.

༺[❄]༻|o0o|༺[✸]༻

"When the heart weeps for what it has lost,
the soul laughs for what it has found."

―Anonymous

With time avalanched more constraints. Her Majesty the Queen had spent the damper mornings of her fall riding South, where she had Novembered in the Republic of Båhus until Høsttakkefest had bannered Arendelle's streets. By tradition, Høsttakkefest marked a period in autumn when her kingdom gave thanks to the land in exchange for a successful harvest. The festival overlapped the annual Buferdsdagen, which was a day that saw Arendelle's livestock being shepherded from highland farms to lowland valleys before frost hit the crocuses. Eugene and Isolde had been absent from Elsa's Høsttakkefest family service, but she wrote to them in her nightgown about the hymns that she and Anna had sung with a children's choir, the lutefish eating contest that Kristoff had won, and the mischief that Olaf and Sven had gotten into at dinner.

In return, Isolde brought her northbound family up to date with her lessons and health. Art's historical romance with mathematics was written to have captivated her more than the story of whatever pheromones Romeo and Juliet had died for. There levitated from her whole letter a happiness expressive of her high spirits and the November victory that had lifted them. "I've been hale all season because I did what Daddy said," she underlined, "so I'll be in fine fettle for Tristan's mud race one day." Her words were a blessing to Arendelle and a planter of laughter in Arendelle Castle's garden.

Eugene shared with Elsa his enslavement to his programme. Corona's harvest festival had ended on the first Sunday of October, catapulting him into less colorful commitments that introduced rusty tankards and wagon travel to His Royal Daintiness. He had only enjoyed his interactions with commoners and their munchkins. Someplace between venting about face-slapping toupees and wig clips, he hinted at the idea of endorsing another expedition next year. Lucrative trading schemes were married to Eugene's musings, but with the occupation of other isles underway, funds for a concurrent voyage were better suited for inland projects from Elsa's point of view.

Eugene let Elsa have the final say on the matter because "a happy wife ensured a happy life." It was a recurring phrase that had gained momentum in bedeviling her.

Time and again, her spouse had taken to back-paddling at the first ripple of disagreement between them because of this gospel he sang. "You're right," he'd relinquish instead of speaking his true mind like he had done in the beginning of their marriage. "Rocking the boat" was a "no-go" for this honey-tongued pilgrim; he very much preferred smooth sailing without tsunamis, and would offer cringeworthy candlelit dinners by the seaside just to get it.

When first "a happy wife ensures a happy life" had disturbed Elsa's circadian rhythm was a mystery, but once it had been inside her blood, it had nauseated her for days. 'He's implying that the burden of maintaining a happy life falls on my shoulders,' she had believed. She had not wanted her manifold moods to make his life harder. She had not wanted to tire him with her verbal twisters. They had rammed into more than their share of icebergs, but keeping the breeze in their sails had proven to be impossible.

Rather than bottle up her megrim, Elsa had chosen to work into her anniversary letter an apology for the tempestuous nature she possessed. In it, she had neglected to mention the apology's provocation as to not appear as though she was affixing blame.

Her dreamer had been alarmed, and a little amused, by the sad little thing he had read in his bed. "If anyone is stirring up twisters in this marriage, it's this guy," Eugene had averred. "I think it's safe to say that you've been weathering my moods much more than the other way around, Elsa. Even if the roles really were as reversed as you think they are, I've been through it all, including dying...and somehow managing to still stay alive. There honestly isn't anything that you could do at this point to run me off.

It's me who's worried that one day you'll wake up and you'll realize that you've had enough. I worry about that day all the time. Being married to me never meant that you had to love me. Being married to you never meant that I wouldn't fall in love with you even though I was sure that I could never love anyone but Rapunzel. You and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best possible solution for us.

The 'best' one we came up with to 'deal' with how we felt turned out to be the worst, so we tried something better: we loved each other. As hard as it's been these past few years, I would much rather be with you than passing you by in the halls like you don't take my breath away when you smile. We both know 'conceal and don't feel' has never ended well for us in life. And now that we're finally here, I don't want to go back to where we said we should've stayed. I want this moment in time to last me a lifetime.

