Hello everyone! This is my first Hetalia fanfic, so I don't know how I'll do, but with any luck it will be decent enough. Obviously I don't own Hetalia (even though that would be awesome). Anyways here it is!
In the freezing landscape of the arctic, one would not except to find too much. The snow was easily up to the upper calf of a full grown man, and to make problems worse, the top layer of snow was in a frozen state. In theory, this made it possible for a lighter weight being to walk across the hard snow. However if the weight suddenly became too much, then whoever was on it would fall and would have to suffer the consequences of cutting any skin that came into contact with said snow. Though in these temperatures skin should not be exposed in the first place, for the arctic was a fine friend of negative forty weather.
That does not include wind chill of course.
However, if one looked closely enough, there were not just polar bears and arctic foxes who have adapted to these temperatures present. In the fine drift of snowflakes that was being blown around in the breeze that could leave freezing cuts on cold skin, one could see a tuff of blonde hair dancing with the gusts of wind. The white cloth that accompanied it was ruffling along in the same direction, with pale skin in between them, having two splotches of red on the cheeks. A dark purple colour could be seen from half open eyelids, and was shiny from the tears that were attempting to run down, only to be frozen to the face. As if that wasn't enough to obscure the view of those eyes, there were two tiny pudgy hands that were rubbing them.
This creature of course was a small child; a small child that was whimpering and sobbing neither less, but at least it was living. That's a start.
"So cold." He sobbed. However, if there was anyone there, it was unlikely that they would understand exactly what he said. The child knew no language, so the sounds that came out of his tiny mouth were gibberish at best. He, for one of his own kind, was still a little young the knowledge of true language.
As that moment the hard snow suddenly gave way, revealing the soft snow underneath. The child plummeted, the snow scraping his miniature leg. The ghost of blood was left behind on the sharp edges of the snow. The child cried louder, now in pain. He sat down, feeling hopeless. It felt to him that he had been alone forever. With that thought, he tried to remember his past. However, no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember any parents or where he came from. It was if he just appeared out of no where one day in this cold landscape. For a moment he thought he remembered a pale face with blue eyes smiling in a warmer climate, but then the image was gone and refused to reveal itself once again. The sensation of warmth that accompanied the image suddenly disappeared, and the child shivered once more.
He felt lost, confused of not only where he came from, but even where he was going was a mystery. All he seemed to know was that his miniature fingers felt like ice, how to cry, and hopefully how to put one stubby foot in front of the other. However even this was starting to get hazy on the uptake.
The child continued to cry for a couple of minutes more in the little hole he made with his weight, until he decided to put himself out. The first couple of attempts did nothing but pull chunks of hardened snow down into the softer snow layer, but eventually he got himself out.
At that moment he suddenly heard this horrendous wail of pain. It sounded as if the frigid earth had opened up, and cried out in agony. The child was startled, and his eyes widened with fear. Whatever it was, it wasn't human. He never heard anything like it before. With this thought in his mind, the fear was eventually replaced with childish curiosity, and he went toward the sound, trying the best that a three year old equivalent can do to not break the hard snow, and to be careful with his slightly injured leg.
Within about five minutes or so, the child saw something in the snow. Actually it was more like some things. There was a staggered trail of tracks in the snow, easily breaking through the top layer. However that wasn't the only peculiar thing about the sight. Littered around the tracks, though slightly more focused on the left side of the tracks, had red… colouring seeped into the frozen precipitation. The child looked at it in cautious wonder. It was the same colour that came out of him when he scraped his leg.
"Someone hurted themselves," he mused, that being the closest translation for his thoughts. Despite his limited amount of reasoning he had at his disposal, even he figured out that with more of the red stuff fallen around, whatever "hurted themselves" was more injured than he was. Intrigued, he stepped into one of the tracts.
