King Agnarr's Journal

The Day Elsa Ran Away

One of the worst days of my life is when Elsa ran away from the castle. Elsa was 16 years old, she was startled by a maid who had entered her room unexpectedly. Ice shards flew up from the floor boards and nearly pierced the maid. Luckily they did not and this maid understood that it was just Elsa being frightened. But Elsa was absolutely distraught over the whole event. She cried and curled up on the floor. Neither Iduna or I were in the castle when this occurred. We were out in the kingdom working with the citizens.
I do wish we could have been there, so that she wouldn't have run away. When we returned, we were informed of the situation and went to Elsa's room to comfort her. She wouldn't let us get too close, but we eventually got her to calm down enough to where she said that she would be okay. Usually this worked with her, so we left the room to give her some extra time to calm down before dinner. We returned to our office where we were joined by Anna who had many questions about how our day went.

It was during this time that Elsa slipped down the servants stair case and into the kitchen before darting out into the woods. When it was time for dinner, I went to go see her to make sure that she was okay. I knocked for over ten minutes with no response, fearing that something was wrong I opened the door to find an empty room. My heart dropped and the breathe caught in my lungs. Panicking, I looked around the room but she was gone. I ran up to the dining room where Iduna was eatting and told her of the situation. The color drained from her face and the look of absolute fear came over her. Quickly, I called my most trusted guards and formed a search party for her. Iduna said that she would wanted to wait in the castle to see if she might return on her own. Respecting her wishes, I went out with the guards on horseback and entered the forest. The forest went on for miles and miles, my greatest fear was that we weren't going to find Elsa. As we rode through the forest, calling her name my mind was just spinning through all the possible ways we could find her. Most of which were extremely unpleasant. I couldn't lose my little girl, we had tried so hard to have her and she was so special.

We just had to find her. Minutes turned to hours as we went on, eventually having to light our lanterns just to see what was in front of us. I got to the edge of a cliff and got off of my horse, I called out her name once more wiping the tears from my eyes. I am not one to cry, but my wife and daughters always bring out my emotions. I looked down the cliff and noticed something on a ledge, it was Elsa! She had fallen off the edge of the cliff which was quite easy to do if you weren't paying attention. Without hesitation, I grabbed a rope and began tying it into a tree. Once I had done that, I started to make my way down. My guards were not happy that I did so, but what did they expect? I am her father afterall. Anyhow, I made my way down to the ledge before scrambling over to her. She was unconscious; a few cuts, bruises, and a broken arm but other than that she appeared alright. Tearing my coat jacket, I made a sling for her arm to keep it stable before tying her to me as the guards pulled us both back up from the ledge. Luckily, there were many guards there so it didn't take too long to get back up to the top. Once we arrived back at the top, I quickly put her on the horse with me and we went as fast as we could through the forest.

The terrain was rough and it was quite dark so it did take about an hour and a half to get out of the forest. As we rode back to the castle, I could hear mumbling coming from Elsa, this encouraged me greatly because I feared that she had hurt her head badly in the fall. The guards made sure that we got back to the castle as quickly as we could. Once we got into the castle, I held her in my arms as we ran to the royal doctor. He took Elsa into the small infirmary within the castle walls and started to examine her. Iduna was immediately informed and brought down to the infirmary to wait with me. She looked so stressed and scared, it made me feel so helpless. The doctor returned about an hour later with semi-good news. Elsa was able to speak and think clearly, this was such a relief. The bad part was that she had broken her upper and lower arm on the left side of her body. He was able to clean and stitch a few of the more serious cuts. He said that we could enter the infirmary, just as long as we were quiet and spoke in a gentle tone. We both went in to see Elsa playing with the cast on her arm, it was clearly quite painful for her. Iduna and I stood at the edge of her bed, hoping she wouldn't be angry with them for bringing her back to the castle. She simply looked at us and started to cry, mumbling that she was sorry through her tears. Iduna rushed over to hug her, being gentle enough with her fragile body. I was angry, but more sad by the fact that she had run away. I ended up joining Iduna in a hug, wanting Elsa to know that she was safe here. She recounted her story to us, though many parts had been lost due to her fall and unconsciousness. We did not punish Elsa for running away, we both figured that the pain she was going to endure would be enough.

But I did warn her to never do it again or else there would be much larger consequences. She agreed and the day ended with us sitting in the infirmary bed until she fell asleep. We decided it would be best not to tell Anna about the escape and say that Elsa had fallen down the stairs. It would raise less questions, though we both hated to lie to her. At this point in time, we felt as if that was the best thing to do.