But if that day ever comes―the day when you realize that you deserve more than what I provide―then I'll support your decision, and just pray that whomever you fall in love with sees you for who you really are. But when we're together and you're happy, it makes me that much happier because I know you're still choosing to spend the rest of your life with me in the exact same way that I want to spend the rest of mine with you. I love you, Elsa. Icicle heels and all. And whatever it is you choose to do down the line, I'll always be here for you."

What terrible relief, pain, and warmth his words had churned in her, and all of it written without him ever knowing the cause of her plight! This confession, she had believed. This fear, she had understood. This truth, she had trusted. This letter...had made her cry.

Elsa's reply had poked fun at the irony surrounding their mutual positions to take attention off the bittersweetness. Then from him, she had borrowed the role of reassuring her spouse that her heart was steadfast.

"If you want my advice, it was never that deep," Kristoff had muttered across a plate of lutefish after hearing Elsa read Eugene's letter to him. "When he said 'a happy wife means a happy life,' he was telling you that he's smart enough to know he can't win an argument with Queen Elsa, and since his main interest is cuddling with you at night, trust me when I tell you that your husband? Is thinking about one thing and one thing only when it even smells like an argument is about to fumigate the room: 'How does this affect my married life?'"

Elsa had been appalled by Kristoff's impropriety.

Her brother had been enjoying his meal so fully that he'd forgotten to whom he was ranting until he opened his eyes. "...So the cuddle part made this awkward," Kristoff had finally digested.

"You think?" Elsa had mumbled to Sven between the gritted teeth of her awkward grin before realizing that she was gossiping with a reindeer.

Sven had licked her.

Nowadays, the motto "a happy wife ensures a happy life" was an annoying mosquito in place of being some onus that stepped on her heart. Kristoff maintained the presumption that Eugene was purely playing the part of the everyday husband in his forties. Elsa didn't care to espouse the fungus licker's nonchalance. She discountenanced Eugene's toadyism because it still blocked him from really listening to her. He never disrespected their handshakes by doing as he pleased behind her back, but she wanted to be heard. Rubbing sensitive toes until they curled was not synonymous with listening to your partner.

However little understood by her such a marriage may have been, she played her part by grounding her spouse without muting, pinioning, or snowing him. Anna would argue that she had a "thing" for nagging Eugene about petty things like finishing off her perfume, but in the right context, Elsa would elect the word "guidance." She had stopped herself from "over-guiding" him on how he could improve this, that, and the third about his ways for fear of wounding the precious orphan underneath. It was the business of allowing him to get off the hook with certain curiosities that just so happened to be non-negotiable. Eugene was a man who thought outside the box and wanted to do it all, chiefly the "extraordinary." Come what may from his astronomic ambitions, she couldn't deny that she envied his gumption.

Eugene didn't pray for the best returns on his investments. He demanded and expected them. Elsa organized timetables of what had to be accomplished each week so that she would never go astray or feel overwhelmed, but she was always praying for the best and planning for the worst. Her attentiveness separated her regimen from Eugene's go-getter style, which nevertheless hamstrung his ability to keep his finger in one pie at a time. If nothing else, Eugene could now depend on Elsa to flute the edges of the crust around his projects, and Elsa could depend on Eugene to add the fruit fillings.

Eugene supplied ideas. Elsa secured completion. Together, they had baked perfection―and sucked the results off their fingers after painting each other's noses with them. Mercy for the other's modus operandi, as he would say, had matured from their vow to strengthen their reversed weaknesses with ample communication. To be without was to be asunder, and asunder they had been.

How laughless those months had been. Back there is where "a happy wife ensures a happy life" may have been born. Before autumn receded from Arendelle's hairline, Elsa asked Eugene at once and altogether if the phrase belied resentment from that dark age.

Eugene's sworn statement disclosed that he simply wanted to preserve the privilege of spending time with his "foxy lady." He didn't want to talk politics till three in the morning on the night of their reunion. "I rather enjoy cuddling with my meltable wife, thank you very much," he spelled out in Kristoff's language.

Heavens, his wife. The title was still fraught with foreign overtones. Tremors had not been strangers to Elsa's lips when she had uttered the four-lettered thunderbolt in the dead of night. Eugene had learned to love on it, nuzzling the implications and kissing his way down the complications until the whispered word felt warm against her cheek, though never quite warm enough. The weight of its responsibilities and unconventionalities were still stuck in her stomach.

