We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters.

"Frozen Again: 'Love Never Ends"

Act IX

Chapter 24

"Consider the Lilies"

The following days on board the top of the fleet Portuguese ship, Santa Teresa, were indeed as full and exciting as their hostess, Princess Valentina promised.

Between games with her pink tamborita, magic shuffleboard and skeet shooting competitions that kept the various dignitaries and royal family of Enchancia quite entertained, Elsa felt like she was in a competitive gaming whirlwind.

But, as this was Princess Valentina of Paraiso's all-important wedding cruise ship entourage, her captive audience of traveling guests could only indulge her every whim.

No one could say 'no' to her. And the worst part of that was that the vain, bossy, noisy Princess Valentina knew it.

"PULL!"

Before the growing spectators on this early, sundrenched, ocean breeze morning, Prince Hugo, much to his demanding team leader Valentina's clapping delight, shoots a direct hit to his clay pigeon discus. It added points to the rising number of the demanding young woman's own team high score that had already beat Chancellor Esteban, Princess Amber and Princess Cleo's mediocre score.

Their third teammate, Princess Hildegard, chosen by draws, however, misses her shot entirely, due to the wind kicking up her flowing hair in her eyes just at the wrong moment.

"So sorry, Valentina. But my beautiful hair has a mind of its own sometimes." The vain Princess of Freezenburg brushes back her long purple waves from her face with a dismissive expression that showed she cared more for her looks and little for the silly game that put a single hair out of place.

"Proper styling of my own naturally wavy tresses is tantamount and mandatory to participating in a good game, Hildegard, if you are to ensure no chance of being a complete failure on beauty's account." The dark-haired, healthy russet skinned young woman, in contrast to Hilde's pale complexion, was trying not to display the irritation she felt for her inept, unapologetic teammate.

Obviously getting up on the wrong side of her cabin bed, domineering Valentina snaps her fingers for her servant Manuel to produce her vanity kit as she roughly braids up Princess Hildegard's mass of purple curls for the next round.

"You'll do better next time, now that your hair's out of your eyes." Valentina says with a shrug of her own perfectly coiffed, ponytailed ringlets. As she spoke though, her eyes flash across the bow of the ship it seemed at someone on the opposite craft whom the Brazilian Princess was sure was laughing at her failure to not achieve a perfect team score.

Alonso of Córdoba does not refrain from giving a chuckle from where he was indeed languidly watching the competition on the other ship beneath his straw hat. Giving a bored yawn, Alonso was trying not to look as though he was observing his spicy fiancée's antics from where he was lazily laying out on a deck chair on the Gler's top deck.

But across the crashing ocean waves, the young man could feel Valentina's angry glare almost as hot as the sun blazing down on him.

Noticing this animosity which seemed to be growing between the affiancéd pair on the way to their wedding, Elsa was puzzled. In Arendelle, Alonso and Valentina seemed so romantic, so intensely hot and heavy. But by the time they got to Portugal, something had happened to the madly enamored Hispanic couple that drove them apart.

Is the course of love so quick and capricious? Or is it simply wedding day countdown nerves? I don't believe the former, for God created love to be patient and abiding. However, as to the latter, I can sympathize with Valentina sometimes as I ready myself for my prince on our happy day…

But Elsa didn't have much time to ponder these things, for she soon found herself unpredictably presented by draw with an unexpected skeet shooting teammate.

"How lovely it is to be thrown together so on this otherwise boring voyage, dear little maiden Elsie – or rather I should say – Captain Elsa. Of course, the Princess would choose only her counterparts to be the team leaders." A tall, dark-haired, well-dressed man of obvious royal breeding and lineage was first to speak to a surprised Elsa above the chattering din of competitors assembled on the top deck of the Santa Teresa, until they were suddenly standing face-to-face.

Elsa almost gasped to be part of a trio with this new familiar face, after Prince Desmond shyly held up his corresponding card to show his affiliation with her 'Team D.' At this early morning skeet shooting competition the Queen of Arendelle finds herself in the presence of an unmistakable personality from her past.

"Prince Didrik! I didn't know you were here on board the Santa Teresa!" The platinum blonde sputters at this startling fellow traveler whom she had no knowledge beforehand of being invited by the bride, Princess Valentina.

"We have been shipmates for several days now, Elsa. And though I have noticed you, your Majesty, you have been so in demand by your good friend – the bossy bride – you apparently have overlooked my acquaintance. It is quite amazing being on the high seas for, what, almost a week now, and I have never been able to catch your exquisite eye? I should be slighted. Or am I losing my touch with the ladies? It seems we have been as two ships passing in the night, as they say." Feigning hurt feelings, the debonair Casanova Prince with the cunning eyes curls a wheedling smile down at the defenseless young woman.

"Oh! Please forgive me for not greeting you properly earlier, Your Highness. But I honestly was unaware you were even on this voyage to South America. Hans – that is, Vise Admiral Westergaard – only informed me that your brother Prince Peiter and his wife would be representing the Danish Crown, as the bride-to-be is dear Princess Lujza's niece. They relayed nothing to me of your attendance when we spoke earlier." Elsa apologizes to the sixth-in-line Prince of Denmark with a demure curtsy up to the devilishly handsome coxcomb staring down at her.

"So, my brothers wish to ignore the black sheep of the clan? I can see blowhard Peiter holding a grudge against some of my less than exemplarily candid affairs, I suppose. But I am surprised our youngest, now again recognized princeling is too enamored of his impressive ship's commission, amongst other tantalizing features of command, to be so disinterested in being his brother's keeper. Is he not?" The suave and sleek older Danish Prince, speaking in riddles as always, lays his wolfish eyes upon the blonde young ruler.

Then he gives a directed gaze towards where Elsa's redheaded Captain of the escort steamship was standing at the aft taffrail of the Gler. Hans had out his trusty map and compass directly across from her, pretending to navigate. Though he really was keenly watching them with more than mild surprise and yearning upon his comely features.

"I wish I could answer you of that accurately, sir. But I have been requested personally by the bride, in deference to my role as maid of honor at her marriage in a few short weeks, to accompany her on this ship on her wedding voyage home. So I have not the privilege to travel alongside the noble Kommander to confirm his valued perspective." Sighing, Elsa gives a longing glance across the crashing waves to the ship sailing parallel to hers, so close and yet so very far away.

"Valued and desired. It is all a man craves." Prince Didrik murmurs beneath his minty breath that was becoming startlingly close to Elsa's face she could have easily become intoxicated, as had many females before.

"Good morning, ladies." Nervously taking a step back from where Prince Didrik had masterfully cornered her near the Santa Teresa's railing edge, Elsa attempts to make pleasant conversation with either Princesses Amber or Hildegard on the deck with an officious Valentina.

But they were all too absorbed in learning the rules of skeet shooting from good-looking instructor Manuel, much to Princes Desmond and James' chagrin, to notice Elsa's discomfort with her aggressively over-attentive companion.

"So, as I see it, you are rather a lonely young woman on the ship, even in the crowd, in much need of some thoughtful doting and tender petting, rather than playing these trivial games?" The flirtatious rogue teases Elsa's braid with one hand while the other was expertly caressing the skeet shoot shot gun like it was a long-lost lover.

"How… how is your wife, Princess Antonia?" Changing the subject, Elsa purposely mentions, as ever-caddish Didrik closes in, her hand knocking down a mop at the handrail stern of the ship that must've been left by the crewman when swabbing the weather deck clean for this morning's competition.

"Alas, my Antoinetta had taken ill on the outset of this journey at sea, and I have been virtually anchored to our state room cabin to care for her and watch over our three elder girls who insisted to come along. They promised explicitly to not lend themselves in trouble. My dear little girls have developed a strange fetish for their cousin Alonso, on their mother's side, since the scrawny little dandy came a-visiting." With a disdainful grimace at the other young man, lounging on the Gler, Prince Didrik answers her query.

Then, shotgun in hand, he gives a stretch of his long lean limbs upward to take aim at a wayward seagull that he refrains from pulling the trigger upon, due to the Norwegian Queen's startled features.

