Note:
Disregard my last update blurb – Chapter eleven was too large, so I had to splice it. Here is the very small portion of that very long chapter.
[x] song: "Vor í Vaglaskógi", KALEO (From their Album "A/B", 2016) - FYI: This song isn't like being sung by a particular character, it's just like the mood for the scene because it sounds pretty and intense. It's about spring in the forest, but I thought it sounded cool to put over the scene.
Disclaimer:
If I owned any part of Frozen (which I do not), I probably wouldn't have to worry about the price of produce as much as I do.
Happy reading!
- JQ
Chapter Eleven: All's Fair in Archiving and What Not
[Botarskal, Iceland]
Princess Finnborja – or 'Finn', as her sisters called her – was seated at the dining room table, in her family's castle. The dining room was a long room with no large windows. The way the chandeliers hung overhead, coupled with the tiny square windows near the top of one of the walls, made it seem as if they were dining in an old viking ship.
Although it was long past dinner time, Finn was just sitting there, tracing patterns on the tablecloth's embroidery. She sighed heavily, just mindlessly tracing the delicate patterns, willing herself not to think about what she had been thinking about for weeks now.
It had been a total of eighteen days since her sister, Princess Tina, had left for Vennesvurg.
Eighteen days since Tina so bravely took her place.
Eighteen days since she had seen her best friend.
{...}
[x]
"Tina no – please!" the blonde cried, tugging her older sister's arm; tears streaming down her freckled cheeks. Said sister just shook her head aggressively, tugging her own arm back and willing the younger of the two to let go.
"Finn – stop!" Tina cried out. Tina was trying to pack her trunk for her trip to Vennesvurg when her little sister barged into their room and started wailing at her and tugging her arms away from packing up. The brunette eventually shook the younger girl off of her arm. Unfortunately, the thing about little sisters is that they are incredibly persistent.
Finn threw her arms around Tina's waist in an attempt to drag her down with her body weight. "I-I can't – I won't l-let you!"
"This isn't your choice Finn!" Tina barked out – her mouth dry from how much she was sobbing already.
"It is my choice!" Finn argued, constricting her arms tighter around the brunette. "I'm the one they wanted! I'm supposed to go!"
"Finn – I already bloody told you! I'm doing this to save you! Get off!"
Before anything else could be said, the door to their room burst open revealing another one of their sisters: Hinrikka (or Rikki, as she preferred).
"I found them!" Rikki shouted from the threshold of the doorway. "They're in their room!"
A few loud footsteps were heard before another sister appeared: Princess Engilbjört (otherwise known as Gilly). "Why the fuck did we not look here first?" she asked in annoyance. However, she had no time to wait for an answer as the two youngest siblings began shoving at one another. Tina was trying to push Finn away while the latter was desperately trying to pull her away from the trunk. Rikki ran to grab Finn while Gilly ran to pull Tina away. Both older sisters were successful, but Finn just kept screaming.
"No! No! Get off of me!" the small blonde screeched at the top of her lungs,"She can't leave! She can't! She can't leave us!"
"Finn – she has to..." Rikki said softly, trying not to cry herself.
Gilly then tossed Tina onto the bed and stormed over to Finn. She looked crazed and tired all at once. She grabbed Finn by her shoulders and started to shake her. "Would you rather you be sent away?! Huh?! WOULD YOU?!" Suddenly, Gilly was being pulled back by Tina.
"Engilbjört!" Rikki warned.
"Gilly! Stop! She's just scared!" Tina pleaded. Gilly just turned back towards Finn and asked her for an answer. Finn just cried and shook her head while Rikki held her close.
"Yeah...that's what...that's what I thought." Gilly huffed, sinking to the floor. Her rage had seemed to subside completely once she was on the ground. After a few minutes, she looked up at Finn and shook her head. "I'm sorry...but...you know she's doing this for you, right?"
"You're our baby..." Rikki added, "...we can't let you be sent off."
Finn just kept shaking her head. "But t-t-they asked f-f-for me..." she sobbed out.
"And they agreed to have me...instead." Tina managed to get out before falling to her knees and crying as well. Gilly wrapped her arms around Tina and kissed her on her forehead.