Elsa closed out their November epistolary with lighter news: her "Tradition and Inspiration" exhibition in Arendelle Castle's art stable had been a sensation. Timeless royal costumes, both national and magical, had been donated to the museum as staples of Arendellian culture. Elsa and Anna had proudly worn their mother's bunads to the opening. None so ready as Anna to give his stamina to every demand from the press, Kristoff had itched to peel off the interviews and his stuffy attire. Eugene apologized to Elsa for missing his chance to see her in a bunad and Kristoff in a tizzy, but he wished her a night of sweet dreams and fluffy sheep.

December brought Elsa neither. Before dawn haloed across the horizon on December 1st, she cracked her eyes open and saw grey. The color was not the color of her bedroom or the world beyond; it was the color of her mind. She looked over her shoulder for a silhouette of green and ginger. Anna was not in bed with her, but Olaf was.

Innocent and joyful little Olaf. He was trying to block out the grey with his head, eyes, and precious smile. Elsa wished she could smile as big as Olaf could. He shook her with the reminder that December was her and the Yule Bell's birth month. Hearing him was hearing nothing more than a muffled voice behind glass.

Olaf pulled Elsa up by her wrists and slid her toes into her blue slippers, caroling, "This December is gonna be ALL about looove and family traditions! And it kicks off the celebration of the best day ever: your birthday! Hooray!"

With an anvil for a heart, Elsa touched her snow-powdered window.

"…It can...still be the best day ever…right?" Olaf hoped, feeling the weight of her heart pancake his. He was standing in her shadow because he was waiting for her to turn around and suffuse him with the light in her eyes.

Elsa looked at her shoulder and greyly reminded Olaf that December was also Isolde's birth month. Olaf didn't answer her by gasping or berating himself for forgetting. His thoughtful silence told her that he had not forgotten. He had merely wanted to give her permission to smile first and cry later. She promised him that she would cry first and smile later.

Elsa sat down in her study to write to Eugene; ink ate through the paper that she tabled because the pen it seeped from stood lifelessly in her hand. The blank sheet of her mind was damp from tears and memories. A sunny hand warming her shoulder, though having no visible arm or body appended to it, revived her. Swooping pen lifts and loops ligatured the words that poured from her heart, but they did not flow with confidence. Sharp pains needled her chest and intense tremors terrorized her wrists, and all this due to Rapunzel's grave haunting her.

It was towards the suturing of the tenth paragraph, and while Olaf poked his sad head out from behind her study's door, that Elsa succumbed to covering her face with her hands. "..."

"Elsa?"

Her shoulders shook as she sniveled.

"...Oh, Elsa..."

"..."

—Shuffle—

When Elsa parted her hands, discovered by her dripping eyes was a face veil made from pink lace. It rested on her desk, put there by Olaf himself. Isolde had worn the veil in her toddler years to hide her so-called defect from Arendelle. Olaf didn't provide commentary; he allowed Elsa's bright memories of Isolde's growth from fear to fortitude to outshine her dark memories of Isolde's birth. Olaf's efforts were rewarded by her with one of those warm hugs he loved.

Elsa resolved to let Olaf help her finish her letter. Thereafter, she had it rowed to Corona together with Isolde's early birthday card. Rowed back to her was a merry reply from Isolde. Eugene's epistle arrived a week late on a stormy night. His sodden letter captured the heartache and comfort that December brought both daughter and father every year.

As he had the December before, Eugene told Elsa that they were more than blessed to have her brought to them by Rapunzel. Elsa told him, as the Northern Lights rainbowed her face from her bedroom window, that she had been no less blessed by the same guardian. Boarding Fairhair on December 16th required bravery from the gut. With her tearful yet mighty Anna enthroned as her regent, Elsa sailed to Corona to support Eugene's memorial week for all who had died at the talons of the Southern Isles during the Great Famine. No Coronan era had ever been so horrific or hopeless.

King Ragnar had officered the fusillade by planting corrupters in Corona's government and purposely spreading disease by boat. The Bovi Fever's late incubation stages had served to cause the most harm to Corona. Death had been rife long before the kingdom had seen itself seized by Southern Isler fleets. Elsa knew not whom she would meet on the island kingdom's pier at dawn today. Either a frayed king or a king who had been sewn back together by duty awaited her there, but it was her duty to be strong for him.

