We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters.
"Frozen Again: 'Love Never Ends"
Act IX
Chapter 25
"Three Simple Little Words"
Kommander Hans Westergaard could not be more satisfied as he stood tall on the bridge of the HmNos Gler's foredeck, sailing the high seas as Captain of his own mighty steamship.
Not only was he in command of this modern, imposing, remarkable naval craft – as the young naval seamen always dreamed, yet knew he would never attain as the outcast, thirteenth in-line son — but Prince Hans was traveling to the other side of the world beside the woman he loved.
And from the way her exotic eyes looked approvingly at him, Hans could tell his Elsa loved and adored him every bit as much right back.
That sentiment of passion between the young and virile Prince of the Southern Isles and his beautiful – not to mention powerful – bride-to-be was only augmented by this precious interim chance to be alone before their own wedding would take place.
In full command of the HmNos Gler, clever navigator Prince Hans had made certain his steamship had easily sped on ahead of the ship it was to escort, the Santa Teresa. The Gler effortlessly outpaced the larger Santa Teresa in distancing nautical miles between them, by order of gradually increasing the refitted steamship's speed knots.
And maybe the Sprit of the Water had his fellow Spirit of Harmony's back on the ocean she once feared, too, sensing the last underlying unease in the depths of her soul as Nokk heralded her sea vessel along the maritime seaways.
However, Elsa was determined now more than ever to find some way to let the liberating waves take her far away from the awesome responsibility that Ahtohallan still held over its symbiotic Queen of the Winter to return.
All Elsa of Arendelle knew was that she yearned to enjoy these days and this chance to express her humanity as a woman - beyond being just an ethereal being - now that Hans Westergaard proved his destiny to be her man, her steady rock and other half.
Nokk understood the 5th Element's drive to be free and find oneself her own ruler better than any of the other elementals Elsa's spirit harmonized her homeland's delicate peace with. So perhaps this oceanic journey to the opposite side of the world – though the Water, Wind, Earth and Fire spirits never physically left their Enchanted Forest home – would bring Elsa one step closer to the truth of where her spirit was wondrously created to be.
With each nautical mile, the Gler would pull further away from its partnered craft, moving just a little bit faster than its more slovenly maritime counterpart of a cruise ship and increase the traveling distance between them.
After all, what was the point of standing at the command of a more sleek and swift vessel, if one did not utilize all of its splendid features? At least, that's what Hans' elder brother, Prince Didrik, on board the Gler, had slyly insinuated this to his little brother during dinner seated at the Captain's table just this evening.
This open dare between the men prompted Hans to invite Elsa out for one of their after dinner late-night strolls on the deck. The redhead had tired of putting up with their tacitern guests of honor.
Princess Valentina and Prince Alonso's endless competitive arguments which put the two not on very good speaking terms with one another all through the tense dinner. The sparring couple gave the ship a negative atmosphere that its Kommander did not relish for this pleasure cruise he had in mind for his sensitive fiancée, whom keen Hans intuitively felt was in need of cheering.
Is something amiss back home in Arendelle to upset your delicate spirit, min hviddue (my dove)? One wonders if it is the Kingdom - or perhaps, your other glacial realm hidden within that Forest you are so connected to - that has left you so unsettled…
"Oh, what a marvelous night! I feel like I've been swept off my feet after that delicious dinner and then all that dancing, Hans! You are so incredible at that exciting triple-time, Castilian medieval sequidilla dance your many nieces initiated to entertain Princess Valentina!" 'Embracing the moment' as her mother instructed and her baby sister Anna daily prescribed, Elsa subconsciously concealed any inner worries she held concerning pulsating Ahtohallan as the 5th Spirit inwardly felt another presence – both familiar and new - approach her distant, attempted-to-be forgotten Fortress of Solitude that still called out for a connected spirit, a ferryman of sorts, to guard the River of Memories.
But instead, the Ice Queen was determined to laugh on this once in a lifetime excursion with her chosen man.
"How exhilarating it is to be traveling the high seas with you, on a ship you command, my handsome Vise Admiral!" Elsa whispers her high spirits in her fiancé's ear, breaking the precious silence both had been enjoying out of range of Valentina's shrill constant chattering in an increasingly hoarse voice.
The Paraiso woman had been prattling on and on about wedding plan after wedding plan that only Eliana seemed to be listening to out of the seven passengers seated at the Captain's table.
"And so fast! The tingling sensation of the salty sea's wind rushing across my skin makes me feel so free and untamed!" Giving invisible Gale above and frothy Nokk below a smiled wink, the once constrained and controlled young woman, who found freedom in the elements all around her, lets herself go in this unrestricted environment. Elsa's billowy lavender sleeve arms outstretch, like wings that were at last ready to command the racing breeze's stimulating excitement as far away from her homeland as she ever had been before.
"Cutting through the Atlantic Ocean at top speed on the open air deck of my ship suits you, min hviddue. I can assure you the Gler has enough reserve energy in its potent, multiple steam turbines, Elsa. The surging raw power this vessel has been holding back all this trip has been itching to be put to good use and revved up to keep you satiated with ample chills – I mean thrills, my enticing Norwegian Queen." Charmer Hans gracefully sidles up behind the arms stretched out blonde and slides his arms around her slim torso, seductively breathing into her wild hair and intoxicating neck. "Much like its Captain Kommander has been withholding his… ahem… reserve steam. Just for you." Pressing Elsa intimately close to his tall, svelte body, with a sly smile, the Danish young man had been feeling his oats particularly this night. He had been masterfully maneuvering across the dance floor and now this deserted darkness with his lovely lady, in pretense to be escorting her to her state room cabin below deck for the night.
With fluttering purplish shadowed eyelids that were on the verge of being lost to his dominant force, Elsa peers over the dark choppy seas as the Gler was gaining significant distance across the ocean with its escort ship.
"Revved up, Hans? Whatever do you mean? Aren't we pulling a little too far ahead of the other ship where Councilor Kai and the others are? They're just tiny little specs on their deck that I soon won't be able to see at all." The picturesquely innocent platinum blonde murmurs between breathless moonlight kisses that her ardent lover was generously supplying on her pale shoulder.
"That is the point." The amused Kommander of the naval vessel takes command of his woman now, twirling the Ice Queen around to pirouette on her dainty, but slippery, icicle heels until she falls dizzily into the crook of his embrace.
Startled, yet too euphoric to further protest, Elsa glances over one last time to where the Gler was leaving the Santa Teresa in its seafoam dust. Then she turns back, full of hungry yearning to meet the burning green eyes of her own attentive, attractive escort.
The Dane rewards her with an inviting lick and nibble to her enticed lips that causes Elsa to nervously titter at this new and exciting, tickling sensation.
Hans, feeding off the easy-to-read desire in the platinum beauty's stunning eyes, fluidly scoops the giggling Queen of Arendelle up in his strong arms.
Flowing on the beams of the romantic moonlight, the confident Prince of the Southern Isles nuzzles his pointy nose in Elsa's soft hair as he holds her like a priceless treasure in his arms. Showering her with kisses and promises of sweet everythings all the while, Prince Hans instinctively moves like a self-satisfied panther who had caught his finest prey across the empty decks and down the hall towards the Gler's stateroom cabins.
When he strides deliberately past hers, Elsa was neither surprised nor distressed to be weightlessly carried in through the kicked open door of the Captain's cabin instead.
As the ship sways gently, the amount of breathless, needy kisses that pass between the devilishly handsome Danish Prince and his iridescently disarming Norwegian Queen in his arms were countless as the stars Hans and Elsa left behind above deck.
The light of their ecstasy didn't require the celestial illumination anymore, as the lovers find their way in the dark around the room and each other in this extremely intimate, uninhibited way for the first time.
"I love you…!" Elsa suddenly affirms, cryokinetically cooling the perspiration drops from the forehead of her heavily breathing young man.
"Jeg elsker deg, my darling min skat." The Dane murmurs in response to her declaration with a trail of kisses along Elsa's elegant, willing throat and jawline, despite his best efforts to restrain himself.
"But…we shouldn't be doing this… Elsa, please, you've left me in agony withholding our wedding date all these weeks! I don't know how much longer I can remain a perfect gentleman, never mind my honor as an officer, with our future up in the air like this. Why have you indentured me to such sweet torture, my Queen?" All at once, Prince Hans felt forces pulling his body and soul in opposing directions. Vulnerable and guilty at the same time, his conscience knew he should not be taking advantage of such a magnificent, innocent creature before they were officially wed. His conscience tries to sift through the minutiae of his moral guilt versus the passionate actions that spoke volumes to the ready and rearing, doe-eyed woman.
However, as her long elegant fingernails dig in deliciously to his strong back, a seductively smiling Elsa draws Hans in with encouraging smiles and little yearning noises until his moral principles become hopelessly lost under the Ice Queen's desirous spell.
Prince Hans was utterly at her command now as liberated 5th Spirit uses her magic to coax her betrothed's handsome face to her vehemently with her ice and elements at her fingertips.
"Oh Hans, my foxy Raevstorre. That doesn't matter! All I know is I need you now. You are the most wonderful, most gallant, most beautiful man I have ever known. No longer can I wait for you to touch me like this! After all these long, lonely months of our forced, prolonged engagement we've struggled through—when we know our love is true? How many times have I dreamt of you taking me as your own and making me a real woman—not just a lonely ethereal creature created of glassy ice, at last?" Coquettish, unusually impatient Elsa huskily whispers in their deliciously transcending mixture of cold passionately hot breaths shared in the midst of the spacious cabin, unlit by any luminescence save the bright moonlight somewhere above their heads bent into one another.
"Not half as long as I have yearned hear you say those three simple little words, min kæreste. Never have I awaited another moment with such eager anticipation than this I hear in your voice's hungered welcome to bestir my once forsaken heart." The Prince of the Southern Isles throatily confesses his own masculine longing as he, with perfect grace and flawless rhythm, lays Elsa's lissome frame down to his bed.
"Are you as sure of this, my dove?" Hans whispers the final consent, stroking Elsa's alabaster cheek before taking her pale chin firmly between his fingers as his pulsating lean body hovers over her.