The track was at least ten times larger than his own foot alone, and probably with the snow broken around that tract that was engraved into the bottom layer, it made it seem more like 20 times larger. When he looked down at the engraving, he found that the foot was unlike his own. Proportion wise it was wider, and had five divisions in it. There was also the obvious fact that the red frozen liquid stuff was on it a little bit too, like everywhere else in the trail. The child saw a game in hopping to the next print, so he did so, bracing himself every time he did so.
Amazingly he managed to not kill himself playing this. To a normal sized person, that is not a big deal, but when there are stuffed animals that are taller than you, the success of it all suddenly takes upon itself a whole new level.
Eventually this game that should be dubbed The-Miracle-of-not-Metaphorically-Dying led the child to a cave. By this time the red dye stuff had increased in amount on the ground to the point that there was more of it than snow in the path it seemed. While there was a slight howl in the wind, the child could hear whimpering within the shelter. Curious and freezing cold, the child decided to go in.
While the small cave was dark, he could still see pretty well due to the light outside. He saw a huge white creature, with a giant wound just below its left shoulder, and in front of its mouth had this… other type of animal on some sort. The child didn't know what it was, but it was huge. Not as big as the white fuzzy thing, but still, it was larger than him. For some reason in which the child could not figure out, nether was not moving at all. Not even to breathe.
The whimpering continued however, and the child turned toward the sound. It was another creature that was white and fuzzy, but not as big as white thing number one. In fact, it was slightly smaller than the child himself. It was nuzzling the other fuzzy creature's fur, getting a little bit of the red liquid onto itself. The child thought he saw tears coming out of its eyes.
"Mommy." The bear cried softly, sadness with just a twinge of unanswered hope creeping into its voice.
Now for any normal people, would do one of four things in any order and combination, one: try to make sure they are not dreaming, drugged or intoxicated. Two: run away. Three: capture it, and four which is reserved for modern day citizens only is to record it via cell phone, and THEN run away, posting it on Youtube later for more popularity in virtual reality.
However this child did none of these things. He did not know that talking white blobs of fur was not normal, and decided instead to sit down beside it, somewhat puzzled. Mommy? He figured that was something nice, but for some reason it was causing this little being so much pain.
His subconscious caught on before his conscious ever did. Tears streamed down his face that had previously dried up sometime during his quest for that strange sound. Needing comfort for some reason he couldn't quite grasp, he grabbed the other whimpering mammal and held it close to him, shoving his little face deep into its fur.
This surprised the other animal, who didn't even realize that someone else was there. However, due to either grief or feeling comforted by the gesture, the creature did not move for some time.
After a while, the white baby animal stopped snuggling the larger form of itself and moved away from whatever was hugging it just enough to see the child's face. Even though there was some sort of liquid that was coming out of every possible place in its face, the purple eyes showed promise of kindness and gentleness. The small animal felt content and safe with this being.
Though one question had to be asked. A very important question indeed.
"Who are you?"
"Kohe jeis memi Kumajiro" The boy babbled and his adorable small voice. The fluffy mammal relaxed, content with the answer.
"I am a friend," was of course the translation.
So that is the end of chapter one. Sorry that it had so much fluff in it, but I wanted to write something for Hetalia, and this is what came to mind, one night at four in the morning, so I decided to write about this. The advantage of writing stories like this is at least you can't mess up on the history too much, and if I write other Hetalia fanfics, I want to make sure I got the history right.
By the way, yes, snow can get to be like that, with a hard top and soft underneath, and yes, snow can cut you. I have bled because of snow before.
I don't know too much about polar bears lifespan, so I don't know how old Kumajiro would be in this story, but pretty young, probably just at the stage of just finished weaning. This story, hopefully, takes place at the end of winter, but the scenes that I describe and the age of Kumajiro especially might not fit that. Remember though, that Kumajiro is not your average polar bear, so the age might be different for him then everyone else (I know I'm stretching it here).
So what to you think? Loved it? Hated it? Something I could improve on? I would be very interested to know. Actually I left this open enough to keep this story going if there is enough demand for it and I feel inspiration for it. So please, take the time to review. It would mean a lot to me.