Royal Family Tales #1 - “Mister Beef”
Raising kids is challenging at best, but raising Anna and Elsa is a whole new thing on its own. One of our many stressful days happened when Anna was still baby and Elsa was a three-year-old who talked way too much and ran way too fast for someone with such short legs.
I was helping miss Iduna to change Anna’s diapers when we got distracted for one whole second. A mother knows this mistake is unforgivable. When we looked down, the tiny albino had disappeared and the redhead was peeing all over the table again. I offered to clean the mess and sent the Queen to do the running for once. She was younger than me, she should have more stamina. She came back minutes later saying she couldn’t find her daughter, I had finished with the baby so I joined the search hoping Elsa had left a little bit of snow behind like she did sometimes.
We were out of luck, and the stress levels were rising fast, we were about to put every soul in the castle after the girl when we met King Agnarr talking to something inside the fireplace. Here is some context: after the girls were born every fireplace got their stylized grid. The goal was to avoid children too close to the fire, but we underestimated Anna and Elsa’s potential. We were all fools.
Inside the hearth, covered in coal dust, that royal goblin tried to catch a mouse. Agnarr was begging her to come close, at least at arms’ length to pull the kid out, but she refused, arguing that Mister Beef had to be saved! The rat. The filthy rat she struggled to hold.
“It’s biting me!” she kept saying and screaming in pain but refused to let go of the animal.
“Elsa, we can take it out later, but you need to come to dad,” said Agnarr.
“I can’t leave him. He’s my friend“.
It’s a rat!
Iduna rushed there and realized that there was still some burning ember somewhere under the coal. The smoke was starting to come out and they needed to get the girl out fast. Wisely the Queen ordered the servants to bring anything to smother the fire. Agnarr’s pleas became more and more urgent until Elsa finally started moving. By then the coal was hot and bright, he had to ask her to stop coming towards him cause there was fire between them.
Help was taking way too long, but then we all joined to try to encourage the girl to use the ice powers.
“Fweeze!” Elsa commanded shaking her hand towards the coal as we kept cheering like a bunch of stressed-out idiots ready to have a group stroke.
It worked. After struggling with the grid we managed to get Elsa through and by the gods... It was Jesus’ grace that stopped me from spanking that kid in front of her parents.
There was a lot of angry talking. But as the good unofficial counselor that I am, I guided both parents through the competent parenting method.
I asked Iduna to hold Elsa in place, the kid was trying to distract them with the rat and wouldn’t look at their mom's eyes cause she knew she had done something bad. Iduna really struggles to be harsh with the girls, but I help her, I make sure she states that Elsa had acted badly, that she disobeyed mom and dad, and that it is not acceptable. We both proceeded to explain that because of her attitude she would be in time-out and that she would have to leave the rat outside. Unsurprisingly the child started crying and begging to stay with the rat, but that was not up for discussion. It was then Agnarr’s time to explain why that was such a bad thing and how dangerous it was. Different from Iduna Agnarr is very good at discipline and yes, I know I said I wanted to spank her for that, but truly I’m more of a scary slap on the table kind of woman, not an actually hitting the kid, but Agnarr is very comfortable with that. I can’t pretend my heart didn’t hurt a bit when he hit her. Iduna almost slapped him for that, but that was something they would fight about in private.
Iduna took the weeping kid on her arms and we went outside to get rid of the rat. It was away more emotional than I expected it to be. Elsa spoke to it like it was her soulmate and hugged the little monster only to be bitten again, now on her face. We called the healer immediately, Odin knows the number of illnesses that animal could spread.
By night everyone was feeling better and all the grids were about to be replaced. Mister Beef will be forever in our hearts and probably inside our castle too...
