The door to Anna's bedroom swung open, and out came a pair of pigtails attached to a princess. "Hey, everyone!"
The head of every last maid, servant, and guard spun towards her.
"I'm changing clothes in here! Nobody come in! I, uh, I might be a while! Don't disturb me, okay?"
The door shut.
On the other side of it, Kristoff gave Anna a look. "Your nonchalance might need a little work."
"No, my nonchalant just looks chalant."
"What?"
"Come on already." Anna took his hand and tugged him towards the bed.
Kristoff tugged away. "You sure you wanna do this? I mean, the last time Elsa caught us, I thought she was gonna turn me into a popsicle."
"First off-" Without warning, Anna went for the top button of Kristoff's shirt. "-Elsa's a worrywart. We're not gonna do anything, y'know, bad until we marry – which I'd love to do as soon as we're sure it won't make Elsa's head explode, by the way – and you wash well, so you don't have any weird diseases, right?"
"Well, not any weird diseases..."
"The point is, what Elsa doesn't know won't hurt her. Second off-" Pop went Kristoff's second button. "-holy moly, those abs." Anna wolf whistled, then went for the third button. "Third off-" Pop. "Third off... What was I talking about again?"
"You sure you don't just like me for my looks?" smirked Kristoff.
"Not just for your looks, no," Anna smirked back.
The mattress groaned at all the weight it suddenly had to support.
"Y'know, Anna, it wouldn't hurt to go out and do something romantic every once in a while. I just want there to be more to us than the, uh, physical parts."
"We will go out and do something romantic. Right after we're done here."
"Well, I guess now we know who wears the feisty pants..."
"Come on, you've been gone forever! I've missed you. And you can't tell me you weren't lonely, too. You've been harvesting ice all by yourself."
"I wasn't by myself. I had Sven."
"True. But can Sven do this?"
The mattress started creaking.
"You're right, he can't. Not flexible enough."
"Eww, stop, you're ruining the mood."
"Sorry."
"Hey, Kristoff? Not to be weird, but... am I doing this right?"
The creaking halted.
"Uh... yeah, you're doing great."
"You hesitated," said Mary.
"Agh! What the-?"
There was a whirlwind of bedsheets and a noise like a startled cat yanking itself off an octopus, and the next instant, Anna and Kristoff were fully covered and facing the doorway. Mary was standing before the opened door, her face a perfect blank.
"How long have you been there?" demanded Anna.
"A couple minutes," said Mary. "What are you doing?"
Kristoff strangled Anna with his eyes. "You didn't lock the door?"
"I didn't think I needed to because I assumed people would heed my warning!" Anna said through gritted teeth.
Kristoff moaned and turned to the doorway. "What are you doing in here, Mary?"
"Well, I was walking by, and the door was open a crack."
Kristoff buried his face in his palm.
"It's a force of habit, okay?" said Anna. "I think I've got a pathological thing against closed doors."
"Why is your blouse open?" asked Mary. "And where's Kristoff's shirt?"
"Uhhhhhh..." You could see the gears turning in Anna's head. "You just missed it, but a second ago, there was this huge cloud of ravenous moths-"
"We were about to have sex," said Kristoff.
"Kristoff!" Anna spun towards him, eyes bulging. "Ixnay on the exsay!"
"Sorry, I thought we might want to spare ourselves some headache and come clean for once."
"Alright, alright..." Anna sighed and returned her attention to Mary. "Look, Kristoff and I weren't going to do anything bad-"
"Maybe a little bad," muttered Kristoff.
"-but Elsa doesn't really sympathize. If she finds out about, like, any of this, she'll be burying Kristoff-flavored ice cubes under the floorboards, you follow me?"
Mary shook her head. "I don't understand."
"I'm saying she'll kill him. Not literally, I hope."
"No, I mean don't understand what it is."
"What what is?"
"Sex," said Mary. "What is that?"
Kristoff rolled over under the covers and let out a self-pitying groan.
"Wait." Anna blinked. "You mean you don't know?"
"Maybe Elsa's snowmen just aren't programmed to know this stuff," said Kristoff. "Olaf didn't know either that time he caught us-"
"We don't talk about that!" hissed Anna. Then she turned back to Mary and said, "Look, Mary, sex is this, uh... thing that people do when they, y'know, like each other and want to feel good."