"You're so brave, Tina." Gilly told her, "Braver than all of us."
No other words could be expressed. The four sisters just sat together and cried while they held one another close.
{...}
Princess Finn sighed before planting her face down onto the table. Her wavy blonde hair cascaded over her arms, accentuating the bounce of her shoulders as she sobbed into the table. She was sobbing so loudly that she couldn't hear soft footsteps approaching her.
"Finn?" called out a soft, yet firm, voice.
The teen looked up abruptly to see her eldest sister. "Ka...Katla?"
The older woman just smiled and knelt down beside her baby sister. "What are you doing down here still? Dinner has long passed now."
"I...uh...I just wanted to think for a little." Finn answered in the smallest voice possible.
"In Tina's chair?" Katla asked, already knowing the answer. Finn broke down again and fell right into Katla's waiting embrace. During dinners now, the place that Tina always sat remained vacant. Nobody sat in it out of respect. Earlier in the evening, King Hallgrimur attempted to have the chair removed but all four sisters protested against that. Tina was still here, even though she was physically someplace else.
After sobbing some more, Finn peeled herself away from her sister's hold. "I miss her, Katla."
"I do too." Katla admitted, running a tanned hand through curly blonde hair. "I miss my favourite headache." This made Finn laugh out loud. Tina and Katla always did fight the most. Hallgrimur always said that Tina and Katla fought because they were the most like him and his wife – their late mother. Hallgrimur was even-tempered and righteous; a king through and through – much like Katla. Queen Úna, on the other hand, was independent and intelligent; a free thinker who was as stubborn as the wind itself – very much like Tina. They hardly ever saw eye to eye, but the decision to protect Finn from the arrangement took them both less than one second to agree on.
After a moment of silence, Finn looked up and asked: "Tina woke up from her coma, right?"
"Yes," Katla stated, "Queen Anna and her physician wrote to me last week. She's still healing her foot injury, but she'll make a full recovery soon."
"Okay..." Finn sighed, leaning further into Katla's embrace. She was still hiccuping and sniffling from her sobbing, earlier. "That – that's good..."
"But I was looking for you." Katla told her, brushing away some loose blonde strands from the younger woman's face. "Tina sent a letter for us. I came to find you so all of us could read her update together." Katla's heart almost burst at the intensity of Finn's smile.
...
"Oh – fucking finally!" Rikki stated, when Finn and Katla arrived in the lounge room of their castle.
"Rikki – language." Katla warned. Rikki just rolled her eyes.
"Icelandic." she replied, sticking her tongue out at Katla.
"So, where were you, Finn?" Gilly started to tease, from her spot on the carpet by the fireplace. "Were you making out with Leif?"
"What?! No!" Finn defended, although blushing quite terribly. "He's on a hunting trip with his father." the blonde knew that if he wasn't away, she would have liked to have been kissing him.
"Sounds like a falsehood." Rikki stated. "What do you think, Gill?"
"Lies." Gilly deadpanned, "All of it."
"Children, please." Katla said, refocusing everyone's attention. "Let's just read our letter."
Rikki yanked the piece of paper from Katla's grasp and began to read. "Dear Knucklehead Squadron –!"
"It doesn't say that!" Gilly accused.
"It does! Look!" Rikki stated, shoving the letter in her older sister's face. "See? There it is! Knuckle – Head – Squadron!" Gilly just sighed and shoved Rikki away from her.
Katla sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "...just continue reading the damn thing, Rikki."
"No, I don't trust her!" Finn protested, "Give me that!" Finn said, swiping at the letter and continuing to read it. "Dear Knucklehead Squadron; It is I, your dearest – and most favourite – sister. I have just woken up from my comatose state and have received your gift. I love it and keep it by my bedside. It helps me to feel next to you four, and it keeps me safe. I can't wear it though, as the locket is entirely too large for the necklace. I don't know who's idea it was to buy it in this size, but I love it nonetheless." Finn stopped reading and all the sisters looked up to glare at Gilly.
"What?" Gilly said, crossing her arms. "It was the only locket that could fit the photograph we picked!"