"I trust no one else to ever make me feel as warm and safe all over as I know you can, my gorgeous Prince. Only you can penetrate the ice barrier erected in me with the intensity of your love." The once inhibited, withdrawn, untouchable woman, who wielded potent, powerful magic running through her veins, right down to her enchanted fingertips, completely comes out of her cool shell.
Which begins to literally, as well as figuratively, melt away.
"I love you, Hans Westergaard. Make me yours..." Unguarded at last and ready to let it all go, harmonious in herself Elsa invites Hans in with her most earnest, beseeching voice, accompanied by a soft peck of her luscious lips craving for him to the side of his mouth.
As his ship sways softly around the pair enraptured in one another, his hands, his lips, his entire body responds to her, desperately wanting to please.
Hans Westergaard tenderly shows Elsa of Arendelle all the gentle warmth and deep passion he had kept alight and saved himself for all these years, just for his dream of her alone.
The suave and urbane young Vise Admiral tenderly beguiles his trembling, innocent lady into this new realm of being physical lovers with a soft love song on his lips to both becalm and entice her.
"Do I want you because you're wonderful? Are you wonderful because I want you?" Hans' soaring tenor unassumingly asks as he leaves a trail of blazing hot kisses and teasing nibbles across a sighing Elsa's cool jawline and nape of neck as he sensuously makes his way down to her heaving chest.
Her aesthetically enticing glistening blue ice gown slowly melts away, layer by tantalizing layer under his fervid touch. That gives Prince Hans, in the pale moonlight streaming through his cabin window, his first ravenous look and unfettered amorous access to exert himself over to explore his flawlessly stunning Queen Elsa of Arendelle's most secret treasures.
"Are you the sweet invention of a lover's dream? Or are you really as wonderful as you seem…?"
Delectable hours of delight later…
As if in a delirious fantasy, with each splendid moment tingling with pure gratification, Prince Hans had finally relinquished his incredible drive to join his thoroughly exhausted, yet smiling serenely Elsa, curled up like a satisfied kitten into him, in a contented rest in the wee hours of the morning.
Without opening his viridiscent eyes, his lady's sweet scent in his nostrils, the succulent taste of her kisses still in his pleased mouth, Prince Hans languidly awakens from his lazy slumber with the dawn.
As the sunlight streams through his Captain's cabin window and onto his languorous simper, Prince Hans reaches his sinewy, flexing muscle arms around where his sultry blonde muse had been languidly laying with her sylphlike slender body over his equally unclothed form.
The Danish young man was unable to contemplate much other than how very satiated his exquisitely alluring compliant Arendelle Queen appeared, lying on his bare chest with her attractive, perfectly formed, vulnerable pale one rising and falling with softly slumbering breaths.
How I adore you, my own true love…
Hans gazes down in awe upon Elsa's silky soft perfection his fingers were tacitly admiring, made even more glistening and flawless by the fresh sunlight. Then the ambitious, virile young man of twenty-eight years of age turns over to hover over his appetizing Queen with a taste for more as she begins to stir.
But that's when the hackles on the back of this just awakening redhead's aroused neck stand up with sudden, jarring pre-recognition.
More like a cold premonition of doom.
"VISE ADMIRAL!" A bitter cold rush of wind signals a violent ice storm rumbling into his previously peacefully blissful cabin.
"I entrusted my precious child to your care, and you promised nothing would happen to besmirch her chastity! You LIAR! YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO MY NAVY!" The utterly disquieting resonance which assigns to an agitated Hans' ears was so filled with perturbation, resentment and wrath that the normally self-possessed Danish Prince was literally shivering.
Maybe that was also due to the overwhelming surge of an accumulation of frost Hans and his entire Captain's cabin from stem to stern in the subzero castigation of his future father-in-law's raw anger was ensconced within.
"WHAT DEBAUCHMENT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY DAUGHTER, YOU BLACKGUARD PROFLIGATE?! How dare you sully her purity prior to your Royal wedding, that I now GUARANTEEwill never take place, you Devil Boy Dane!" Appearing out of nowhere and everywhere at once, the Ice King furiously pelts the caught offguard younger man with a relentless sheath of punishing cold ice spikes.
"ELSA! Dress yourself immediately and come away from that wicked man's clutches! I should have known better than to have stood by and allowed you to become involved with such a treacherous villain!" King Agnarr viciously rebukes his chattering teeth junior officer for defiling his previously pure Snow Princess.
"But, Papa! You already agreed I could marry Hans, didn't you?!" Draped in sheets, Elsa jumps from Hans' bed, weeping uncontrollably as her father cryokinetically wraps a supercooled cloak rime around his similarly ice gifted elder daughter's aforementioned vulnerable naked form found in this despicable Dane's cabin on the ship he foolishly entrusted the miscreant with.
King Agnarr transforms into his fearsome, full crystallized ice form, with surging frosted light eyes aglow glaring down at the Dane, who was unable to move from where he had been pinned to the bed with ice.
"That was before he violated all decency! No more will this vile princeling ever deceive our family! He has extinguished henceforth any chance of trust or further forgiveness and forbearance from anyone in my kingdom forevermore, Elsa! I'm taking you home far away from this unworthy wretch and designing trickster! I hereby banish him from our land and summarily sentence him to be under the Snow Queen's eternal domination in the South Pole with that wicked Djvælen monster encrusted beneath the ice—where both belong! Prince Hans will never see you, my daughter, nor the light of day again!" The booming roar of the Ice King's venom echoes in Hans' ears as he watches his beloved delight, his enchanting Queen Elsa of Arendelle, be beckoned away.
Soon complying in distraught tears, she accedes to her angered parent's demanding order, her spirit dampened and ashamed.
Then the Norwegian King leads Elsa safely in her protective Papa's welcoming embrace as the elemental sea begins to grow wild to its angered earthen core depths, while the stormy winds spark with livid fire in the sky.
With frosty white, punishing hands, the Ice King who heralded the other four elementals of water, earth, wind and fire, shuns Hans Westergaard from his dearest aspiration of sharing a lifetime with the woman he loved. The Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret pulls his little snowflake girl Elsa away behind his bitter ice tempest until her sparkling light disappears from Hans' view entirely…
With the fierce oceanic winds and igneous fiery elements concurring with this sailor's damned fate with their agreement at his back, the blue white Ice King of Arendelle buries in frigid wrath his would be son-in-law. This would mean banishment for the guilty young officer forever from being a citizen of the King's country, destroying any hope of Hans of ever returning to settle in Arendelle as his home.
In one terrible moment, Prince Hans' dreamed of life was ripped asunder. His own true love was taken from him, as he is decommissioned in disgrace as a Sjoforsvaret officer, never to be saluted as Vise Admiral nor sail his own mighty ship again.
The Danish Prince knew he deserved the relentless piles upon deadly piles of frigid snow and ice that cover up his entire blameworthy, incriminating bed as his heart sinks into forlorn despair at all he had lost for just a fleeting sinful pleasure.
And the heart of Hans Westergaard was buried alive in an avalanche of snow, frozen solid in shame and sorrow to realize his temptation's indulgence ensured he would see his breathtaking Elsa of Arendelle no more.
And his once promising story of Grace and Redemption and true Love ends tragically, as hypothermia sets in…
'Ungh!"
Pant. Pant. Pant.
In a cold sweat, literally gasping for air as he awakens again from a terrifying nightmare, Prince Hans opens his eyes in his solitary bed.
Trying to regain his scattered senses, the disturbed Danish man sits straight up in bed to scan around his empty Captain's cabin of the HmNos Gler in this early morning light.
No condemnatory snow or ice, nor any other judgmental elements to be felt, Hans was also uncommonly grateful to find his breathtakingly beautiful, still pure and unsullied virgin Queen Elsa was not present there.
The sun was just peeking through his shipboard window as his thunderously pounding heart in his ears calms down slowly from the at first enthralling, than absolutely unsavory nighttime hallucination.
Hans gives a sigh of relief to realize it was all merely a nightmare. Though all his physical senses felt this dream intensely more this time than ever he had a nightmare before, the apparently imaginative Prince of the Southern Isles was relieved to see it not true.
Importantly to him, the trust, position and honor benevolently placed in the penitent man by his Admiral leader – Elsa's father the King – was not in reality shattered by temptation's momentary weakness.
Dear God, forgive me for entertaining such wicked, depraved thoughts. Help me keep all patient rectitude and righteousness, to maintain stalwart resolution in my soul, especially concerning my pristine angel, until our wedding vows are sanctified under the sacrament of marriage You beautifully created for man and woman. The wiser conscience you have graciously instilled within me has pricked my mind, heart and soul to strive to remain that principled hero my pure of heart Elsa deserves, until the propitious day we are properly joined in Your holy bonds of matrimony, Lord.
Quietly Hans proficiently prays and begs pardon to the God and Saviour who munificently gave the repentant man a blessed second chance at happiness in life.
"A wiser conscience – and my proclivity to avoid the Admiral's sharp hoarfrost icicles…" Smirking wryly as he whispered that stab at calming self-humor at himself aloud, Hans Westergaard was too smart a young man to let that serendipitous opportunity at the cusp of a lifetime of warmth and goodness slip between his fingers for mere mortal needs of immediate gratification.
"Are you talking to yourself in the mirror, JustHans? I like to do that, too! I always think that maybe one of these times the snowman in the glass will answer back differently! Wouldn't that be fun?! As well as instructional." The talkative, nowadays contemplative frozen sidekick had waddled through the door of the Captain's cabin after a single knock – which Hans apparently did not hear during his ardent morning prayer and guilt ridden confession – as the ashamed young man washed his perspiring hair and performed his morning ablutions before the mirror with the washbasin and towel.
"Is someone there?!" Uptight, deep in thought Hans, with soap and water in his eyes, makes a grab for his always close by blade and expertly wields it at whomever had unduly entered his room uninvited.