"And Elsa doesn't want you to have it with Kristoff?" frowned Mary.
Kristoff snickered. "Yeah, pretty much."
Anna shut her eyes and took a deep breath. "No. No, I'm an adult, so Elsa's not the boss of me. It's just, err, frowned upon to sleep with someone you're not married to."
"Why?" asked Mary.
"Oh, um-" Anna was disarmed. "I dunno, I guess because..." She turned to Kristoff.
"Hey, don't look at me!" said Kristoff, throwing his hands in the air. "I was raised by trolls. They've got a whole different-"
"The point is, Elsa's gonna be mad at us, so you have to promise not to tell anyone, okay?"
"Alright, I promise." Mary's eyes wandered, prompting Anna to turn a shade redder and button her blouse. "What happened to your clothes?"
"Well, err..." Anna bowed her head. "Part of the whole, uh, process involves... taking them off."
Mary brought a hand to her mouth. "On purpose? But you're a lady! You have to protect your modesty!"
"Yeah, that's, uh, that's the idea." Anna made eyes at Kristoff and gave him a somewhat strained smile. "I wouldn't do this with just anyone, Mary – despite what some rumors say. That's what makes my relationship with Kristoff so special."
"Oh! Oh!" You could see the spark of realization flash through Mary's icy eyes. "Kristoff finds your naked body fetching!"
"Not the word I would use, but yeah," said Kristoff.
"And that's why Elsa didn't want me running around naked!" said Mary. "Because I'm fetching, too! But Olaf is allowed to because, well, who would find him fetching?"
"You'd be surprised..." Kristoff earned himself a look from Anna. "I'm kidding!"
"And this makes your relationship special?" Mary gazed at the two of them with pure, innocent fascination. "How?"
"Well, uh..." Anna sat up under the blankets. "I guess because it's how babies are made."
From Mary's face, Anna might as well have said it's how unicycles are made. "What? What do babies have to do with any of this? I thought they came from their mother's womb."
Anna's eyes met the ceiling. "They do. It's just a, uh... It's a whole thing. Don't worry about it. Kristoff and I aren't gonna make a baby. Not until we're married, anyways. I mean, Elsa's not about to churn out an heir herself, so someone has to."
"So that's what marriage is for?" asked Mary. "It makes it okay for people to have sex so they can raise children?"
"Gee, when you put it that way, it sounds so unappealing," said Kristoff.
"That's one part of marriage," said Anna. "It's complicated, okay, Mary? Now if that's all, we were kind of in the middle of something before you came in, so..."
"Oh, you wanted to keep..." Mary backed away from the bed, her cheeks filling with frost. "You want me to leave?"
"Sex is private," said Anna. "Super private. You should go. And don't tell anyone about any of this! Especially Elsa. Trust me."
"Alright, if... if that's what you..." Mary hung her head and made for the door. Just before leaving, she turned back around, took one last lingering look over the two of them, and said, "Anna, can... can we talk more about this later?"
"I've probably already said too much." Anna gave an apologetic wince. "Just don't worry about it, okay?"
"Okay..." And with that, Mary slunk out the door.
The instant she was gone, Anna rolled over to glare at Kristoff. "What do you mean, trolls have a whole different-?"
Mary returned to her bedroom in a daze. There was this entire fun thing people could do that they'd kept secret from Mary? Why hadn't Mary known about it before? She seemed to know most other basic information automatically. The only explanation was that Elsa hadn't known about sex when she'd first made Mary – which made sense. Elsa had only been eight, after all.
Mary locked the door behind her and ran to examine herself in the mirror, stripping off her dress. Mary had known she was missing some body parts, but she hadn't realized those parts were useful for anything! Her body was smooth and barren like a doll's. How bizarre must that look to outsiders?
Suddenly, Fritz's face flashed through Mary's mind. The pieces clicked into place. Of course. That's why he'd acted so differently towards her when Mary turned into attack form. That's why Fritz still acted antsy around Elsa even though he was dating Mary now.
