the picnic blanket she had laid out earlier (a shame I missed that). He then settles himself and a plopped Anna on the blanket to eat some of those delicious smelling—'manna' to a nutrition starved well-exercised stomach—potato lefse that Elsa had made with her own hands and Hans was gentlemanly serving out, from a politely extended tray as a proper waiter—not a Prince—would.

"Did you try it already?! Without me?! How does it shoot? When do I get my turn?!" Anna sprawls her lithe body over Kristoff to reach over him to touch and ogle the golden wooden limb of her thrilling new prize. She was so giddy with bubbly excitement (as the sheltered little Princess met every new experience in her life, full of gusto) that Anna forgets all other concerns when she sits back to grab a flapjack in either hand to give a quick enthusiastic absent-minded big bite chew on each one in turn.

"Whoa, slow down, Feisty-pants! You're gonna get indigestion eating fast like that!" He chides with an amused smile as he then has to fend off the guilty faced girl who had just downed the rest of the hotcake nearly whole just that second before his warning came. She lunges back over Kristoff to grab the bow lying there, like a kid with a new toy for Christmas would.

"Hold on, flutterbudget. You're gonna have to promise to learn some safety precautions first before I let you loose with this sharp headed baby." Kristoff has to physically restrain his spirited squirming wife who was almost kicking and screaming to grab hold of that shiny new toy glimmering gold with the rising sun in her bewitched eyes.

"Stop it, Anna. This is a dangerous weapon that only we men should be handling." It was humorous how diminutive snowman Olaf takes up that mantle as he aids Kristoff by yanking away the bow and its quiver of deadly pointed arrow tips out of the reach of Anna's grasping hands just itching to scoop up the bow and purloin some arrows to start blasting off in any given direction.

Hans Westergaard's tight bum bent over the campfire seeing to the firewood looks pretty darn fine a target about now, Anna begrudgingly had to admit, as she raises her arms mimicking the bow she wasn't permitted to touch—yet!—in his direction with a wicked gleam in her eye.

Anna decides to just chew on another pancake lefse instead, though the look on her face was far from satisfied.

Finally finished whipping up the remainder of the lefse batter to take as snacks on the road, Elsa and Hans had just sat down to join Olaf, Pascal, and a fondly bickering Anna and Kristoff with their first serving of potato lefse, for which Hans praises the Lord of Heaven and then the Queen of Arendelle for 'providing for the deliciously created meal that feeds both hungry stomachs and hungry souls for the good company,' when the final member of their rescue party comes bounding and tripping from the Vis-à-vis sleigh.

"Eugene! Somebody help him, please! My husband's in terrible danger! I can feel it! Please, take me to him quickly!" A disheveled and distraught Princess Rapunzel launches herself bodily from the sleigh car where the others had thoughtfully left the poor nightmare-tossed and stomach-turned young woman who had been softly moaning for hours, though she was sleeping, as if her very soul itself was in restless pain.

For it was. Her love for her beloved husband, her funny friend, her other half soulmate was so intense that Rapunzel's broken heart was certain she could hear his plaintive voice calling out her name in the darkness. And she could just sense through their true love's bond that her Eugene was cold and sad and hurt and scared—

And alone…

Elsa and Anna immediately jump up to their feet to comfort their hysterically weeping older cousin in a tight group hug that Olaf and Pascal soon are squished within as well.

Kristoff and Hans exchange a silent look as both men carelessly abandon their breakfasts to spring into action, their pensive eyes sharing a foreboding sense of trepidation, sending Hans running in one direction to quickly hitch the horses and Kristoff in the other to get Sven ready to move out all due haste.

But the big blonde doesn't forget to reach down to grasp hold of his new companion in all its legendary golden glory glinting in the fresh sunlight. His Saami bow and quiver was filled with arrows readied for the fight against this emotionally charged incoming storm with Flynn Rider's fate riding in the heart of the eye of it…

Hello there friend SSB-sama! Thanks for your great reviews on chapters 2 and 17!

I really enjoy hearing new comments on even past chapters gone by, so we can relive the story fun together!

Just thought I'd try to personally drop you a note of gratitude for your kind interest here, since I can't reply to your review.

It's so nice to share our thoughts and hearts over the miles thanks to Fanfiction and imagination's magic. ^_^

God bless you as you continue to read through our very long and winding still continuing tale!

Please review often and tell me what you think of your favorite chapters and characters as you forge ahead in "Frozen: Again"!

Thanks!

Your Frozen friend,

HarukaKou!

P.S. La Corda is wonderful too! Did you read my full blown novel, 'Crescendo 2f" yet? My sister (who is my greatest writing supporter and forever best friend) adores Len x Kahoko and the story revolves around the entire Corda gang having romantic adventures traveling to the city of music, Vienna and culminating in Len & Kahoko's engagement.

It's complete, so give it a read, if you already haven't ^_^ (then I'm tilting at windmills :)