Do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters.
"Frozen Again: 'Love Never Ends"
Act VIII
Chapter 5
"A Hero's Reward"
By nightfall, after some celebratory shopping in Flåm, Elsa had taken her parents, General Mattias, Minister Kai, Gerda, Prince Alonso, Eliana, Olaf and Boninite on the Snow Queen's carriage for an overnight stop-off at her North Mountain Ice Palace before the last leg of their journey home.
It took more than a little reassurance for a worried sick Marshmallow, who had been dutifully keeping vigilant watch over the errant Snowgies all this time, to allow the enemy Fire Troll girl with the dark mahogany skin and fiery tail into the Ice Queen's sanctum.
King Agnarr nodded his assent to the cautious twenty-five foot tall icy bouncer, while Olaf displayed the Troll's trustworthiness by taking the once non-tactile and unfriendly, now smiling tentatively Fire Troll by the hand to walk across the Palace threshold Marshmallow was physically blocking.
Elsa's bodyguard finally relented to allow Bonnie entrance into the Ice Palace Great Hall after the Ice Queen explained quietly to him of the previously possessed Nibelung's reformation.
"See, Marshmallow? This is how we make new friends. With warm hugs, not growling ice spikes." Olaf demonstrated his more joyful greeting. His steamy snow was only melted a little bit by Boninite's caught-off-guard tail end flame during the unexpected embrace that Olaf's little girlfriend Eliana was herself steaming at.
"I never thought I'd see a snowman with a smolder." Destin Mattias comments with a low whistle at not only the vied-over snow creation, but the intricately crafted, exquisite Ice Palace made by the same remarkable girl.
Make that a remarkable Queen.
Soon, Elsa's ornate Ice Palace front entrance was crawling with Snowgies who had slid down the staircase banister in enthusiasm to see their creator Ice Mistress – and torment whoever was in their collective mischievous path. Unlike Marshmallow, the Snowgies appeared to have no apprehension or innate fear whatsoever for the Fire Troll female. Instead, they all soon swarmed around her in playful curiosity, making a circus game of bouncing one another over Boninite's swishing blaze ended tail.
"That means they like you, Boninite." Elsa interprets the unintelligible 'snowgese' clicks and squeaks sympathetically to the confused Fire Troll girl as the Ice Queen ushers her frail mother towards the Ice Palace kitchen. There Gerda would make the suddenly worn out, petite woman some warm chicken soup.
"The little men of snow are… friendly. Boninite is not accustomed to…playing…touching." The young Fire Troll explains her awkward position about her normally solitary lifetime spent alone in the dark catacombs with a smile, in her best broken Norwegian from her native tongue of Latin.
"Well, Boninite, up here on the surface, most male creatures are apt to be 'friendly' to females who take up their offer to play 'touching', rather than those who leave them out in the cold. They thrive on encouragement—not timidity—and often just need a little boost of forthcoming persuasion at the right moment." Queen Iduna had paused before entering the insulated kitchen from the Ice Palace's populated and playful Great Hall.
The savvy mother was in code speaking more to Elsa then she was the Troll girl. Then Gerda peeks her head out with her store of frozen chicken soup now thawed and heated beckoning to her Queens to come in.
As she attended to stirring the pot over the wood stove, Gerda smiles inwardly at the motherly advice shared over the steaming hot soup which Iduna insisted her lissome, too dreadfully tall and thin daughter partake in as well.
But the shy platinum blonde, knowing where her assertive mother was going with this, merely swirls the carrots around in her bowl. Elsa blows an icy breath over each hot spoonful of potatoes that reminded her of her Hans and their unforgettable second encounter in the shared bedroom/kitchen down in the pirate ship galley—what now seemed a lifetime ago.
"The right moment…" Gazing down at her currently barren engagement ring finger, Elsa inwardly sighs before changing the subject. "Do you think it's the potatoes that make a good soup, Gerda?" She smiles through her hidden, sentimental tears.
"I think your Prince Hans is a very brave, good man, your Majesty. He will do nicely to join our family." Gerda adds to the conversation with a sweet smile directed at Elsa, who blushes. But she was glad to hear her Hans' name spoken aloud in such a familiar, glowing fashion when she dared not speak of him at all these past months in her father's presence.
The honest servant woman, who had known the family for years, puts paid to the question burning on both the royal women's minds.
"Yes, min Flicka. Prince Hans is an exceptional hero. That was excellent broth, as usual, Gerda. Thank you." Finishing her soup, Queen Iduna steadies her own frayed nerves as she holds onto Elsa's stable arm. The older Queen takes a deep breath, not wanting Elsa to worry or fret just one day to her birthday about her exhausted mother still recovering from that torturous ordeal in the Black Ice Queen's frozen dollhouse.
Gale swirls around the older queen, strengthening Iduna's chilled shoulders with a southerly warm wind that blows in Bruni's heated traveling cloud from where the Fire Spirit had been hovering around Boninite, enjoying the snowgie/ Fire Troll interaction.
"Looks like the men have made a mess out there. Let's sneak past them and head straight to your room before they insist upon us helping to clean it up, shall we, my girl?" Peeking out into the Palace's front hall, Iduna chuckles at how men could be so prone to untidiness when no women were present as she leans on Elsa to exit the east wing kitchen.
"The Snowgies really respect Papa, don't they? It's amazing how he is so very skilled at gaining utmost respect and obedience from his soldiers, isn't it, Mama?" It was Elsa's turn to address/not address the subject pressing on both lovely Arendelle women's minds as the two leave the kitchen arm in arm after finishing the quick late-night meal.
Both mother and daughter look to where the pale ginger haired King had been reprimanding several of the overenthusiastic Snowgies who had gone too far. The messy amber evidence on the Great Hall's stained ice marble floor proved they had nearly emptied out the accidentally spilled bottle of a good year brandy when the irascible creatures tripped up obese Minister Kai as he was hurriedly returning the bottle to his hiding hole when Elsa and Iduna were spotted.
"Your father is accustomed to doling out orders and expecting them to be obeyed without question. I suppose it comes with the territory being solely in charge of so many officers and sailors aboard ship as Captain and Admiral of the Navy.'' Iduna recollects her own young wifely anxieties during late-nights spent alone with her messy, tiny babies at home while her heroic, young lover was off battling at the sea, captaining his ship in the past.
"Naval men are renowned for their compliance to the chain of command." An amused Iduna quietly answers Elsa, giving her guilty-faced husband a raised brow for sneakily going at the sauce again with Kai behind her back.
The pair, arm in arm, walk towards the icy staircase, avoiding the sloppy scene as the stern Ice King instructs the snowgies to clean up. A strict order to which the threatened miscreants rapidly obeyed after Marshmallow supplied the soft snow mop which Elsa kept under the staircase for him to clear away the naughty snowgies' daily messes.
"But it was always the delight of his coming home — a feeling like none other that a woman can ever experience. A good marriage comes with the knowledge that no matter where he's been, your husband has kept his cup full just for you. Like that first delicious taste of cool water on your tongue after a long, hot drought." Iduna admires the constancy of her yet handsome and svelte husband, standing tall and strong and commanding again as she licks her lips with some sage motherly – and woman to woman – advice for her elder daughter.
"You'll understand what that feeling means yourself, my girl, when your naval man strides back through that door to drink you in." In Elsa's Ice Palace boudoir, while tidying and setting up her older girl's bedroom for the night, like she always did when her baby princesses were little, the Queen Mother goes to work on two fronts.
