Heart is Where the Family Is

        Tree’s rustling in the wind was all Kristoff could hear as he tentatively placed his weight on his back foot. He could feel loose rocks slip and grind under his foot but the hold held. It wasn’t a sheer cliff, but he’d be hard pressed to stop himself, and none of the more jagged rocks looked too comfortable to him. The mountain man tested another grip, and took another step down. This wasn’t the easiest route to the bottom of the valley, the cliff seemed more like a pile of rocks than an actual mountain side, Kristoff had actually walked through the valley some dozen times but it was important he did it this way. He’d always done it this way.

        He hadn’t made this trip in years. Years upon years really. He must have been, what twelve? Thirteen? He shook his head at the thought.

        Another step down, but this time the tumble of rocks took him with it. Kristoff scrambled to grab anything as he slid down. Rocks slid with hi and by him, but he found a little outcropping and with some luck was able to grab it, his grip tightening as his full weight bore down on his hands. With a grunt he held on as more and large rocks tumbled past, he could feel a few cut his hands and tear little holes in his clothing. As the rock slide subsided Kristoff looked up to see a little blond head sticking out over the cliff where he’d started. He gave a friendly wave to assure her.

        It was nice that Anna asked to come along but the hurt look on her face when he said he was going down alone had driven a bit of the enjoyment out of the trip. He’d always done this alone ever since he first made the trip before meeting Sven. It was... right. It felt right. The idea of someone else with him for it was strange. Besides, Anna has Sven up there to keep her company. Regaining a foot hold, Kristoff started to head back down the last thirty feet of the climb.

        Some of the tree’s had fallen and new ones had grown up since the last time he’d come this way, but it wouldn’t hinder him in finding what he was looking for. They should be right near the cliff.

        A few feet away from where he’d reached the ground, at the edge of an old clearly now being invaded by small ferns stood two small, out of place boulders. Kristoff had remembered them being bigger, and as things always seem with memories, he couldn’t grasp on if it was because he was taller, or the rocks had simply been eroded away. The stones were black, different from all the other ones on the cliffside and Kristoff had always wondered who had put them there. He never remembered anything like that when it had happened, but he couldn’t remember much of it anyway and it always seemed to be slipping away. He rubbed some lichen off of the smaller of the two stones; the green flecks reminded him almost of hair with how they clung to the stone, before standing back and smiling.

        “Hey, mom. Dad. It’s been a long time, huh?”

He plopped himself onto the ground before the two head stones and continued with a dejected smile, “Sorry I haven’t been around, there was... well I’m sorry, I’ll try to do better.” The man looked around, almost embarrassed by what he was doing. He’d grown up with trolls but it was a little strange talking to rocks you knew couldn’t talk back. He scratched his neck, “Let’s see.. uh. Something new. Oh I uh, I met a girl. Two girls, actually. I’m sort of engaged. Not to both of them, just the one. Ah… it’s still kind of complicated, I don’t really want to get into it, you probably don’t have the time and.. ugh what am I even doing.”

        It had been so long ago that it was more of a story than a memory. People from a nearby village had found them, broken bodies and beams and a baby. They’d taken the child in, four maybe five at the oldest. They’d told him about what happened but Kristoff didn’t remember any of it. When he’d finally decided to come here, the stones were in their places. They never even told Kristoff if they’d been buried here it wasn’t exactly a barrow, but somehow the stones felt like the right place for them to be. He’d come her a lot before he’d found Sven. Kristoff sighed and looked back to the stones, “You’d like her I think, my fiancée, Anna. I mean I like. I’m just you know, guessing you’d like her. She’s uh.. She’s kind of the princess, you know, in that she is the princess.” Kristoff wondered if his parents would smile at that. He didn’t remember much of anything about them. Faces that were like you were looking through a haze, features that could belong to anyone, words that might have just been him hearing things came from those foggy lips with half seen smiles.

        It had been harder as he grew older. He didn’t remember much of his parents but what he did was just enough to send barbs at his heart, to needle him just enough to feel I He’d yell at his mother, at Pabbie. Seeing the others, the other trolls. With their parents growing up had been difficult. When anyone tried to find out why Kristoff was so agitated he could never explain why. The feelings were there, but at the time he didn’t know how, and he couldn’t say why, and that only served to frustrate him more. He was wrong, he’d thought. Something was missing, he’d been left behind. By the time he was fifteen he’d left, as much out of a need to do something as it was not wanting to be around people, even his adoptive family. For a long time after that he hated his foggy memories. That was when he promised himself he’d never come back to this little clearing.

        Looking back at it, he was ashamed. Kristoff had acted so, well, childish to his family then. But what did you really expect? And now today, it was his first time back.

        “Oh right, I uh, I’m the Royal Ice Master and Deliverer. The queen told me it was really just rank so that it wouldn’t be so, what did she say, scandalous for me to court her sister. Oh you probably don’t know, see the King and Queen’s daughter, Elsa? She had ice powers; there was a whole deal about it almost two years ago. That’s how I met them, actually, Anna and her sister. I guess I helped to save them, but Anna really did all the work. And the saving.” Kristoff had pulled his legs to his chest, resting his arms on his knees.

        It was nearly an hour later when Kristoff’s head finally peaked over the edge of the cliff and Anna hopped up from the log she was sitting on. She’d thrown down a rope after he’d nearly fallen down the cliff face, she was all for Kristoff and his little moments of bravado but she really would rather he not break anything.

        “Well? What was that all about anyway?”    

        “Oh just.. you know, visiting family.”

        Anna stared at him, she’d looked over the edge more than once while he was down there, it just looked like he was sitting with some rocks.

        Well, he was raised by trolls… I suppose not everything is right in his head.

        “Thanks for coming. I shouldn’t have just told you to stay here but it was, ah, something I always did alone before. But it was nice that you came along Anna.” Said Kristoff as he patted Sven, bringing him over to the sledge. He hooked the beast up to the vehicle and hopped in, Anna following suit.

        “So where to now? It’s only three.” Anna asked.

        “I don’t know, I’m just the guide.”

Anna smiled and kissed him on the cheek, “Let’s find some place fun”

        With a chuckle Kristoff gave the reins a snap, “Alright, but feet off the sled.”