"Okay. Let's start again. Good morning, JustHans! According to your seamen in the wheelhouse I've already visited this early morning to confirm it, the Navy weather report says it's going to be a beauty! Well, that's what Princess Valentina said, though Prince Alonso contradicted her and predicted rain. So either way, I brought out parasols for me and Elsa!" Olaf sings happily, nonplussed by the redhead's edgy response to his appearance.
"Hmm? Olaf? What did you say will be 'instructional'? Forgive me for not listening closely. I was just contemplating another erroneous transgression I might have eventuated." Distracted, Hans holds his shaving razor away from Olaf and back up to his smooth chin as he glances down to the small snow creature who had let himself into his Danish friend's cabin bedroom.
"Ooh, big words! You know I indubitably LOVE to learn new words every day! Isn't 'indubitably' a beautiful world? I've already gotten past the letter 'E', so I know 'erroneous' means 'bad' - which you aren't anymore, so I don't get that. But what's your 'transgression', JustHans? Have I 'eventuated' any lately?" Always receptive Olaf naively blinks up at his downhearted friend in utter curiosity at the intellectual descriptives he could always count on Hans for supplying, even early in the AM.
"As for 'transgressions'…sadly my complex life is a bitter example of those, Olaf. It is a sin against God's moral code teachings that the Devil continually tempts mankind to pursue, though the sinner knows better with a sinless Jesus Christ as our guide. The Lord only wants us to experience the good in life, not indulge in the sin. We must strive to resist immoral transgressions at all times, Olaf, lest they lead to the disastrous consequences that they surely will culminate into. Believe me, I know firsthand the pitfalls." Hans explains, more talking to his own heart than to the snowman's pure one.
"Oh! Pish-posh! We beat that old Devil Troll guy already! So you have no worries! Can you teach me to shave, too, JustHans? I've been noticing Eliana staring at my developing manly 5 o'clock frost shadow and I think I want some dapper sideburns to give her my best masculine profile while we attend all the romantic parties planned in Paraiso. Princess Valentina asked Elsa to turn her palace ballroom there into an icy summer wonderland! Can you imagine? It's Summer in Brazil already! SUMMER! I think some sideburns like yours will make me more debonair a dancing partner in my bow tie, don't you?" Olaf didn't realize how absurdly comical he appeared as the permafrost creature reaches up to rearrange his own face with a fistful of snow grabbed from his sloshier rear end after he had studied Hans' exquisite facial features closely.
"With some slick new sideburns, I'll be as handsome as I have yearned! Gliding my gal to and fro, as handsome as a waltzing gigolo, in South American Summer!" As he boisterously sings in rhyme of his favorite season, Olaf swiftly fashions a thin layer of the snow to be his svelte sideburns. He affixes to each of his snowy temples the elongated pair of 'furry', pointed rectangular shapes.
"How do I look now?" Optimistic Olaf shines his brightest gleaming smile up to Hans as the little snowman had mimicked the dashing young sailor's trademark facial hair, showing it off.
"Amazing." Inwardly distressed at his recent nightmare that left him quite rattled, Hans still had the wherewithal to humor Elsa's first creation. As the redhead pulls on his freshly pressed Navy blue jacket, it made him feel more proper, on the outside at least.
"Hmmm…" Olaf hops up on the vacated seat at Hans' washbasin and table and stares critically at his own face. Squinting one eye, the snowman leans in as Hans continues to button up his collar in the shared mirror behind Olaf.
"Maybe sideburns look better in that nifty shade in red of yours. I wish I had red hair, too." The snowman bemoans his head's lack of top color, never mind his body devoid of any facial hair whatsoever to start out with in the first place.
"I prefer blondes myself, midshipman." Just then, Hans' green eyes light up and his face deeply reddens as he spies his fiancée with the platinum locks – the real, actual, non-fantasy woman he had, in dreams, been forbidden from ever seeing again – strolling across the Gler's top deck.
Top deck, Elsa and Valentina were up there together arm in arm, sunning themselves languidly across the deck on this already hot, humid sunny February morn south of the equator.
The ship had transferred from the cold Canaries current of the North Atlantic they had been sailing, to now move into the warmer North Equatorial current of the tropical South Atlantic where their target destination of Paraiso would be reached in the next day or so.
Like every sweet flower, the warmth seems to stimulate her…My Elsa looks especially blooming this fine morning…
"On your best behavior, Westergaard, unless you wish to relive that frightful nightmare in real-time." With this warning to self under his breath, Hans comes above deck with Olaf at his heels. Any trace of the unfortunate male propensity to want to rush right out and enjoy the delightful view at closer range was eradicated by that sobering thought as the Vise Admiral instead dutifully makes his way to the wheelhouse.
But it was particularly tempting, for his stunning Ice Queen was trying out that fetching lilac sarong type ensemble that perfectly tanned Princess Valentina had lavished her pale friend with earlier this morning.
Valentina wished Elsa to gain some better skintone coloring that befitted her auspicious role as the maid of honor not to so contrast with the vain, bronzed skin Paraiso bride.
"In my experience on the beach, it's best to pretend you're not paying attention to your audience of admirers. Then you can discreetly watch them try to do something racy to entice you to look their way." Valentina was giving Elsa some sisterly advice on how to attract men on the sunny shores of Brazil.
"Look at those two, traipsing 'round the ship as thick as thieves. Val's showing off her finer angles, pretending not to give me a sideways glance. She thinks I don't know what she is playing at, that vain vixen." Just then, the Prince of Córdoba smugly saunters up behind Hans just entering the Gler's pilothouse bridge.
Just about out of sight, Hans tears his final picturesque view around from the pair of dark and light, shapely ladies strolling on deck arm in arm and chattering furtively all the while. At least Valentina seemed to be talking nonstop in Elsa's ear across the top deck of the Gler this early morning.
It was as if she was purposely trying not to meet the bored eyes of one of the only non-naval protocol male passengers on board the ship where he was sitting on a deck chair they passed nonchalantly by several times.
"Good morning, Prince Alonso. Fine weather and following seas have brought us to our destination a few days ahead of time, as I course plotted." Hans says a bit proudly to the dark haired prince while he doled orders out to his dutiful. hardworking crew. The seamen required their Kommander's signature concerning docking instructions at the port they were to approach in the next day.
Putting on his Captain's hat in more ways than one as he ducks and forth between the deck and wheelhouse to check coordinates with the crew, Hans defers a nod to the Argentine Crown Prince. Despite taking some slight offense at Alonso's offensive words concerning the fairer sex and their tendencies to draw young men in with their wiles, Hans offers Alonso a pleasant morning greeting.
"I suppose you can call it that. Hmph. At least the weather is tolerably warmer. It's an improvement from that transatlantic cold crossing anyway. Better you than me being stuck going back to that biting arctic environment." Donning his own more loosely fitting, breathable tan and gold trimmed shirt, Prince Alonso lazily saunters across the deck with a nominal glance at his brassy fiancée.
"So then, you attest it is preferable to be in your shoes which will soon walk down the aisle with your lovely chosen maiden, here in your beautifully tropical South America." Above Alonso's head, Hans could no longer help but give a blushing Elsa his full attention with a dapper wink, as prickly Valentina pointed out the pair of young men ogling them.
The Arendelle Queen was startled to be seen in such bare skin fashion in public before Alonso and Hans' crew. She modestly veils herself in a sheer translucent scarf of ice blue, with a demure giggling wave to her fiancé.
"Juvenile boys!" Unruffled Valentina sniggers right by the two young princes, flamboyantly tossing her ponytail over her bare shoulder peeking between her slinky pink beachwear. All the while, the she had been giving Alonso a dared look back.
With catty eyes, the busty Brazilian beauty appeared rather eager to be showing off her finer points to her intended.
But the disinterested Argentine seemed not to care, as he practically shoves Hans with him into the wheelhouse and slams closed the door behind them.
"Ha! That's a laugh! It's more likely I'll be walking out rather than walking down any aisle with her." With a crooked, bitter grimace through the door at his fiancée after this morning's latest round of snide remarks and non-addressed quips at one another during breakfast, Alonso was obviously fed up.
The selfish Córdoban Prince once again had been envisioning his standing up his persnickety bride at the altar as a runaway groom for a change, rather than indicting himself to a lifetime of being bossed around and hounded by the pretty-in-pink vixen.
Blink. Blink.
"Prince Alonso? How can you get married in three days and live happily ever after if you plan to walk out of your own wedding ceremony? I don't think Princess Valentina will find it very funny at all if you don't show up, after she's worked so hard for it to be the 'most spectacular event of the millennia'! It's all she's been talking about to Elsa the past week and longer. It really means a lot to her." Innocent Olaf inquires with a twittle of his branchy thumbs in his total confusion up at the Argentine Prince standing near Hans inside the wheelhouse door.
"Tell me about it." The dark-haired Prince dourly rolls his eyes, his head still ringing with his prideful fiancée extolling how fabulous and better than any other wedding this stunning one of hers in Paraiso was set to be.
Her wedding. To Valentina, I'm just a small addendum to it, in the grand scheme of things. An accessory and nothing more!
"Ensign Olaf. Please call up to relieve the lookout ensign, and tell him his Kommander wishes for him to take a well-deserved break. Tell him to heft you up to the Gler's crow's nest to take his place. You see, I remember my promise, my friend." Hans clears his throat and looks down to where nosy, private conversation absorbing Olaf was curiously staring up at the pair of young men speaking on the heady subject of love and marriage.
"Oh, boy! Have I been waiting for a chance like this! Thanks, JustHans! I mean, Aye-aye, Kommander Westergaard! Woo hoo! Up I go!" Olaf happily sings, feeling as light as a feather in utter joy at such an important, lofty assignment he had begged the Gler's captain for all during the voyage.
"At least someone's happy as a clam." Slipping back into his usual sulky nature, Prince Alonso murmurs sourly as he watches Olaf skitter out the door.
After he had shooed Olaf and his big snow ears away, Hans considers his next words carefully before speaking to Alonso as they too exit the bridge.
