.

"Women are quite able to make friends with a man; but to preserve such a friendship
that no doubt requires the assistance of a slight physical antipathy [on his part]."

― Friedrich Nietzsche

༺ ❆ . ✸ ༻

Anna bluely opened her bedroom door and looked around the edge. Elsa's arm was the only body part bulging from the mountain of covers she was under. Her snores were louder than Oaken's ice engine (*), which was a common telltale sign that she was down for the count. Anna left the door ajar by three inches and beckoned a housekeeper to come in. The plump maid entered with a wooden pail and tiptoed into Anna's bathroom to clean the bath shower.

The first thing Elsa would need was a wash-up. After that, some nutrients. The one-on-one Eugene wanted to have wasn't the sort to be had on an empty stomach, but Elsa wasn't the sort to eat before she sat down for politics, so Anna would have to play maestro. She just hoped that Eugene would respect Elsa like he promised he would. If he didn't, then he was going to wake up with a black eye in the morning.

Anna rolled back the blankets. "Elsa?"

Her sister had her cheek smashed against her arm with her mouth wide open. A small creek of saliva flowed down her wrist and dampened the mattress padding it, completing the picture of sophisticated grace.

"Awgh, she's out like a candle!" Anna smacked her own forehead. She rolled her invisible sleeves up to her elbows and shook Elsa's shoulder. "Elsa?" When she didn't budge, she shook it harder. "Pst! Elsa!"

Elsa's snore hiccuped into a snort that was followed by a moan. She furrowed her nose and closed her mouth, swooshing her lips from side to side. Her eyes fluttered open to Anna.

The redhead smiled hesitantly. "Ahoy there, sleepy head..."

Elsa blinked back the fog misting her sight. Once the fog melted, her pupils dilated. The eyebrows above them fell down like two separate ends of a bridge joining together. "Anna..." The name throbbed off her tongue. She lifted her head and looked around in confusion and shock. "Why am I in your room?"

"You fell asleep because you were so exhausted." Anna stroked her arm. "How're you feeling?"

Elsa held the blanket against her chest and sat up on her elbow. She raked her fingers through her roots to get her tresses off her face. The strands got caught in the tooth comb of her fingers, and when she flattened them, three bangs stuck up like a cockatoo's feathers. "For h-how long have I been asleep?"

Anna giggled until she corrected the action with a harrumph. "Um, since yesterday."

"What?" Elsa bleated. She sighed before reaching for the sheets and fussing, "Then why didn't you wake me up?!"

Anna was going to blurt, "Hello! You don't think I tried? You slept like a log!" She switched her rejoinder to, "Because, Elsa, you needed it. You obviously slept that long because it was overdue. Do you feel any better?"

Although preparing to quickly dismount from the bed, Elsa countenanced her point. "I guess I feel a little better, but―"

"Great," Anna corked her before she could drain the positivity out of the conversation, "because Eugene is in the room right down the hall."

The drain-stopper worked so well that Elsa choked on her own spit. "Wh―...wait, you're not...?"

Anna shook her head with her lips wrapped under her teeth.

"...Anna!" Elsa ripped off the covers and planted her bare feet on the wood.

"I tried to get you up before he got here!"

While Elsa went on a shoe hunt, her breathless words ran together like bathwater from a tap as she rabbited on about headaches she had to discuss with Eugene, plans she had to reschedule, choreography they had to learn, which phrase to greet him with, how sick she was going to be, and a cataract of other tizzies that got lost in the combers.

"Um, Elsa?" Anna watched her hop around the room on one leg as she tried to get a shoe on. Elsa's cheeks puffed up like an angry blowfish's the more she fought with the rascal. "Elsa, you might wanna...―Elsa!"

Her one-legged sister canted sideways so much that she keeled straight into the purple chair beside the nightstand.

Anna's pigtails stood on end as the room rumbled from a miniature earthquake. She opened one eye after the other before shrieking, "Elsa!"

The queen was seeing stars and planets. Anna rushed over to Elsa's legs, which were draped over the seat, and grabbed her wrists to heave her up. "Al-right," Anna grunted between gritted teeth, "that's enough excitement for one day." She helped Elsa stand, who was rubbing her head as she ow-ed about how much that really hurt. "You need to just calm down, clear your head, and clean yourself up before you go kicking down Eugene's door with your heels."