"Ahh, my gallant Lillebror appears to have noticed our little tête-à-tête, Queen Elsie. Do wave to the lad before he falls off the stern of his steamship to spy on us. Poor boy does appear so lonely and forlorn without you to steer his ship's compass, my dear." With his smarmy demeanor and equally oily voice into the stiffened Arendelle Queen's ear, the older ladies' man of a prince smirks. He flutters a hand across the bow of the Santa Teresa towards his perceptibly disturbed younger brother on the Gler.

"What game are you playing at now, Didrik? Have you no decency, even when your own lass is bilious and ailing, being attended to by your children below deck?" Just then, more blustery, call-it-like-it-is Prince Peiter marches up to where his cunning brother, just one year his elder, was creepily close, sniffing his pointy nose too near an uncomfortable Elsa's regal hair.

"Skeet shooting, of course, Peiter. But with all these lovely young flowers of God's creation around us, begging me to join in their games, how could I not pause to smell the roses? It was your good lady who made it abundantly known that my pacing presence in our shared state room was no longer welcome, for I was 'driving her mad', was I not?" Smiling Didrik says accusingly of strident, opinionated Princess Lujza, changing the subject entirely in his favor. And just in time too for their first round, as he led Elsa to where Prince Desmond was signaling for them to start their team's turn.

"It appears, Elsa, that before you delve into marriage with my youngest brother, you may wish to discuss it with our experienced, distressed wives. They apparently prefer to dispose of their husbands' company to restore peace of mind at sea, sending us poor chaps listless and lonesome, in search of entertainment. But I am certain that you, dear lady, would not treat your intended so, if he was attempting to be companionable and caring in offering you, in your ill health, his devoted companionship." Ever playing the victim card, Didrik delivers these words as he strokes his debonair moustache with a look for sympathy down at a dispirited and annoyed Elsa as they take their places at the designated shooting area.

"Particularly not at this precious, rare vacance period away from royal life's normal humdrum worries and cares, when irreplaceable memories of cherished times together can be intimately shared. I have been watching you and Hans pining away for one another, Elsa. I took you, the young Queen who would sneak by subterfuge into our fortress as an intrepid chambermaid, to be more the independent modern woman rather than the wishy-washy old-fashioned type of delicate flower that simply takes orders from pushy others." Prince Didrik also considered himself a persuasive arbiter who could tug at the heartstrings of many a vulnerable female as fidgety fellow teammate Desmond looked on uncomfortably.

"I can assure you, Sir, that I am no shrinking violet to be pushed around. I am the Ice Queen of Arendelle and the North Winter, as well as the Elemental 5th Spirit, and I make the rules when and how I will spend as much time as I wish with the man I love. PULL!" Elsa declares definitively as she – an expert at taking aim with any weapon at her fingertips – spins from the man she was addressing to set off a blast with the shotgun she assertively claimed from Didrik's surprised hand.

BAA-ANNGG!

With fire spirit Bruni hidden in her billowing cool icy sleeves silently applauding at the explosion he enjoyed, the shotgun shell makes direct impact the skeet clay pigeon Manuel had released upward with the launching cannon to Elsa's 'pull' command, giving leader Elsa's team perfect mark initial score points.

"Well done, Queen Elsa! You fire that weapon like a professional markswoman! Your father taught you well," Chancellor Esteban gives his wife Johanne and sister-in-law Gerda on the judges' panel a shared proud grin of the Arendelle monarch's sporting triumph.

Many of the others gathered on the deck through the competition applaud for a blushing Elsa's perfect clay pigeon strike.

But her teammate was no slouch with a firearm, either.

"No shrinking violet indeed, your Majesty. I will strive to match that precision with one of my own. Pull." Didrik flashes a dapper, cool and calm simper, looking to Hans momentarily before he takes aim in the corner of his sneaky eye and shoots, without even looking up it seemed.

KA-BOOM!

The clay pigeon again explodes exquisitely, for Prince Didrik was, if nothing else, an excellent hunter.

"Don't be showing off your uncanny, reckless hunting skills to the ladies too much, dear brother-in-law! You may frighten off some of the more delicate blossoms, as you always say. But I know firsthand that the soon-to-be addition to our family, our lovely Queen Elsa, is no longer a skittish one. She is tough and hard as ice when she has to be. Brava, girl." Princess Lujza comments from where she had been huddled with her early morning first up skeet shooting team of bubbly Princess Sofia and her step brother, James.

The matronly woman, wearing a vibrant orange and green noble tress, had joined her husband Prince Peiter on the deck of the Santa Teresa playing shuffleboard with King Roland, Councilor Kai and the Duke of Westleton. Tiring of the old men's shipboard recreation, when Elsa arrived, Lujza had soon volunteered for the skeet shooting competition that she knew very little about.

But the well-endowed Princess of Portugal was the kind of go-getter who was thoroughly enjoying this vacation from her home in Denmark to visit the sunny shores of Brazil with her relatives she had not seen in ages. After all, her three bouncy, lively girls were begging to be introduced to the vibrant world there in South America Lujza often spoke of for cousin Valentina's wedding where they would all play the part of bridesmaids and flower girls.

"Thank you, Lujza, for saying so. Since I am embarking on this full voyage to a brave new world, I must be just as fittingly brave and bold as I embark forward." Elsa responds to her friendly, soon-to-be sister-in-law, as both brush off their mutual brother-in-law's quirky flirtatious annoyance as just that.

"Lena, Selena and Corina would be proud to see you so daring and victorious, Elsa. You and Princessa Anna are all they talk about since you left Egeskov! Alas, they've missed all the fun, stuck below in our state rooms playing board games with their cousins while attending to their poorly Aunt Antonia. But my girls will be up here shortly, to watch your victory in the competition! I will send for them!" Lujza smacks her fleshy fist in her plump palm like an encouraging sports manager, swinging her large form back-and-forth like a cheerleader.

"Well… we are not out of the woods yet." Elsa giggles as she gives the big boned and just as big hearted Portuguese woman a shaky smile when her final skeet shooting teammate, Prince Desmond, steps up to the aft section of the Santa Teresa's prepared shooting area.

With a weak glance to now official girlfriend Amber, and a wince at Didrik's inscrutable smirk as the older gentleman had been giving whispered advice in the young man's ear moments before, timid Desmond gulps.

He then nods with a frightened expression on his sweet face to unsteadily start to signal for Valentina's manservant Manuel to launch the clay pigeon cannon.

"We will surely win in the next round if the slipshod scores even just one point." Didrik whispers to Elsa, just loud enough for Desmond to hear his sharp remark that erases any trace of confidence that poor Desmond had tried so hard to muster.

"No pressure, my friend." Didrik lays on the charm as he places a helpful lowering hand on Desmond's trembling sweaty one over the trigger of the aimed too high shotgun he was attempting to hold up.

"Pull…?" Desmond seemed to be gathering all of his courage as he aims the shotgun at the proper angle while trying to breathe normally with equipment he was not at all comfortable with.

Manuel does as ordered and the clay pigeon discus from the launching cannon flies upward to the clear blue morning sky.

"A little higher to the left!" But as if to lend further assistance to the nervous lad, teammate Prince Didrik points his right-hand straight up as helpful guide to show the untrained Prince the most advantageous trajectory he should shoot towards.

So, as directed, Prince Desmond's plump hand squeezes the trigger prematurely in his pressured anxiety…

BAA-NNGG!

Before many pairs of witnessing eyes, the clay pigeon zings untouched across the skyline, for poor Desmond's wayward bullet had found another target –

"Argh! My hand!" Didrik sinks to his knees dramatically, suddenly falling back to Elsa's willowy arms as he sinks to her shocked lap, writhing in pain as he clenches his left hand tightly to him.

"Prince Didrik! Are you all right?!" Elsa asks in genuine concern for the obviously in pain man lounging his dizzy head against the young Queen's chest.

