The world seemed to be bleached out. By the stark, milky white of the sky, by the algid, brumal wind. By the whirling, swirling, dancing snowflakes.

By the weather of the Land of Snow.

Yesterday had been cold and dry without a speck of snow, but the snow was not unexpected. Their guide had informed them of the predicted weather. The dusty, dehydrated roads of the land were now finely coated with two inches of snow—and steadily increasing with each small flake.

Trees usually adorned by emerald leaves now gave way to a skeletal jacket of white. Their branches were barren and lifeless. Carefully stacked snow glistened and sparkled on the stripped branches. Every hour or so, a clump fell off and joined the millions upon millions of flakes onto the floor.

Blinding, blinding white mirrored by the sky and the floor. All was pure and fresh again. Old paths and new mounds were all covered by the natural eraser of snow. From roofs and outcropping juts and such hung clear, growing columns of ice. They sparkled clear and clean in the indirect light of the nonexistent sun.

This place, dust-coated with snow, was nothing, nothing like Konoha.

Though it was admittedly the first time he had ever seen or experienced snow, Uchiha Sasuke was quite unfazed. Irritated even. Such inclement gales and biting flecks of frozen condensation made Sasuke anything but a happy camper. The only inclination of such discomfort was the tightly knit eyebrows on his face, but even that small expression was quite commonly seen anyways.

But here he was, trekking through the abominable, soggy wetness called Snow. It was only his first seven minutes inside this new experience and he hated it already. He now not only cursed their mission to come to this place, but also the fact that Naruto’s cabin was all the way down the street from where his cabin was. After all, who would be so stupid as to design buildings in such a bizarre manner? Down the street, Sasuke scoffed and stomped down harder on the snow. The white became a filthy, murky brown.

The roads had not been sprinkled with salt yet.

His deep blue scarf fluttered into his face and blocked his vision momentarily. With a bit too much vengeance, he almost ripped off his scarf and threw it over his shoulder and behind him. The two long tails trailed behind him in a frenzied sort of tango with the wind. Every now and again, the small Uchiha fans at the ends of the scarf would peek through the folds of the fabric and show a flash of red hidden between navy blue. The bits of white which made up the fan were stolen away with the paleness of the snow.

His deep frown, though hidden by his scarf, creased in even more as he neared the building he was seeking. Building number seventeen right up ahead. He almost, almost shuddered when a particularly gusty wind swirled by him. When he stopped in front of the building, so did the steady crunch-crunching of the snow being crushed by his boots. He glared up at the large, bronze “17” above the huge, wooden door as if it had done him some wrong.

Large puffs of pale, transparent breath came whispering out of Sasuke’s mouth and through the holes of the scarf as he huffed a bit. He lifted his gloved hand banged loudly on the door. Clusters of snow and even a few icicles fell down, as if threatening him for disturbing the house’s occupant.

“Oi! Wake up, idiot! We’re going to be late! Naruto!” he yelled so that the entire street could hear him. The building in front of him stared silently back at him with its ominously empty window eyes. ‘No,’ it said back to him rebelliously. If it was even possible, his frown became even more vicious.

He was very near just kicking down the entire house just to drag Naruto out of his sleep. Two and three fourths of a second before he actually succumbed to the completely irrational thought, Naruto opened the door. The first thing he saw in the morning was a very petulant-looking Sasuke.

“What do you want?” he mumbled sleepily as he peered out the door with half-lidded eyes. He brought a hand up to rub away at his eyes. He didn’t actually seem to be aware of the fact that the weather was well below zero and he was only wearing a pair of thin, cotton pajamas.

Sasuke merely raised an eyebrow with a strange expression when he spotted the ridiculous looking hat sitting on top of Naruto’s head. Some sort of… weird creature biting his head? He never got to enquire Naruto about the stupid looking hat because just suddenly, Naruto’s facial expression completely changed.

His mouth fell open a little bit and his eyes widened. His pupils dilated as they were blinded by the whiteness of the day. If there had ever been a good expression of shock, this was it.

“It’ssnowing!” he exclaimed loudly, almost deafening Sasuke. He whooped even louder and rushed outside—with fuzzy, orange slippers and thin pajamas.

Sasuke had the chivalry to momentarily wonder if Naruto would die from hypothermia or something like that. Then he lost interest.

He merely watched as the idiot charged out there without a second thought. And expectantly slipped and fell onto the snow and ice. Naruto laid there, motionless, for several seconds.