"Though they do tend to keep their deepest emotions secret, I've heard the more a certain type of lady adores her fiancé, the more she wants to show him off to the world. To a female, her precious wedding celebration reflects her happiness and high regard for her intended." The tactful Danish Prince comments to his companion, leading the lackadaisical complainer towards the ship's starboard railing with a chin gesture to Valentina.
"Adoration? High regard for me? Ha! And double 'ha!' That girl only holds an incredible self-worth for numero uno – AKA herself! And I can't honestly say that I have a different lifeview. So, I'm pretty sure this whole marriage idea was totally wrong for Valentina and I. We're too much two-of-a-kind to ever civilly get along like man and wife should." Alonso admits his own massive ego that he had recently come to grips with was only exceeded by hers.
At that cued moment, Princess Valentina had her head held high in letting out a loud, almost hoarse, haughty laugh at some young sailor's net knotting she'd suddenly become interested in learning, just to irk her betrothed across the deck.
Letting out a deep pent-up sigh, Alonso leans over the railing, weighing the consequences of his immediate future awash in the warm waves that were taking him even closer to a sealed fate if he didn't put a stop to it himself.
"Then, who is better to understand your heart than someone who thinks and acts and feels the same as you do? The Lord God gave us the ability to love so we could surpass all the wrongs of our selfish solitary hearts to cleave to one special, destined other. Someone dearer than our own flesh to travel this life alongside, and make its hopes and struggles both bearable." Hans speaks of his own spirit's longing as he stares at the beautiful soul Elsa of Arendelle encompassed and shared so much - in loneliness and insecurities amid triumphant strength and mercy - with him.
"That is why 'Love never fails', nor does it end, if we each find that peace and joy through the example of His Son Jesus' forgiving love and wise counsel to give more to our love than we take from it — to love more than to seek to be loved. Someone who truly loves like that will be proven to do only right for the other, 'hoping for nothing, and the reward shall be great', in good times and bad." Hans brings the ultimate Higher Authority's shining advice to the perplexed South American Prince who was having second thoughts again about being a free swinging single.
Alonso pauses to look Hans quizzically in the eye. He had been almost resolute about tossing asunder the sacrament of holy matrimony, which his fellow prince held so high in esteem and worked so hard to achieve with his own beautiful fairytale princess.
"Hmmm. You give a better sermon than that sanctimonious preacher in your shipboard Chapel, Westergaard. Maybe you should give up this sailing gig and go for the cloth." Alonso chuckles with the uncomfortable memory of the Sunday morning chapel service on board the Gler just yesterday.
Both he and Valentina had shifted in their seats as captive audience, listening about tenderness, patience, forbearance of forgiveness that was slow to anger when both were at one another's throats and at their wits' end with the aggravating other.
"Heck, maybe the priesthood would be a better choice than a life sentence of marriage for me, too. My devoutly Roman Catholic dad couldn't say a word against me if I took holy vows, hehehe. At least then he wouldn't have to worry about me making a mess of international relations as a Casanova Prince anymore." Feeling some moral compunction at the mention of his goodly father he secretly didn't want to disappoint, Alonso lets out a pressured heaving sigh as Hans' words seem to strike a note home to him.
"What is this madness I am hearing!? If either of you young rascals gives up his trip down the aisle to his promising bed of roses with either of those ravishing visions of beauty, I will personally declare you insane. Or perhaps lacking proper masculinity. Believe me, when I say as a very happily married man of too many years to count, that a woman with enough spice to wage proper confrontation in the battle of the sexes keeps a man's passion hot and on his toes rather than exist day to day in the dull and plodding." Just then, the other Prince hailing from the Southern Isles on board the Gler had emerged from his recuperating sick bay bed below deck to eavesdrop on his younger brother and friend's heartfelt discussion on women.
A subject Prince Didrik of Denmark felt himself an artful veteran expert on.
"Didrik! I see you are feeling well enough to leave your sickbed. How is the hand?" Hans politely asks his elder sibling with an inward chuckle of his own at the less than pious Prince Alonso's proposition to become a priest. Or himself abandoning the Navy to be a minister, for that matter, which the red-blooded Dane had no intention whatsoever of entertaining.
"I am hardly a purehearted candidate to fill that most honored career position, sir. Especially after last night." Hans spoke so low that he thought only he was privy to the latter guilt-ridden comment as to his unimpeachable piety. But he was mistaken there too, as Didrik quirks a grin over at his just as tall and svelte little brother.
"Yes, I find I am in well and fine enough shape to give my doting wife on that opposing vessel a fond wave to alleviate her worries and let my lady love know that I am still viable and kicking." The sixth–in-line Prince of the Southern Isles leans over the deck rail beside Alonso.
Didrik wiggles his sore fingers to greet his wife, Princess Antonia – who had aroused herself from her seasick cabin to sit on the Santa Teresa's foredeck the majority of time since her husband's sly departure.
All for the fleeting hope to catch a glimpse or two of her yet adored husband's invigorating behavior, every now and then.
"Considering my more inspiring nurses have all abandoned me and left only – ahem – that less curvaceous, officious snowlady – to attend to my bedside needs, I have decided to come up and change my scenery as we are nearing the continent. May I say what a welcoming and breathtaking scene it is on board your ship, Vise Admiral Westergaard. 'Tis a shame we must ever disembark this lovely transatlantic cruise." The older roue's hungry eyes scan the closeby vista of females in scanty clothes strolling the deck of the Gler with far more interest than the Sugar Loaf rolling mountain escarpment dotting the lush green scenery of Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara dock just coming into view in the distance.
"By the sound of it, it appears you have found some time away from your maritime duties to take the opportunity of the manifold enjoyments of being Captain this unfettered crossing, after all, Lillebror." Prince Didrik teases his handsome, hopefully by now more experienced in matters of women younger brother with a smug expression on his moustached face.
Didrik hooks the stolen captain's hat from Hans' head and places it on his own, smirking shrewdly insinuating at the way Hans was looking at Elsa as she shyly waved back at him from across the ship's deck.
"Though it is not as free and easy as you imagine, Storbror, I have prided myself upon keeping these still waters clean and clear, as befitting a proper gentlemen and Kommander of this great Sjoforsvaret Navy." Hans slyly and righteously declares to his amused sibling, who merely shrugs his dapper shoulders and grins benignly.
"Whatever high waves you fancy, Sailor." Didrik responds with a crafty wink.
"Why do I have a feeling you two are meaning more than you're saying in those strange maritime similes? Nevermind. I've got too many of my own female problems to deal with to care." Alonso lets out a huff, his eyes too entranced in that vision of bronze and pink strutting down to the deck below to even cast a glance at the familiar continent they were slowly approaching.
"Speaking of the exceptional feminine creature that is woman, may I make a suggestion, Prince Alonso? I have watched you and your intended together on board the Gler this past week. I assure you that your explosive relationship is much akin to those early days your dear cousin Antonia and I had shared a decade and a half ago when we were first wed." With a cunning look to Hans, Didrik pulls Alonso aside, speaking like a big brother to the younger man as the charmer wraps his good arm around his shoulder.
"Take my word for it, your feisty Paraiso Princess would not react to you with such vivid emotion were there not enough passion behind those entrancing eyes to keep you satisfied for a lifetime. After seventeen plus years of our glorious cat and mouse marriage, my combative love affair with Antoinetta is far more rewarding now than ever before. And that is because all the real fun is in the challenge of the invigorating fight, followed by undeniable breathless declarations of those three simple little words: 'I love you' while making up. The pleasurable reconciliation that assuredly takes place in the bedchamber later, does help, as well. Perhaps that is why I thrive on driving my lady mad. Good or bad, I know that I fill her every thought, emotion and dream, as she eventually encapsulates mine." Showing off his own marital expertise, Prince Didrik ends by giving a sweeping bow to his Spanish beauty he had affectionately nicknamed 'Antoinetta' for her finicky airs and graces combined with a temper that kept him in check all these years, with the fires of their love still burning bright.
"You two Danes make a pretty convincing argument about the rewards of wedded bliss." Just as he finishes saying this, Alonso only had take one look across the deck to see his fiery fiancée give him a haughty, challenging look over her shoulder.
"You say marriage gets better with age? It had better, since she already treats me like dirt. I guess I'll still think about it though." Still clinging to youth's undomesticated lure, the vain, good-looking playboy Prince of Córdoba could feel slightly more willing to wait before breaking the kingdom joining deal with his lately intolerable fiancée.
Gazing over at her dangerously enticing pink silhouette, irresponsible Alonso could maybe yet consider rising to the challenge of Valentina of Paraiso, if given the right incentive.
Unfortunately, at this inopportune moment, Valentina snubs her nose up at her unforthcoming future mate, causing Alonso to sniff in disdain as she saunters in the opposite direction and disappears down the steps to the cabins below.
"But imagining me trapped in a lifetime with her nonstop bossing me around? No, thank you." Self-important Prince Alonso petulantly tosses his errant brown coif back at the distasteful thought.
"If her attitude doesn't improve by the end of this voyage tomorrow, I'm definitely calling it quits."
Hans and Didrik exchange doubtful glances as the cagey young man makes the ultimatum to the sky, as if to yet declare his last gasp of independence before the end of everything fun and exciting – AKA marriage – roped him in.
As Elsa glances back to Hans helplessly, a strangely wet and wild Gale of wind Nokks Alonso's long strands of hair in his face in judgmental response.
And the Ice Queen and her Vise Admiral could not stifle the giggle shared in one another's truly as one heart eyes at their flustered Prince companion struggling with more than his mussed hairstyle.
Meanwhile on the outskirts of Paraiso, in the Tijuca rain forest…
"No no no no no! This is not good! Why did we have to be so selfless and send good ol' Carpet off with fresh medicine for those native sick folks that Tibetan witch doctor of yours was treating?!"
The Military Division of the Royal Guard police, militia of the Brazilian kingdom of Paraiso known as the 'guardas' were hot upon the trail of a certain attractive, noisy rogue.
Who, whether by bad luck or misfortune, found himself once again on the wrong side of the law.
