"NO!" A small, blonde, six year old boy screamed over his brothers' bodies. "WAKE UP! WAKE UP! YOU CAN'T DIE! YOU CAN'T! YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED TO STAY WITH ME FOREVER!" The boy had tears falling from his face as he was pulled away from the bodies.
"Come on, there's nothing you can do," a woman tried to tell him. "They're already gone. I'm so sorry." The boy refused to listen to her words, shaking his head. He broke from her hold and ran, his pet running after him. For a young boy of six, he was surprisingly fast, and had made it all the way to the heart of the forest, with the help of his pet, of course. By this time, the men going after him had given up and believed that there was no way the boy could survive in the heavy snow.
The boy shivered as he made his way to the cave behind the frozen lake. Usually, there would be a waterfall blocking the cave, but due to the cold, the water had frozen over and had therefore stopped the waterfall.
The boy fell to the ground as he made it to the back of the cave. His pet nudged him worriedly, but he simply smiled.
"I'm alright, just tired," he reassured. "I'm going to take a nap. Maybe when I wake up, my brothers will be here. Kuma, please make sure that nothing happens to me before I wake." His pet nodded and watched as the boy began to sleep.
And the boy did sleep. He slept, and slept, and slept. And he never woke.
"Hey, Artie, check this out!" A boy called to his brother, Arthur, as he ran towards him with a piece of paper waving about in his hand. The boy had blonde hair with a cowlick and blue eyes covered with glasses. His brother had messy blonde hair, emerald green eyes, and HUGE eyebrows.
"What is it, Alfred?" Arthur asked. "And don't call me Artie." Alfred ignored him and shoved the paper in his face.
"I was doing this research for college about local legends, and there's this really cool one you need to see!" He exclaimed excitedly. "There is even evidence that it's true!" Arthur raised an eyebrow and scanned the paper.
There is a legend of a boy who sleeps in the Forever Frost Forest.
"A boy that sleeps in the Forever Frost Forest?" Arthur said, raising an eyebrow. "Now that can't be true. He would die if he slept there for a long time without the proper equipment." The Forever Frost Forest was a forest just outside of Alfred and Arthur's town that had a cloud over it all the time, and there was always snow on the ground, regardless of whether or not it was really snowing. Sometimes the snow was one inch, but it never reached more than one foot. No matter what, there was always snow.
"But he might have some really cool powers that allows him to stay alive in the Triple F!" Alfred said excitedly, using the slang term for the forest. Arthur shook his head.
"It is 'allow' not 'allows', Alfred," he reprimanded half-heartedly. "And anyway, it is incredibly hard to get a good enough grasp on magic to be able to survive the snow."
"Maybe the boy was just extremely powerful!" Alfred claimed. "This legend started like, hundreds of years ago! Maybe kids had an easier understanding back then!" Arthur sighed.
"If you do your research, the magic back then was actually way more powerful and harder to understand than people have now," he explained. "It would be next to impossible for a mere boy to have complete control of that."
"Whatever Arthur~," Alfred said, rolling his eyes. "I didn't even think that magic could possibly be real before this. You don't exactly make it convincing."
"Oh so you'd much rather believe a legend than your own brother?" Arthur said angrily.
"Uh, yeah dude," Alfred replied in a 'duh' sort of voice. "I mean, with the way you act towards me, it's not hard to believe that you would just be trying to mess with me."
"Anyway, what's so interesting about this boy?" Arthur asked, sighing once again. "You normally wouldn't be so interested."
According to legend, the boy brings good luck to whoever wakes him and gains his trust.
"So you want to find this boy for your own selfish reasons?" Arthur said, shocked. His brother was, quite possibly, the most selfless person he knew when you got passed his personality. Alfred always put others before himself and only seemed to care about being independent from others if he wasn't too busy caring about making sure everyone else was happy. He had a bit of a hero complex, but his heart was in the right place.
"What? No way dude!" Alfred shook his head. "I just want to see if the legend is true! If I happen to wake him up, I'll just let him live with us! I don't care about good luck! I'm happy here! According to this, the boy is only six years old. Seriously, he shouldn't be in the Triple F. And also, I don't want anyone else taking advantage of him." Arthur nodded slowly.