While Iduna busily refolded the new bedding and some of the sleepwear she and Elsa and Anna had purchased in Flåm village's local general store when the three ladies had gone for a celebratory spending spree after the race, she begins to talk of Elsa's lover.
"But hopefully your handsome Prince will never have to come home to see you wearing that! Oh, Elsa! What happened to that lovely lilac négligée you selected? How did this one get here?! I thought I convinced Anna not to choose it for herself. And here it is with you. Gaudy, bright yellow and orange sunflowers are hardly the way to encourage a young man to your bedside." The petite brown haired Queen holds her flabbergasted hand over her aghast mouth when her tall platinum blonde child emerges from behind the elegantly decorated icy screen. Elsa was donning an extremely plaid and overtly big, ochre and sunflowery night dress suited more for an eight year old than an attractive young female about to celebrate her 25th year.
Gale rustles through the homey nightgown that Queen Iduna was holding up dubiously from where she was sitting on Elsa's bed.
"Well… Long story short, Mama. Remember how Anna and Olaf were pulling shadow faces with that lantern Papa insisted Kristoff hook up to his sled during our night driving?" Elsa began her long and drawn out excuse of this inexplicable fashion switch.
"Yes. I'm listening." Queen Iduna quirks a smile from where she sits her tired bones on Elsa's bed, having a feeling the direction Elsa's story was going there was the smell of scorched earth disaster with her predictably klutzy Anna involved.
"It burned a hole in that filmy pale pink négligée we helped her pick out." Elsa says with a little bitten lip guilty look on her pretty face for her much matured, but still trouble making dear little sister.
"Oh no! And after we tried it on her in the dressing room, she was so excited to wear it for Kristoff tonight as a – ahem – special prize for winning the race! But how on earth did you end up with this monstrosity?" Iduna clamps a hand over her mouth that was just itching to giggle at her baby scapegrace.
"Yes, I know. That's why I had to lend her the lilac one of mine. When the road split off for us to come up here, Anna and I secretly exchanged shopping bags along with the supplies when we stopped the carriage to say goodbye, while Anna and Kristoff went to the Valley to see the Trolls. I found in the bag Anna traded me this extra nightgown that she must've ran back in and bought anyway even after we convinced her it was… a little less than alluring." Elsa giggles to her mother as the dainty Ice Queen attempts a graceful, clumsy curtsy in the restrictive, loud and colorful flannel dress.
"You must put that in the church charity box the minute we return to Arendelle! Neither Kristoff nor Hans should ever have the privilege to see either of my girls in that eyesore! Now you march right back there and take the wretched thing off, my gorgeous girl! Here, wear this in the meantime." After shimmying out of her own under slip to donate to her girl, Iduna plops back down to Elsa's bed of soft snow mattress. The small framed, native woman lies back to enjoy that freeing feeling of being loosed from her tight undergarment. But she was trying not to get motion sickness from the cool beneath her double skirted buns, snowy bed's flowing, moving waves as she orders Elsa behind the elegant ice crafted Rococo style changing screen divider.
I wonder if Hans would find this luxurious bedding too chilly…Knowing that exceptional Dane, it's probably not too bad a suggestion…
While Elsa changed 'her' nightgown into her Mama's slip, as directed by her stylish, savvy, spicy Mama, Iduna fingers the book upon the glassy ice nightstand of the original French author Charles Perrault's 'La Belle au bois dormant' ("The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood'). The Queen recalled giving the 17th century folk legend fairy tale book to young avid reader Elsa as a birthday present in years gone by, and was touched Elsa had cherished this particular novel with her mother's loving inscription enough to bring it up here to her own secret hideaway palace.
'Un jour, votre propre prince de rêve tombera pour tous vos charmes, ma Petite Neige ... un jour, il réveillera la belle endormie en vous...' ('Someday your own once upon a dream prince will fall for all your charms, my Little Snow…someday he will awaken the sleeping beauty within you.') The dedication message written in the tale's original French language spoke to Elsa far more now that she had come to understand her mother's past motives truly.
That someday isn't far off now, my darling girl. You've come so far in your relationship with your handsome young man already, Elsa, that I think you'll be ready for this next big step. Now, if I can maneuver your immovable Papa to budge just a little bit more, it's time for dreams of your Prince Hans to come true…
"That's better. Now, why don't we consider what costume you wish to dazzle your subjects with at the Masquerade Ball? I know how you love to dress up, my pretty kitty, so Anna and I have planned this special party with your love of fashion in mind." Iduna recalls young Elsa's fondness growing up for the annual Christmas 'dress up' the townspeople of Arendelle included in their door to door caroling as part of the holiday tradition. Oh how her prim little miss enjoyed wearing the new clothes from exotic parts that her young Sjoforsvaret father would often bring home in his 'treasure trunk' full of goodies for his girls after long trips visiting distant foreign styled continents.
"Then, after we decide, you can show me some more of those icy trousseau ideas you have planned for your honeymoon bridal tour, mu fávru (my beauty)." The proud Northuldran mother talks to Elsa after chasing her lovely daughter back behind the changing screen. Iduna was prompting her slender and chic elder child to rather try out some of her own artistic designs they had discussed last time they were here, rather than suffer that ill-matched fashion faux pas a moment further.
"Mama! How can I…what…should…that be?" Elsa's at first shocked response then turned rather sheepish at her mother's bold insinuations concerning a subject the platinum blonde icy beauty always felt unattainable for her.
But now that Hans Westergaard had asked her to be his, in doing so opening up so many new possibilities for her womanly emotions, Elsa was starting to be curious as how to dream those impossible dreams too.
"Just imagine you are free as a bird, flying high on the frozen currents, creating an exquisite, elegant, ice meltable négligée meant for the eyes of your one and only handsome redheaded, red-blooded Danish hero below on earth." Setting the romantic mood with her own fetching form draped across Elsa's bed, Iduna grins up dreamily. She knew she was pushing the envelope for her skittish girl, but that feeling of teasing mischief prevailed over the nausea, and she would be remiss as a mother if not to start to prepare her naive daughter for that first special time.
"Mama!" Elsa squeaks as she was physically down to her skivvies, bringing her long fingernailed icy hand over her heaving chest at the suddenly disconcerting heady thought of Hans ravishing her. Now that she had time to consider it, the mere idea was a terrifying unknown as the rattled young woman settles down with a sadder, less confident contemplation.
"What if he doesn't make it in time for my birthday tomorrow? It wouldn't be his fault. The South Pole is so very far away. What if something went wrong to delay him? Should I be thinking of frivolous dresses and parties while he may be in danger? What it the Snow Queen needed Hans' help to contain that Djvælen Troll indefinitely? What if Papa shoos him away when he does arrive? There is still over a year left of our trial separation. What if we never get the chance to marry—?" The chill temperature of the bedroom was dropping as the young woman worries her hopes and reservations aloud, getting herself into a tizzy.
"Elsa, be calm. You are the new Winter Queen of the North. You are the 5th Spirit of Harmony. You are the hereditary Queen of Arendelle. Your Prince Charming will be there for you, if you have faith in his love. Please stop worrying so much, my little girl! 'All things work for the good for those who trust in the Lord'." With that Bible truth spoken from her heart, Queen Iduna leaps up from the bed she was lounging to squeeze both of Elsa's nervous, wringing hands. "Trust in your Hans. You will realize with maturity, as I did, that part of being a good partner is never having doubt of his dedication to you. I know it is hard now since you are both still so young in your love, but patience is a virtue of love, my darling girl." Iduna pets Elsa's thoroughly flustered head with a sympathetic smile into her pensive child's glistening wavering eyes.