She surfaced from the mouth of Fairhair on a snowless sunrise, lifting the hem of her dress off the gangplank as she glided. Everyone on the island was still for her. Seeing Eugene, cloaked in fur and still golden despite the weather, made her want to close the gap that the Corona-Arendelle Union had widened between them. Eugene was too ensorcelled by the sunrise she was gowned in to process his thoughts, but he dimly realized that two skinny arms had pulled him forward. A whimper gushed from Elsa's smiling mouth.

She perched her moist chin on his capelet and held his shoulder blades with her palms, squeezing him against her body. Her heart stuttered when she felt the dimple in the corner of his mouth smiling against her braid, the sigh leaving his piping hot nose as he buried his face into her shoulder, and the hand squeezing her other shoulder as his arm pressed her against him. She felt all of him—all of him dissolving into salt water and Stargazer lilies and hot summer mornings—like the hug had just allowed him to breathe, to be. Warm from chest to hands, Elsa peeled her cheek off Eugene's neck. He looked all over her parting form with a strand of her hair pasted against his damp nose.

Elsa cupped his jaw to press her lips against his forehead. He held the hands holding his face to anchor himself to her. The sunrise that blinked between their chins was warm.

Elsa remembered telling him back when she couldn't console him after King Ragnar's invasion, "I sincerely wanted to be the one running down that dock to pull you into my arms, Eugene." Now she was that person.

Upon Elsa's horse-drawn homecoming, Corona's parade purpled the town square. Children waved sun banners while soldiers rode through the snow with memorial flags on their shoulders. There were pennants, suspended lanterns, pageant wagons, decorated barges, music, and love coming from the kingdom's heart. Without was Corona's once legendary fear of Elsa's winter magic. At the foot of Corona Castle's ramp, Big Nose summoned to Elsa's presence a band of friends from the Snuggly Duckling, and with them, presented a bouquet of snowdrop flowers to her hands.

The smile she shined on the gift and its givers was so warm that Hook Hand asked her to be careful not to make spring bloom too early even though he would very much appreciate it.

Attila, muffled by his horned helmet, took Elsa's hand between his large mittens and mumbled something close to, "Your raiment is nice. Do you have one in menswear?"

Elsa's awry grin and back-leaning posture pried amusement and sympathy out of Eugene. She punctuated her dragged-out "thank you" with a question mark that flew over Attila's head.

Hook Hand spooned in, "What he meant to say is that we're all very happy to see Your Majesty again."

"And she's very happy to see YOU gentlemen again, trust me," Eugene piped up, preparing to save Elsa from her own shyness, but four munchkins bolted between his legs. "Wha-ho! Where's the war?"

Big Nose's quadruplets called themselves vying for Elsa's attention by insisting upon carrying her white train to the castle's portico. A breathy giggle pervaded her modesty. The sisters were eager, sprightly, and squeezable, and rejection seemed more a punishment than a courtesy to them. Elsa humbly ceded herself to the nymphs as a mere servant to their girlish whims. Behind her they danced, gushing over their fluffy new plaything.

The doors of Corona Castle moaned at being pushed open. Big Nose and his fellowman pulled them back wide enough for Elsa's view of the castle to stand uninterrupted. Here was where Rapunzel had died. Here was where Isolde had been born. Here was where she would sleep.

Elsa drifted through the doors of the castle with her dress rippling and lapping against the shore of the floor. Her face, matured by loss and pain, was reflected in the mirrors she walked past. Her eyes, so heavy and hot, carried the unshed tears of a sad woman, owing their sadness to the fact that her cousin was still gone. Elsa felt her inheritance from Rapunzel taking his place by her side. He was looking at what she was looking at and saw what he always saw looking back.

Elsa spoke to him like one in a dream, "I had a dream last night that we were all together."

"…"

"..."

"…Well," Eugene whispered with a stuffy nose. His fingers trickled down Elsa's wrist and slipped into her hand.

Elsa looked at their interlocked margins before looking at him, searching for the placement of his heart.