"I suppose you are right," he agreed. "So what? Do you want to go find the boy and try to wake him?" Alfred nodded and Arthur, being the loving brother he was, couldn't stand to see Alfred sad, so he agreed.
"Awesomeness~!" Alfred sang. "I've gotta go pack! We'll leave tomorrow!" Arthur sighed for third time that day as he watched his hyperactive brother run back to their house. He let a smile cross his face. Perhaps I'll gain a new brother for this, he decided. I've always loved caring for children.
Many people have tried to find the boy and wake him for glory and fame.
"It's so cold, Artie!" Alfred complained as they trudged through the thick forest, "and the snow is a foot high!"
"You're the one who wanted to do this," Arthur reminded him. Alfred pouted and continued following his brother.
"How long will this take?" Alfred asked.
"According to your research papers, a day, because this forest isn't too big to begin with, so it shouldn't take forever to reach the heart of the forest," Arthur explained. Alfred's face lit up.
"Alright!" He cheered. "This shouldn't be hard at all then!"
However, there was one thing those people did not count on.
"Okay, we should rest here for the night," Arthur declared later on when the stars had come out. "We are lucky that there is only one inch of snow tonight, and we brought extra padded sleeping bags with warmers so we would stay warm." Alfred nodded, tired.
"Okay," he yawned. He began to get his sleeping back out of his large back and set it up. They brought no tent, unfortunately, so they had to make due. They both climbed into their sleeping bags.
"Goodnight, Arthur," Alfred mumbled as he closed his eyes, shivering slightly.
"…Goodnight Alfred," Arthur murmured. Slowly, they both began to fall into a deep sleep.
The next morning, Alfred woke up to growling. At first, he thought it might have been Arthur's stomach or something, so he tried to ignore it. It was until he heard Arthur's voice that he sat up.
The boy had a guardian.
"A-Alfred, you better get up," Arthur stammered, his voice trembling ever so slightly.
"What?" Alfred said irritably, opening his eyes and sitting up. His eyes widened as he spotted the large creature in front of him. It was a big, full grown, and obviously, very angry polar bear.
This guardian was a polar bear.
A searing headache passed over Alfred's brain as images passed over him. It was almost like… a memory?
"We can't just leave him alone for three weeks!" Alfred felt himself shout at Arthur. "He's six years old! Yes, we can keep him alone for a few hours, but three weeks?" Arthur sighed.
"I know, Abraham, but what can we do?" He said. "We don't have the money to hire a nanny or a maid or someone to take care of him." Blue eyes looked around helplessly, wishing someone would intervene and say that they would help without money. Suddenly, white fur caught his eyes.
"Hey Arran…" Alfred (or Abraham) said quietly, staring in the direction of the animal. "What if we didn't get him a nanny? What if we got him an animal that could protect him?" Arthur (or Arran) raised an eyebrow and looked in the direction of the bear sitting calmly in front of them with a tilted head. Slowly, he nodded in agreement.
The polar bear roared and Arthur took that as a sign to grab Alfred's hand and run. It took a while and a lot of stumbling, but Alfred eventually was able to run beside Arthur. The polar bear was right behind them, but due to the many trees and bushes and the polar bear's size, it wasn't able to get close enough to rip them to shreds like it wanted to.
"WHY THE FUCK IS THERE A POLAR BEAR IN HERE?" Alfred screamed. "THE ARTICLE SAID NOTHING ABOUT A POLAR BEAR!"
"PROBABLY BECAUSE NO ONE LIVED TO TELL THE TALE!" Arthur yelled back. "LESS TALKING, MORE RUNNING YOU IDIOT!" Alfred wisely shut up after that, and they continued to run.
Somehow, they ended up in the heart of the forest. The heart was a small clearing with a frozen lake in the middle, and a cave behind the lake.
Alfred and Arthur stopped, only to make a silent agreement to run into the cave. This seemed to be the wrong idea, because the polar bear only roared louder when it saw that they ran into the cave and chased after them faster than it was before.
Just as they reached the back of the cave, they caught a fleeting glance of a small boy lying against a rock before they were tackled to the ground by the bear's large paws.