"Remember: 'Love is patient and kind. Love always bears up, Love always trusts, always hopes. Love always endures.'" Iduna prompts Elsa to remember the wisdom of one of her favorite Biblical verses.
"'Love never ends.'" Elsa finishes the Bible's beautiful 'Hymn of Love' that meant so much to her and Hans' hearts linked together so cherished. It was their verse, their motto, engraved forever in their souls. The gentle-hearted young woman remembered that fact well as a happy tear springs to her cool eyes.
"Now, be inspired and show Mama the stunning beauty in the costume you will proudly wear for your birthday ball, dazzling us all while waiting for your Prince to sweep you off your feet by the night's end." With a soft kiss planted to Elsa's forehead, reassuring Iduna changes the subject, wiping the sweet moisture from her first baby's pale cheek.
Under her mother's warm encouragement, Elsa nods and closes her eyes. She almost subconsciously recreates the gorgeous dress she had seen once upon a time in the fairy tale of old that Elsa adored best as a child.
The demure young woman transforms herself, complete with bejeweled masquerade mask and all, into a breathtaking iridescent 14th century stylized, low neck gown. Its full skirt's long train swept across the ground with pleats and peplum as multihued and color changing from purple to pink to blue to violet than back again at whatever chosen angle as the 'Aurora' she, as Ice Queen of the North Winter and 5th Spirit of Nature now commanded.
"Once he sees you in that, I have a feeling you'll be needing that trousseau very, very soon, if I know my Westergaards right…" The older more experienced woman murmurs under her breath, beginning to hum a Strauss waltz she could envision her elegant child dancing with her handsome Danish Prince—the Viennese 'Döblinger Réunion-Walzer, Op. 2.
Perhaps your Papa and I should brush up on our waltzing a little when we get home…
Gazing at herself through the exquisite crystal gemstone mask as her favorite Sleeping Beauty Princess of yore, Elsa violently blushes all over her pale body that shivers in the mirror behind the screen.
It was not from the cold, but rather from the visions of her exciting birthday event and the future ahead that her Mama put in her spinning head just imagining what Prince Hans Westergaard would say if he saw her in the complimentary glittery royal purple hued aurora borealis infused gown she magically illustrated over her body.
Swaying in the full length cheval mirror in this glowing ice inspirational off the shoulder Princess gown, Elsa couldn't help but fantasize ceaselessly of her gallant Prince Hans being the dragon-slaying hero of the beloved story. Her handsome Prince would go through any danger, face any obstacle to seek her out and discover his Sleeping Beauty locked away in a romantic bedroom scene where her one and only love would awaken her with a true love's kiss…
Downstairs, King Agnarr, in his dim eyesight over the din of snowgies vying over Boninite with Olaf and Eliana being goalies under Marshmallow's refereeing feet, had watched his little woman and daughter walk up the stairs of the elegant Ice Palace Elsa had magnificently built in a single night.
"Do you think there's something amiss with the Queen, Kai? Doesn't she look tired?" His vision might have been failing him, but Agnarr still had a lover's sense that his drained mate was not at 100% since they left Svalbard.
"Queen Elsa is an extraordinary young lady, bearing up well considering her recent tribulation, with barely a trace of her usual melancholy." The intelligent regent comments, rather mistakenly speaking about the other, younger Queen of Arendelle. The cabinet Minister always considered Elsa the delicate one whom he and the rest of the nation had shared much concern about during this second strain of Eternal Winter.
"Yes, she is that. But the melancholy…? Can we do nothing to solve it?" Agnarr had meant his Queen Iduna, this journey north obviously taking a lot out of his wife. But putting on his other cap as a Father now, Agnarr placates this strange new anxiety with a headshake. He returns to considering his dutiful disquiet and his role as a concerned parent with many plans ahead for his precious elder child to secure her future happiness now too.
"I think you know how to fix that particular problem with just the nod of your head, my Crown Prince." With raised eyebrows, Mattias leans in a hushed whisper into King Agnarr's cool ear.
"Perhaps…But a painful nod…" Agnarr mumbles with an agitated smile at his empathetic, generally perceptive older friend.
Kai attends to the fretful King some shared glogg along with added ample brandy he knew young Bjorgman had stashed in an icy sconce along the staircase when Kai had come to help supervise the building of the kitchen addition wing of Queen Elsa's Ice Palace last summer.
"Don't mind if I do, Kai, old buddy." Holding out a tall stein of his own, Mattias had slipped in and out of the kitchen when the keen-eyed General had spied the booze being secretly bandied about.
The Councilor makes a sour face at his age-old rival, slickly butting into this mano a mano moment between the King and his right hand man.
Okay, I'm good with being your left hand man, my grown-up Crown Prince.
"'For emergencies only', of course, Mr. Bjorgman said, your Majesty." Trying to relieve his sovereign and friend's unease with a little levity, snooty Kai rubs his well-padded stomach, fondly recalling the last 'emergency' which required the amber bottle to be produced for the older cabinet Minister gent who was growing less fond of the bitter cold in his advancing years.
"Of course. A wise young man." King Agnarr smiles wryly, giving his reliable son-in-law silent credit for shrewdness – if not prudence – every married man required when the subject of drink was approached in the presence of delicate ladies.
"Skol, Gentlemen!" Mattias tips his tall glass of straight brandy to Agnarr and Kai's laced hot glogg ones as all three had their glasses full.
"Skol."
"Skol."
The brandy stash reference making him think of his little ginger girl, Anna's father wondered of his wisdom in not accompanying Kristoff to drive his champion speed sled with his sleepy little bride down to Troll Valley. The mountainman intended to ensure everything in the Troll village below was going peacefully well as another night was falling and the Rock Trolls would awaken to greet their Fire Troll cousins in their midst.
Anna insisted on going back too after getting her folks settled in here in Elsa's palace. On behalf of the royal family, she would in her auxiliary capacity as secondary Queen – make that 'tertiary'? I think that's what Olaf said the big word for third in order was! - would check up on GranPabbie and the Troll Council of their success in acclimatizing their newcomer cousins.
As he sips the alcoholic glogg, Agnarr sighs, hoping the newly liberated Fire Trolls were doing well and being welcomed by the kindly Rock Trolls into their new family dynamic in the Valley of Living Rock together.
Iduna said that we should give them time to naturally settle in, and leave some flexibility to the dependable Snow Prince who grew up with the Trolls firsthand and knows their culture better than any of us. I suppose I should be grateful for Anna's husband's familiarity and responsibility in this delicate domestic ethnic situation in our nation at this critical time…
I must remind myself to commend him for that conscientious concern. Plus this excellent tasting brandy…
At the foot of the North Mountain, in the Valley of Living Rock…
While the Fire Trolls slept by night, the Rock Trolls slept by day, making quite a harmonious community lifestyle for the new heavily populated Valley of Living Rock.
To Krostoff's relief, when he and Sven arrived in the village, the two races were getting to know one another and working hand-in-hand with mutual trust and acceptance that overcame racial prejudices and age-old fears with a new peace they had established.