Elsa retired her hand from her skull and nodded queasily, her eyes focused on nowhere. "Right. You're right. I-I need to get a hold of myself." She looked down at her dress and twirled her finger. Her gown melted off her legs and liquefied into a pool of blue. The puddle inched up the door of Anna's wardrobe like a caterpillar until it reached an empty hanger, where it stretched back into the sleeves, bodice, cloak, and skirt of her dress.

Elsa folded her undershorts on Anna's mattress and hurried into the bathroom. After receiving the housekeeper with a stammer, Anna heard her stumble into the basin and blast the water. "So exactly how long has Eugene been here, Anna?"

'Well, that was an accusatory tone.' "Uhhhmm, since~ sunset, perhaps? He said his blackout wasn't as bad as everyone told you."

She sighed her frustration. The violent scrubbing added to the many sound effects coming out of the bathroom. "He's probably wondering why I wasn't there to welcome him at the gates. You should've gotten me up!"

"I tried," Anna repeated, "but it was like trying to wake up a mummy! Eugene jumped down my throat a few minutes ago to get you up because he wanted to talk to you in..." Anna discontinued. She had told him to wait in the parlor where they could dine (unbeknownst to him), but now she was considering a place where her spyglass would come in handy. "In the garden! He wants to talk to you in the garden! A-At eight-thirty!"

"That late? Anna, are you sure that's what he told you?"

"It's only eight! Besides, it feels great outside!"

"Anna, it's March."

"Maybe Mother Nature is in a good mood tonight! Who knows? Either way, he said he wanted to have dinner with you alone. You know, like a proper reunion."

"...He said that?"

"I'm telling you, Elsa; he wants it real fancy, the whole nine yards. After all, he didn't eat much himself. Maybe you could even impress him with your magic?"

Elsa made a helpless whimper. Anna thought she was going to gripe about it and refuse, but instead she stuttered out with another lisp, "Fine, whatever, just...I-I wanna know what he looked like when you saw him. Did he look hurt or thin? What about the Union Act? Did he mention anything about the Brotherhood?"

"No and no. To the first one, he was wearing this huge cloak, so I couldn't exactly weigh his body mass and everything, but he looked―"

"WAY dreamier than Gerda said he was!" Olaf popped up in front of Anna.

"Olaf!" Anna jumped back. "Wh...! Where'd you come from?"

"From the hallway, though usually from thin air!" Olaf grinned back at the bathroom. "Oh, and that girlfriend of his is a total cupcake!"

"Wha―...Girlfriend?"

Anna pictured Elsa sneering. And then freezing Eugene alive. "N-No!" she squawked.

"Yep!" Olaf chirruped.

"Olaf!" Anna hissed.

"She's this cute wittle daisy with blonde hair and a poofy dress! You should see the way she looks at him; totally in love! And he tries to play it off by not looking at her, but you can tell he thinks she's a looker―"

"He's joking! He's joking! He's totally...―Olaf, tell 'er you're joking!"

"I ― am ― dead serious."

Silence.

"...W-Wait, start from the beginning ― who are you two talking about?"

"His..." Anna reevaluated what Olaf had burped up. She didn't see any shady business in the foyer, but she honestly hadn't been looking after that intro scene played out against her suspicions. "His nursemaid! She's just his nursemaid! Um, I-I mean, Isolde's nursemaid."

The water stopped spurting. Elsa came out of the lavatory with her towel hanging in one hand and her fist on her collarbone. Droplets starred her body and hair.

"Ooh~!" Olaf admired her. "You look nice and refreshed!"

"He brought Isolde?" Elsa's eyes would've looked like empty white balls had it not been for the dots trembling in them.

"He brought her," Anna validated. "She's sleeping right now, but I got to see her, and―..." Anna had been trying to figure out how to bring up Isolde without bringing up her deformity because Elsa would've squeezed it out of her. She thought back to what Eugene had made her promise, which was not to say anything before he addressed it first, something she still partially agreed with. "She's the most precious thing you'll ever lay eyes on―"

There was a bang on the door. Both sisters gasped.

"J-Just a second! Elsa, finish drying off!" Anna told her.

