This Icy Force Both Foul and Fair Has a Frozen Heart Worth Mining

What's the Next Step?

Finally coming back into full consciousness, I opened my eyes only to find myself completely engulfed in snow. It was white everywhere and cold, cold, COLD! I suddenly came to the realization that I lay flat on my back at that exact moment. It was all coming back to me, now. We had fallen off of a two-hundred-foot-high cliff face after being chased by a gigantic snowbeast. Hey, I had just taken a massive hit to the head. I could not help it if I was being a little bit slow. 

I was alive, though. I had actually fallen off of a two-hundred-foot-high cliff and lived! I had been right about the landing being just like landing on a pillow, after all. Landing on this much fresh powdery snow worked to perfection, even when falling from such tremendous and extraordinarily vast heights. 

I suddenly heard Olaf's muffled voice screaming from just above me. "I can't feel my legs. I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS!" he screamed out. 

I could feel someone holding onto my snow boots and shaking them desperately. I sat up and spat snow out of my mouth. Olaf's head and torso were both sitting atop me, clinging to my boots which were already sticking out of the snow. Obviously, the little snowman thought he was holding onto his own feet. "Those are my legs," I frustratedly corrected him. 

Olaf's real legs and belly suddenly came waddling by. He perked up at the sight of them. "Ooh, hey! Do me a favor, grab my butt," he said to me. I grabbed it, then picked up his head and torso and set his parts back together. He sighed in content. "Ah, that feels better," he said in relief. 

Sven appeared from behind me, and Olaf grinned. "Hey, Sven!" he turned away from Sven just as my friend was about to take a bite out of his nose, missing it. "He found us." Olaf then hugged Sven's muzzle. "Who's my cute little reindeer?" he cooed at Sven in the most ridiculous voice I had ever heard. 

I was disgusted by it. "Don't talk to him like that," I told Olaf, pushing him back. 

Olaf just laughed, waddling away. 

Finally, I noticed Anna nearby with her entire half beneath her torso lodged into the snow, struggling to get herself free. She grunted and twisted, attempting to pull herself out, but to no avail. 

I stood up and walked over to her. "Here," I said, grabbing her under the arms. I pulled her out of the snow with so much ease, it was just like lifting a feather. 

Then, I set her back onto her feet. "Whoa!" she exclaimed. 

"You OK?" I asked her. 

"Thank you," she said, smiling up at me. 

I smiled back, meeting her gaze. Actually I think that that very moment was the first time I had ever gotten a good look at her. She had stunning, strikingly beautiful blue eyes, and I just found myself sort of getting... lost... in... them... 

"How's your head?" she asked, reaching up for the spot on my head which I had banged against the cliff just mere minutes before and touching it. 

A sharp pain spread from her touch and I just winced at it. "Ah! Ooh! Ah!" I cried out, but immediately caught myself and tried to play it off with a small laugh. "Uh, it's fine. I'm good," I told her. "I've got a thick skull." 

I smiled at her again, and she smiled back at me. We wound up staring at one another once again. We probably would have been able to do it for a long time if Olaf had not delivered his own input on my comment about my skull. "I don't have a skull... or bones," he said. 

After our second little gaze-off, I began to realize that maybe my interest in Anna was growing beyond that of just admiration, and that it was perhaps showing too. But, no! Pfft, no! There is no possible way for it to be showing through. It was also ridiculous to think that I could possibly like Anna like that, right? Right? I did not know. It was all very confusing. Sure, she was such a fantastic girl and I really liked her. More than I had ever liked anyone before. But, how do you even decide just how much you like someone? 

At that very moment, I decided to turn my focus to the next step of our crazy little adventure. Anna was always the one with the plan, so I turned to her. "So, uh," I began. "So, now what?" I barely even had time to recover from strange little feelings fiasco. 

"Now what?" she repeated coyly, almost as though she did not fully hear me, but then my words began to process into her head, and she suddenly began to panic. "Now what? Ohhhhhhh, what am I gonna do? She threw me out," Anna continued to panic. 

I started to think that I should have just kept my mouth shut and searched for a different kind of distraction for me if this was the result from her end. "I can't go back to Arendelle with the weather like this. And then, there's your ice business_" she panicked some more. I had to do something about this. After all, I was the cause of it more or less. 

Luckily, I actually found myself smiling at her concern and knew just what to do about her panic without even realizing it. I held up my hands trying to calm her down. "Hey, hey, don't worry about my ice business," I told her reassuringly. And you know something else about it? I was actually being genuinely sincere towards her for the first time since we had met the night prior. 

Suddenly, something caught my eye from within her hair. That one streak of white in her hair was... was it getting thicker? It was. It was spreading over more of her hair. I could not help but stare at it like I had managed to stare at the ice palace before. "Worry about your hair," I told her. 

She frowned at me, seeming to once again misunderstand what I was telling her about her hair. "What?" she asked me. "I just fell off a cliff. You should see your hair." 

"No," I told her. "Yours is turning white," I added, telling her the full truth. 

"White?" she asked. "It's..." She picked up her right braid to look and watched as the entire tendril turned white. "What?" I heard her whisper. Almost the entire right side of her head was now the same color as the snow from all around us. 

I remembered what I saw back at the ice palace when she tried to talk to Elsa. "It's because she struck you, isn't it?" I asked her in concern. 

Anna looked up from her hair to me. "Does it look bad?" she asked, a little worried for my answer. 

I contemplated her question about her hair for a moment. The white in her hair certainly was a strange sight, but she could never look bad. "No," I said. 

Olaf raised his head up in between the two of us. "You hesitated," he said. 

"No, I-I-I didn't," I stammered, which I had to admit was unusual for me. 

I looked back at Anna. That white within her hair suddenly sparked a memory. The first night I had met my family, I watched Grandpabbie heal a girl with a white streak within her hair, just like Anna's. I tried to think about it further, it was so long ago, but who were those people that consulted my family? There had been four of them; a mother, a father, and two young girls. Wait a minute! 

I suddenly remembered... the trolls had called them 'your majesties'. That one little girl who had been healed by Grandpabbie that night had been Anna. I knew that white streak looked familiar. That settled it then. If Grandpabbie had healed her then, surely he could help heal her now, too. 

"Anna, you need help," I stated to her. "Come on." I began to walk. 

Olaf happily began to follow. "OK. Where are we going?" he asked. 

"To see my friends," I replied, picking up my hat which lay nearby. 

"The love experts?" Anna asked almost confusedly as she also began to follow me. 

"Love experts?" Olaf repeated excitedly. 

"Uh huh," I told them both. "And don't worry. They'll be able to fix this." 

"How do you know?" Anna wondered. 

I looked back at her, wondering myself whether or not I should tell her about when I saw her get healed last time. "Because I've seen them do it before," I replied to her. I suppose that she did not need to know the real reason her hair had that one streak of white within it in the first place. Not at that very moment at least. 

"I like to consider myself a love expert," Olaf said to Sven. Honestly, I could not tell whether or not he was being serious. 

I led the way there. The next step in our crazy journey; the Valley of the Living Rock in the Black Mountains.