“Mybutt hurts! Geez, it’s cold!” he yelled to the world at his awkward position.

Sasuke stood there for a moment, watching the breath trickle out of Naruto’s mouth and nose, before he flatly said, “Go get some warmer clothes on, dead last.”

“Okay.”

---

Fifteen minutes later, both of them were walking down the street in reasonably warm clothes.

“Sasuke?”

“Hn.”

“This is your first time in the snow, right?”

“Hn.”

“Oh. Okay. Then why the heck aren’t you having difficulty walking through this mush?”

Sasuke paused, for the twelfth time in fifteen minutes and watched as Naruto slipped, fell, and tried to pick himself up again. The boy struggled with the cold, slippery snow and slid around for a few seconds before Sasuke got impatient and yanked him up by the arm.

Naruto brushed his damp cape off futilely before continuing—or trying to continue—their walk. He huffed angrily as he watched Sasuke walking smoothly and calmly without the slightest slip-up. Sasuke glanced at him out of his peripheral vision. There was a short yell, a blur of yellow, and a swish of olive-green fabric—and again, Sasuke was stopping and helping Naruto stand up again.

“Are you vertically challenged or something, moron? We’re going to be late at this rate,” he growled angrily. He looked up at the opaque sky and blew out a stream of angry air at the deities up there, like some sort of offering to appease them.

“Not everyone can be perfect like you, jerk…” Naruto muttered through gritted teeth. He looked down at the powdery, perfectly smooth snow and took a cautious step forward. He ground down the powder with his foot before taking another step forward. Though his overtly chary method of walking was working, there was only one,minute problem.

“Sasuke-jerk, can you stop burning a hole through my head?”

“If you can walk a little faster than one meter per hour, maybe we’ll actually be able to reach Kakashi and Sakura before the end of this century.” His glare challenged the chilliness of the air.

Naruto halted, looked up defiantly, and glowered back at Sasuke.

A small yelp and tiny storm of disturbed snowflakes later, Sasuke muttered, “Let’s try something else…”

---

Now, not only had Sasuke’s morning been perfectly incompliable with his already-sour mood, but Naruto helped add fuel to the fire. At this rate, he said to himself acidly, he would have to learn to live life with only one arm.

Naruto was clutching onto his left arm with a death grip and certainly cutting off the circulation there.

Had it been just someone walking down the same path as they were, it could have been pointed out that Sasuke and Naruto looked suspiciously like a young couple going down the street. Of course, anyone who had the sanity and sensibility to want to live life in relative comfort and with all his limbs attached would not say any such thing. But it had to be acknowledged that with Naruto with his arms linked with Sasuke’s… it looked rather strange.

“There. See, I can walk perfectly fine!” Naruto puffed out his chest like a bullfrog getting ready to croak.

“Hey, this is kind of cool. Look!” he said, as if he had just discovered something amazing. He pursed his lips together as if he was going to whistle and let out a stream of amorphous, white breath. Naruto laughed cheerfully and continued to puff out lungfuls of breath as if he was some sort of locomotive engine, with white steam instead of black.

The white breath was shattered by the wind and was torn apart in its short-lived moment of perceptible existence.

“Oh… Listen to this…” Naruto stepped down deliberately on the snow and made the distinct noise of crunching ice crystals. “That’s a weird noise, isn’t it?” He chuckled as he lifted his feet and saw the footprint he made. He then went onwards to crush all the snow he could reach with his feet while being dragged along by Sasuke, who was growing more impatient by the footstep.

“Hmm, let’s see…” the blond hummed, looking up at the sky and allowing the snowflakes to fall onto his face and melt. He opened his mouth widely and stuck his tongue out. He continued doing this for a few minutes, like a frog trying to catch flies with a too-short tongue, until he had his fill of a few flake. “It tastes like nothing,” he contemplated slowly.

It took much effort on Sasuke’s part to not grind his teeth to naught or to shove Naruto off the nearest, ice-riddled cliff. He was upset at the fact that the weather was very much below his usual standards and that they had spent more time than necessary outside in such weather, but it was inevitable that they would be late. Never mind the fact that Kakashi would probably not there yet. Or the small knowing that Naruto was pointing out the most obvious things to him.

The usually pallid-faced Sasuke now donned a very red and cold hue on his face from the relentless battering from the chilly wind. Small flecks of snow that periodically flew into his scarf and immediately melted to a cold droplets of water didn’t help much either. He could justfeel his skin getting dried out by the cold and his lips slowly cracking apart.