Why hadn't Elsa told Mary about this? Mary was dating someone, wasn't she? Was she waiting to say anything until Mary and Fritz were married? They... They were going to get married, right?
That was another thing Mary had never thought of before. She'd been so anxious to have someone to kiss her and love her the way Elsa's mama and papa had that Mary hadn't thought about what she would do with that someone once she had them. She and Fritz mostly just kissed and hung out together, but was there supposed to be more to a relationship than that? Were they expected to marry one day? To have a baby? Was that even possible?
Mary brought a hand to her stomach. In her reflection, she could see straight through her torso to the wall behind her. There was no womb in there, just ice. It didn't seem possible, but... Mary was brought to life by magic, wasn't she? Magic could do anything, couldn't it?
At any rate, Mary was more than a little foggy on the exact mechanics of this "sex" thing. It didn't sound like Anna was anxious to explain any more about it, and if Mary went to Elsa, that might give away that she'd caught Anna and Kristoff in the act. Would Mary have to figure this out all by herself? How was she expected to do that? It wasn't like there was an instruction man-
Mary froze. Then she dashed for her bookshelf, grabbed the anatomy book, plopped down on her bed with it, and flipped it open to the table of contents. Of course, Mary knew she wasn't supposed to be reading for the rest of the week, but... Well, her curiousity had gotten the better of her. Her finger skimmed the page, coming to a rest on the words, "The Reproductive System."
Mary smiled to herself, then pushed her glasses up her nose and set to work.
After the ten thousandth legal document, signing your name became second nature. Elsa had mastered the art down to the slightest detail, from dipping the pen in the inkwell to scrawling her perfect signature in one swift, pleasing motion. Her hand moved at rapid speed, no longer so much as stopping to consult her brain. At this point, it was physically impossible for Elsa to err. The action had been so deeply ingrained into her that-
"Your Majesty!" A squeaky voice sent Elsa's hand jerking in surprise, smudging out her last name so that her signature read "Queen Elsa ~~~~~~~ of Arendelle." Elsa sighed and turned to the doorway to find a scrawny, lumpy-headed servant boy standing in the study.
"It's past your bedtime!" Fritz said this the way one might say, "Your hair is on fire!" or "You're coughing up blood!"
"It is? Wow, the hours really slipped away from me." Elsa gave him a patient smile and rose to her feet. It took the fingers of her writing hand a second before they'd agree to release the pen.
"Is your hand okay?" asked Fritz. "Do you need me to get you some ice?"
Elsa gave him a long, hard stare.
"Oh," said Fritz.
It was only after Elsa slept soundly for several hours that Fritz allowed himself to turn in for the night. Waiting on Elsa hand and foot took a lot out of him, but Fritz didn't mind. Finally, after failing at reindeer herding, higher education, trading post-slash-sauna maintenance, and bodyguarding, Fritz had found something he wasn't a complete and utter failure at. Sure, it was hard work, but honestly, Fritz would rather work his butt off than lounge around the castle leeching off the royal family's hospitality.
Fritz still couldn't believe Elsa had taken him in. She was too nice. Incredibly nice. And beautiful. And elegant and honest and perfect and sexy – uh, in a completely platonic way, of course. Fritz had a loving girlfriend who he was totally committed to.
Crack. Just the thought of Mary sent the sound of snapping bone through Fritz's ears. Yeah. Totally committed.
Fritz arrived at his bedroom and reached for the doorknob. He was being paranoid again, he told himself. Mary had only attacked that guy to protect Fritz. It wasn't like she was some sort of crazed murderer or anything.
"Hello, Fritz."
"Gah!"
Mary had apparently decided not the make her presence known until after Fritz had locked the door behind himself. He spun around to find Mary sitting under the covers of his bed, smiling from cheek to cheek. Normally, a glasses-wearing snowwoman would've been adorable, but every time he looked at her, Fritz had to fight down the memory of a thin, featureless snow-monster sticking its tongue in his mouth.
"Surprised?" laughed Mary.
"I just, uh, wasn't expecting you back so soon." Fritz's mind raced for a way to undo the lock and bolt out the door without looking like he was scared of her. Fritz was pretty sure Mary would buy it if he said he was late for a staff meeting, but he wasn't sure how he would explain the part where he ran screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Come into bed, dear," Mary said silkily. "I've got another surprise for you." She sat up, then tossed off the blanket.