"Because your big-hearted Dad opened his mouth that he'd go 'acquire ample supplies' for his 'new friends' on 'my son's swift airborne transport'. Eugene! What did you do to make those angry guardas so not your friends?!" After rolling her eyes for the millionth time at her generous – if illogical at times - in-law, Rapunzel's aunt on her mother's side, Princess Wilhelmina of Drottningham, hisses at her current male companion as she catches up to him.
Flynn Rider had ducked back behind the tall sprawling mangrove tree that was just on the outskirts of the rain forest boundary they had just exited.
She grabs a panting Eugene by the nape of his neck and pulls him back behind the tree just in the nick of time to miss catching the eye of one of the patrolling local guardsmen.
"Absolutely nothing! I swear! Look, Willow. All I did – after our long and arduous, weeklong trek through this godforsaken rain forest full of snakes and bugs and creepy crawlers of every variety known to man – was to stop and stretch to rinse out and wring my sweaty drenched shirt and muddy trousers here at this roadside well. That's when the next thing I knew some elderly old nuns crossing the road start screaming bloody murder! All of a sudden, these military types come rushing out of that café bistro over there yelling 'Criminoso!' and swinging whips, canes and other unpleasant looking mercurial tools of torture at me." Eugene pants, leaning down to his knees, exhausted from his dash trying to lose the federales chasing him.
The athletic bandit had flipped and leaped magnificently over the lush greenery of Tijuca's dense vegetation that he had just exited to return right back into the darkened canopy for cover. Problem is, Eugene landed right in a tangled mess of the flowery bramble vines Brazil is famed for.
"Damn thorns on these wretched pink leaf things! Ouch!" The unlucky thief tries to brush off the colorful Bougainvillea's long arching thorny branches, but only succeeds in further ensnaring himself.
"What exactly did they accuse you of, Eugene? I was way too absorbed in picking up those heavy packs of botanic and biological samples Master Babaji asked me to bring back to Prussia for Varian to test at the Leipzig University, and getting them into the cart that you abandoned me to push all on my own. So I missed the incident entirely. But I could hear you swearing all the way from here." Willow complains of her gallant traveling companion who left her literally holding the bags, in a pickle again.
"Well, since my old Pops volunteered us to be good Samaritans and give away our plush ride, I'm a little stressed about pulling up my pants while I dash around in the snake-infested brush!" Just about able to snap the clasp on his trousers he'd shimmied into double time as he ran, Eugene whines in a snarky voice. "Anyway, my Portuguese is a little rusty, but those police guys sounded like they were saying something like 'X pours sewing de sainte.' I swear, I did nothing to any of those sweet little holy ladies going to their sewing circle! Nor do I have anything in common with any Saints they're on their way to extolling."
"Eugene! 'Exposicao indecente'!? That plainly means 'indecent exposure'! Which is considered a punishable crime here in this strict ethical sector of the southern continent. To make matters worse, did you have to flash a group of nuns?! Why on earth did you have to strip off your clothes in public?" As if scolding a naughty child, Willow puts her hands on her shapely hips, then points at the extremely tanned and shirtless, stubbly man's incriminating and hairy hirsute, full-grown bare chest.
"And if they catch me – a lone, unattached woman – emerging from the jungle with you, both of us looking bedraggled like this - I'll surely be tossed in jail and whipped with those lashes, even more than you, for being a vulgar muhler da rua (woman of the streets)! And that would definitely be added to your long list of crimes against this land's severe moral code!" Willow says in exasperation, desperately trying to slice away at the vines that her extravagantly erstwhile fellow traveler gotten himself tangled in.
"Hey, it's not my fault! You didn't expect me to walk around in a filthy shirt and soaking wet pants after you and your bright ideas of a shortcut got us in that bog! And I blame stingy Pascal entirely for making that arbitrary ape angry about lunch." Eugene makes an excuse as to the unfortunate morning involving bananas and thieving monkeys and an irascible, fellow pickpocket who wasn't about to let the long tailed miscreant get away with the prize Eugene went to great trouble climbing to pick.
"So what if they catch us anyway? We'll just explain who we are, you know, special envoy royal visitors and all – and these local yokels will have to show some respect and let us pass on our way to Paraiso Palace, right?" With that calm, logical disclosure decision, Eugene slumps on the jungle's verdant green in prickly pain.
"Wrong! If we do, we might cause an international incident here for Corona and Bohemia too, if I know how just as crazy Edmund will react when he gets back to us with Carpet! We're supposed to be respectable foreign diplomats! Diplomats don't break laws as a rule! And you, my friend, have taken the brass ring for racking up criminal violations here. That's the last thing we want to do, with Edmund and Fritz trying to create some trading inroads with this country. And that's despite your father-in-law's rocky past history with the King of Paraiso. What is it with you dominant males not being able to get along with other male world leaders?! Argh! Men!" Frustrated at the sex as a whole, Willow throws up her hand, knocking the big straw hat she had been wearing to look more native to the side as she whispers in quick time.
"I could try to go back to Baron von Reichenbach and Master Babaji, but they've gone in the opposite direction—more south, so we must be miles apart now. Besides, I wouldn't want to get either of them involved in this trouble. Scientists and Himalayan yogis foraging through their prized rain forest are not exactly welcome in these draconian parts either." Princess Wilhelmina explains the impending peril of the already strained relationship between King Friedrich and King Pedro.
They haven't been on the best of terms since Arianna and I had to be bailed out years ago on our last expedition as free women, when we needed a time out after that business with Prince Anders and Iduna left her sisters again to go back to Norway in her single-minded pursuit of her Crown Prince Charming. It was just previous to Ari's wedding, when we encountered that recently widowed, indisputably charming and drop-dead gorgeous Brazilian King who started being such a machismo flirt! With both of us no less!
And me, only sixteen…Then Ari wonders of my low opinion of all the opposite sex that broke up our happy sister trio...
Now, I'm here again, stuck babysitting Rapunzel's bozo and his endearing, yet oddly eccentric father. Wherever Edmund wandered off to…
"Yeah! The local guardrilleros are definitely going to lock you up for the next three months in forced hard labor camp if they catch you looking like that, Flasher!" Flustered Aunt Willow was well-traveled in these parts enough to be more than knowledgeable as to the strict local policing laws where unclothed public displays were taboo.
"What's wrong with this physique, woman?! Despite a little dirt – and regrettable thorn-pierced blood spots here and there, anyone just has to take one look to know it's perfect. At least, it was before this godforsaken jungle got a hold of me! Scheiße! Verdammt these thorns have teeth! Der mist!" Eugene was still the vainglorious braggart in the midst of danger and troubles, loudly letting out a tirade of pained expletives in his native German as he gets further entangled in the wisteria vines.
"That harsh sentencing, by the way, gets worse with each minor infraction. I.e. loud shouting, swearing, and use of indecent gestures. All of which you have done in the past five minutes nonstop and quite vociferously." Not used to being the disciplinarian – and not liking herself much fo it - Willow warns as she struggles to carefully cut her nephew-in-law's verdant green vine prison.
"Now you tell me!" In a frazzled state, Eugene's muddy shirt tied around his hips only partially covered his capuchin monkey ripped and torn pants, exposed, sweaty bare chest and general state of indecent undress.
He had emerged hot and disheveled from the Tijuca rain forest, where Willow's head shrink scientist friend and doctoring medicine man from the Himalayas had worked for this past month to cure the sleepwalking thief of his idiosyncratic pilfering somnambulism.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire…
But in his haste to escape the guardsman and rush back into the lush jungle, Eugene had gotten himself snagged in the dangling vines there he had painstakingly avoided walking through before.
The vines clinched the criminal offender from further flight, for the unlucky ex-con had the damning bramble wrapped around his ankles to keep him grounded here indefinitely.
"These vines are like damn snakes that would make any man swear!" The saucy rogue had attempted to straighten his hunched over frame to display his many ripped - in both attributes of the word - indeed impressive, albeit thorn pierced, bared abs and pecs in protest of any local, rigid decency rule.
"There! I have spotted the indecente criminoso! Get him, men!" One keen eared and eyed malicious guardsmen also took note of the incriminating display of the shirtless man who just added cursing loudly and indecently gesturing to his list of crimes.
The young guardrillero raises the alarm to his compatriots as they race the felon who had got himself ensnared in the lush, summertime bougainvillea and liana bramble.
"Damn it! I'm nicked! These prickly vines are worse than Rapunzel's hair! Ouchy! Was zur Hölle! Damn! # #%$!$ &%!" Beyond overheated, sweaty and frustrated, Flynn Rider vents his hard luck, despite Willow's warning.
In letting out every swear word in the book he knew, Eugene's heedless, quick movement struggling only furthers his self-nabbed cage as the lawmen were inevitably rushing towards him.
His gutsy aunt wields her handy penknife and continues to try to cut him loose, ignoring her own pricked fingers in doing so.
"No time to cut me out, Wills! I'm stuck in these dratted vines too bad! You and Pascal get out of here and get back to Dad and Carpet before those military moral police catch you, too!" Eugene selflessly decides, giving up to his prickly vine captor that was ripping his rippling pecs to scratched, bloody messes.
And my magical, melodic healing gal clear on the other side of the globe…
"But what can Edmund do once you're in jail!? He's not exactly known for his discreet tact, nor possessive of any mitigating lawyer diplomatic skills! He'll probably blunder his way into prison with his loud mouth too! Ooh! We need to get you help without causing an international incident for Corona or Bohemia! Like I told you, Master Babaji is not all that popular with the local Catholic administration and the Baron probably wouldn't want to reveal he was messing around with the exotic animal test subjects in their precious rain forest right about now when he's at a parapsychological breakthrough. Ari is gonna kill me for not keeping a closer eye on you and your father…" Beneath her sombrero, panicking Princess Wilhelmina may have been fond of King Edmund, but she had little faith in the decades-long recluse, recently just come out of his self-indentured isolation, proving any skilled proficiency here in this sticky situation on foreign soil.
But wringing her hands, Willow could think of no one else to turn to in this strict cultural divide, so far away from home, for help.
