What is happening? I thought. This has never happened to me before. It was true. I have fainted several times in my life, sometimes even passed out from exhaustion. I have always had a reason, though. This? I had no idea what was going on. I didn't have a long time to wonder, however; almost immediately, I was—this gonna sound so cheesy—I was blinded by a vivid vision.

It took me a moment to realize that it was a vision that was blinding me. At first, all I knew was that there was a light in my eye. Probably a flashlight. Maybe the others are checking to see if I suddenly dropped dead. But that didn't make any sense. I could still feel my body, and my eyes weren't even open.

Then, I became aware of something else. The light was coming from a weird direction. It almost seemed to be coming up and into my eyes. I've only ever seen light from that angle in one type of situation. When the realization hit me, I almost smiled.

Snow. It's snowing! Where am I? I wasn't home or at the University, and as far as I know, it does not snow in conference rooms. Once my (vision) eyes adjusted to the glare, I was shocked. I was right about the snow; the stuff was everywhere. For as far as I could see in front of me (which was actually very far), there was nothing but white. There were trees to my left, as well as behind me, and they were covered in snow and ice crystals. Not very far away, maybe three or four hundred yards to my right, I could see mountains, also covered in snow. In front of me, there was nothing. There was just that long stretch of land that I could not see the end of. The sunshine glancing off of the snow was really beautiful, but as far as I could see, there wasn't a single person, nor were there any foot prints. Why am I here? I thought. Then it happened.

From the corner of my eye, I saw something moving in the forest to my left. When I turned, I saw that it was moving quickly. It wasn't so much an object, though; more like a shadow, but I thought it was moving closer. Sure enough, a few moments later something burst out of the trees. I jumped out of the way as it ran past me. Then I realized: Duh. This was a vision; it would have passed right through me anyway.

As whatever it was got closer, it started moving faster, like the forest was slowing it down before. When it was about ten or twenty feet away from me, it spun around to face the forest, to face me. It was then that I realized that the 'thing' was a boy.

He looked around my age, around twenty or twenty-one, maybe even twenty-two or -three. That's what he generally looked like, but…his clothes were not what I would think a college boy would wear. I mean, maybe if we were in the fifth century…BC. It looked good, though. It basically looked like a bunch of leather over fur-lined cloth. Simple, but effective; he was obviously warm—I could almost see the sweat on his forehead and neck from his physical exertion—and the leather seemed thick enough to protect him in a fight. I've always loved older clothes. And movies. And books. And…Well, you get the idea. His face was just a little bit off, too. Not that he was ugly or anything. Quite the opposite, he was very handsome. However, his hair was a little longer than what I would have considered 'normal', and it had a weird little curl in the back. The curl seemed strangely familiar, but I'll get to that later. His hair was even longer than Francis', but only by a couple of inches, and it was a strange yet pretty color; almost a cross between silver and a light coffee color. He had what can only be described as bangs, which were held back with a leather band. His eyes were a light, icy blue, with dark eyebrows above.

After maybe two or three minutes, there was rustling in the forest, so I turned around to see five boys running out from the trees, laughing and yelling to each other. They were obviously related, but their appearances were each unique. There were two that looked to be the oldest of the five; they looked around seventeen, with eyes a slightly darker blue than the first boy and lighter eyebrows, and they both had yellow-blond hair, although one of them had his sticking out in all directions, which matched the huge, wild smile on his face, while the other, more serious one, wore his relatively flat. Another of the boys looked just slightly younger, yet somehow more serious, with dark blue eyes and pale blond hair that had a curl in the back. On the right side of his hair was what looked like a cross shaped hair clip, but I couldn't be sure. The fourth boy was younger than hair-clip boy, and he was the one smiling brightest and laughing loudest. His eyes looked to be between a dark blue and a deep purple, though at some moments they looked like a light brown color, and he was wearing a cute white beret (which made no sense: if it was, in fact, BC times, berets had not been invented, so how did he have one?). The last boy was the youngest, made obvious by the fact that the comments from the others pretty much revolved around teasing him. He had silvery-white hair and bright purple eyes, and he didn't look very happy. Instead, he had the same expression as the middle boy: none whatsoever. They were all dressed in clothes from the same period as the older boy, but the clothes under the leather were all different colors. All of the languages they were shouting were foreign to me, but my mind somehow translated their words into English, though the accents were evident.

I quickly realized what I was looking at: the Nordics having fun. It blew my mind; I had only ever seen two of them even mildly interested in having fun, and the others didn't seem like they ever had fun. Here, though? It looked as if they did this kind of thing all the time.

"Come on, Emil!" I turned to see Tino and Lukas practically on top of the older guy, who was grinning widely. A leather bag fell out of his hands as the boys tackled him. Tino was shouting through his laughter. "Get deh bag! Get it! Get deh bag!" he squawked as they all fell down.

Emil dove for the bag, landing on top of it. Mathias and Berwald jumped on top of him, trying to wrestle the bag from his hands. Emil wouldn't let go, even though Berwald was glaring away at him and Mathias was obviously using all of his strength and clearly cheating by trying to squeeze snow into Emil's grip to loosen it. Suddenly, Emil let go, and the older boys fell back, their grip slipping from the bag, causing it to fly up and backwards. Emil jumped on top of them, holding them down as Lukas, rushing over from tackling the older guy, and grabbed the bag from the ground. "I got it!" he yelled, the most excited I had ever heard him. "I got it!" Then, he turned and sprinted back toward the tree line as Tino and Emil cheered him on.