The polar bear was very protective of the boy, and attacked anyone who dared come near.
The polar bear roared furiously in their faces and lifted a paw to swipe at them, only for a young, timid voice to stop it.
"Kuma?" The small voice sounded. "What are you doing? Please do not hurt them." The bear immediately stopped and slowly got off of them, but it never stopped staring at them, almost challengingly. The boy that was previously sleeping stood up, but immediately fell back down. The bear was by his side in a nanosecond, nudging the boy with a soft look in its eyes.
"I'm fine, Kuma, don't worry," the boy said, smiling. Alfred took this time to observe him. The boy was only six, that much was obvious. He had wavy blonde hair that fell to his chin and he had a stray curl in front of his face. The boy had violet eyes. Another memory hit Alfred.
"Mattie, you know that you have to stay home for three weeks, right?" Alfred told the young boy in front of him. The boy nodded. "Well, we don't have the money for a nanny to take care of you, so we got you this." He nodded at Arthur, who came up with a polar bear cub in his arms. The boy gasped.
"He's so cute…" He murmured, reaching out for the cub. The cub struggled in Arthur's arms and leaped into the boy's arms instead. The boy fell to the ground, but laughed it off as the cub circled around him concernedly. "What's his name?" The boy looked up at Alfred and Arthur as he petted the cub.
"We're letting you name him," Arthur said, smiling at the adorable sight in front of him. "He is yours now, and he will protect you."
"…Kumajiro," the boy decided. "His name shall be Kumajiro."
"Well then," Alfred began, "we welcome Kumajiro into the family." He knelt down to be eye-to-eye with the bear. "You better protect my younger brother." The bear stared back with eyes that said "I'll protect him, or die trying."
The bear was to fend off any intruders until the boy is awakened by the correct person or people.
"Abraham, Arran?" The boy spoke up, interrupting Alfred's memory. "Is that you?" The boy looked so excited with a bright smile on his face. The smile immediately fell, however, when Arthur shook his head.
"I'm sorry, lad, but our names aren't Abraham or Arran," Arthur told him solemnly. "My name is Arthur. This is my brother, Alfred. And you are…?"
"I'm…" The boy hesitated. "My name is Matthew. Everyone call me Mattie. I'm sorry misters, but you just look a lot like my brothers. I miss them. They got into an accident and died when they were just around the corner from our home." Matthew began to sniff as tears welled up in his eyes, and memories started flooding through Alfred and Arthur's minds.
They remembered everything.
They remembered their parents dying and them taking care of Mattie as best they could. They remembered having to go away for three weeks and leaving Kumajiro with Mattie to protect him. And… they remembered getting hit by that carriage and thinking "Who will take care of Mattie now?"
"Mattie…" Alfred said, stepping towards him, only to stop as Kumajiro growled at him. "It was actually a joke." He chuckled, trying to pretend that they had known all along that they were Abraham and Arran. "We really are Abraham and Arran, but we've been going by Alfred and Arthur for years now. We've gotten used to those names. You've been asleep for a while now, Mattie. Why don't you come home with us? We have a lot to catch up on." Matthew's eyes brightened considerably and he nodded.
"Alright!" He chirped. "Kuma, you can be a cub again!" Kumajiro nodded and he shrank down to a cub again, much to Alfred and Arthur's surprise. Alfred walked over to Matthew and kneeled down in front of him.
"Can you walk, or are your legs too out of practice?" He asked, concerned as he remembered that Matthew had fallen when he had tried to get up earlier.
"I… I can't walk…" Matthew whispered. "Can you carry me?" He looked up at Alfred with big, pleading eyes, and Alfred chuckled as he picked him up.
"Up you go!" He said. Matthew squealed in delight as he was lifted off the floor.
"Let's go Artie!" Alfred cheered. Arthur smiled in amusement as he picked up Kumajiro and followed his two brothers out of the cave.
They didn't notice how the clouds slowly drifted away from the forest and how the snow began to melt until months later.
It is said that the boy is waiting for his family. He is waiting for his precious brothers, who had died in an accident. The boy will wake one day, when his brothers come to retrieve him. Then he will be able to live peacefully, with his brothers by his side.