"Some of the damn shotgun pellets must've misfired and winged my extended hand. Fool man!" Prince Didrik complains through gritted teeth of the multiple spherical projectiles of the 28 gauge shotgun that had hit his hand as Desmond guiltily passes the smoking gun over to Manuel.

"I'm so sorry!" Desmond was on the verge of tears at this terrible blunder, but Didrik surprisingly gives him a compassionate smile.

"Not you, me. I'm the fool. Don't give it another thought, old chap. You played your part quite excellently. I couldn't be prouder." Didrik runs his one uninjured hand through his dark slicked back hair with apparent agony on his face as he looks sincerely into Desmond's somewhat relieved eyes.

Then the thirty-nine-year-old Dane quickly unravels the yellow cravat tie at his neck with his right-hand and binds it with his teeth around his left where red blood soon oozes through the pale ocher silk fabric.

"Should we send for Antonia? What can we do for you, Didrik?" Without a second thought, unafraid-of-a-little-blood Princess Lujza was on her knees at her favorite argumentative brother-in-law's side and ready to have her hubby Peiter run to fetch Didrik's finicky other half.

"No! It'll only make my poor Antoinetta feel worse. I'll… be…fine, ladies. It was my own foolish error entirely to raise my hand in the boy's way in this blasted blinding morning sun. Prince Desmond is not to blame whatsoever. In fact, I think I'd hire him to be a crackshot on my team, someday. But, for now, from the feel of it, some infernal stray pellets must be lodged in my palm. They'll have to come out." Didrik whimpers softly near the end of his brave speech to his wide-eyed teammates and competitors, giving a faint roguish smile to a gulping Prince Desmond, whom Princess Amber places her arms supportively around.

"Manuel! Go get the ship's doctor immediately!" Bossy, panic stricken and horrified Valentina cries out loudly in her increasingly scratchy voice to her dark manservant.

Manuel dutifully races below deck to fetch the onboard physician at his mistress' demand.

"No need for that, dear Princess Val. After witnessing his medical prowess on the field firsthand before, I trust only one man to care for my bullet wound removal. From his vantage point on the Gler to the happenings here, I'm certain he is already prepared for emergency surgery, no doubt. Take me over to the Gler, Elsa dear. Please. Bring me to my brilliant, bright, fortunate and capable brother, Prince Hans." Didrik requests of the Ice Queen on whose lap he was lying so comfortably upon.

With a pleaded smile beneath the dark handlebar moustache on his dashing face, Didrik gives a wistful glance over the ship railing to where the HmNos Gler's Kommander was indeed anxiously barking out orders to his crewmen to prepare their sickbay on the top deck there.

"Yes, my Hans is an expert at attending to bullet wounds." Elsa proudly reiterates Didrik's praise of the thirteenth in-line Prince of the Southern Isles acuity with a glint of a small comforting smile down at him and a bit of ice blown his hand's way to keep it numbed.

Without delay, to the shock of her hostess and some of her fellow shipboard travelers, the Ice Queen in her pale blue and periwinkle travel uniform transforms before their eyes into her final 5th Elemental of Harmony gown.

Dazzling Elsa, with her flowing mane of hair down, quick fashions an ambulatory ice sled beneath the injured man and climbs aboard the ice bed stretcher of sorts to kneel on it close beside him.

"This is cozy. I knew you would succumb to my charms one day and crawl into the sack with me, liberated vision of beauty with the long blonde tresses." Prince Didrik chokes out deliriously as he cradles his arm in pain on the stylishly sleek ice bed of soft cushioned snow where Elsa was kneeling next to his prone body.

Elsa rolls her blue eyes with a smirk of her own before her specialized ice platform begins to rise upward in preparation to catapult over the Santa Teresa's starboard railing.

"Elsa, wait! Poor Prince Didrik may need a willing nurse on call when he recovers from surgery, more than some rough sailor midshipmen to tend to his wound over there. It will not be said that Valentina of Paraiso shirked when I could give a little bit more when it comes to the health of one of my honored guests!" Princess Valentina rashly cries out, with an agile leap upward with momentum kicked off a rushing forward Kai's broad shoulder.

"Ugh! Princess Valentina! Queen Elsa, please come back!" The Councilor had just arrived in time to be deep in consternation to see his charge Elsa so recklessly abandon ship, just about to step in to stop her when Valentina's shoved push back halted the older man.

On her sparkling fuchsia high heels, slender Valentina lands right on the edge of the large ice bed that Elsa had crafted to transport Prince Didrik to the Gler as requested.

"Ohh-ohh!" A little dizzy, as the ice sled was already in motion, Valentina almost slides off the moving cryo-emergency vehicle. With Gale's wind at her back to help steady Valentina, Elsa throws up a fresh frost sidewall, and Didrik uses his good hand to pull the Brazilian girl's sylphlike frame down to him.

As if by second nature, Didrik embraces her close, until Valentina's shapely form was practically sitting on the prone Lothario's lap.

"Oof. One dark beauty to my right, one pale lovely to my left. Two beautiful angels of mercy adorning my sickbed. It's almost worth the price of admission to Heaven." Flippant Didrik flirts through gritted teeth, his one good hand still fully functional as Valentina's fondled and pinched rump could attest.

"If devils are permitted through the pearly gates." Valentina coquettishly flicks her ever-present parasol closed as she settled into her perch draped across Didrik's chest.

His roguish fingers finally snake around her slender pink satin waist, to keep the Princess of Paraiso securely on the ice bed that Winter Queen Elsa masterfully maneuvers on the rushing winds above the crashing waves between the two ships.

For they were both this elemental being's friends now.

"Elsa! Wait! You forgot Anna's letter set box!" Eliana the snowwoman comes skittering along the Santa Teresa's deck a little too late. The fastidious snow creature was holding up the satchel of letters that Elsa had been writing to her sister back home.

Though her wind spirit companion Gale could easily have sent them off, it would disappoint the seagull not to be involved. So, Elsa would wait for when Scuttle's express mail service to catch-up to the ships and deliver the correspondence back to Arendelle, as the birdbrain promised a week ago in Portugal.

With an elegant raise of her talented hand, the 5th Spirit and her invisible guardians easily added her snow creation of Eliana's three-part small frozen frame to the caboose of her ice ambulance train.

Over the wide-open expanse of the sea where she could sense water spirit Nokk near, the fearsome crashing ocean waves no longer held fearful sway over the determined Queen of Arendelle.

Upon her magic cryokinetic transport, wearing her peaceful 5th Element translucent capelets and white snowy, crystal-imbued dress, Elsa bravely crosses the distance between the powerful ships of sail like it was nothing. She slides her projected ice ambulatory with her trio of passengers like an ethereal goddess of legendary fables.

The cryo-vehicle under the 5th Element's magical steam moves at the speed of ice across the two large ships running parallel with each other. Over the ship's portside railing, Elsa smoothly directs her ice ambulatory as the Gler's Kommander Westergaard had his crew prepare for the incoming patient and trio of pretty nurses who had accompanied him.

"Trust you to find trouble anywhere, even on a peaceful cruise ship, Storbror." Shaking his head at his ne-er-do-well big brother, the Gler's captain directs his shipmates to load the injured man upon the readied gurney stretcher and quickly transfer him to the medical section of the ship's foredeck, called the 'sickbay'.

"Trouble? I have been 'Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight.' Are these fairy blossoms not more divine upon this vessel rather than that obtrusive one, Hans? These delicate flowers have delivered me in my miserable state for you to mend my boo-boos personally, Lillebror."

Prince Didrik, cloyingly sweet, waves farewell to Elsa and Valentina as he deliriously waxes poetic from Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'Sonnet 98' as he was taken into the Gler's infirmary.

'Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, figures of delight,
Drawn after you, the pattern of all those.'

"Unarguably, she is that and so much more to me, Storbror. My intrinsically delicate and pure of heart Easter lily." Prince Hans gazes adoringly back at his beautiful Queen, now once again close enough for his five senses to see, smell, hear, touch, and perhaps, if lucky, taste, as his long legs cross the deck swiftly to escort her.