The situation sounded pretty grave as she agonized over how to keep her recently cured of his sleepwalking problem nephew out of this South American country's prison and back home before he was sentenced to years of hard labor and face international embarrassment.
"Yeah, who you gonna call…? I know! Sideburns!" Eugene's furrowed brow and spasmodic struck face silently break into a wry grin in utter confidence, even as the noisy guardsmen enter the ring force limits.
"Who?" The Swedish woman cocks her dark brown ponytailed head at the unfamiliar moniker.
"Prince Hans of the Southern Isles!" Eugene says with exasperation in his voice that Willow did not at first recognize his fitting nickname for his bosom friend of an inseparable cousin who was more like a little brother to him.
"Your Danish friend? But isn't he still on his way here by ship? " Willow recalled the extremely winsome, reliable younger man whom she had met in Corona who had capably helped deliver Rapunzel's twins when the pregnant mother to be was in deathly peril.
"It's almost February 14! Knowing my judicious Lillebror, his ship has not only come in, but it's days ahead of schedule! He'll find a way to either sweet talk or break me out of here, because the kid's almost as slick and sly and cool and cunning under pressure – not to mention devilishly good-looking – as me when it comes to unjust incarceration! He'll find some stylish way to break me out of the clink before these local losers know what hit them! Ha ha!" Eugene, rather than writhe in agonized pain, or regret of his dire, politically sensitive predicament, had his eyes lighting up with glee at the liberating thought.
The wily thirteenth in-line Prince of the Southern Isles would surely come swooping in with his clever schemes and suave surefire maneuvering to victory which Eugene had witnessed too many times to doubt the outcome.
"I sure hope so. I'd hate to have to go all the way home to Corona to tell your folks that, yes, the sleep experts we came to cure you of your somnambulism and thieving insomniac penchant were successful after a month-long treatment between the two of them. But on the way to the Royal wedding in Paraiso we were to respectfully represent on their behalf, you got yourself beaten with forty lashes and locked up for years, just for going shirtless, swearing and acting lewd in public here in austere Brazil – a kingdom King Friedrich is already not the fondest terms with. Might cause a war." Willow mutters, glancing back to where the Brazilian guards were almost upon them.
"Gee, Willow. Thanks for that overwhelming vote of encouragement." Flippant Eugene smirks up at the explorer woman just a year or two his senior, wincing at his multiple thorn wounds.
"And for heaven's sake, Eugene, please don't tell these local neighborhood inspectors who you really are! They'll think you're representing Prussia and throwing support for the potential uprising in the class warfare I heard from the Baron, that's malingering between the common man and upper crust elites here, with the military caught in the middle of South American politics. It's an extremely complicated situation, so it's best we keep mum, lest we step in an explosive can of worms. The guards have a mandate to subjugate or even execute any foreign dissidents who get involved, so try to keep a low profile, okay? I'll collect your father and Carpet and we'll attempt to locate Prince Hans as soon as we can!" With a glint in her eye, audacious Willow takes the large straw hat sombrero from her head and pops it onto Eugene's. Then she pulls on a dark cape to hood over her ponytail with a final salute to the stationary man.
Pascal gives a wide-eyed Eugene beneath that huge straw hat a thumbs up – in his best non-opposable thumb lizard digit way – to encourage Rapunzel's husband to hang tight. Then the chameleon jumps on Willow's invigorated shoulder to take off for this grand adventure, just like the ones she and Iduna always planned in the far-flung corners of the world when they were kids.
The limber, experienced older woman gathers up the important bags of her luggage from the wheelbarrow cart and dashes into the jungle to disappear into its mists.
"Wait. Did she say 'execute'?" Eugene spazzes aloud to no one in particular.
GULP!
"Hey! How ya doin', fellas? Fine, hot winter day for us to be out in the jungle exploring, eh?" Eugene flashes his most disarming smile which none of the group of vexed guardsmen appeared to be taken in by, from their sullen, angry faces appearing around him.
"Are you not the criminoso those holy sisters accused of indecency on the side of the road! What is your name, Señor? And what is your connection to the villainous insurgents we recently picked up down the road on their way to disrupt the Royal wedding? What is you name?!" The Captain of the guard – who looked and sounded to Eugene uncannily like the Spanish version of Cass' sourpuss dad, Captain Schmidt, back home in Corona – demands.
Tipping the sombrero up from Eugene's slumped head, the lead guardas sneers down at the disruptor with the accusation as the former thief squints his eyes against the bright sunlight.
"Me?! Why on earth would I be flashing nuns?! Look at this handsome mug! Doesn't look like a creepy serial pervert's, does it? Oh, come on! I've got a new family with pair of babies to go home to be a good daddy! I wouldn't do anything so contumacious here on this lovely visit to your stunning land!" He puts up his hands defensively arrogant as they approach, giving cover to Rapunzel's explorer aunt and the frog on her shoulder who were dashing away with a cloak over her head.
When Willow just disappears over the rise on the woooded path, going the opposite direction of the Tijuca rain forest, Eugene gives a sigh of relief.
The entire group of dark skinned lawmen doesn't twitch a muscle at his plaintive words in the foreign language they did not understand. The burliest guardsman soon reaches for the punitive whip at his belt with a sneer down at the condemned man.
Okay! Time for some improvisation to the smolder…My disguise acting better be award-winning, if I want to stave off these bloodthirsty locos for a while...
As the angry guards descend upon the thorn-trapped man to punish him harshly to the full extent of their severe laws right on the spot, Eugene hangs his head.
Then, from beneath the depths of Willow's sombrero that she had flopped on his head just before she booked it, the cunning man applies his suddenly-fluent-in-time-of-need, linguistic merit in a change of both his tune and voice accent to be more self-effacing humble.
"Esperar! Eu não sei nada sobre essas pessoas ruins que você fala, señor. Sou apenas um humilde e temente a Deus fazendeiro de uvas das vinhas do Sul, trazendo amostras da minha melhor colheita de degustação para o mercado para a cerimônia de casamento real em paraiso. Eu devo ganhar dinheiro para minha esposa doente e nossas meninas gêmeas recém-nascido. Mas aquele cavalo possuído por demônios fugiu com a maioria dos meus barris de vinho depois que um macaco barulhento o assustou. Então eu devo andar esfarrapado pela floresta tropical, perdido por dias. Depois de beber o último vinho do barril caído para o único sustento que eu tinha disponível antes de desmaiar morto, eu devo ter tropeçado no escuro e caído neste pedaço espinhoso desagradável. Por favor, mostre misericórdia a este jovem pai azarado, mas bonito, gentil Señor. Eu não queria assustar essas irmãs sagradas com a minha robustez masculina em tudo. Imploro o perdão deles mil vezes. Eu me atiro à sua misericórdia, bom senhor! Meu nome é José Berrera."
("Wait! I don't know anything about these bad hombres you talk about, Señor. I'm just a humble, simple, God-fearing grape farmer of the vineyards from the south, bringing samples of my best tasting harvest to the market for the Royal wedding ceremony in Paraiso. I must make money for my sick wife and our newborn twin girls. But that demon-possessed horse ran off with most of my wine barrels after a noisy monkey frightened him. So I must walk myself ragged through the rainforest, lost for days. After drinking the last of my good wine from the dropped keg for the only sustenance I had available before I fainted dead, I must've stumbled in the dark and fell into this nasty thorny patch. Please, show mercy to this unlucky, yet handsome young father, kind Señor. I did not mean to scare those holy sisters with my male ruggedness at all. I am begging their pardon a thousand times. I throw myself to your mercy, good sir! My name is José Berrera.")
After a long moment of silence following Eugene's elongated speech, that was pronounced fluidly in the foreign Portuguese language as if the con man's life depended on it – because it probably did – the obese chief guardsmen breaks out in a harsh chuckle.
"For some reason, this strange-talking, good-looking funnyman José Barrera amuses me, gentlemen. We will not sentence him to death, just yet. As for the lashing he deserves… In the meantime, perhaps we can kill two birds with one beautifying stone." The large, dark skinned, heavily accented man smiles sadistically to lean into Eugene's flinching face, setting our handsome thief's teeth on edge with this suspicious motive for a supposed reprieve.
"It just so happens that these 'nasty vines' you have become entangled within, Señor, also sport the lovely Bouganvillea flowers of colorful pinks, magenta and fuchsia, with heart-shaped leaves that our dear Princess Valentina of Paraiso adores. Considering her upcoming wedding in two days time, we here in Barra da Tijuca, on the outskirts of the capital city of our beloved Royal family, will start the celebration in style. You will personally be the purveyor of so many breathtaking arrangements of these beautiful flora to offer to the sisters you have unwittingly disrespected. They will add the lovely flowers with the heart-shaped foliage to their rosary prayers in the happy wedding's honor on St. Valentine's, in just two days time. It will be a wonderful sight to behold, and show our province's devotion to the kingdom, yes?" The big man with the dark black beard and thick accent tenderly strokes the petals of the colorful cluster.
The three, pink hued flowers surrounded by the three heart-shaped bracts instantly associated these attractive blooms with the symbol of love that the pretty Crown Princess daughter of King Pedro favored greatly.
"You, José Barrera, will use those talented, fine wine pressing fingers to create a beautiful floral arrangement that we will send to our beloved Princess Valentina for her wedding with the prettiest Bougainvillea flowers found here. That is, after you painstakingly strip each and every Bougainvillea flower vine of the thorns, by your bare hands alone for atonement, Señor Berrara. If – and only if you do a decent job that the holy sisters approve of enough to forgive you of your sins – will I consider leniency of sentencing you to only the three years hard work labor. But do not worry, my handsome friend. I will personally take care of your long sentence here in my jail cell, and show my celebratory benevolence by not summarily executing you for your many crimes, Señor." The sugary worded Captain of the Royal Paraiso Guard says to Eugene with a sadistic smile stretched across his tanned, too-jovial face looking his captured criminoso up and down approvingly.
The jaw dropped man stares in horror from his creepy would-be jailor to the masses of pink and red and purple blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of the Bougainvillea flowers hanging from the highest point of each of the hundreds of trailing vines at the rain forest edge.