"Brrr!" Another Princess straining in similar excitement in another decidedly different way suddenly shivers in the darkness. They had been so busy getting the Fire Trolls settled into new housing dugouts til sunset. And then the human couple, with Bulda and Cliff and the other volunteer Rock Trolls, tirelessly went to assigning shared apartments with their new Fire Troll cousin acquaintances that Anna and Kristoff had meticulously tried to learn at least the names of.
But all that new settlement of this long lost race who only spoke in Latin – a language even friendly Anna had a bugger of a time grasping without her hunky Spirit Whisperer translator near - hardly had time for each other all day.
{"Are you cold, Baby? Where are you?"} Hearing Anna's shiver – more like feeling it in his well tuned senses – Kristoff comes around the corner of the Troll cave he had called his 'room' for years.
"Sorry I took so long, but getting every last Troll settled in their new dugouts are pretty tough! What a day it's been digging and clearing roughage to make some new real estate outdoors! I know you've been at it too, playing with the new kids and helping move them into abandoned caverns for the new folks to have some space to live in the Valley! Boy, every muscle aches after all that digging. I think I'm gonna just drop to the bed and never get up again." After a long day of plowing fields to make more room for Gamme turf huts and Goahti peat, sod and wood ones for durable, yet quickly erected, living quarters; having meetings concerning the food and water supplies for so many Fire Trolls and Rock Trolls in the relatively small valley area for such a massive influx of refugees; acting as translator, mediator and moving man intermittently when required by any and all, a used up muscle and mind, exhausted Kristoff returns to his room by nightfall.
The poor man was plum tuckered out and ready to put up his aching feet to finally stop moving his busy hands, shut his hectic eyes, turn off his overused mind and get a well-deserved good night's rest.
His eyes slowly adjust to the lowlight with the luminescence of the northern aurora borealis streaks across the winter dark sky in the Land of the Midnight Sun. Kristoff gazes quizzically at his little woman's strangely silent, skinny back to him.
His Anna's silhouette, seated in the pale moonlight streaming down over her shoulders, was absolutely the most stunning thing Kristoff Bjorgman could ever see under that cavern skylight which he personally carved out of the hilltop as a boy growing up.
There, the skimpy chiffon flowing fabric fell just over the right places, with a palest lavender lilac nightgown adorning her slender form that took the virile young man's breath away. Especially when a jittery Anna turns to face him and the front was even more enticing than the back.
"I… burned the night dress I picked out with Mama at the millinery shop in Flåm, so Elsa lent me hers because it was supposed to be a surprise for you, kind of, 'cause it's our six-month anniversary and my congratulatory prize for you winning the Ice Harvester Games plus a special 'thank you' for always being so wonderful to me –" An uncharacteristically nervous Anna spills this all out in one breath, rambling, and oddly exhilarated to feel so sophisticated and gracefully feminine in the filmy little see-through slip.
Forgetting all his innumerable aches and pains, Kristoff silently skulks across the messy boyish bedroom. In seconds her was where his petite girl had gotten herself all dolled up in some frilly translucent nighty – just for him.
Her loose hair mussed from her own demanding day full of Trolly activity, Anna coyly tries to be the picture of sophisticated grace as she starts fingering his Ice Harvester King trophy at Kristoff's childhood worktable and accidentally drops it to the floor with a thud.
"Oops! Darn it!" Ungainly Anna trips on her own filmy slip's decorative scarf trail as she tries to pick up the reindeer horn prize, frustrated at her own ineptness to be sexy for one night.
The once loner boy who never interacted with human girls until he met crazy Princess Anna, all of a sudden knew just what to say and do to his girl who was feeling quite out of place in a silly, provocative female style not her own.
He was seriously glad now all his jobs outdoors were done and meetings with GranPabbie and the Council of Rock Trolls concerning the Fire Trolls concluded. Even as far as getting Sven already fed and watered and situated for the night in the nearby lean-to shelter just outside the cavern was done.
So a suddenly not tired at all Kristoff blows air between his lips and rolls closed the big boulder to seal just the two of them in from the rest of the world.
"Has it really been six…? Feels only like yesterday… that Troll wedding ceremony…here in this room on our honeymoon…" The blond Ice Harvester turns around and huskily breathes as he deftly crosses to the otherwise vacant room to Anna, unable to finish any coherent sentence or thought for that matter at the enticing sight of his beautiful ginger love.
"Yep. Right here in this room it was our first time in forever… It seems like that long since we last…" The dreamy Princess of Arendelle gives her big mountain man a similar hungry look and wont for words. She watches Kristoff's quirky smirk on his good-looking face lit up by the aurora borealis as he sheds his thick outer clothing. He approaches her flimsy dressed small body that was trembling with so much more than the late December chill in their semi-outdoor northern hemisphere Troll Valley cave home.
"Sorry I'm a mess. I was too tired to take a bath yet in the hot springs out back." Staying back from coming too close to his little bride for sudden fear of turning her off with his manly pungency, Kristoff self-consciously makes the apology.
But Anna shakes her head and ignores his timidity with a careless 'p-shaw' as she invitingly draws him closer.
"So says a sweaty, smelly mountain man. But you're my sweaty, smelly mountain man! I think a man's musky testosterone scent is a major turn on! Unless you're still too tired…? Or maybe you don't like my nighty?" Oddly ashamed she wasn't being herself tonight, Anna looks down at her herself. All of a sudden she was sure that Elsa's silky, filmy lilac camisole didn't really suit, as the blond mountainman was still at arm's length.
{"Hey. Look at me with that endless sea of gorgeous eyes. I don't care what you're wearing, Anna. Tattered sackcloth, fine Queen's silk or even that clunky old Ananias outfit – You shine so bright, you light up the world for me, living fearlessly, braver than brave. Your shine can't ever be covered up because your heart is so brilliant. I'm the one who should be thanking you for the family, the home, the life - all you've given me, all you mean to me, Baby. I'd trade ten dozen trophies for you, Anna of Arendelle. You're my greatest prize. You're my hero. All I know about love…is you."} Finding thoughts easier than words, Kristoff mentally whispers to his psychically connected lover as he gently yet powerfully encompasses Anna in his beefy arms.
Lifting her acquiescent body so easily, Kristoff presses Anna to his by now bare chest, meaning each and every sentimental, sappy, overtly romantic phrase that the down-to-earth mountaineer never imagined he ever would utter to anyone once upon a time.
Anna drinks in each yummy, heartfelt honest word as Kristoff then passionately kisses her until both were equally breathless. He scoops up and carries Anna's compliant body loosely to the feather mattress on his rock carved sleeping area that Bulda had amply re-feathered and stuffed since last the couple was upon its flattened form.
"I love it when you go all formal yet sticky like that, Sir Kristoff Bjorgman. SMACK! Now it's my turn to count all the ways I'm thankful you're so mine. SMOOCH! I'm thankful for your brown eyes that always make me smile 'cause they remind me of sweet chocolate pudding, even when I'm scared and nervous sitting on that throne! I'm thankful for your ripped muscles that make me shiver all over to watch saving my dearest ones lives or almost single-handedly clearing an entire field full of weeds and bramble all sweat drenched and manly. SMOOCHIE! I'm thankful for your glorious moon roof full of Northern Light beams showering down so I could see every one of my gorgeous hunk's studly angles! Makes me so thankful I want to run out there and soak up every inch of their light on your bare skin chasing me to the hot spring! SMOOCH! I'm thankful that the sky's still awake, so I'll stay awake as long as they do – even if it's all night - to show you my - gasp! -appreciation! KISS!" Enthusiastic for all games, Princess Anna, aloft in her husband's strong arms as Kristoff hovers her lithe body at sturdy elbow length above his prone body, plants a sloppy kiss somewhere on his personage her lips could reach with each declaration.