"Agh!" Fritz nearly fainted on the spot. Beneath the blanket, Mary had on nothing. No dress, no undergarments, nothing. For a solid minute, Fritz stared, slack-jawed. If you listened carefully, you could hear the wiring in his brain hissing.
"I want to have sex with you," Mary helpfully clarified.
Fritz's eyes impulsively double-checked Mary's body to make sure they hadn't somehow missed the genitals the first time around. Nope, nope, she was definitely smooth and flat. Even her torso was featureless. Well, it had a feminine shape, but overall it didn't look much different from if Mary was wearing a skintight shirt.
A couple questions fought to escape Fritz's mouth, with "Why?" and "How?" coming in close second behind "What?"
"I know what you're going to say," said Mary, her cheeks filling with frost. "I don't have the same... parts as a human. How is it going to work? Well, I was wondering that, too, and then I remembered snowmen like heat. All we have to do is light a fire and then-"
Word to the wise: Any sex that starts with the phrase "All we have to do is light a fire" won't be good sex.
Elsa was awoken by the sound of birds chirping. She yawned, stretched, and pulled herself out of the covers. She'd already brushed her teeth and conjured her ice-nightgown into an ice-dress before it hit her. Birds chirping? She could actually hear the birds chirping this morning? Usually, it was drowned out by an incessant stream of "Good morning, Your Majesty, I fixed you your breakfast, Your Majesty, can I get you anything, Your Majesty?"
Elsa searched the bedroom, the washroom, and the bedchambers hallway, but Fritz was nowhere to be found. Despite the peace and quiet this bought her, Elsa frowned. Who was going to fix her breakfast? Who was going to straighten her bed covers? Who was going to brush out her hair and apply her makeup? Of course, Elsa was perfectly capable of doing all that herself, but there'd been something oddly appealing about a servant waiting on her so enthusiastically. Elsa had always found Fritz's blatant crush annoying, but she had to admit, having someone so delighted by her very existence did wonders for her self-esteem.
"Fritz?" Elsa opened his bedroom door a crack and peeped inside, but the bed was unoccupied. She was about to give up and go search somewhere else when she caught a faint whimpering sound. Elsa crept inside and tracked the noise to behind Fritz's closet door. She opened it to find a scrawny boy hunched into a ball, hiding under a pile of spare uniforms and trembling.
"Fritz?" Elsa was at his side immediately, a comforting arm around his shoulders. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"Shh!" Fritz immediately hissed. "You can't let Mary know I'm here!"
"What?" Now Elsa was less worried and more confused. "Why are you hiding from Mary?"
"Because I have a sense of self-preservation, that's why!" Fritz snapped, a frantic gleam overtaking his eyes. "Mary's crazy! Crazy, I tell you!"
"Is this because she broke that man's leg?" asked Elsa.
Fritz faltered. "Well, uh, that's a contributing factor, but..."
"Fritz." Elsa knelt down to meet his eyes. "Tell me what happened."
Fritz broke from her gaze, tripped over his words for a bit, then finally uttered one cryptic word: "Sex."
Elsa's mouth fell open. "Oh my God, did you try to do something with her?"
Fritz went red. "What? No!"
"Good, good. I didn't think you had it in you, anyways..."
"She tried to do something with me!"
If Elsa had a drink in her mouth, she'd have spit it out. "She what? But she doesn't have-"
"She wanted to try, y'know..." Fritz grew a shade redder. "...alternative stuff."
Elsa grew a bit red herself. "I see. And did it... work?"
"Her entire body is made of freezing cold ice!" snapped Fritz. "You do the math!"
"And she did it against your will? Were you hurt?"
Fritz shook his head. "She didn't actually do anything. I freaked out right away and she stopped."
"And then you hid in the closet all night?"
"Not all night," said Fritz stiffly. "I... snuck out to use the bathroom once."
"What could've gotten into her?" Elsa brought a hand to her forehead. "I need to go find Mary. How did she take it when you rejected her advances?"