And they all were full of the thorns the poor scratched and scraped man was well acquainted with already.
"Just think of it, Señor Barrera. This will be a labor of love that your wife and children will be proud of you for creating, as citizens of this great nation celebrating our Princessa Valentina's love! You can tell them all about how you contributed to the grand wedding of our dear Princessa when you are released from prison in three short years' time, after you and I have become good friends." The gregarious and sadistic Captain places an arm around Eugene's freed shoulders as his griping troupe of pricked finger guardsmen finally loosen the dark man disguised as a Brazilian from his thorny vine imprisonment.
"Só o que sempre sonhei. (Just what I've always dreamed.)" Plucking the thorny flora as directed, Eugene grimaces with a sigh. He bolsters himself with the thought of Hans coming to his rescue, hopefully pronto, while the thief who needed his talented fingers still had sensation in them.
Ouchy! I hate the sight of blood! Especially my own! And this weird geezer's laugh gives me the creeps!
Come on, Kid! I'm counting on you to get me out of this rotten, thorny mess...
Back on board the HmNos Gler…
Late that evening, an urgent knock at his captain's cabin door startles Kommander Westrgaard from a disturbed reverie.
All day he had kept his mind occupied, writing imperative formal letters to contacts on the South American continent he was scheduled to soon meet with.
Afterwards, into the night, the dashing Vise Admiral, seated at his desk, had attempted his daily entry in his Captain's log. But, every now and then, he would stare up at the stars through his cabin window to sort through this rollercoaster last day of the Gler's incoming transatlantic voyage.
You're brilliance blinds me, min hvvidue…
In between his apprehensions as to the auspicious, highly anticipated Valentine's Day wedding in Paraiso – that was, as yet, still tentatively set in two days time – Hans could not help but murmur in wonder of his own future wedding date to a certain shining constellation above.
The Prince of the Southern Isles considered for long hours all day how he could present himself to his Queen as a gentleman Prince still after that disturbing dream the night before. Hans had decided to come to her with heart in hand trying to convince Elsa to hasten their own long awaited nuptials, lest his morals falter, this time in reality.
However, the flustered state of the scantily dressed woman on the other side of his door sends Prince Hans' muddled head utterly reeling.
"Hans! Please come! I thought her sore throat was feeling better! But when I returned from dressing in Valentina's bedroom to show her some…last minute evening wear fashion ideas…she wished to view, I just found her collapsed, all feverish and not moving! Princess Valentina won't wake up when I call her name!" Hans was anxious when he throws open the door to find his pale Queen – suddenly shame-faced for donning an alluring, low-cut, frosty lavender-pink negligee, as requested to be on display for Valentina's personal runway collection - quite frightened and shaking for her friend's welfare in the starry night backdrop.
"Elsa! Please calm down, my love. Olaf, go inform the ship's doctor of Princess Valentina's worsened condition. He's starting his rounds in the crew's cabins in the forecastle checking them for landfall deployment in the morning." Again, Hans was Elsa's cool, even voice of commanding reassurance as he gives the sleepless snowman who had trailed Elsa's side his orders.
"I'll come with you at once, min kæreste. I'm sure the Princess will be fine soon." In the hallway, the tall, slender redhead looks deeply in his Ice Queen's chilled eyes as he strides alongside her, placing his grey cloak and reassuring arm around her chilly shoulders.
"What would I ever do without you, Hans?" Elsa weakly smiles, beyond grateful to have her decisive young man so swift and attentive to her cares as Hans takes his Elsa's trembling hand securely in his warm one.
Hopefully, you'll never have to find out.
The guilt-ridden redhead shivers at his recent punitive nightmare self-consciously, giving Elsa a quirky smile as they quickly traverse the lower berth hall to the Gler's staterooms.
As responsible captain, Hans was only too glad to personally help his high strung, important Brazilian passenger, and especially felt it his duty to come to his love's beckon on her friend's behalf.
Coincidentally, Prince Alonso had been solitary strolling on deck, thinking about the big step he would be taking in two days' time and really searching his soul in wonder if it was all worth it.
As the ship drew closer to the South American port of Guanabara Bay, the young Argentine had been seriously considering the lifelong fate assigned to him there.
The previous morning's cold shoulder and evening dinner's unapologetic, insipid remarks put a nail in the coffin for a teetering resolve Alonso. Even after he went out on a limb after dinner, and put out the first olive branch, asking Valentina to dance, his bride-to-be had awarded him with the excuse of a 'splitting headache' and dismissive 'need to lie down'.
That selfish insensitivity was plainly on display almost this entire month-long trip, so Prince Alonso had come finally of the decision to call it all off, advice or no from the Danes.
He had spent this early evening's final shipboard sunset and starscape summoning up the courage of vexed anger and resentful reliving through their many arguments.
Prince Alonso decided to confront Princess Valentina with his last minute, yet conclusive withdrawal of their upcoming marriage arrangement.
Before it was too late for either of them to feel free to have fun anymore.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
"Valentina? I'm not gonna stand out here all night! Open up!" Spoiled Prince Alonso's patience was never very reliable, and the waning sunset and soon nightfall were no help to his edginess.
KNOCK! KNOCK!
"We have to…talk…? HEY! What are you doing in my fiancée's bed, you mercenary jerk!?" Impatient and careless of proper protocol Alonso was disgruntled to say the least upon not waiting for permission before entering Valentina's bedroom.
That was because he was stunned to find his near bride, stripped down to her meager undergarments and in the arms of another man, apparently in the process of further removing Valentina's negligee, nightdress and silky wrap.
Already worked up in great emotion, the hot-blooded, young Córdoban Prince was not prepared for how this shock would affect his male psyche.
"Stay away from my girl, you treacherous old lothario!"
PUNCH!
In the interim it took for an incensed Alonso to cross the room and wrench Prince Didrik – wearing nothing but his own dapper, loosened nightrobe sleepwear – away from the looming close proximity of the seemingly ravished and limp dark skinned beauty, Elsa and Hans were just arriving as stunned eyewitnesses to the violent scene.
Before Didrik had the chance to explain his unnerving intimate presence, hotheaded Alonso had squarely slugged the surprised Danish man in the jaw so hard and fast and furious in his vehemence that it was nearly dislodged, and a tooth knocked out of socket.
"Oh dear! Prince Didrik kindly offered to come help prepare poor, sickly Princess Valentina for treatment by laying that waterproof canvas sheet down on the bed beneath her when the doctor was not in sickbay! He said he used to assist the ship's doctor on his Navy craft prepare patients with the fever! When we arrived, the lady's temperature was so hot and high, the good Prince was only trying to cool her down by removing some of her outer clothing. The doctor would need to do so as soon as possible to start the bringing down the fever with ice cubes! Queen Elsa must help with her ice! Oh! This is terrible! He's bleeding!" Eliana whines as she rushes between patients in from the other room.
She had been gathering towels and pillows and such for Valentina and now runs under everyone's feet to dab her handkerchief and cradle the Danish Prince's wobbly head.
Didrik's bruised and battered jaw was starting to ooze blood all over the snowwoman's prim little frock. But he licks up the blood at the side of his moustached mouth with a quirky smirk.
"That's what I get for being such a beneficent fellow. I assure you, sir, my intentions towards your fiancée were purely of platonic concern. Besides having some experience on board sickbays on ships of my own as the little snowwoman addressed, my Antonia and my girls all went through this type of emotional fever in the past. Then the good doctor prescribed removing all their thick, water retaining clothing as quickly as possible, to allow the suffocated skin to breathe, before the immediate ice bath could be applied, soon thereafter. I honestly meant no harm to your Crown Princess, Prince Alonso." As Hans helps his split lipped older brother up to his feet, Didrik calmly explains his motives with a smirk at the passion evoked from the Prince of Córdoba, who otherwise feigned passivity and indifference to the Brazilian beauty.
"Emotional fever!? Why is Valentina feverish?" His fists at his side involuntarily shaking, Alonso sheds his peevish angry lover mode immediately upon hearing and seeing his fiancée's limp and listless form lying strewn on the bed where Prince Didrik was forced to drop her unceremoniously on the waterproof canvas.
"Maybe I can answer that, Alonso." Elsa pipes up here, giving Hans a glance and a smile as she steps forward as she pulls Hans' cloak snugly around her.
"Valentina's been so excited and anxious and in great anticipation for the upcoming wedding, I'm afraid she had worked herself into a tizzy of high expectation these past few weeks. She's been so sleepless and worried that all must go perfectly, I have seen her health suffer day by day, despite my best warnings. As a friend, I have been trying to urge her to just let her worries go and enjoy this special time with you, Alonso, as I am with loving every moment with my beloved fiancée on this incredible journey." Elsa gently strokes the Princess of Paraiso's hot forehead with her cool fingertips, while gazing adoringly over her shoulder at Hans.
"I was once just like Valentina. Perhaps not as boisterous, but the same at keeping my emotions bottled up inside. Until the people who love me most showed me that keeping everything locked up tight inside myself was wrong. If 'Love can melt a frozen heart', it certainly can bestill an uptight, bothered one." Once shy Elsa honestly opens up to her former suitor. She recalled her sister Anna's endless belief and sweet confession of devoted unconditional love which brought the Ice Queen out from under the bondage of anxiety and fear.
"All these grandiose preparations and extravagant plans are because Valentina secretly fears disappointing you, Alonso. Like her mother did when she left her father, the King of Paraiso, for his indiscretions with a mistress when Valentina was just a baby, and she later died of a miscarriage, alone. That's why her whole life, Valentina's been so competitive, trying to prove she's 'a little bit more' than worthy of not being tossed aside, nor trampled on, nor discarded." Elsa sagely narrates what she – a good listener – quietly perceived of her new dear friend, as the Prince of Córdoba had flown to Valentina of Paraiso's bedside, and had tenderly gathered up his Princess in his arms.
"I didn't know all that about Val's parents…her mother…her past. Why didn't I ever bother to find out!?" For once in his vain life, Prince Alonso regrets his actions.
Or rather, negligent inaction.