Audience or not, the attractive Dane automatically was unable to contain a tender longing stroke to his mystical Elsa's pallid cheek as he whispers into her blue eyes: "And yet you are, as ever, my strong and enduring flower in tense situations, min kæreste. Thank you for bringing my brother to my care."

The redheaded Kommander wordlessly signals with a nod for his first mate to oversee the ship's duty functions as he was to personally attend his brother. Then, Hans gentlemanly offers Elsa his hand to step onto the foredeck as a smug, smirking, scheming Didrik lies back and relaxes while he is carried into the towards the ship's sick bay.


"That was even a little bit more exciting – cough, cough, cough – then riding on that Alonso's racing – cough, cough – chariot. Cough, cough, choke, cough!" Playing to her audience, Valentina pointedly critiques in her loudest voice while she, still upon Elsa's ice sled, felt important to float over the Gler's port side rail.

Good nurse Elsa, depending on Hans' wiry arms and strong shoulder to steady her down, was already guiding injured Didrik with her ice to be carefully unloaded by the crew to the sick bay.

But secondary 'nurse' Valentina, in a hopeless coughing fit, nearly tumbles off the ice ambulatory backwards into the crashing and deadly waves below.

"Whoa, girl!" Prince Alonso, who had obviously been watching his fiancée's every move, despite trying to seem blasé, rapidly steps in here to stabilize the shaky Princess of Brazil.

The Argentinean young man sweeps his own betrothed into sinewy arms, pulling her dizzy form from a certain dangerous plunge to him.

"Do you still say it's more exciting than riding my chariot, Val? Would you honestly say it's more exciting than this?" With much innuendo in his raised brows down at the winded, lightheaded girl, Alonso, with a macho grin directed at his rival Hans, decides to show Valentina who was boss.

"A little bit more." Trying to regain her scratchy throat breath, Valentina murmurs her infamous catchphrase, trying to push her arrogant fiancé away.

But at the same time, she was thoroughly swept away by his confident gallantry. She enjoyed being held so buoyantly up in her handsome Prince Alonso's arms where the Princess of Paraiso was surprised she fit a little bit better than anywhere else.

Sensing her wavering pride, Alonso full mouth kisses Valentina's parted for air, dry lips until they were quite moist, now that the young Prince had his stubborn Princess right where he wanted her at last.

Several seconds of immutable lovely silent staring into one another's bewitched eyes with lovestruck ecstasy that neither could deny – nor wished to admit – on both Alonso and Valentina's faces passes when the Prince opens his saucy mouth.

"I see you couldn't help but come crawling back to me." Breaking the spell, the smug Córdoban couldn't abstain from rubbing this in his fiancée's rather deliriously satisfied face.

SLAPP!

"You brute! I'll tell you when – and if – I want you to ever kiss me like that again!" However, for the sake of pride, Valentina recalled her original annoyance at her on-again/off-again beau.

Namely, his intentional, cruel humiliation of her by opting to travel on this Norwegian escort vessel rather than their glorious wedding yacht which was taking her triumphantly home to Paraiso.

"Fine." Miffed, with a shrug to his petulant fiancée's bad attitude, Crown Prince Alonso of Córdoba flips his errant brown bangs back dismissively. Then the brash man practically drops the pink Princess down to her well padded big bustle behind on the Gler's deck floor before he victoriously smirks and storms off to the other end of the foredeck.

"Hey! No one treats the Crown Princess of Paraiso like this! And in public! Ooh!" A hissing Valentina's ire shoots up as she scurries to her feet and collects her fallen parasol. She holds the umbrella threateningly in hand as she angrily gives chase to her self-absorbed male equal.

"I don't think so, Val." Prince Alonso's arms reach out to obstruct her violent ardor. Then he spins her back around to reel her into his sleek body for a silent rumba. He and she, in rhythmic dance moves play out their romantic cat and mouse game that first enticed the Brazilian woman and Argentinean man to one other.

"I told you, I hate it when you call me that!" Valentina spits out, just missing hitting a ducking Alonso with her clubbing parasol.

Across the deck and down below the previously peaceful, yet lonely, Gler, the two young lovers go, with vindictive barbs, self-important conceit and umbrella beatings ready to fly amid their fervent, quarreling lovers' dance.


"Ah, young love. I predict that there will never be a dull moment for those two with Spanish blood in their veins. Reminds me of my fifteen years of wedded bliss to my hotheaded Antoinetta. Fiery, spicy and passionate, keeps one coming back for more, in spite of it all." Didrik comments to his brother with a wry smile on the subject of love as Hans puts on his 'physician's cap' and sets out the tweezer tools, anesthetizing numbing medicines and clean bandages required for hours of difficult scattershot removal that his able crew had prepared at once at his command.

"I do appreciate your seamen's aid, Hans, and do not indicate any disparagement towards them at all. But I am a popinjay enough to prefer no further audience to the torture of my pain while you attend my injuries, Brother." Prince Didrik sits up and gives the sailors who had carried the stretcher into the sickbay medical area an unwelcoming scathing glance that clearly said: 'Begone'.

They look to their superior officer, who dismisses his crewmen from where he had been preparing the sterilized equipment and bandages for the multiple stitches that the brilliant young Vise Admiral foresaw he would be required to undertake on his erstwhile older brother's behalf.

"I'm afraid, Hans' Easter lily blossom, despite your being an inspirational sight for any injured man to yearn to have full function of both his hands in working order again — may I say, you look quite ready to pluck, like a delicate flower adorned in that fetching lavendery white ensemble. Which gives errant thought to a man's burning question: is there only ice beneath those filmy skirt petals and capes? – you, as a tender female, my dear, are not to witness the gory details of my torture either." Giving this long-winded, querulous speech, half beneath his breath to Elsa's astonished blush, flirtatious Didrik stops just short of awarding Elsa in her low-cut 5th element outfit with an eye pleased wolf whistle as he instructs her to leave.

That is, until an obviously irked Hans, after a thorough wash of his hands, returns to his patient and steps between Didrik and Elsa with a pair of flashing green eyes.

"'Consider the lilies of the field, Storbror. How they grow and toil not; nor do they spin. And yet even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.'" The younger Danish Prince calms his jealous nature by quoting the Good Shepherd in reference to God's blessing of Elsa's natural beauty.

"I can assure you that Queen Elsa has proven in the past to be quite a competent nurse to me." He gestures with a floral comparison of Biblical standards towards the blushing Norwegian Queen as he begins to abruptly remove Didrik's blood-drenched hand bandage.

"Ouch, Lillebror! Your bedside manner could use a little fine-tuning. And nurse or no, I would sincerely prefer that such a delicate flower, as you refer this fine lady rightly to, is not to endure the gory details of my injury. I fear my dapper form may not be as stirring and I will lose face in her eyes, should I grow faint. You do understand, don't you, Elsie, my sweet blossom?" Hans' older brother puts on quite a show of male modesty combined with macho pride and private shame as Didrik blocks Elsa from seeing his uncovered injured hand.

"Yes, yes. Of course, Your Highness." Elsa sighs. "I'll just wait outside, if you need me, Hans." With one final numbing layer of her cryo-magic to the ice pack she had affixed around Prince Didrik's bloody left palm, Elsa meets her fiancé's exasperated gaze before demurely taking her leave of the two men in the otherwise emptied sickbay.

"Now, Didrik, her ice should dull the pain as I work on your hand. However, the initial bandage removal will no doubt be excruciating even with the Asian powdered anesthesia I learned of in India and the morphine I have here at my disposal. And it will be fairly bloody, depending on the amount of scattershot involved. I did not realize you were this squeamish, Storbror. So please, I'll ask you to brace yourself." Hans speaks with compassion befitting not only a physician, but a caring brother also, as he carefully begins to uncover the tied bandage, ready to see the penetrated single slug shell hole or number of lead pellets shot into Didrik's bloody palm.

"Despite my debonair appearance, Lillebror, I am neither squeamish, nor intolerant of pain." Didrik's smile was quite enigmatic as he watches Hans gently progress to slow unwind the blood drenched yellow cravat tie around his injured bullet perforated hand.