Elsa draped the towel around her body and backed into the bathroom, still trying to take in what she had just heard.

Anna opened the door.

Kristoff was standing in the entrance with his wrist against the frame. He looked up from his uggs and frowned at her imploringly. "Anna, we need ta' talk―"

Anna shut the door behind her and grabbed two fistfuls of his tunic to super-glue their lips together. He held his hat back and blinked at her freckles. Just as he was starting to close his eyes and smile against the kiss, she pulled back and thwacked his chest with the back of her hand.

"Ow!" Kristoff held his bosom. "That hurt!"

"Where on EARTH have you been for the last thirteen hours―"

"Fifteen," he dryly edited.

"―Fifteen hours? I have been looking all over Arendelle for you! Do you know how many gray hairs I have?!"

"Re-lax, Feisty Pants," Kristoff chuckled. He circled his arms around her waist and squatted a bit to tip his chin down and look at her over his bangs, shaking his head without breaking eye contact. "I was just taking care of Marshmallow like Elsa asked me to. He helped with the harvesting again (*), but getting him to stay put on my way back was easier said than done. You know how lonely the big guy gets up there (*). These four just happened to hitch a free ride on my sledge behind my back. Literally."

Although her palms were resting on his chest, she was too riled up to break her temper and concentrate on his body heat. "Who four? What four?"

The heads of four snowgies popped out of the mountain rucksack strapped to Kristoff's back. "Those four."

"Kristoff!" Anna's face was a page of exclamation marks. "Have you completely lost your mind?" she fumed, lowering her voice so that only he could hear her. "We can not keep them in here!"

"Do you see 'self-torture' written anywhere on my forehead? I didn't bring them here on purpose. It took me almost three hours to round them up after they spazzed out over that parade you guys were having for Eugene ― which didn't go too well at first, by the way ― so there's no way I would actually choose this type of torture for myself."

"Then hide them until we can take them back! If Eugene sees this many snowgies in one sitting, he's going to have a stroke!"

"Well, if Eugene is marrying into this side of the family, then he's just gonna have to get used to it." Kristoff sounded offended. "After all, Grandpabbie and everyone else are coming, too. They wanted to be a part of the wedding."

Hearing his attitude, Anna chose to trod on the matter with more sensitivity. "They are? But, how will they get here?"

"Trust me, they can travel like armadillos. Also, Grandpabbie had something he wanted me to ask you." He squeezed the wrinkles on his forehead as he tried to remember. "Nrgh, something about ― something about magic and souls. He said he wanted to know if Elsa knew ― or if you knew ― if there was any other magic in the castle."

"...Why would there be other magic in the castle?"

"Beats me."

It was past eight when Eugene's request had been granted with a twenty minute wait in the Royal Parlor. The room's modest Stave church design was the opposite of his grandiose renaissance parlor in Corona's onion domed castle, echoing the incompatibility of their royal occupants. He began to feel the minutes crawling over his arms like centipedes as he mused on the marriage that would dovetail them for life.

'Save your vomit for another day, Eugene,' he told himself. 'Don't think about that part right now. Now is just now. Just meeting in the castle to get the answers she should've given you a long time ago.' Ironically, his advice was easier to pitch than it was to apply. Playing thumb wars in his lap didn't mollify him, so he circuited the parlor's art gallery to pass the time.

Portraits of Elsa's parents were rife for yards, but not one casement framed Rapunzel's. A timeline of Elsa's childhood turned out to enwound his interest. In the paintings she posed for, she evolved from a girl with shy smiles to a girl with none. Then, as if there had been a death in the family, she was no longer featured in any.

Eugene reached the gallery's appendix. Towering over him with a height and width that made him stumble back was Elsa's coronation portrait. The twenty-one year old did not bear the aplomb of a monarch or the ferocity of the monster she had been called that night. Her expression, which caged bulbous eyes and tight lips, fit that of a convict before a mob. It took Eugene down two memory lanes: his own grisly coronation and his attendance to hers.