"About as well as you'd expect."
It looked like a tornado had come through Mary's bedroom. The floor was littered with shredded pages from an utterly decimated human anatomy book, which was lying at the far end of the carpet next to a shattered pair of ice-glasses. Sitting in bed was Mary herself, her eyes blue and puffy. Her ice-dress seemed to have been thrown back on in a fury – it was covered in wrinkles and one of the sleeves was torn.
Elsa was overcome with the simultaneous urges to reprimand, console, and roll her eyes at Mary. "Mary." She walked through the doorway, putting on her "queenly" voice. "Fritz told me you tried to do something inappropriate to him."
Mary turned away, hiding her face.
"How do you know what sex is?" Elsa's eyes returned to the tattered book on the ground. "Oh, of course. You read about and then tried to emulate it, didn't you? If I'd known we had those kind of books in the library, I wouldn't have-"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Elsa nearly flinched when Mary spun around, screaming at the top of her nonexistent lungs. "Did you keep this from me on purpose? Are you saying you didn't want me to know about sex?"
"Keep your voice down," said Elsa. "I made you when I was eight. I didn't know about it, either."
"I've had a boyfriend for weeks!" spat Mary. "Did you never think it might be important information to me?"
"Okay, okay!" said Elsa, throwing her hands into the air. "You're right, Mary. Clearly, not telling you was a mistake. I guess I..." She sighed. "I didn't know how to broach the subject. I'm sorry, if I'd known you'd find out on your own and try something like this, I would've told you."
"I... I didn't..." Mary bowed her head, her face softening. "I didn't think he'd get so upset. I just wanted him to feel good. I thought..." She shut her eyes. "I thought I was supposed to."
"You're not in trouble, Mary." Elsa laughed. "Trust me, I've caught Anna doing much worse."
Mary gave a start. "You know about that?"
The laughter abruptly stopped. "Know about what?"
"Nothing," Mary said immediately.
Elsa raised an eyebrow.
Anna groaned and rolled over under the covers. After "the Mary incident" yesterday, the mood had sort of been ruined, and Anna and Kristoff had ended up going into town for a romantic picnic instead of doing the, uh, thingthey'd been planning on doing. It'd been great. Anna had zero complaints about doing something romantic with her boyfriend. She should've been happy as a clam right now. Wait, scratch that, clams weren't a great thing for Anna to be thinking about in her current mental state.
The point was, Anna should've been happy, but, well... Okay, there was this one time a couple years back when Anna had broken her arm doing this amazing backflip off the spiral staircase, and she'd had to wear a sling for weeks. Her arm had gotten so darn itchy,and she hadn't been able to do a thing about it. That's exactly how Anna felt right now. If this kept up any longer, she was gonna go bananas. No, wait, scratch that one, too.
"Anna?"
Anna jolted awake at the sound of knocking. She sat up and checked the clock. Eleven. Ugh, what did Elsa want at this ungodly hour?
"I'm coming, I'm coming." Anna climbed out of bed and tried not to taste her own mouth as she slinked towards the door. She opened it to find her sister staring her down.
"Mary tried to do something inappropriate to Fritz," said Elsa, folding her arms. "You wouldn't happen to know where she learned that behavior from, would you?"
"Oh." Anna's face fell. "I... might have had something to do with that. But it's not like I told her, 'Sex is great, have as much sex as you can!' She just caught me and Kristoff, um, you know, and she didn't know what we were doing, so I kinda gave a rushed explanation and then shooed her away."
From Elsa's face, you'd think Anna had confessed to murder. "A rushed explanation?"
"I was a little distracted at the time!" said Anna, throwing her hands in the air. "It shouldn't be my job to explain this stuff to her, anyways. She needs to learn it from her mom, not her floozy aunt."
"I know, I know," said Elsa, digging her palm into her forehead. "I should've told her when I explained about nudity. You're absolutely right – She needs to learn this properly." She turned back to Anna. "Go get Kristoff. And Mary and Fritz and, you know what, get Olaf, too. Why not? The more the merrier. We're having a family meeting."
"A family meeting?" frowned Anna. "About what?"
Elsa's voice held total solemness: "Sex education."