Her eyes dancing in his as her linked mind deliciously sensed her husband's yearning, Anna shimmies out of that filmy nightgown. It drops to the cavern floor as she throws herself into the thrilling role of perfect mate for her heroic, rugged mountain man whom she loved so completely to be his partner in every way.
"Wow. All that thankfulness is going to your pretty head, Baby. You're nuts, you know that? But that's one of the things I love most. How you'll bravely risk it all and never leave behind the ones you love. I wouldn't want to change a single bold and amazing sunflower seed about you. I love you, my sweet hearted, gorgeous souled, ginger heroine. Thank you for including a nobody like me in your big beautiful dreams so much." In between Anna's incessant hot kisses begging him to allow her more, Kristoff chuckles at her adorable charm as he lays his frisky wife down next to him on the leafy hay mattress as tenderly as possible.
"I wouldn't change a thing about you either, Kristly. I love everything about you being my big, strong, buttery hero, too." Anna giggles, counting a finger to each of Kristoff's ripped pecs and abs and intercoastals, utterly drunk with love as she rolls into his embrace. Kristoff presses his feisty ginger down to the feather and hay bed Bulda had set out for the lovebirds celebrating exactly half a year anniversary of their happy marriage.
{"Okay. Hehehe. Guess we're even then after all those compliments to each other. So let's spend the rest of tonight saying 'you're welcome' to each other."}
Kristoff wasn't sure anymore if that was his thought or Anna's surging through him intimately as both their basic instincts take control.
"Yes! It's true love!"
A chewing his cud, smirking Sven could hear Anna's squeals of delight late into the evening from where he was outside the closed rolled over boulder under the in sync fireworks show of the aurora borealis lights ceaselessly streaking by…
Somewhere in the skies above the Skaggerrak Straits between Denmark and Norway…
"Ah, I have found my angel, with the dust the stars in her eyes. I have found my angel, and she's taking me back to the skies!"
The Prince of the Southern Isles' perfect tenor soars through the nippy winter airwaves high above the choppy blue seas of the Skaggerrak Strait nearing the Norwegian coast.
Clouds race by the crisp chilled sky that encompassed the young man on a magic flying Carpet. The chameleon charmer was on his way back from one final mission concerning the Djvælen King Troll's capture that the man himself was instrumental in helping the Queen of the North Winter defeat.
"Does this cloud formation remind you of somebody, Carpet?" Hans' eloquent tenor allows himself to finally push down his tense guard to go all dreamy quixotic as only a romantic young man of twenty-six could, all while shaving his noble chin and trimming his debonair sideburns to perfection in this airy situation.
Trying to keep a smooth ride, the friendly Rugman turns his tassels upward in a shrugging 'I give up again' animated motion to the daydreaming young man who – not holding on at all - trusted the flying Carpet implicitly. It could have been a dangerous game for the daring Prince with a fearless sharp razor at his throat while fantasizing of his lover back home each time he emerged from his steam moistened towel.
But what was a little nick that drew blood when true love ran feverishly rampantly in his veins?
Carpet had a feeling the answer yet again was 'Queen Elsa of Arendelle' in some model-esque striking pose.
I wonder what you're doing right now, min kæreste? Have you had time yet to spare a thought for me? Clearly or maddeningly, you and our future together are all I think about now that we have put that contemptuous creature behind us, my darling min elsking.
His last minute touch-up shaving complete – without a single bloody blemish - Hans Westegaard smiles at the indulgent fantasies he was prepossessed to keep replaying in his head. Longingly he clutches the brilliantly glowing ice pendant yet around his neck in his Ice Queen's delicate shape and form.
Yes, he may have to endure much deserved verbal abuse and administrative consternation, and perhaps even a demotion of rank from his superior officer – namely Elsa's father, the Admiral – for abandoning his post of a ship's Captain in the Norwegian Navy. But Hans was willing to face whatever punishment, take any upbraiding, for he was ready with the explanation of his honest intentions.
All he had to do was think of some way to come clean and still spare his future sister-in-law Princess Anna from bearing too much of the blame. Even if it was her scheme Hans was innocent of to exercise duplicity to call him back early and perhaps jeopardize the cautious Danish Prince's brittle chances for leniency.
In due time of establishing himself to be an upright and trustworthy second-in-command Vise Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret, and Captain of the newly commissioned flagship HmNoS Nidaros, Prince Hans had been planning to make a request to King Agnarr for a shortened separation trial period. The gifted speaker, in good faith, would incrementally urge his superior in subtle ways transpired in their business correspondence, until Hans could smoothly beg audience concerning the remainder of his two year engagement stipulation with the Admiral's daughter.
Surely Elsa's recent emotional ordeal must've illustrated to the Admiral of his daughter's explicit need for stability in her anxious, wavering heart? And that sort of forever security comes only with a lifetime union of two souls who can share anything, unquestionably, and without doubt.
Romantic hope soaring, Hans' only anticipating prayer, now that his case was compromised by Anna & her mother's plotting, was that Elsa's good father would be more inclined to his heartfelt plea in real life than Hans' devilish past nightmare portrayed.
Just the passing idea of 'devil' in his windswept head gave Hans thought of another wicked malevolent—the Djvælen, giving the redhead shivers. He was thoroughly relieved to have been there to witness firsthand the Snow Queen herself open up the fathoms deep crevice beneath age-old glacial ice that surrounded an impenetrable deep ice cage in the Volstok South Pole area of Antarctica.
There he personally saw to profoundly throwing down the magic, all-powerful Genie's lamp his Storbror Eugene had donated his one wish for in brotherly love. It contained the iniquitous menace to be buried in subzero ice that would never melt until the end of time under the vigilant Snow Queen's careful watch. Down there, the evil Devil Troll King had no recourse for a heat source to power his mind games in this far-off distant corner of the world where his malevolent threat of domination could never escape again.
"Godspeed, young Prince, as you return to your Queen. I have sensed that your true home is with my Northern Winter counterpart, Ice Queen Elsa of the North Mountain. Be her strength in weakness, her voice in silence, her reason in confusion, showing her love is the answer…Just as my rock, Ragi, has been the light in the darkness for me all these years. Once you have found that true Heaven-sent intimacy between two like souls, dear Prince Hans…never let it go again."
" May God send you prevailing warm winds and sunlit polar days…this blessed next generation will rule the wintry mighty land to the north as the Lord intended, hand-in-hand, two by two, side-by-side."
Hans recalls the Snow Queen and Ragi's sapient words of wisdom as he marvels how, so as one they were, that the older pair finished one another sentences. The ancient Spirit of the Winter and her chosen mate held one another's hands with a tranquil smile on each wise face all the while they waved to him from the Snow Queen of the South Winter's newly erected dome Snow Palace.
Please God, give me the courage to ask for boldness of wise words and an understanding heart that will comprehend with forbearance all opposition and adversity set before me. I am determined to overcome all to hold my beautiful Queen close, just as they have, all the years of our lives.
"Soon it will be my Queen's birthday, Carpet. So her knight in shining armor must be presentable." The handsome Prince makes pleasant conversation with the flying creature. His nimble hands were now employed in threaded needle handicraft that he was adept at as a Naval born and bred man, trained to repair sail at any hour at sea.