"At least one of us still gets to see Rapunzel in our dreams." Eugene's eyes were pinker than the morning sky and soggier than her own two eyes, but her smile was feebler than his.

In his face, she saw suffering that had been accepted by his body for many years. The growing pains that came with coping had not stopped. Years had flown, and their bones were still moving to make room for their new selves one rib at a time.

"But, as of right now,"—Eugene led Elsa to the sunlight ribboning the staircase—"there's a certain special someone who's absolutely dying to see your face."

Elsa's heart regrew its wings. Big Nose scooped his nosy daughters up into his arms and reddened their cheeks with kisses to distract them from the couple heading upstairs. Elsa opened the door to a room of murals that stretched from floor to ceiling. Puddles of rainbows painted the floor underneath the vestibule's wooden A-frame beam. One puddle was still being made from the droplets that fell.

Elsa looked up. Mounted on the wooden beam in a yellow nightgown was Isolde with her paintbrush. Shrieking, Eugene ordered his adventurer to get down from there right this very moment—

"ELSA!"

—but seeing Elsa's face was the deciding factor. Isolde corkscrewed down her rope and ran to her guardian. Elsa held her arms out for her lifeline. The child nosedived into her embrace, pushing out from Elsa's chest a breath. Elsa sat on her haunches and pressed her cheek against Isolde's scalp to deepen the hug. Rapunzel's last drop of sunlight felt so dissoluble in her arms.

Sighing, Elsa held Isolde's head between her hands to look down at her when she looked up.

The sunbeam spoke as well as she could about her new mural; her little head bobbed with every run-on sentence she made as she kept her chin embedded in Elsa's chest. Her chocolate fondue eyes were framed by eyelashes long enough to brush the skin beneath her eyebrows when she blinked them. She didn't notice the tear falling from Elsa's smile until it tapped her on the nose. "Your eyes!" Isolde squealed like a piglet. "They're all wet! Why're your eyes all wet, Elsa?"

This time it was Elsa's finger that tapped Isolde on the nose. "Because seeing your smile makes me very happy, if not more than."

"Happy people don't have wet eyes," Isolde educated, irritated by her own confusion. "Only sad people and all the cookie-pushers—"

"Cookie-pushers?" Elsa echoed, suspiciously eyeing her father.

Eugene's shrug was overly theatrical.

—"whose toes you step on during those boring ol' waltzes. Huh, Daddy? That's right, isn't it?"

Elsa's quizzical face made room for a smirk. She opened one eye to Eugene without turning her head away from Isolde.

Eugene cleared his throat and stretched his collar for air. "Um. Cottontail?"

"See?" Isolde returned to making Elsa her priority. She placed her hands on Elsa's bare shoulders and ordered, "So you have to tell me why you're sad because I said so, alright?"

Elsa's astonishment broke out into peals of healthy laughter.

Eugene stole this chance to excuse himself with his daughter. Elsa watched him hunker down to Isolde's height to remind her about the number of times he'd asked her to paint in hazard-free zones. The lecture was verbose and all over the place. His strokes of her long hair became increasingly frantic the deeper he dove into the types of accidents that could have happened. "Because Sunshine," he was saying now, "when I tell you that sky's the limit, I mean metaphorically, not literally. We've been over this."

"But I wasn't going ta' get huuurt," Isolde whined, adding the musical lilt that all prepubescent negotiators did.

Elsa sat beside Eugene on her knees, hands positioned elegantly in her lap. "Your father's right, Isolde," she contributed with a voice that was softer than cotton, yet its softness didn't sting Isolde any less. Elsa melted for her. "But..."

"What?" Eugene exclaimed, emphasizing the "t" in his pronoun. "Since when did you start condoning 'but's'?"

Elsa's fancy handwork formed a spinning wheel of blue snow dust that left Eugene speechless. " I think we can find a way to bend gravity's rules just this once."

"...Oh, now you're just showin' off."

Isolde jittered with excitement from seeing Elsa's magic snake under her feet and levitate her off the ground. She turned her body around as the snow dust flew her to her unfinished sky lantern.

Eugene watched his daughter paint from her new safety booster. It was not the first time that he had seen Elsa win Isolde over with magic, but it was the first time that he pleaded, "You have got to stop ruining my reputation as the cool dad."