“Fuu, it’s so cold!” Naruto complained bitterly after he had enough fun messing around with the weather. He ducked his head and used his hair as a small shield against the snow. “My ears are hurting so much right now! Aren’t you cold, Sasuke? Why is snow so cold? Great, now my head hurts because it is so cold! I’m going to get a migraine now. Why do you look so disgruntled, Sasuke?”

If Uchiha Sasuke had just one wish at that small moment, it would have surely been to go deaf—just for a while. Hearing Naruto complain at a distance was bad enough, but now, when he was not even eleven centimeters away from him—it was torture. Sasuke wasn’t even aware of how many times a person could rationally fit in the word “cold” into one breath’s worth of talk. He was certain that Naruto had broken all set records of such.

He stopped.

“Hey. Why are we stopping? Aren’t we supposed to hurry up or something? I don’t think Sakura will like this very much. Are you even listening? Hello? Sasuke, what are you doing?”

Sasuke turned to face Naruto and started to unwind his long scarf with much annoyance as the blond continued to babble on mindlessly. He could see his own breath swirl away from him since his scarf was no longer wrapped around his mouth and nose. A silent curse was said as the greedy wind stole away whatever left-over warmth Sasuke was savoring from the scarf.

He threw a loop around the blond’s neck and began to wind it around Naruto’s nose and mouth. Just to spite him, Sasuke made sure to wrap it around him extra tightly. Perhaps just a bit too tightly.

“Mmssmeh, mm’s nuu minght (Sasuke that’s too tight),” he mumbled through the super-taut wrappings of the scarf. He only pulled it apart a little bit when Naruto’s eyes began to roll towards the back of his head.

Sasuke watched Naruto for a few more seconds before he took his gloved hands, ran his numb fingers through the strands of hair, pressed his bangs back, and yanked up Naruto’s hood so that it covered over his forehead warmly. A piece of yellow hair fell back down. He glared at it with a look filled with a killer intent before he tucked it back under the hood of Naruto’s cape.

“Thanks,” he muttered, toasty warm now. It didn’t even strike him as a smart thought to pull up his hood.

“Let’s go, idiot,” Sasuke growled angrily and grabbed Naruto’s right arm and looped it through his own before trotting along quickly. The quicker they got to the meeting place, the happier he would be.

There was only a few moments of blissful silence before—

“Hey, Sasuke?”

“Hn.”

“Guess what?”

“Hn.”

“I took your ‘first time,’” Naruto snickered.

“What?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Your ‘first time,’ right? It’s with me,” he waggled his eyebrows suggestively at his teammate.

“What?” he asked again. He slowly unclenched his sore, frozen jaw. He wasn’t even aware that he had clenched it in the first place. He shook it off as an attempt to stop chattering teeth.

“The first time you’ve walked in snow, jerk. Your first time walking in the snow is with me,” he laughed raucously.

Sasuke slipped his arm out from Naruto’s grip and slapped him upside the head.

“Ow!”

“Why must you say it that way, dead last?”

Naruto laughed jovially at Sasuke’s reaction.

“Are you blushing, Sasuke?” he prodded into dangerous territory.

“It’s the cold, moron. You’re all red too!” he snarled and pushed Naruto into the snow, though it wasn’t as angrily as Sasuke had meant to be. If anything, it was even a bit playful.

Naruto scooped up a large handful of snow and packed it together. He discovered that though flaky and soft, it was still wet enough to pack together quickly. A crumbly snowball was formed within seconds. And it was thrown at an even quicker pace.

Inevitably, a small snowball fight had broken out.

People waiting and missions were forgotten for just a bit.

There were angry grunts as snow exploded on shoulders or stomachs, or even faces. Most of the snow surrounding them were scooped up with hasty hands and thrown elsewhere.

Their breaths swirled up into the air, quickly disappearing as the wind passed by them.

The wind was unrelenting, not caring if they were first-timers, not caring if they were completely clueless as to how to deal with this act of Nature.

Sometimes, the wind blew strong enough to throw the snow horizontally.

Their footprints were being slowly covered up by the thickening snow. Both of them were losing feeling in their feet, hands, noses. It was the first time they’ve walked in snow, felt the cold, or had a snowball fight.

The first time snowing—for them.

It was cold—terribly so. The air would crackle now, from dryness, from Sasuke and Naruto’s (but mainly Naruto’s) laughter, from the flakes falling down.

By the weather of the Land of Snow.