"Didrik, there is no need to put on a brave show for me, Storbror. After all, as a Westergaard son, I too have my share of pride, as well as being master of façade…Hmm?" Full of his own bluster, Hans acknowledged his share when it came to the stage of pretense. But he was a little more than floored when he unwrapped the bloodsoaked initial bandage, just to find that the hand beneath was utterly devoid of puncture wound of any sort and unscathed of injury totally.

"That chubby young Prince Desmond did a superior acting job playing the frightened fool, if I do say so myself. He'll have fine career on the stage ahead of him, if he so chooses. I approve of him excessively already." Flexing his hand that was supposed to be inoperable, Prince Didrik smirks. The consummate actor praises his own theatrics from his misspent youth while reflecting upon Prince Desmond's co-opted supporting role as his accomplice's skills as well.

Hans recalls how his brother had dabbled in the Shakespearean stage in his youth. For Prince Didrik's good looks and lazy streak preferred the dramatic arts to any other actual, viable career their kingly father had chosen.

With a catty grin, Didrik reveals the self cracked open and pierced vial of red liquid that appeared to have the qualities of blood. It had been secreted in his cravat many a time before as well to add to this slippery fellow's eminent acting prowess.

"A little drop of 'blood' here and there goes a long way in the art of persuasion. And anesthesia as well." Didrik sips the remainder of the thin flask of his favorite full bodied red Bordeaux wine he always kept on him. The man of the world did not wish for his hidden supply of high alcoholic content beverage to go to waste as he knocks back the last swallow from the vial after Hans refuses the fine royal vintage's thick draft.

"Whew! I needed that! You were saying, Lillebror?" Didrik uses his defunct hand's quickly rinsed 'bloody' fingers to first do some tricks with the nearby scalpel that plays music notes on the metal pan Hans had previously sterilized and prepared. The irreverent man smoothes the ends of his waxed, dark black handlebar moustache while whipping out his favorite deck of playing cards, which he shuffles easily through with his 'injured' hand.

"But…heh he heh…Why the farce, Didrik?" Hans chuckles in relief as much as confusion at his elder brother's inscrutable motive to falsify an injury to apparently no end but tomfoolery.

"Was it not an ingenious method to return your muse to you for a more romantic remainder of this voyage to South America, Hans? Particularly advantageous to be minus the annoying chaperones in the obese style left behind on that damnable 'pleasure' cruise." Holding his head at the inference of the word 'pleasure' at Princess Valentina's inane whim, the dapper man reveals his clever ruse.

With the best of brotherly intentions, Didrik schemed to liberate the lovelorn, lonely, and longing for her love Norwegian Queen from her Paraiso captor and Arendelle Ministry sentinels on board the parallel ship and return her to her Danish Knight in shining armor here.

At first, Hans' eyes light up at the fantastic idea as his young heart jumps at the thought of having his ladylove back aboard his vessel. Once again they would be able to enjoy one another's company in tender companionable mornings and moonlight stroll stolen kisses.

Just the thought made Hans smile a bit giddy.

But then reality's harsh daylight sets in.

"Perhaps temporarily that will work. But my conscientious, selfless Queen will feel duty-bound by friendship to Princess Valentina to return with her to travel upon her wedding cruise ship."

"Hahaha! If I know women, and believe me, dear boy, I do - Oh yes indeed, I do -I have come to recognize their eccentricities and hidden desires inherently." Didrik confesses his penchant for female familiarity.

"Eccentricities and hidden desires?" Hans quirks an eyebrow as his elder brother's fully functional fingers flick the shades of the sickbay window open a little to let some sunshine in.

"Yes, my pure of heart little brother. It is very simple. The bride and her maid of honor are both present here on your ship. So, all you must do, is keep the bossy former happy with her sulky lover to maintain the latter to be yours and yours alone on your ship until we dock again south of the equator. The lure and object of both is right here under your celestial nose, Lillebror. If you play your cards right, she can be yours." The sneaky Danish card sharp plucks the Queen of hearts and simultaneously the same suit Knave to be paired with. Then Didrik produces the Queen of diamonds from his faithful deck without looking and flutters her before Hans' beginning to be enlightened eyes as he places her in the Kommander's grasp.

The pair of brothers glances out the sickbay lookout to where Elsa stood magnificent in her gleaming white sparkling gown that portrayed every element coursing through her veins, her long flowing hair loose on the sea breeze.

Norway's Ice Queen appeared so very lovely and tranquil basking on the other side of the deck in the morning sun at her little snow woman Eliana's instruction.

With pride Prince Hans watches the tall blonde woman in question smile to see Olaf and Eliana reunite and be included in one of her first gift of the snow magic Olaf's famous warm hugs.

"So, Lillebror? Do you want some advice on women from an old married man? Right now, I know my Antoinetta is brooding for me over there already, so our reconcilement after this yearning absence will doubtlessly be sizzling spicy for the rest of our vacation and trip home, just as I like it." The elder Danish Prince sits down in Hans' vacant chair and puts his spat shoed feet up luxuriantly on the sick bay table.

"How much burning with desire for that Ice Queen of yours can you withstand if you don't soon assert yourself?" The sixth Prince of the Southern Isles prompts his younger brother to make a long awaited consummated move on his fiancée.

"The sun's fire is nothing to my passion for that most exquisite of God's creations." The redhead quietly proclaims while his viridescent eyes glow in complement to the declaration. Hans was secretly a little jealous of how the tiny silhouette of the Fire Spirit named 'Bruni' had the privilege to run up and down Elsa's sleek body, from her wind-tossed torso down her long, luscious legs, in search for snowflake reward.

"Then, now I have provided you with the opportunity to prove yourself a proud Dane worthy of conquering your powerful Scandinavian bride-to-be and make her your own! I would be labeled blind had I not noted how your lustrous Elsa of Arendelle has been pining away for your desirable company, Lillebror. She is hanging on your every word, Hans. Why not simply declare your marriage date quickly and end her feminine torment at the same time?" Like a wise old fox himself, Prince Didrik comfortably leans back in the physician's tall chair to notice how Hans was gazing hungrily at his beautiful Elsa.

"I have vowed to uncomplainingly wait for her to set the date, Didrik. 'Love is to be patient and kind', remember? For all the crimes I have committed against the Queen of Arendelle and her family, I do not wish to add one more by rushing my crystalline angel in any way. Not after all the trials she's been through, until she feels she is ready to give herself completely to me in holy matrimony." Hans confesses his frustration, every emotion inside aching to press Elsa further. But the integrity of his reformed heart knew he did not deserve her, and was still holding him back from being too insistent.

"Then why don't you display your desire more effectively in the interim to convince the woman? Rarely have I seen such single-minded piety in a male and such long-suffering devotion in one of the female sex combined! Obviously, she wishes only to please the man she has pledged herself to. So the question is, how certain are you of Queen Elsa of Arendelle's fidelity of love as being more than perfunctory nation binding?" Didrik poses the inquiry, a better analyst in matters of love and the female heart than he was even an actor.

"I am indisputably certain, Storbror! It is not like that at all for us! My Elsa and I have unequivocally proven that genuine affection to one another on so many occasions. So much so that I have never been as certain of something in my heart and soul than my darling Elsa's abiding love." Goaded as intended, Hans declares assuredly with a hand over his heart that was so full of the warmth of love for this woman, he felt it may implode should he not be able to reveal all of its mysteries to her soon.

"Precisely, Lillebror! So find the courage to demand the actual time and day, for Heaven's sake, man! Before the fickle creature who is woman has time to change her mind and get away! If I was yet twentysomething, and my fiancée and I had been through as much as you and she have already, by all my talkative cousin's reports…And if such a breathtaking beauty as Elsa Bernadotte was my intended...And we were out here on this secluded journey, without the impediment of a chaperone, I can assuredly tell you that by now I would have guaranteed her of my adoration by every means possible, up to and including inviting her to my be—" On the verge of saying something crude concerning the lady, Didrik was instead miserably surprised when someone unsuspectingly slams open the door.