His old knack for conning people had made a woman's psyche easy for him to read, so he'd spotted the anxiety tinned inside the queen during her coronation. When Elsa's eyes had flashed down to the Crown Jewels, his had instinctively followed, and lo and behold, there was ice on her regalia. After rubbing his eyes with his fists in screw-turner motions, he had opened them to see Elsa smiling with her hands clasped as though nothing had happened. The bishop who pillowed the Crown Jewels hadn't detected anything odd about the items in his custody, either. These negations had forced Eugene to blame the phenomena on land-sickness, visual migraines, sunlight, and eye floaters even while his shoulder angel was telling him, "She has magic like Rapunzel did."

The ballroom shindig took the cake on the list of bad experiences. He remembered Rapunzel's mood oscillating between butterflies and willies as they stood in the line of dignitaries exalting Elsa. She hadn't been nervous about meeting Anna because they had written to each other before. Elsa had only written once a year after her accession, and when she did, it had been to politely congratulate her on a birthday; oftentimes she wouldn't even reply to Rapunzel's gratitude. Eugene had spent three years trying to kill Rapunzel's notions about "why Elsa hated her" by saying Elsa had hated herself. Because he'd slain a similar dragon, he had believed that one's self-image was the only reason why a relative would shut the world out and divorce themselves from their sunny family.

Where Elsa's problem had made Eugene uncomfortable was his knowledge of its side effects. People who isolated themselves were apt to grow up without empathy, which harmed everyone who tried to get close to them. Most turned out sociopathic or schizophrenic. As Rapunzel's watchtower, he had kept an eye on the new queen's interactions with Princess Anna in order to gauge her empathy level before encouraging his wife to engage. When Elsa had smiled upon the party with Anna, her face had paralleled Rapunzel's on the day she saw Corona's markets. Her childlike fascination, if genuine, had implied that Elsa had craved intimacy with people, but it faded the more Anna goosed her, which had fatally backfired on Anna. The redhead had abandoned Elsa's dais to flounder into the arms of Hans, and Elsa, who had chased her back with her eyes, left to flounder into the arms of depression.

Eugene had no intention of stalking the little grenade to lure her into Rapunzel's den of female fans and anti-Eugene envoys. He'd separated from Rapunzel's social circle to return with refreshments, but he had found himself docking on the balcony to unpin his sun brooch for reexamination. Being an ostracized prince hadn't been his new dream. Undulating with the impression that her skin would tear if touched, Elsa had stood some feet away from him as foreigners whispered about her unfitness to be queen; the silence prolonged by the damp stares Elsa and Eugene shared had been shattered by a drove of dukes who abducted her to talk about trade.

Elsa had recovered from the abduction with grace by putting on a polite mask, yet there had been something troublesome about her eyes—something she had been trying very hard to hide. Her royal overseer had liberated her before Eugene could have taken a shovel to it. Minutes later, Eugene had ditched the premises to find his wife, who, by that time, had been free to face Elsa, but finding either sister had been impossible, and the couple had been scheduled to leave Arendelle while the night was still young. They had been made to regret that decision after Corona had caught wind of Arendelle's tale, but Elsa, who'd utilized the following years to be as openhearted to the world as possible (via paper interviews and all), still failed at being the consistent cousin Rapunzel had wanted.

Eugene put the rotten reflection to bed as he walked down the last row of paintings. His eyes arrived to the heart-stopping art of what he reckoned to be a goddess from Arendelle's pagan myths. The dress she wore was magnificent and unconventional. Though the subject's hands were folded primly, her cocky smirk and mischievous eyes contradicted her pose. He was sure to have seen a shimmery deity like her on his orphanage's book shelf―

"Your Majesty?"

"Uh!" He cleared his dry throat and tracked his crier's voice back to the open door. "Yes?"

A liveried manservant stopped in the center of the room to report, "Her Majesty the Queen will not be holding audience in the parlor tonight―"

"What?" Eugene paled. "But Princess Anna promised me that Elsa would meet me here, to-night." He pointed to the ground to punctuate his urgency.

"Her Highness has made arrangements for an outdoor dinner instead, Your Majesty. Is that not what you requested?"

Eugene pinched the ceiling above his nose before staring at him with the face of an unimpressed showgoer. He smiled sourly and sugared his reply with a bittersweet cadence, "I'm sorry...but can you run that by me one more time?"

"Princess Anna made arrangements for your dinner with Queen Elsa. According to her, the change was made at your behest."

