5/6/14.
AN: I promise this is the absolute last time I introduce another kid into the story. Jorrvaskr's got its hands full.

Winter in Whiterun was nearly as nice as summer in Falkreath, in Ria's opinion.

When the ice glazed over the streets, the children would play and glide around, as children were wont to do. Oberon and Hallbjorn were too young to do much, of course, apart from staying bundled up in the clothes their father had knit them, but Ursula had taken to the ice with her older cousin along with Lucia, the orphaned girl who had been taken in by Aela and the Companions only two summers before.

For her part, Ria was sitting on the back lawn of Jorrvaskr, enjoying the snow and watching her two young sons take to it like fish to water. Despite the frigid air, they were warm, snugly tucked into their winter garments and, of course, blessed with the benefits of Nord blood. They patted at the mound of snow she was working at, smiles spreading across their chubby little faces.

"What've you got there?" Vilkas called as he strolled out to the back lawn to watch. "What is it?"

"It," Ria said, a smile spreading across her own face, "is a snowman."

"Is it really?" Her husband squinted at it from his spot beneath the awning. "It hasn't got a head."

"We're just getting started on the bottom, aren't we?" She smiled down at her sons, who giggled as they continued slapping the rounded mound of snow. "It'll have a head soon enough, and when it's finished someone can use it for target practice."

"A single hit would decimate it."

"Don't be a spoilsport." Ria turned back to stick her tongue out at him. "Maybe someone can practice archery. Besides," she said, pausing to wrap her arms around the boys on either side of her, "I think they'd like watching the snow fly everywhere. Wouldn't you, boys?"

Her voice became even warmer and more melodic as she addressed her sons. It had been the same way when Ursula was their age, but that was where the similarities between the children stopped. Where Ursula looked like her mother, the boys seemed to take after their father, though, to be fair, their facial features could still mostly be described as "pudgy" and didn't much look like anything. But it was no wonder Tilma often slipped up and called them Farkas and Vilkas: they had their father's same silver eyes, the same coarse hair that flopped about when they bounced.

"You should come join us," Ria called to her husband. "While Oberon and I work on the body, you and Hallbjorn can make the head."

Vilkas merely laughed as he strode over. "Alright, then." He took a seat in the snow next to his son, who giggled and clapped his hands together.

Ria watched as Hallbjorn and Vilkas played, patting snow into an ever-growing ball and laughing. This Vilkas was a far cry from the Vilkas she'd met when she'd first come to Jorrvaskr, the Vilkas who had grumbled about snowflakes only being good for rusting swords and ruining training sessions. This Vilkas laughed along with his son, played with the children who resembled him so closely, and saved his complaints for rainy days.

Of course, she loved him regardless of his sour days. Sometimes she would even say that she loved him because of his sour days, because it made his cheerier moments all the sweeter. She loved him whether he scowled or not, but it was nice knowing how to make his scowl disappear for a moment.

It was almost surreal watching him now, with the little boy who looked so much like him- really, the resemblance was surprising. She never would have imagined it before, but it was as if she were watching two different versions of the same man: the young one, naive and open to the world and fully believing it was his to take, and the older one, world-wearied and sometimes frightened but slowly learning once again that the world had good things in store for him. Two ends of the same timeline, with a chunk missing from the middle where tragedy and lycanthropy caused grief to mar his features.

Vilkas' voice woke Ria from her reverie. "You're staring, love."

"Am I?" Ria smiled as she went back to patting the mound of snow in front of her. "I just never would have thought I'd see the day you'd play in the snow, is all."

"I did as a boy," he said casually, grinning. "Farkas liked building snowmen, and he was my brother, so I would help him."

"Well, now that you say that, I can see it." Ria pulled Oberon out of the snow and seated him in her lap. "I bet you looked just like these two boys right here," she said as the little boy let out a shrill laugh. "Well, maybe not just like them. I still have trouble imagining you giggling."

"Fair enough," Vilkas said as he continued to shape snow into a ball and Hallbjorn continued to pat it aimlessly.

It took only a short while before the snowman was completed, though, admittedly, two toddlers hitting at the balls of snow didn't much help the process. The figure was nearly as tall as Ria by the time it was finished, and was covered with tightly packed lumps that probably couldn't be said to resemble much of anything, but that didn't seem to bother the boys, nor did it bother Ursula, who had returned from sliding through the streets with Lucia and Ulva.

And it took even less time for the thing to be destroyed, in a beautiful display from Vilkas. With a swing of his greatsword (and with a rather lengthy explanation of the technique with which he held it, to which only Lucia politely feigned interest), he decapitated the snowman. Oberon and Hallbjorn both giggled and clapped excitedly as snow flew out every which way. Ursula, too, cheered at the sight.

Perhaps it wasn't the winter that Ria liked so much after all. Perhaps it was the contrast, the bitter cold days making the warmth of the hearth and of her husband's arm wrapped around her all the more pleasant, the effort of building a snowman making the process of destroying it all the more satisfying, the dying plants making the thriving family around her all the more beautiful to look at.

Whatever it was, winter was becoming, quite possibly, Ria's new favorite season.