Title: Sirius

Disclaimer: I may be the specialist cookie in the cookie jar, but I'm not special enough to own Naruto. –sniff- Ah, well.

Rating: PG. I mean, nothing really happens…

Author's Notes: I never thought that I'd do this, but here's a minifanfic from Nara Shikamaru's POV. Since he's so smart and such (including lazy) I think that this is a pastime that he'd probably have. Remember this is my opinion, so please no flaming due to that.

No, I doubt that they have the same constellations in the Naruto Universe, but for the sake of the matter…now they do. I'll have to label this differently then. –sticks an Alternate Universe label on the fanfic- There we go! All better now.

I hope that you enjoy this, and please review!

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Sirius

The clouds hung heavy for three months and they were three of the most depressing months of my life. The endless hours of training and drudgery of the academy kept my nose to the grindstone for three long months, until winter time came around and I found myself in the backyard of my modest, two-story home, staring up at a pitch-black sky, my boots crunching on the snowdrifts.

There were no stars for those few days because the snow reflected every particle of light and mocked my efforts, freezing my ass to the concrete and chilling my gloved fingers to the bone. Finally, one night hunched against the wall of my house, I glanced at my watch and realized the time had flown. It was three in the morning and Orion hung above my house, the snow having melted and now only the bitter wind lingering; both my ally against the clouds and my own worst, bitterly resolute and freezing enemy.

Orion was easy to find. Rigel in its splendid white and blue played the perfect counter to orange-red Betelgeuse, each in his own corner of the constellation. The Nebula was a hazy cloud to my 7x50 binoculars, but I traced the stars to the left, to the yapping constellation of Canis Minor on the heels of the Gemini twins, and back up and over right to the glowing Capella hanging above Orion in the nighttime sky. The bull Taurus rushed between them and the night was complete.

I ducked my head into a laughable attempt at protecting my cheeks, scouring the sky for the star I knew rarely came above the horizon. It was reputed to be white and blue; much like Rigel but unmistakable in its loyalty to Orion as the great hunter's faithful hunting dog. Canis Major was maybe four stars visible, on a good night.

In the middle of Konoha Village on a cold winter's December, the snow still plentiful and my fellow shinobi still up and celebrating, that night would not by any stretch of the imagination be considered a 'good night'.

With a suffering sigh, for my fingers and toes would have been thankful had they retained any feeling at all, I packed my binoculars, star chart, and gloves away into my pack and went inside. Where the red Betelgeuse was pretty and the glowing Procyon was easy, Sirius was taunting me, hanging just under the treeline of the neighbors across the street, its laughter floating through the night sky for weeks afterwards.

It was unreliable at best on the nights when training had me walking home from the academy at ten p.m., alone and trying not to freeze. January had come and gone, my stargazing exploits cut short in favor of more training and trying to keep up with Ino. The night wind had returned, straight down from the forest and reveling in its power to nip at the heels of strangers and contribute to the protection of the village. Missing-nin didn't want to show up when their greatest enemy was the cold itself.

I refused to play along, walking instead of running and clutching my pack with my fingers, cursing under my breath my lack of gloves. It was dark, of course, but it wasn't until I left the academy and walked through the market of the village that the stars were really exposed in sharp relief.

There was one problem, I thought, remembering to myself all the nights with my father up on Ryiben Mountain in September. Orion was risen, of course. And the smaller dog and Gemini were present and accounted for, each with their own stories. But there was a bright star dodging the hunter's heels and so many hours of not finding it, or perhaps more not recognizing it, stunned so that my feet paused on the pavement and I looked up for a long minute, trying to reconcile the pictures in my books with the sheer perfection in the night sky.

Mr. Raymo, I appreciate your efforts in that classic three-hundred, sixty-five nights of the starry sky, but you're sadly out of date. Any book who attempts to explain to the reader Sirius, in all its elusive glory, needs to include only full-color, digitally perfect renditions of that great canine. Forget Murzim and Muliphen, forget Aludra and Wezen. The only reason this puppy made it into the history books was the rising of the great star Sirius over the Nile, bringing with it the new year of flooding for the Egyptians. This I learned later, though, in a book unrelated to stargazing. For sure, for being the one star that will always make me stop wherever I am and appreciate in reverent silence, it's no surprise that one star is the brightest in the sky.

The view is worth the effort in the end.

And for a mere puppy dog forever yapping only 8.7 light years away, that's the greatest compliment a shinobi can give.