Eugene rocked forward on his soles. "At my behest, you say. Ah-huh. Interesting." He rocked backwards and folded his hands behind him, nodding up at the ceiling with a contemplative look, before cocking an eye at the talebearer and smirking out of irritation. "And, where exactly is this collaborative tête-à-tête taking place?"

"In the royal garden, Your Majesty. Princess Anna told Queen Elsa that you wanted to meet her for a lavish dinner, so Her Majesty has been...persuaded to wait for your arrival."

"...Un-believable. I ask for conversation, and Anna sets up a blind date in the cold." There was not much he could do except drag his body into Anna's trap with his tail between his legs, so Eugene fixed the collar of his golden doublet and followed her bloodhound outside. His legs were as supportive as jello as he walked between the veils of Monkshood flowers that chandeliered the pergola. The rock troll statues fringing the footpath were exceptionally creepy, which didn't help his goosebumps.

In spite of how uneasy he was about meeting Elsa for the first time, Eugene made it past the final pilaster without mishap. Crystal beads swung from the garden's trees like glowworm strands dancing in the breeze, conceiving the illusion that he was walking through stars.

"Wow" couldn't even begin to describe the feeling imploding in his stomach. Within five seconds, he had forgotten a fourth of his worries. It was not because his worries were one brick less heavy than they were before, but because an old and powerful adrenaline rush from his boyhood had pushed them out of his mind for a wink. He felt the same high that he would get when he used to escape into his orphanage's library on lonely nights. "I could get used to a view like this," he mumbled without a smile.

Eugene's fingers unrolled from his palm to touch a scintillating thread―

"This way, Your Majesty." His navigator presented the entrance of their destination.

With his heart performing backflips, Eugene walked away from the bead curtains and into the garden beyond. Trees covered in constellations of fairy lights bracketed a tall pergola on the flagstone patio ahead. The composition was so dazzling that anyone could've mistaken it for a fay haven where demigods served heroes. Eugene forgot how to walk, breathe, and think simultaneously. What he did remember how to do was hold onto the nearest crutch in case of a heart attack, which just so happened to be his guide.

The chaperon lost the feeling in his forearm as he tried to catch the king from tripping backwards. He pulled Eugene toward the pergola's mouth, where wisteria blossoms dangled from its latticed roof like purple waterfalls spilling over a precipice. After Eugene swam through them, he ducked his head under the last floral stalk and marveled at the splendor being reflected by his eyes.

Rated by him as the most beautiful fixture he'd ever seen was a crystal chandelier tied to the pergola's latticework. The stunning object hung above a fancy table that made him raise his eyebrows. On the table-for-two stood a silver candelabrum with three lit wicks. The silver candelabrum was companioned by napkins, wineglasses, and silverware, but there were no plates or Elsa. Clanking sounds shattered his assumption.

"Maybe next time," a man said.

Eugene looked to his right. The object on the floor took his breath away. What he at first fancied to be a runnel of diamonds was actually a sheer cloak redolent of Nimue's manteau in King Arthur. A longer inspection told him that it was bespangled with crystals. He followed the cloak's sparkly road to the glass heel pedestaling an ankle, and then hiked up the curve of the calf emerging from the wearer's gown―'Great balls of fire...'―before settling on the shimmer dusting a bare pair of shoulders.

The silver-blonde hair on the head between them was styled into a scrollwork coiffure, spoiling his eyes with a filigreed tracery of calligraphic curls and spirals. ''Wait ― t-time out...' Eugene's vision zoomed out. The subject in the frame was standing beside two footmen who were hassling with buffet servers.

"I'm sure your magic will work again once you sit down with the king, Your Majesty. A barren stomach makes it harder to think clearly."

"It worked just fine the first time." The human sapphire turned around and carried two loaded plates to the table, never looking up from the mental argument she was having with her feet. Her cloak floated on the air currents like a cobweb bedewed with water as she glided past Eugene.

Eugene watched the sparkler with a total suspension of thought. Her leg, which flaunted the pearlescent glow of chinaware, disappeared and reappeared in the high cut of her gown until she stopped to lay their dinner on the tablecloth. When she felt his eyes, hers finally touched his.

Sweat flowered under Eugene's armpits. 'This is going to be an even bigger nightmare than I thought...'