Loved - Gift or Curse

Loved - Gift or Curse

“Father?” Asked his daughter Elsa.
He looked up from the report he was scanning through. They were having a royal meeting, but since it was just the two of them it had fallen to silence as they read through reports to get an idea of what was happening in the kingdom. They were each reading about half of them and summarizing what they had learned.
He had used to read all of them himself but he trusted his daughter, she was smart and could summarize things quickly and succinctly. It wasn’t perfect but it got the job done.
She looked so pensive now. He wondered if it was one of the suitors. They were an issue, most were not worthy of her, but to be polite they would meet them and send them on their way.
“Yes, Daughter?”
Elsa looked down holding her hands together.
“Am I …bad?”
He felt a chill, and he knew it wasn’t her powers. He knew what question she was asking but desperately wished it wasn’t.
“Bad… at what?”
“At…everything. Is this a gift or a curse? I became frustrated at my math homework and froze the book.” She was looking at her hands. “I try so hard to be good, but it goes wrong all the time. It feels like a curse so often now. Am I really evil instead?”
He reached out to her, but she flinched back.
“No. No, you’re not evil. And you are not doing things wrong.” He and his wife had flogged this question to death between themselves. They had analyzed everything they did from the day they first met until the present time. They weren’t perfect, they tried so hard to be good but why did it seem as though everything was falling apart around them. Rachel had, more than once, in tears, confessed to minuscule sins. He had begged his wife to forgive him for fleeting thoughts.
They tried to make their kingdom a good one. Was their evil in their kingdom? Of course, but they tried to weed it out, without going on a witch hunt which was bad in a different way. And they were terrified that they might find out about their daughter and it would backfire horribly. So they had the watch keep a sharp eye out for wrong doers but made sure not to go creating something that wasn’t there.
“Is it a curse. I don’t think so. No witch or wizard ever pronounced one that we could find and they always announce it so everyone knows. The trolls asked if you were born with it or cursed. But we know you were born with it.”
He just didn’t see any evidence for such a curse. They had searched the royal records back for generations but had found nothing.
So it had to be a gift but why was it so double edged?
Where had it come from?
I know you aren’t perfect. That is part of being human.”
Elsa gave him a look.
“Even with your powers you are still human and my daughter and I love you.”
“I love you too father.”
She looked around a little.
“Father, Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why me? Why did all this have to happen to us?”
He sighed, “I don’t know. One thing I am sure of though. You…We can handle this. We are strong enough for that. I believe that you can control your powers.”
“Yes, Father.” Elsa said quietly. She wasn’t so sure. Her powers kept getting stronger. What used to work for her would fail after a few months. She kept chasing after her powers to control them. It never seemed to be enough. She had to be so careful about her emotions. They were somehow key to it all, but she couldn’t seem to turn them off completely.
“We are here for you.”
“Thank you, but you need to be here for Anna too.”
“And we are, which reminds me, we have to start her on riding lessons now that the weather has warmed up.”