That unwittingly smashes the tall man's fraudulantly bandaged hand that just happened to be leaning against the door jam.

"ARGH!"

"Just Hans! Just Hans! Elsa is wondering if your brother is feeling better to come and have a sweet snack with us in the mess hall! She said she'll make some homemade ice cream! Don't you love the sound of 'mess hall' plus 'ice cream'?!" Olaf comes barging into the sickbay as excited as a puppy.

"Stupid Snowman! Damn it all!"

"Oh, hoo! Swearing on a Sunday! And by both definitions in the dictionary and encyclopedias I have extensively studied of late, I am neither 'stupid: have some speech impediment' or 'stupid: lacking of mental capacity'. But I do confess happily to being a 'Snowman!'Ta-da!" Exhibiting his recent bookish bent, Olaf sings, flapping his branches in show-offy style. "Was that your bad hand? I'm really sorry, Hans' big-brother-with-the-curly-moustache! I know how I can make it up for you! Do you like extra whipped cream on your ice cream, too? I'll give you half of mine to make up for squishing your hand in the door! It's the busted one anyway, so it can't hurt that much more than being blasted by a shotgun! Boy! You are really brave to have endured surgery and already be up and around on your feet!" The clumsy snowman blinks up at the tall, dark and dangerous eyed man who was glowering in pain down upon Hans' strange little snow friend.

"I know a secret about what flavor ice cream Hans loves! But wild reindeer couldn't drag it out of me to say Hans loves pumpkin! Oopsy! I spilled the cream!" Olaf whispers conspiringly behind his branchy hand into Didrik's ear.

"I prefer crushed snow-man, but – argh – of course, we will be honored to attend the Queen of Arendelle's luscious luncheon. Right after my doctoring Lillebror redresses my bandages for the new wound I doubtlessly deserved in some kind of, some kind of..." In authentic pain now, Prince Didrik was at a loss for the proper term. He purses his lips at his actual bloodied wound, followed by a smarmy sneer down at the smirking cold perpetrator of his pain.

"Poetic justice?" As he now truly applies medicinal ointments to his older brother's broken skinned knuckles, Hans could not restrain his own simper with the supplied fitting phrase. Hans was on the verge of berating his discourteous brother for insinuating something inappropriate about his, thus far purely platonic relationship with his Queen, but he needn't add insult to injury.

"Ha ha. You have a fine deadpan sense of humor, Lillebror, belied by those innocent wide-eyed looks. 'Tis a shame we were not better friends growing up, Hans. I think we would have hit it off splendidly and been infamous rascals, notorious throughout the Southern Isles." Didrik honestly relinquishes some of his past misgivings and resentment as he sees his youngest brother in another light now.

And for once one brother at last was in need of such brotherly advice on the heady subject of women Didrik considered himself expert on.

"Perhaps we can make up for lost time now, Storbror. I believe we could spend the rest of this voyage enlightening and encouraging one another, as the good Lord originally intended for brothers to do." Hans says with a sympathetic smile of compassion as he finishes bandaging Didrik's genuinely injured palm.

"Thank you for bringing my angel to me. You are a true brother after all, Didrik." Hans secretly always looked up to how his older brother Didrik had such debonair charm and natural eloquence that sent whatever lady he encountered reeling.

"Well, as long as we end up in the 'brotherly love continues' category rather than 'brothers born for adversity'." Didrik impresses Hans with his unexpected well-versed memory of Biblical proportions concerning brethren. The older ne'er-do-well had remembered the verses from his earliest years spent studying with his devout Scottish mother before she was lost to her brood of a dozen plus one last, fateful son.

"'Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.'" Hans lifts his deep tenor voice in the sanctified hymn he recalled from choir days of old at the convent orphanage where he was sentenced to as a youth.

Hans had spent many an hour wondering what it would be like to be a full-fledged Westergaard brother, back home in the Castle in Egeskov, when Didrik was one of his main ridiculers. The outcast boy had longed to be able to ask his big brothers the questions little brothers growing up held, concerning so many subjects, including that of how to properly woo a woman.

And now he had the chance at last, due to the forbearance of that faithful young woman Hans had fallen madly in love with, and she returned that affection, fully granting his repentant soul forgiveness.

So that forsaken young boy could now, as well, share the forgiveness Jesus Christ gave to all, to wash away every sin of kidnappers, attempted murderers, and cruel brothers as well, on a destined day two thousand years ago.

Now, Hans could, as the Lord instructed, turn the other cheek and strive for the true friendship of those who once reviled him, due to Elsa's pardoning example and harmonious love.


Speaking of that phenomenal young lady who never imagined herself a peacemaker…

Elsa found herself in the awkward situation of trying to keep her oversensitive friend, growing touchier by the day, Princess Valentina appeased, while not alienating Prince Alonso too badly in the process.

Proposing a sweet snack break to ease the intense combat between the back to arguing affianced pair, Elsa had asked Olaf to fetch her Hans to help bring some sanity to the warring lovers the 5th Spirit of Harmony was having no luck in reconciling.

In the kitchen galley lower decks of the Gler, the current naval staff bowed reverently to hop to Queen Elsa's every bidding in her sudden hankering for hand-made cookery.

Elsa felt rather a homey attachment to the small ship kitchen, knowing her guy was the commander of the vessel this time rather than the cook/ rigging sailor/ cabin boy/ pirate slave from those days shared in the cramped galley deck.

At the spicy memories that started off this romance, the blond Scandinavian monarch takes a deep breath as she super chills the homemade ice cream before her with a simple blow from her icy lips.

"How to make the perfect royal ice cream wedding cake when Prince Alonso prefers chocolate flavoring while Valentina insists that strawberry is queen? The brown and pink colors do not blend well at all when they begin to melt." The two-toned ice creams that Elsa had set beautifully in side-by-side hearts and swirled flowers, as per Valentina's desire, were starting to melt into an icksome colored puddle in her two guests' neglected bowls.

"Oh Hans, you must help me! I can't do this by myself!" At the end of her rope, Elsa continues to watch Alonso and Valentina quarrel in the dining area as she whispers to herself forlornly.

Her lips were folded in a tight line as the Ice Queen had tried for the third time to reconstruct each of their ice melting delicacies, delicately spiraled with frozen whipped icing in the shape of the double heart motif of her friend's Valentine day ice cream wedding cake.

It was to be premiered in two weeks in Paraiso as Valentina had nonstop chattered. The pushy princess had infinitely described in every detail the design pattern she had in mind for Elsa to help create a splendid cake this past week on board her wedding cruise ship.

"Guess who, Mademoiselle cake mistress?" Breathing into her ear with a pair of playful hands over her eyes, the dashing Captain of the Gler had just seconds earlier, with a silent finger to his lips, signaled to his smiling crew to not alert the occupied ice cream dessert decorator.

"No one could mimic your touch, min Raevstorre." Elsa whispers in her man's large, keen ear. "But when my eyes are covered, I'm not always perfectly sure of what exact target I may be freezing." She gently comments, unaware that the respectful galley crew had mostly cleared out from the dessert area to serve out the other entrées for her impromptu brunch.

"Now that thought could give a man nightmare chills, Lillebror. Or should I say 'Raevstorre' (Fox)? Perhaps I should be the one receiving lessons on women from you, little brother. Argh! Damn blasted hand! Pardon my rough language, your Majesty. That was not suitable for a delicate flower to hear. Ergh." Prince Didrik bows his snarky head to the Arendelle Queen. He cradles his injured left palm that had attempted to swipe a maraschino cherry from atop one of the dessert plates on the counter at lovely young 'Chef Bernadotte's' artistically frozen ice cream display.

"No offense taken, your Highness. Is your hand injury still so very painful? Shall I employ some ice upon your brother's bandage, Hans?" The Ice Queen offers her services to the pair of tall man slender men invading her busy kitchen area.

