Frozen Fandom Month: Duos Week: "Kristoff and...Elsa."
Elsa was heading towards a quiet corner of the palace grounds to take a breather when she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a tall man with a shaggy mop of blond hair duck into the stables. Undoubtedly, it was her sister's Kristoff, and Elsa felt fairly certain he had seen her. Was he avoiding her on purpose, then?
Perhaps it wasn't just her, she reflected, as she directed her steps towards the broad, low building. Shortly after he and Anna had started seeing each other, Elsa had told him he was welcome at the castle anytime between ice trips, but with the exception of a few dinners and casual afternoon visits, he seemed to feel more comfortable outside the castle building itself, especially favouring the stables. He had to keep Sven there, somewhat reluctantly, and he had also made friends with several of the workhands.
At that moment, Kristoff was alone with the animals, prodding hay into piles with a rake. Elsa smiled slightly. In that way he reminded her of herself--hardly ever able to allow an idle moment.
"Kristoff," she called. She wondered why she was doing this, but surely it would do no harm to get to know her sister's beau better, for they would be seeing much of each other in the months to come.
Startled, he turned, wiping sweat off his forehead with a large, callused hand. When he saw who had called to him, he quickly straightened, dusting off his shirt and bowing somewhat awkwardly. "Um, Your Majesty."
Though Elsa couldn't help but approve of his civility, she laughed, waving a dismissive hand. "There will be no need for that soon, I hope." Yes, it would be months before he would work up the nerve to ask for Anna's hand, and certainly she did not mean to make his task easy, but she knew that eventually the day would come.
Unsure of what she meant, Kristoff ran his hand through his hair. "Uh...so can I help you, ma'am?" He looked nervous, uneasy, but Elsa's sharp eyes picked up an undercurrent of suspicion, maybe even resentment, in his face. It puzzled her.
"I'm not here as a queen, you know," she assured him. "Just as a person whose sister you are courting, naturally interested in knowing you better."
It was doubtful how much more comfortable that made him feel.
Seeing that he was at a loss, Elsa sighed slightly. All the same, she could not deny rather enjoying the sensation of being on top of the situation, something she felt all too little. "How are you finding the palace?"
"It's all right, ma'am," he said, noncommittally. He wrapped his fingers tighter around the rake in his hand as though itching to get back to his work.
And here, Elsa realised, lay the issue. Naturally, raised by trolls, an ice harvester by trade, Kristoff was unaccustomed to such opulence. The endless meetings and formalities and balls probably bored him as much as they perplexed him--for sometimes even Elsa, of royal birth, felt overwhelmed. "It must be tough on you to adjust," she said sympathetically.
"Not really--" Kristoff started to say, and then changed his mind. "Sort of."
"Anna's worth it, though?"
He smiled then. He had, Elsa thought, a nice smile. Reserved, but sincerely happy, with none of the false quality Elsa saw in the smiles of her officials and visiting diplomats. Much like the man himself. "Yeah," he said, somewhat bashfully. "She is."
"I suppose you weren't thinking that she would have a castle to go with her."
"Truth is," Kristoff answered, "I wasn't thinking of finding a girl at all." He hesitated. "But yes, I associated settling down with a little cabin in the woods, not with Arendelle Castle." His tone was light, but something in his face betrayed that this had been a smashed ideal of his.
"A cabin." Elsa now realised she had never thought to ask where Kristoff stayed on the nights he was not at the castle. They had given him a nice room in the far wing. Yet, according to the servants' reports, he very rarely occupied it. Did he have his own house, then? Or did he just sleep in the woods? Anna had told her he knew how to build a snow shelter. "We can probably manage a cabin."
Again Kristoff fell stubbornly silent. To Elsa, searching for another subject to pursue, the silence was excruciating, though normally she treasured it. Thankfully, she was saved--and momentarily shocked out of her wits--by the horse in the next stall, neighing and pawing at the ground.
Kristoff hurried over, trying not to betray relief. "Something outside probably spooked her," he said, taking the horse by the head and attempting to calm it down. Elsa watched, fascinated, while he ran his hands soothingly over the horse's neck, murmured words of reassurance. Finally the horse stilled. "Good girl," he whispered, offering her an apple, which she crunched between her teeth.
He noticed Elsa still looked a little startled. "You all right, ma'am?"
"I'm--I'm fine." The young queen chastised herself for losing composure.
"You been with horses?" The question was rhetorical, clearly; Elsa's smooth white hands looked as if they had never held the reins.
"Not for years." Dimly, Elsa remembered a dapple grey, remembered galloping over green fields. What had the horse's name been? Bjorg, she thought.
"Some spook easy," Kristoff said, not voicing his second thought: just like you, ma'am. "But you should ride again one day, with Anna. She would enjoy it. You both would."
"Perhaps." The idea rather appealed to Elsa. She had too many experiences to catch up on, things she had missed in her years of isolation.
Then Kristoff smiled again--two smiles in only a few minutes!--and he showed her how to brush the horses down till they were sleek and shiny, and gave her a lump of sugar to offer to the gentlest steed. She even worked up the courage to stroke Sven, his fur rough yet soft beneath her fingers, and he nuzzled right up to her, and in that moment Kristoff saw a glimpse of the carefree girl she could have been.
Swiftly, it passed, and again they were facing each other, formal and slightly stiff, but there was a spark--a common understanding, perhaps even a camaraderie, that had passed between the two.
"I have to go back to the castle," Elsa explained, folding hands slightly dirt-stained. "Anna is somewhere about--I hope to see you there soon?"
In that question (a request, not an order, Kristoff realised), Elsa offered him a welcome, something that few people in his life had done. He would be a fool not to accept it.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered, and then she was gone, leaving him alone with the horses.
No comments:
Post a Comment