"I didn't mean what I said last night, Val! I wasn't thinking straight when I threatened to leave you. Come on, girl! You have to be all right, because we have an incredible wedding the day after tomorrow to go through with! I know you'll give a little bit more than your all and won't ever let me down, girl! So, I swear I won't ever stand you up or dare to mess around or leave you in the lurch like that! I'd miss you too much. Hey, wake up! You can order me around and talk my ear off the rest of our lives together! I need someone to tell me off every now and then, right? I'll make 100% sure that you'll never want to leave me. And I won't ever leave you, my funny Valentine." All at once this spills out as Prince Alonso realizes from the limp, silent, feverish state of his usually vibrant and noisy fiancée, how much he would miss having her around to chase and chasten him both.
It hits Alonso how he would feel lost without hearing her constant melodic voice, even in bossy, nagging mode, if she never spoke another word to him again.
That was because the once selfish and vainglorious young man truly loved this 'secretly a little bit insecure' young woman. Deep down in his soul, he knew she was his match.
"a…lon…so?" At her fiancé's gently breathed words of understanding, where he fondly discovered that all-encompassing, new pet nickname for her at last, spoken with evident tender sentiment, Valentina was moved enough to awaken as she chokes up to him in a raspy whispered name.
"Don't strain your voice, my pretty Valentine. You don't need to say anything. I'm right here for you, all the way." The dark brown haired young Prince pushes back the long bangs framing his face as he leans down over that of the bronze skinned beauty left flopped on the tousled bed all limp and wet like an old oil rag.
But to Alonso, Valentina never looked more beautiful.
"I love you." For the first time in his life, Prince Alonso admits this to someone other than himself in the mirror as he pulls a deliriously smiling Valentina's upper torso closer onto his lap. As he softly strokes her cascading loose mass of curls, the self absorbed Crown Prince gently, yet reassuringly lands a passionate kiss on her trembling red lips.
"a-lon-so? i –" In the tiniest, inaudible, gravelly whisper, Valentina's sore throat may have not been able to verbally utter those three simple little words her anxiety-filled heart had been longing to say, but her lips begin to mouth them for the first time ever.
All the while of this romantic interlude between the couple, the ship's doctor was readying the patient for treatment. With Ice Queen Elsa's able assistance that his Captain offered, after experiencing himself with her amazing cryokinetics, the doctor applies the ice cube 'bath' over Valentina's partially clothed body.
"– LOVE YOU!" A chilled Valentina's barely audible voice now squeals extremely loudly from the sudden sensation of cold ice on her bared skin at a deafened Alonso.
Elsa, under the ship's doctor's direction, had carefully been laying the cold ice therapy to treat the constitutional fever ague with her frosty ice cubes all around her Brazilian friend.
Everyone in the room chuckles at the pink cheeked Princess of Paraiso's slender body responds by involuntarily reaching her arms to grasp firmly around her fiancé's neck.
Valentina forcefully yanks an unsuspecting Alonso down to her ice cube chilled body that was wearing only her tight fuchsia pink shift where Didrik had laid her out on the virtually waterproof cold retaining canvas fabric.
"Can't say I blame you for wanting my company, my chilly Valentine. I know now how eager you are to have me in your bed, so I might as well share in your therapy treatment and keep you company now already. That's what good married couples do, right? 'For better or for worse.' That means what you're in for, this donkey's all the way, too. Brr! That's cold!" Bravely lying on the frozen mattress next to Valentina, teasing with a bit of self-mockery at the 'asinus magical' memory Alonso leans in to smooth back some of her drenched bangs and the mass of curls that were part of Valentina's unkempt hairdo.
"Let me warm you up." Flirtatious Alonso smoothes back the wetness on her shivering, smiling cheek before planting another gentle, yet reassuring kiss to Valentina's trembling purplish blue lips as he lays back and whispers sweet nothings in her decreasingly fever reduced ear.
Reverting back to his no longer panicking, saucy smug self, Prince Alonso responds to his certainly now reaffirmed bride-to-be playfully on his side of the frosty mattress.
If this positive spirit had anything to do with health's quick recovery, Elsa and Hans' matchmaking efforts these past weeks for the combative pair was not in vain.
"So romantic." Elsa sighs blissfully she steps back from icing Valentina and Alonso's shared subzero spot on the bed and goes to lean into her own gallant fiancé's warm chest.
"Yes, min alskare. Your good example and sweet understanding has paved their way. I love you even more and more each day for your compassion." Whispering his own words of love, Hans indulges in this intimate moment of breathing into Elsa's fragrant hair, before catching himself.
"As we will be making landfall in the next few hours, my Queen, I'm obliged to return to the bridge. I must devote myself to studying the maps of the Guanabara Porto if we are to safely sail the Gler into their dock. Excuse me, please, my love." The Southern Isles' youngest Prince stoically withdraws, feeling a little skittish after his consequential nightmare to fully enjoy his Queen's provocative advances.
Hans gives his betrothed a gentlemanly bow and backs out from the room.
"I love you…Hans?" Elsa whispers back with a quizzical brow as her fiancé left too quickly to probably even hear her three simple little words.
Worry not, beautiful spirit girl. When a man such as this is in that much denial of his drives, the end game will be that much more rewarding when he finally lets himself go. You shall see soon.
Hans' big brother, Didrik, just laughs away his bloody split lip that Eliana was attending to. A loose tooth now added to his broken boned left palm's pain, but the older man realized that he had been willing subject to all this nuisance as result of these two pairs of persnickety young lovers' ocean voyage path towards wedded true love.
Halfway into the light, my friends.
At the cusp of the Enchanted Forest's now limitless boundaries…
The extremely short days and long bitter nights held little sway inside the land where enchantment still held some fascination of eternal autumn.
As Agnarr and his life partner Iduna entered the edge of the 'mist' which no longer existed, the more seasoned and life-tested couple felt an intense sense of wonder. It was as if the entire landscape all around them had a sense of curiosity to welcome the old familiar faces again.
The spirits seemed to prefer the season of autumn to any of the others, maintaining their chosen home to stay so even after Elsa and Anna had opened it up to the world. And that was fine with the Northuldra who lived there, perhaps because they too felt autumn was the time of year when all of nature must shed its old skin before the pause of winter, where all would stand still before the transition to spring's full fruition.
The wise people of the sun understood the Creator's design of the enduring passing seasons to strengthen, not hinder the ultimate way for His children. They would wait patiently for old as time, guardian Ahtohallan to be ready to make the gradual change coming to its Enchanted Forest gateway.
Perhaps this would at last be the time to come out from its lingering dormancy, as all the signs of nature had been pointing its watchful native caretakers to a seasonal shift. The Northuldra understood something new was coming when all the deciduous trees in the eternal forest began to shed their final leaves to drift to the cushioned ground at last.
"Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh." Iduna's initial song was carried along the Enchanted Forest's airstreams by the winds to signal their arrival. But her old friend Gale needn't have bothered, for every man, woman and native child in the woods sensed this predicted arrival was today.
"At last the great white King of the North has heard and heeded his call." Northuldran elder Yelana's scratchy tone suddenly appears from somewhere behind where Iduna and Agnarr had been swept into the Enchanted Forest's limits by the four elements.
"The voices of nature bespoke your name back to your home long ago, Iduna, and your soul responded to your destiny. But a man's heart takes longer to conform to his." The older woman's still piercing eyes spoke volumes of droll indictment of the male species in general - and Agnarr in particular - to the special child named Iduna whom Yelana took under her wing long ago.
"Conform? To what, pray tell, honored Chief Yelana?" Agnarr's every fiber of royal upbringing and hair standing up on its regal end twitched at the disrespectful word that no monarch ever abided by. But, with Iduna's hand shooting to his frosty arm, eyebrow raised Agnarr calms and bows his head in his respect to the tactless adopted mother of the woman he loved.
"This." In a hushed tone, the grey-haired Northuldra leader of nearly four decades raises both her arms up high to the sunrise's almost electrified air in the no longer stifled Forest that vibrated with an excitable new energy.
With a superior smirk on her wrinkled features, Yelana heralds the forthcoming occurrence the spirits she knew so well foretold, that would change the ancient land and her people who lived in it forevermore.
Agnarr and Iduna's eyes widen as they watched the cold ground swell beneath their feet, heard the wind begin to rustle through the hibernating trees, smelled an instant fire quickly catch ember of the fallen leaves, and tasted the waters that once again filled the still atmosphere around them all with fresh snowflakes.
All the Northuldra and beasts of the wood, children and reindeer alike, peek around in wonder as the last of the spent autumn leaves make way for a cool winter time of white reflection to change their landscape for the first time in a very, very long time.
And all the hope of a new season was at last to come to the time forgotten Enchanted Forest...
Greetings, Frozen Again friends!
Did you enjoy the start of this oh-so-memorable Helsa episode? That undeniably red-blooded Red certainly did, at least at first…
Poor Hans had a nightmare! But what a nightmare!
Our noble Danish prince is still a red-blooded young man with unleashed fantasies of his lovely lady right at his fingertips, after all…
It may have started out pretty peachy for our hero Hans, but his honorable conscience pricked him with a nightmare of how his love affair with his beautiful Queen may end if he crossed that premarital line. Hopefully, that premonition of frozen doom won't let him go astray again, with certain doom from the Ice King hanging over him!
And as for Eugene…that guy can't cut a break! Brazilian laws were sure strict back in those days and Flynn Rider sure don't seem to be simpatico! Will his cousin/kid brother get there in time to bail the unlucky rogue out of another prison incarceration?
And, with Helsa's advice and Didrik's 'help', Alonso and Valentina seem at last ready to walk the aisle! Good thing too! It's the next chapter's main show! You're all invited to one amazing Wedding Valentine's Day in Paraiso! :)
Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your reviews of this emotional installment that started with a forbidden fantasy bedroom scene and unwelcome appearance of the Admiral for our imaginative Dane, but ended with the apparently awaited, welcome arrival of the King and his Queen to the Northuldra in the Enchanted Forest in a new exciting mystery there.
God bless you all,
HarukaKou