"That won't be necessary. I only ask permission to sample your delectable handmade whipped cream. A little, clumsy, carrot nosed, big mouth birdie told us it was delicious." The older prince, after receiving Elsa's nod, takes a spoon and dips it into the special, overflowing-with-whipped-cream bowlful of bronze orange ice cream.

The scoops had been lovingly crafted and snow-covered sugar carved into three orangey and adorable pumpkin shapes.

"Let me guess. Pumpkin pie flavor, of course, Lillebror! Your absolute favorite dessert we horrible brothers always connived to thwart you from partaking growing up. I deeply apologize for depriving you of it back then, Hans. But it makes this treat all the sweeter now, eh?" Didrik laughs at the silly romantic antics of a sticky couple so madly in love with one another that it was almost at the point of compulsive obsessive disorder to witness.

Sardonically smirking, Didrik gives Hans a coy look that said 'See, I was right. You've got this Queen hanging on your every whim. She only longs to please you.'

"How did you know that pumpkin pie was my favorite sweet treat?" Clearing his 'change the subject' throat, Hans asks Elsa with a pleased grin. Then he takes a luscious bite of the creamy pumpkin pie flavored ice cream fare that Elsa proudly presented to him, too.

"I know everything about you, min älskare. I was in your attic." Elsa mumbles the last five words with a raised brow, which send the naval man's big ears to turn to bright shade of red.

With a nervous giggle, Elsa pops a frozen cherry into her lover's parted, speechless lips.

"Oh, she is good, Hans." Didrik compliments Elsa for leaving her generally loquacious young man without any saucy repartee.

"But what are we to do about them, Hans? It would be a shame to have come all this way to have no wedding to attend at all. Valentina and Alonso had become such good friends to me, I think my heart would break for them both if they let their love slip away." Hopeless romantic Elsa whispers to her man over their ice cream treat.

She motions her head towards where the Prince of Cordoba was petulantly seated at one end of the mess hall table and the Princess of Paraiso was primly perched all the way on the other, as far away from one another as they could get.

With eyes diverted and miffed noses turned up at one another, the explosive two were obviously back to being on non-speaking terms again.

Hans thoughtfully considers the predicament his compassionate girl laid out for him to solve for several seconds. Then the decisive leader takes hold of his own pleasant lover's ice cream surprise with a smile in appreciation to its maker, and escorts his satisfied fiancée to the Captain's table with his brother curiously following.

"We will do what all problems that worry us require to be properly solved." Man of action Kommander Hans answers decidedly, as he enjoys every last spoonful of the sweet pumpkin ice cream his love had devotedly created just for him.

"We pray to God about it for His Heavenly guidance." The young officer had, since his own penitent redemption, had spent many an hour in quiet soulful reflection to clear his head and place his problems before the only One who could move hearts of stone, fire or ice to 'love thy neighbor' and 'forgive trespasses seventy-times-seventy'.

"It is Sunday, after all, and you have come just in time to be welcomed to attend Chapel devotion with myself and my crew. Alonso and Valentina will be specially included for a particular sermon, most of all." Vise Admiral Hans Westergaard reassuringly reaches across the table to 'separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream' of Elsa of Arendelle's now contented, relieved smile which showed how much she firmly believed in him.

"'Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.'"

"Shall we lead them in, my Queen?" Hans rises from his seat and extends to Elsa his hand in a most gentlemanly manner. Along with his calming effect on her soul, Elsa begins hearing holy music play from the ship's chapel area near the officer's wardroom on the starboard side.

Just when she needed blessed assurance, as her Prince Hans offered her his arm, the Arendelle Queen was thankful to have her beloved who had the wisdom and goodness – even towards his former rival – to address her concern for her friends at her side.

"Yes, please, Vise Admiral." Having her confident Kommander Westergaard near gave his lily white Queen Elsa peace of mind that the underlying path of a destined true love would surely lead to the golden bonds of marriage and happiness to come.

"'Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.""

As strains of a lovely hymn rings in the sailors' strong baritones and tenors singing of God's immortal, invisible wisdom drawing them near to the sea vessel's designated place of worship, Elsa shared her fiancé's faith that all would be well.

"'Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
But of all Thy rich graces this grace, Lord, impart
Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our heart.'"

While she absorbed the lyrics of the hymn on a Sunday morn upon Kommander Westergaard's well-run ship, the Winter Queen felt all stains of anger would be washed clean in the precious redeeming blood, forgiveness, and unselfish Love of Jesus Christ.

"'All laud we would render; O help us to see
'Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, Almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.'"

Closing her luminescent eyes to the heartfelt chorus of dozens of seamen, Elsa prayed for the Lord's Harmony to touch the hearts of her spicy friends by the time they reached their summer-bound destination.

"'Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render: O help us to see
'Tis only the splendour of light hideth in Thee.'"


Back east on the continent, Arendelle Castle, Norway

As Sunday morning's light trickles into the palace court, Destin Mattias glances up from where he was nervously perched on the royal Arendelle throne, reading the daily briefings of guardsmen's reports.

Sure, the polished, experienced-in-years soldier was well accustomed to doling out orders to his troupe of soldiers. But the down-to-earth man sure wasn't used to sitting on any regal throne of power while doing it!

"'How the hell – ergm, heck - did this happen?! Oops, sorry, Lord for forgetting my manners on a Sunday. You'd think I was still in the Forest.'"

"You do realize you said that aloud, right, lover?"

It just so happened that Mattias' bride of six months, Halima, after checking the maids had given a thorough polish to the monarchs' crowns, was also present in the Throne Room at that moment the dark-skinned General was caught talking to himself.

Again.

The kindly baker had offered Queen Elsa, before she left on her journey, to help out in the running of the castle for her mother, Queen Iduna, since usual castle managers Gerda and Johanne were both absent, too.

Elsa thought Halima's culinary skills as well as her personable nature would certainly be a plus in not only aiding the Queen with both her daughters gone, but also calming down the King of Arendelle's frayed nerves. Especially with Halima's daily delivery of fresh-baked gingerbread cookies that King Agnarr still enjoyed with his morning coffee.

However, the past few days of full of trays of cookies were still sitting untouched on the sidebar platter. For the sweet-toothed Crown Prince who had grown up into the still sweet-toothed King of Arendelle had already left the palace for parts unknown.

Thus, in the absence of Arendelle's normal regent, Minister Roservalen, King Agnarr had appointed his highest ranking and most trusted General to rule Arendelle in his stead.

"Old habits die hard, Hallie, my beauty…Speaking of which…Why do you think they had this sudden hankering to visit the Forest while the two little queens are away?" Putting aside some signed military orders and humdrum office papers, Mattias wonders aloud to his wife after she had directed some of the maids to start some spring cleaning in the entire royal family's absence.

"Maybe King Agnarr and Queen Iduna just needed some serious 'us time' this anniversary after the poor dears' ordeal. I know I would jump at the chance at a little getaway with you, if the young'uns we never had had flown the coop for the weekend." Halima laughs it off in her convivial way.

"If we had them young-uns…" More nostalgic, the older woman who dreamed since her youth of a normal life of family and children spent with her true love Mattias, never even considered another replacement to fill the void of her longsuffering love for her over three decades long missing man.

"Now, my Crown Prince wasn't too clear on the specifics, but it sounded like he and the Queen would be gone awhile. So that leaves you and me with plenty of time here, lording over all with a whole fairytale castle to ourselves to at least imagine those old plans might hatch. I've heard of some crazier dreams coming to pass. Like an old soldier finding his way back home to his one true love, who time had literally stopped for in terms of pure beauty." Sensing his gal was feeling a bit sad about wasted time and opportunities for a full and rich existence, Destin Mattias hops down from the throne with a spring in his step.

Destin sweeps a charmed Halima up in his embrace, with a smile for her alone that made up for the lost years of hidden, unshed tears now biting behind her voluminous eyes.

Trying to cheer her, playfully he places Iduna's newly polished tiara on his wife's surprised head, with Agnarr's regal crown popped atop his own from the velvet tabletop she had carefully placed them.

"Oh, no, Destin! We can't!" She guiltily glances around, but the army General had already shooed away any of the servants or onlookers with a look that told he wanted some privacy with his emotional mate.

