A/N: Originally written for the 'Childhood' contest over at livejournal's 'NejiTen' community. Please enjoy. (And review. Because I got off my butt for you.)
Disclaimer: Kishimoto is the owner of Naruto and all its characters, while I am currently the sole possessor of a cup of yogurt.
Dedication: To the wonderful Kishimoto-sama, who gave us fans a lovely universe to play in.
Thoughtless
Sometimes the snow is brown, an earthy shade that is as dark as the soil, not warm but cold instead because the sun is hidden behind a dark and dreamy sky in which oddly shaped clouds laze. And when she bends down to inspect the whiteness, and holds the cold in her clumsy, mittened hands, it becomes apparent that the individual flakes are clear and colorless, and that the 'white' is actually the cloudy, hazy visage of a slushy ocean.
But when she looks at his eyes - which is not often because they are quick, so piercing sharp and she's young and soft; the intensity is beyond her - she realizes that he is also like the snow, not all white but clear; not all bitter but damaged.
She is naive.
His smiles are quiet, barely-there joys and when they come, her hands are winding around his waist, her too-loud laughs earning her an embarrassed cry of disapproval from him and the swiftness that it takes his short arms to pry her away. The color on his pale cherub face and her browned cheeks is hinting of things to come, but they're young and these kind of happenings are beyond them. She only knows that he is smiling, that he's not scowling and snarling at the world with a child's rage, and he, he is aware only of her mischievous, pleased grin, a grin that speaks of present fairy mischief and future butterfly touches.
He is naive, too, but all the same, he intertwines their hands in a thoughtless promise.
Isn't the snow lovely today?
A/N: I am penniless. Reviews give me some semblance of wealth.