However, the delicate work was made more difficult due to his lacerated hands still recovering after crushing the black ice crystal that had been controlling his Elsa. The bandages around the wounded deep penetrated scar tissue were rather an encumbrance to simple sewing a seam straight.
There's been worse pain.
But indefatigable Prince Hans persisted through the hurt and frustration as his gaze was invariably drawn towards the tattered plush named 'Sir Jorgenbjorgen' which was winking up at him with the dilapidated stuffed puffin's one wobbly stitched crooked right eye. The cute black and white birdie toy had been Princess Elsa's favorite dear friend since she was very little when her not so stitch-worthy young Mama had hand-knit it together for the tiny little girl ages ago.
After all these years, the cherished redheaded yarn knight had been kept in storage in the attic of Arendelle Castle, until Elsa had discovered and reclaimed her dear plush buddy and brought him up to her Ice Palace bedroom. Despite so many sadnesses and uncertainties along the way, Sir Jorgenbjorgen always reminded the uncertain blonde princess of Arendelle of how she was loved by her parents and sister in all the Christmases of their youth gone past.
Clinging to Sir Jorgen's squishy body when she was unsure, stroking his sparse locks of yarn hair when she was scared, petting his pale blue cape and retying its glove fingers off and on when nervous, Elsa was never really alone as long as she could rely on her stalwart knight to stand at her side.
I think I'm a bit jealous of how much attention you must've received, puffin. Hans stares down at the threadbare stuffed toy that looked so small, yet held so large a place in young Elsa of Arendelle's heart once.
I swear to be your Knight errant from now on, min ædle, who's every bit as resilient as this valiant little fellow who emulated your besotted lover to jump straight into the pit of hellfire for you.
"He may be a tad worse for wear, but we will soon set him right, Carpet." Constantly addressing his ride to keep some sanity at this mind-numbing altitude, ever the proper gentlemen Prince never forgot the rug he was seated upon was sentient and tender of spirit to be merely ignored as dumb transportation.
"I am glad the milliner you suggested before we left Corona offered this shade of viridescent green button for me to replace his missing blue one with. It makes him look more like me, don't you think?" Hans turns around and holds up Sir Jorgenbjorgen's cute face close to his for light-hearted comparison.
When no response save for some unmindful, displeased grunting comes from behind him, the non-acrophobic of heights Hans acrobatically leans over the edge of Carpet at its whizzing by high-altitude. The Prince affably holds up the rerouted red yarn hair – perfectly coiffed and parted in the middle, for Carpet to see.
The fully stuffed again puffin now sported a reinforced green button over its neatly patched up holes as Hans holds it up close to his face for at least Carpet to compare.
The Magic Carpet gives his playful, gallant rider a tassel-ly thumbs up, recalling how the astute prince had stitched him up securely when his rug fibers were literally falling apart after being ripped to shreds by wolves and polar bears and possessed swordsman and the like.
"I realize it is wholly insufficient to offer such a reconstituted present to a lady – much less to a Queen – but my benevolent Elsa will no doubt overlook the gift's inadequacy by proviso of the ample sentiment of my heart as recompense." The closer Hans came to the horizon of the precious far-off shores of his adopted new land, the more excited in anticipation he became.
Despite foreboding knowledge that the King of Arendelle did not summon his Vise Admiral from his remote post in India and the China seas – discovering that this trip home was all a mere ruse of Princess Anna's doing, Hans was still secretly glad to be this much closer to the light of his eyes, the woman he, against all odds and reason, was madly in love with.
"How foolish must a lovesick man like me appear to be, eh, my friend? But you must forgive this weakness in me. I'm on my way home to her! My Elsa of Arendelle is the most magnificent soul I have ever been so privileged to encounter – Queen or no Queen. So I must keep my promise to her." The comely Prince lets out a self deprecating chortle at himself left in this sorry state at a singular female's memorable come-hither glance. Never mind the fact that her entreaty for him to attend her celebration, annoyed father and irate Admiral or no, had reduced the clever man to submission and obedience to any of her whims.
The Prince of the Southern Isles then directs his gaze back to his thus far other silent companion beyond mute Carpet upon whom they were sharing the ride thereupon.
The journey across the sea for Hans Westergaard was not exactly a lonely one. Even amid her own trial of childbirth, caring and compassionate Princess Rapunzel of Corona made sure of that when she insisted her new super team-up doctors stick together.
"Hmm? Have you been talking to me? Oh, sorry. Zoning out again. My bad." A young man with a thick shock of dark hair that had an odd tuft of teal in his bangs glances up distractedly from where he had been welding a bolt into some odd-shaped metallic device.
Local Corona inventor Varian Gutenberg looks up from beneath his big brown goggles with wide eyes that were magnified even more comical due to the eyewear's large lenses.
"Umm…Ice Queen Elsa is magnificent? Yeah. So I've heard. I'm looking forward to meeting your intriguing fiancée, Prince Hans. There's a lot I'd like to study about her to discern all the secrets behind the mysterious science of her alleged 'magic'." Had another man uttered those quantifiable words, Hans would have hit the roof. Or, as there was no ceiling or floor on the flying Magic Carpet ride he had been sharing with this curious friend of Princess Rapunzel – the Danish Prince most likely would have throw down his glove for a duel by sword on the ill-advised, loquacious lad.
But Hans had come to know the spiky black haired younger man - who still appeared just out of his teenage pubescence – though Varian Gutenberg was over 21 years of age – through the nerve-racking delivery of Rapunzel and Eugene's twin babies, to be a decent intellectual, if just a tad eccentric.
So Hans' sword remains in its hilt. The bemused smirk on his tolerant, attractive face looks over to his indisputably Magic flying Carpet shipmate's shrug.
"I assure you, sir, that Queen Elsa of Arendelle is genuinely gifted of cryokinetic magic that is not to be trifled with, nor questioned like she was some freak test subject." Hans swivels his redhead that had been preoccupied with his own thoughts in the dark cloudy wee hours to send a warning shot glance over the bow of the inquisitive young man's curiosity that could've killed the cat.
"Oh – um – sorry I didn't mean that – uh – she's a science experiment or I'd ever want to dissect your fiancé like some lab rat. Wait. Your Queen is not a rat, in any way, I'm sure. And I'd never dissect a girl. Yikes. That didn't come out right either. I'd better just stop talking." Unaccustomed to speaking to strangers one-on-one beyond his dad, Princess Rapunzel, and his close friend, Cassandra, Varian stumbles the words, over-apologizing for his apology.
All the while though, his busy genius hands were nonstop tweaking at his latest invention/birthday gift for said intriguing Ice Queen that Rapunzel had asked her favorite inventor to craft along this out-of-the-blue trip North to pick up Cass.
"Yes, that would be advisable." More amused than angered, the deft swordsman runs his skilled fingers across his blade's sheath in a semi-threat before he smirkingly stands down his offended antagonism of the tactless alchemist.
"What is it you are you are working on, if I may ask?" Like the classy guy he was, Hans magnanimously changes the taboo subject of referring to Elsa as anything other than an angel Queen. His astute mind was more than mildly interested to know what this intelligent young friend of his sister-in-law could be inventing for Elsa's birthday present on Rapunzel's behalf.