"My Crown Prince may be a stuffy little prat at times, but he's got a good soul, Hallie. He wouldn't mind his dearest old friends having a bit of harmless fun while he's away. And I know his wildflower native queen wouldn't have it any other way." Mattias smirks at the genuine kinship he and Agnarr had forged decades ago that was still viable and strong today.

"Come here and sit on my lap on these here vacant thrones, your Majesty, while you and I forget about the past and pretend to be King and Queen for this day of our irreplaceable present." The man who had spent too many years in the company of a stuck-in-the-past old lady like Yelana, had learned from her forward thinking granddaughters, Anna and Elsa, that the only path to the future was to live everyday to the fullest with love.

"That's right, Sugar. 'This is the day the Lord has made. Let all the world rejoice.'" Quoting the psalmist, Halima smiles at the gift of second chances and a fulfilling life wherever hope shone its light in.


As for that broad-minded King and his forever young Queen…

Iduna had been part of nature for as far back as she could remember.

She had loved growing up in the Enchanted Forest, where the small girl, orphaned at an early age, was a bit of a loner when it came to other children. It wasn't that Iduna was an outcast in her Northuldra village. Nor did she consider herself 'special' or 'gifted' as the elders were often heard to murmur in whispers under their breath whenever 'the wild child' had fluttered past.

No, Iduna embraced who she was without bowing to other peoples' belief of who she wasn't or who she should be, never once falling into that pitfall of wanting to please them and their prejudices or creeds.

The little girl born of a healing spirit not only interacted, but actually communed with fire and water, earth and sky since she was barely able to walk. And somehow, despite her tender age, Iduna – which meant 'rejuvenation' - understood that she was created magnificently by a Greater Being both unseen and yet wondrous, Who designed all of Nature in the Forest home in all its majesty. From the splendor of the tiniest blade of grass growing singularly and still perfectly duplicated in a sea of billions under the life-giving sun; to the miracle of every living creature - whether on land or sea or air - experiencing birth and rebirth in environmental renewal, season by season, year after year in a complex simplicity bright Iduna yearned to be part of.

And through that deep spiritual faith, Iduna never questioned her role in her world, bringing the elementals and her people closer together with the magic of her lovely voice's song which both responded too. She was content to live out her days in the Enchanted Forest of her birth, living and loving and learning from the elements of her home. And they learned from her as well, and through her found commonality with Northuldra natives of humankind to be more playful, wild, industrious and independent.

That is, until Iduna took one long look at a singular boy from the outside world who had an unequaled thrilling quality about him which stole young the girl's breath away, and was enough for her to throw everything she knew to the wind to save him.

And in turn, that exceptional Crown Prince defied all standards to choose her in a forbidden love story that filled her heart with a unique destiny, giving birth to a new, Providential-blessed story still untold.

Iduna pulls her reminiscent thoughts back from where she's been, to instead face where she's heading now. She wondered what new adventure awaited them there as the petite woman glances over to that boy turned man who changed her life in so many ways.

Her Agnarr had that set jaw look that told Iduna he was in deep consternation.

Her husband had been that way for hours, silently brooding, as was his nature inherited from his father. Other than that over intellectualizing to the point of driving others mad, thankfully seemed the only adverse quality Agnarr had picked up from his paternal parent.

Perhaps that was owed to personal guard Lieutenant Destin Mattias and special tutor Minister Kai and his sweet wife Gerda's invaluable influence over the motherless Crown Prince's young and impressionable skull full of mush.

"Thanks to Elsa and Anna, this will be the first time we will actually be able to cross into the Forest, at last, my love." Stating the obvious, Iduna tries to make pleasant conversation with her mate as he slowed his fast moving ice sled they were traveling by for the past day to a snail's crawl.

"At last." The Ice King succinctly agrees while his wife's sweet soprano starts to harmonize with the whistling winds of her youth, calling upon the spirits she recognized so well to tell them she had come home.

But they already knew that.

"Ahh-ahh-ahhh…"

Hearing her beautiful, ethereal voice which first drew him in, Agnarr felt almost shell-shocked the nearer he came to this mystic Forest of enchantment and its glacial Ahtohallan beyond the Dark Sea that he of late had been sensing other enigmatic forces calling and bidding him near. That, on top of Iduna's adopted mother and Northuldra Chief Yelana's mysterious riddles asking the King of Arendelle if he knew where he was meant to be, had magnetically drawn him back here.

The Ice King cryokinetically levitates the pair of them down to the icy ground of the wide open plain. Agnarr had pinpointed the exact place just at the spot where the veiled mist barrier that once stood between the isolated Enchanted Forest and the rest of the world last kept them out.

It was the same location she instinctively led them to all those years ago. He and the mysterious orphan girl who, by pluck and destiny, found her way to Arendelle, and as teens had first sneaked out of the castle in secret pursuit of finding an opening here.

Surely that would reunite Iduna with her Arendellian soldier father and family trapped inside the Forest, and the kind heart inside Prince Agnarr could not deny his friend that.

Of course, at the time Iduna was not exactly telling him the whole truth, omitting that her actual 'father' was long deceased, and the 'family' she desperately was trying to get back to was of her native Northuldran race rather than of the Arendelle army.

But Iduna and Agnarr have had enough of dangerous secrets to last the two of them a lifetime to ever go through that farce called 'lies' again.

"It's time, Agnarr." Iduna was trembling, and not from the cold. She huddles into her thick Arendelle coat, her old Northuldran shawl draped over it creating quite a dramatic contrast to the young native girl who last stepped from this mystical land of her birth thirty-eight years ago for love.

Just as the bridge between the Enchanted Forest and Arendelle was created here too, by God's all-important first precept of Love.

"Remember, you're never alone, my darling." Squeezing his hand, Iduna presses into Agnarr's chest, looking at her angst mixed with curious fascination, wide-eyed mate straight in the eye with her crystal clear ones as she lowly begins to sing.

"'O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home;'"

"Time for us to step out of the storm's shadows and into the light, my King." She whispers with an awestruck sense all about them.

Then the King and Queen of Arendelle, secure hand-in-hand, walk from the snow-clouded pasture towards the no longer veiled light that permeated the once shaded tree-cosseted glade within.

At the same stone markers which hadn't moved for the past almost four decades since they last were here, the cold ground starts to shiver with a purplish trail of fire leading them into the winter wind that swirls to autumn as the watery mists part in a dramatic fashion just for them…

WHOOSH!

And the Enchanted Forest, with mighty Ahtohallan silently roaring in the distance, welcomes the Ice King and his native Queen into whatever unknown future already lie in store for the lovers.

Maybe, now that they had finally arrived, after so many years of trying and hoping to seek the truth, there was one more voyage of destiny unfolding for the girl of nature and her prince of ice ahead…


"Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise" – hymn written by Scottish minister Walter Chalmers Smith in 1839

"'O God, Our Help in Ages Past" – hymn based on Psalm 90, written by Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley 1738


Hello, dear Frozen friends!

This chapter, titled in Jesus' Scriptural wisdom about pure beauty and trust in the Father, has been woven in with our Lord and Saviour's beautiful story of redeeming Love, patient forgiveness, and abiding hope for our two concurrent romance couples on their flowery journey down the aisle to wedded bliss!

Hans' once bad boy brother Prince Didrik once again proved that no one is irredeemable! The wily charmer, full of advice for his Lillebror, unexpectedly brought Elsa and Hans back together in his colorful, most unexpected way, so they can spend this valuable vacation on the high seas romancing rather than pine away separated!

Now that they're teamed up, can the power couple get Alonso and Valentina down the altar when they arrive in Paraiso? Stay tuned to see the romantic fireworks, not to mention the older couples back home making mysterious discoveries of their own, friends!

What new destiny awaits Iduna and Agnarr in the Enchanted Forest of old?

Stay tuned to find out! I'd love to hear your reviews of this new, exciting angle of our tale!

HarukaKou


'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these'. - Matthew 6:28-29