Ignoring her, Finn continued to read Tina's letter. "I have so much to tell you, but I'm so tired and wish to sleep. Queen Anna and her family have been so caring and I think we should all start vacationing in Arendelle. Plus, you'll never guess who I met: the ice queen herself – Queen Elsa..." Finn's eyes widened in awe at the sentence she had just read. "Damn that's cool."
"Queen Elsa?" Rikki echoed, "Whoa..."
"That really is so cool." Gilly added.
And so, the sisters continued reading the letter until they were all caught up on Tina's adventures.
...
After all of her younger sisters had gone to sleep, Katla moved to her end of the castle. She stayed in the portion of the castle called 'the West Tower'. Traditionally, the Crown Prince or Princess of Botarskal would move into the West Tower, on their eighteenth birthday. It was a tradition that was as old as the castle itself.
Although Katla enjoyed tradition, she recalled that moving away from her sisters, all those years ago, felt rather lonely. Up until that point, she and her sisters did everything together. Despite their various ages and...rambunctious personalities...they were rather close and stayed that way for many years. Moving to the West Tower meant that she had to focus on running the kingdom alongside her father. She no longer got to 'waste time', trekking through the village or simply relaxing at all.
She was training to be Queen.
She was training to rule a kingdom.
Alas, Katla sat at her desk in her study suite, just outside of her master bedroom. She was writing a letter to one of her contacts in Vennesvurg; A man by the name of Ethan Lindahl. He was a member of King Karl's staff and she had continuously been writing him ever since Vennesvurg had threatened her kingdom. While her sisters believed that she was only looking out for the kingdom, when she backed her father's decree of sending Tina in Finn's stead, Katla had already hatched a plan. She wanted to find any semblance of proof that this arrangement had a loophole.
In Katla's perspective, Vennesvurg's Royal Advisor came to Botarskal with little to no warning. The only person who seemed to have known anything about the arrangement was her father, but he refused to elaborate on any of its' terms. Katla had written to Lindahl, as he had initially written to her about his suspicions surrounding Malkvist and the Royal Council of Vennesvurg. They were both trying to find a way out of it for Karl and Tina's sake. Unfortunately, they had to keep their investigation quiet as this kind of sleuthing around could be considered treason (but honestly, so could anything in the 1850's).
"Love?" came a voice from the doorway of her writing suite. Katla quickly turned around to see her husband, Jökull. That was the other reason for the West Tower – if the Crown Prince or Princess should take a spouse, prior to their coronation, they could live a little separately from the rest of the castle. She placed a hand over her heart and was ready to chastise him.
"Jökull, you scared me."
"Sorry, dear." he apologized, "I just came back from my meeting with Lord Davíðsson and noticed that you weren't in bed, waiting for me." he told her with a suggestive look. The crown princess just huffed at him.
"As if I am always waiting for you there." Katla said, rolling her eyes. "Is that all I am good for?"
"Heavens, no. Not at all." he said, completely offended that she had asked him that. He approached her quickly and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "You're a perfect mother to Lórens," he accentuated his statement with a kiss to her cheek, "you are a fantastic life partner," another kiss to her other cheek, "your sisters adore you," a kiss to her forehead, "and you will be an amazing Queen." This final kiss was to her lips and they let the moment linger for as long as possible. Once they parted, and she returned to her desk, Jökull asked: "Are you writing to Lindahl, again?"
"Yes." she told him, "He has written to me, saying that he hasn't found anything in the archives about this contract."
"Is that significant?" Jökull inquired, "Contracts can be verbal." Katla just scoffed at him. It was times like these when she thinks that she shouldn't have married someone from the legislature.
"I just find it odd that there are no records of a meeting. No letters...no invitations...no treaty...not even a date!" Katla just ran both of her hands through her caramel curls in frustration. "There's no witnesses...no notes from previous members of the court...it doesn't make sense! Vennesvurg argues that their council has all the records but Lindahl cannot seem to find anything."
"I may just be a little stupid so please be patient with my next question." Jökull warned her, "Why do we need record keeping for this? Tina's already on her way there."
"But we have time." Katla pointed out, "She is to be wed by the end of the year – that's all they specified. But if we can find a technical flaw or some type of clause –!"
"Then she will be free." Jökull completed for her. She stared back up at him, eyes brimming with tears.
"Then she will be free."