"Oh!" Varian's bright sky blue eyes light up like Christmas trees at any interest shown for his brainstormed products that most normal folks go all dull-eyed bored over in seconds.
"This is my latest innovation of my take on the classic Belgian invented waffle iron. But this one is wind power motorized to be every handy traveler's cooking toaster for fast baked waffles, cookies, bread, even meats and vegetables and the like! My 'Wafflebaker' even doubles as a water boiler for tea or coffee or soup! It's also designed to serve as a glove warmer/ heater on cold vacations in the woods!" The excited, stick-thin young man looks as wild-eyed and crazed as his windblown spiked hair. Dynamic student of alchemy Varian Gutenberg 'sells' his latest, most state-of-the-art creation. It was full of concisely crafted small gears and belts and heating elements cleverly placed in a compact flat metal waffle iron design complete with chemically treated fireproof handles and feet.
"Ingenious. This could be the wave of the future, my friend." Studious Prince Hans was always interested in modern development, his prescient intellect stirred by the self-powered, fire-less cooking and heating device that any homemaker, traveler or on the go workman would appreciate.
He turns from Carpet's front seat to compliment his passenger to look behind where Varian the alchemist had been industriously holding shop with his backpack full of tools and tricks in relative silence since they left Corona for the South Pole on a mission to be permanently rid of that Devil Troll Hans and Eugene had trapped in the Genie's lamp.
"You really think so? I'm just working out a few bugs after something that Ragi friend of yours pointed out to me about the density of fired sandstone and the conductive current passed through resistance to graphite via the cupronickel wire I was using. He's quite a free modern thinker for an old guy, and seemed to know a lot about alchemy and natural elements. Quite futuristic." Inquisitive Varian had no idea how very wise - and very old - the original Wind Whisperer was about many things in Nature the unobservant man could not see.
Hans examines the self heating device that would eliminate the necessity of fire and danger of searing flames that he was all too familiar with from recently battling the Devil Troll King in the pits of the earth.
But that's when his fine nose smells something onboard quite acrid penetrating the wind blown upper atmosphere they were zipping through.
"Yes, the original Wind Whisperer appeared to be rather visionary in his thinking. It is admirable. However, I believe something in the present is burning." Hans states calmly, yet urgently directing the gangly tall lad to look.
Varian was so busy perfecting his 'wafflebaker's' feet casing to not singe any of game Carpet's high pile but failed to remain alert on the contents of the new invention.
"Oh no, no no! Our dinner is wrecked!" The goggle eyed frazzled boy looked quite the part of a mad scientist when he, wearing his thick black leather gloves, lifts the lid of his flat iron wafflebaker invention. He crinkles his cute little red nose at the burnt smell ensuing from it.
Using his long handled tweezers, Varian extracts one extremely burnt piece of fillet mignon beef Hans had picked up at the butcher shop next to the tailor in Corona before he left. It was there that Varian had caught up with the Danish Prince, a.k.a. Eugene's 'Lillebror' cousin, collecting supplies before departing for the long, nonstop sky voyage down to Antarctica.
The alchemist pulls down his goggles to get a better look at the leathery tough beef filet's charred damage in the dim light between the stationary lantern attached to a strange utility hat on his ingenious head and the moon above.
"Cassie – ergh, Lady Cassandra – usually is in my workshop to watch that I don't do just that. I get so involved in my projects that I often forget to check on stuff brewing, let alone eat." The young man runs a frustrated hand through his thick mane of black hair as he fondly recalls to the conscientious beauty of the handmaiden turned Royal Guard Captain.
Rapunzel's former ladies' maid made it a point to visit Varian inventor's lair at least three times a week if not more lately at the request of the young man.
Or at least to make sure he didn't burn the place down.
Actually, Cassandra Schmidt was the one and only woman other than Princess Rapunzel who was ever admitted into Varian's lonely scientist's workshop to help with his inventions which not many others knew about.
"Since the beginning of time, every man has needed a good woman beside him to survive this life. Believe me, I've come to realize this as fact. But you must work extremely hard to win her inestimable affection, be grateful for her forgiveness when you do wrong—which is bound to be often, and pray with all your might to not ever let her down again, so you may remain the noble man she deserves." Hans shares his morsels of wisdom of the fair sex that he had learned firsthand the hard way over this past year. Speaking from personal experience and intense determination, Hans clenches his fist over his heart with the silver platinum snowflake engagement ring on his left pinky finger almost biting its sharp diamond crystals into his embedded skin.
I will never give up, Elsa of Arendelle, until you're mine…
"Yeah… She's a very good woman. Smart and competent and considerate. Sigh. But it's hard to know if Cassandra's even interested in me because she's like so amazing, and I'm so much younger than her. And with my record - that everyone in Corona remembers, believe me. They bring it up nearly every public event I go to! - it doesn't help that she's so into law enforcement, does it?" Varian mumbles under his breath as he exclaims his inadequacies.
"She's the Captain of the Guard now. And her father was the former Captain of the Guard who threw me in prison, for Heaven's sake! Even if Cassie understands I'm on the good gy side now totally - because she went through the same thing, and we've talked it over so much about everything we both had to lose and didn't, I think she's forgiven me. But he knows I was once a bad guy who threatened all of Corona just a few years back. But if I want us to start a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, how can I get her Dad to look past all that now? I've been told that I'm a genius – but what good is it if I can't even figure out how to get the girl I love to notice how much I care—way beyond just being a good friend?!" Banging a fist to his useless head, Varian's vented frustration was more directed at himself and the romantic aspiration for the raven ahired guardswoman.
But he was always too absorbed in his solitary scientific work to ever ponder much on its fruition, nor ever learn how to really treat a lady.
But this approachable young Prince Hans, not far from his age, seemed to exude a wise openness about romance to give inexperienced Varian some tips.
I sure can use them with Cassie…
"Your situation and mine are more alike than you know, Varian…" Finding the young man in much the same complicated spot with his intended's irate father and all, Hans murmurs low, with more than a little guilt still behind all of his philosophical, witty smiles.
"But it's different for you. You know your Queen Elsa loves you. What if the girl I love doesn't ever show if she likes me back as much as I do her? What then? There's no mechanical invention I can conjure up that can make her fall for me. Not that I would. Really. I promise. As if a loser like me even deserves an amazing girl like Cassandra." A dejected Varian wrings his removed glove hands over the scorched beef cut as he scrapes it out of his motorized wonder's cooking tray.
"Argh! If this is being in love, it's tough! I just want to be with my Cassie for Christmas…and maybe tell her…" Somehow, with Hans, the distressed twenty-one-year-old felt he could open up feelings that he never told anyone, not even his Dad – about his feelings for the Captain of Corona's Guard. They had known each other for years and the two spent a lot of time together with serious talks and laughs, enjoying one another's company in many adventures, beside Rapunzel and Eugene.
Lady Cassandra seemed willing to forgive his reckless indiscretions of the past, just as Varian had already forgiven hers. Although, she was a tough woman to read who rarely addressed any sentimental feelings to anyone, let alone him.
And why should she trust an ex-convict like him anyway? Just because she was on the wrong side of the law too, once upon a time?
That mind-controlling black crystal made Cass do what she did. It wasn't her fault! What's my excuse? Revenge for what they didn't do for my Dad? No, Captain Cassandra Schmidt is miles high too good for me…
But maybe both of them had one golden thread that brought Cassandra Schmidt and Varian Gutenberg back to the light in common. And her name was Rapunzel whose friendship tied the two troubled souls together.
"Truly, Varian. I personally understand what entails with a woman who doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve. But believe me, to unwrap the complexity of true love in such a special creature, who keeps her tenderness locked up inside, will be the most rewarding adventure of all. You simply must find the courage to make your good intentions clear, and impress her with your resolve and determination to remain her hero, no matter what the adversity." Adaptive 'older brotherly' and wise, Hans bolsters Varian's irresolute emotion with a fair measure for his own self reassurance.
Rapunzel always believed you could come to care for me too. So maybe I'll try to believe it too. Varian closes his eyes, and comes back up with a hopeful smile.
"Thanks for the advice." The dark haired young man gives a crooked smile to his fellow romantic warrior.
"So…what do we do for food now? I ruined your beef. Sorry." Varian twists his lip with a smile to Hans as he pushes the button that automatically cleaned out his device's grilling surface into the evacuation tray underneath. His stomach rumbles down at the sight of the scorched piece of beef he had so been looking forward to as he had not eaten for the past two days in trepidation over Rapunzel's emergency pregnancy. But it was overcooked to a hard piece of leather.
"We make the best of with what we have to offer." Hans smiles his winning simper back at the stressed younger man, speaking of more than just the difficult piece of meat. The Prince of the Southern Isles produces a sharp dagger and expertly shaves off the black carbonization until the whittled down chunk of steak was a mere quarter inch thick.
Putting on his chef hat, Hans liberally salts the beef and expertly slices along the grain of the fibrous, more than well done meat into long, thin-cut strips. He then takes whatever meager juice meat drippings were caught in the wafflebaker's lower drip-tray and sprinkles a laissez-faire amount of freshly ground red pepper and some other fresh spices the nice old butcher had included along with the top choice steak. The charming foreign gentleman, with discerning taste for fine meats, knew how to compliment his way to achieve some free herbs and spices from the shopkeeper.
Hans simmers the dried out strips in a bit of spiced water in a tin cup with the fresh ground pepper, salt and a touch of vinegar and Quaid honey the forward thinking Prince had thought to purchase as it was both medicinal and healthy to spread over bread. He then stirs the marinade over the wind powered hot wafflebaker until bubbles form around the super thin pieces of meat.
"Now you're supposed to leave these strips to cool for an hour. But considering our altitude, this should be sufficient chill in the upper hemisphere temperature for the smoked meat to be cured in minutes instead. Perhaps not as exemplary as it could have been, but this rescued beef will make a tasty Western-style American beef jerky –" The culinary chef in Hans was just putting the final seasoning on the hashed brown potatoes he had adeptly julienned, diced and seasoned with brushed on oil he had been grilling on the other side of Varian's cooking device.
Varian marvels at how the capable redhead had kept balance of the ingredients and cooking utensils and still was able to direct Carpet simultaneously to the best route to Arendelle in the Southeast of Norway, just across the straits.
"This is called 'beef jerky'? Wow. Americans know how to make good tasting stuff out of a mistake. No wonder the colonies declared their independence from Britain. Wow. It's delicious, too." A famished Varian had already scarfed down his three of the six pieces of thin meat strips before Hans finished plating his potato course, causing the former cabin boy/ship's cook to grin at his diner's impatience.
"Glad you liked it. Protein nutritious red meat does wonders for a man's confidence." Hans laughs at the banality of the situation with Varian, both shaking off the jittery nerves associated with soon facing the reality of the women they loved.
There was something naïve and innocent about this lonely young scientist that Prince Hans could sympathize with, particularly after recalling that Varian too had been rehabilitated from being a bad boy once upon a time, just like him.
"You can cook and be a soldier and a doctor and philosopher, all while being fearless of heights." Swallowing back his own fear of heights, Varian, his hunger satisfied, leans back on Carpet's plush seating to take a moment out of his nervous romantic and scientific jumbled thoughts to assess the capable Prince sitting in front of him. "No wonder you snapped up a Queen. Elsa will be lucky to have you as a husband, Hans. Eugene was telling us how heroic you were up in Norway, saving your girl. I'd like to think I could be that for…someone special. But I wouldn't even know where to start to garner courage to ever pop that big question! I'd probably rather busy myself in some new chemistry equation or even discuss a seminar on quantum physics than talk serious romance. But maybe if I use some of your advice, I can get Cassie to notice me…" Varian comments as he accepts a pleasant Hans' offer of a crispy fried potato patty, cooked to perfection on his latest invention wafflebaker atop the high flying smooth ride of a Magic Carpet cutting through the sky.
"I only acted accordingly as to what any good soldier – any true man would do for the cause of protecting those you hold dear. My Storbror is too kind, for I do not consider myself a hero, per se, Varian. Nor have not 'snapped up', as you say, my Queen just yet. It is I who will be the inexorably fortunate one to secure her love for a lifetime. I do not intend to let this Providential opportunity to encourage and bolster our relationship pass by without offering her all my love, devotion and loyalty, without reservation and without fear of the consequences. Ladies do require to hear and be acknowledged in such things more than we men ever do, so I will not let my angel down in this department. Not now or evermore in the future, which I intend to offer my lovely Elsa with both my hands and all my heart. I refuse to leave this time without ascertaining the date and hour she requires of me to walk her down the aisle as her true hero!" Hans eloquently imparts to an appreciatively applauding Varian the serious man-to-man pep talk both lonely ex-criminals seeking true love required as the beautiful targets of their reformed hearts were imminently drawing closer.
trousseau - French term for the clothes, undergarments, and other belongings collected by a bride for her marriage.
mu fávru - my beauty in Northuldran Saami
min alskare - my lover in Swedish
min spadbarns - my child in Swedish
min flicka- my little girl in Swedish
min kæreste- my darling in Danish
"What Do You Know about Love?" - song performed by Patti Murin (Anna) and Jelani Alladin (Kristoff) from the musical 'Frozen'.
"Loneliness of Evening" – song performed by Santino Fontana (Hans) from the musical 'Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella'
Hello!
What does Anna know about love?
EVERYTHING on this grown up Feistypants' 6 month anniversary! Kristoff, even after a tough day digging and clearing land and building homes for the Fire Troll refugees, certainly got his hero's reward from his enthusiastic little bride!
Mama Iduna was giving timid Elsa some wedding night trousseau advice concerning Hans, but Anna's a ginger who needs no instruction on how to give her man a good time in this one! Lots of hot romantic passion and feisty fireworks were flying in this enticing entry now that our honeymooners are back to days and (nights ;) of rest and relaxation! Kristoff and Anna have finally found a little time for entertaining friskiness that our starved-for-private-together-time newlyweds deserve at long last! The two of the young lovers confessing amid playful touching and spicy kissing + was a pleasurable change of pace after all the danger they faced in the last book! Romantic love scenes look like they're going to be around every corner in Frozen Again: Love Never Ends! ^_~
Our Prince Hans, dreaming of claiming his own skittish bride is on his way with an interesting 'Rapunzel's Tangled Adventures' friend named Varian needing some love affair advice of his own for his Cassie :)
With your handsome Dane coming to conquer your heart, Ice Queen, Elsa's exciting Masquerade Ball that's next on the roster in the celebratory kingdom of Arendelle sounds thrilling, eh?!
We'll see what these frolicsome heroes claiming their rewards are up to in the morning before heading home next for more smiles!
God bless all you heroes out there!
Love,
HarukaKou