"Go, Lukas," they shouted, "Go!"

Then, Emil yelled, "Hurry!" His eyes were wide; he had as much expression in that moment as he'd never had before. "Before—"

It all happened so fast, I almost missed it. But my vision was sharper in the vision, almost hawk like, and I saw.

Lukas was only ten or twelve yards from the forest when I caught sight of Mathias and Berwald in the corner of my eye. They were both looking at the trees with smiles on their faces. Their smiles were very different, though. Mathias' smile was full of joy, as usual, whereas Berwald's looked kind of creepy. They both looked like they knew something I didn't know. I was pretty sure that, had Tino not been burying his face in the snow, the older guy's face would have been lit up with a smile, too. I snapped my head back towards Lukas.

He was only about three yards away, now. Two and a half. Two. One and a half. Suddenly, when he was just one yard away from the tree line, one more stride away from what I assumed would win his team whatever game they were playing, something shot from the trees like a bat out of hell. It tackled Lukas, ripping the bag from his hands. Then, it jumped back up, running the opposite direction, moving a lot faster than the other boys had been, towards the mountains. My sharpened eyesight allowed me to follow the object all the way to its destination: the mountains. By the time it was halfway there, I had realized that 'it' wasn't an 'it' at all; 'it' was really a 'she'.

Soon, the boys were up and chasing after her, Lukas, Tino, and Emil running the most frantically; they looked desperate to get to her before she reached the mountains. I guess that's where they have to go to win, I thought. The older guys were just jogging, laughing at the younger ones, like they were amused that they were trying at all—it was obvious they'd never catch up; she moved at triple, maybe even quadruple their speed. I followed, sprinting to catch up with the elders, watching in front of me. The girl reached the mountains, lightly jumping up a series of step-like ledges until she was about a hundred feet up, where she stood on a cliff hanging in midair. She waited until the younger guys were at the base of the mountain before cupping her hands around her mouth and howling loudly. "Aaawwoooohhh!" she hollered.

The older guys let out an "Awooh!" of their own, gesturing for her to climb back down. She did, and the oldest guy picked her up and put her on his shoulders. She laughed and called out, "Anudder win! Whoa!" Her accent was a weird combination of Russian and the Scandinavian languages. It was really beautiful, if slightly scary.

Mathias called out, "Well, of course we won, Uralia." He grinned up at her, then reached up to take her hand. "We are the coolest ones out there."

Lukas, Emil, and Tino gathered around, sulking a bit, but laughing all the same. "Not on your life, Mathias," Lukas called out. "Uralia is the one who won the game for you, and she's closer to our ages than your guys'." His grin turned a little sinister as he said, "We would've totally won this time if she weren't here."

The girl, Uralia, stood on top of the older guy's shoulders. Then, she did a perfect flip up and over the group of guys. They all whipped around to see her land perfectly on her feet, facing them. She smiled and looked at the guys, then laughed before adopting a serious expression. "Listen up," she said. "I'm not going to be ashosheeated with anyone who can't take a loss. If you guys"—she pointed to the younger ones—"are going to whine about it, I suggest you idur get bedder or stop playing." They all nodded solemnly. She was trying to keep a straight face, but it was obvious that she'd given this speech before, and she ended up laughing anyway, causing the others to join in. Even Berwald was rolling on the ground.

While she'd been talking, I managed to get a good look at her for the first time. She was very beautiful, though she didn't look anything like the Nordics. She was short, but still over five feet tall—maybe five four or five five—taller than the younger guys, but not even close to her teammates' heights. Her hair was a dark brown, practically black, startling in contrast with that of the guys'. It flowed all the way down to just above her knees; it was held back by a leather band similar to that of the elder guy. Her eyes, too, were different from the others'; they were black pools, not even a little blue, though, when the light caught them, they looked slightly purple. It wasn't a flat black, by any means; it had a certain depth to it, like her eyes could suck you in and never let you go. It was beautiful. She was skinny, as far as I could tell. This, actually, was not very much; she, too was wearing a similar outfit to the boys, which covered her whole body and made her seem bigger than she was. As I kept looking at her, I realized something else. She looked like a taller, prettier, slightly older version of—

My thoughts were interrupted by a shriek of laughter. By the time I looked over, they were all laughing even harder, laying in the snow together. Finally, they stopped, and, getting up, started a snowball fight. They were all going to be on teams; Uralia, Tino, and the elder guy were captains, so they got to choose their partner, and everyone wanted to be on Uralia's team. "Come on," I heard Berwald say, and turned to see him pleading with his eyes. He looked kind of cute when he did that; his face didn't look so scrunched up and angry. "You must be on my team, Uralia!" She was just smiling at him, and he finally gave up on the begging. "You're always on either the eldest or youngest one's team. Shouldn't you at least help one of the middles?" He walked up to stand next to her, throwing an arm across her shoulders affectionately, and she smiled up at him, blushing heavily. "Besides," he said, smiling, "I'm older than you, so you should do what I say." Her expression immediately became irritated; they'd obviously been in the age argument before. She pushed him away, and both her action and expression combined to make Berwald laugh, which made her expression soften. "Seriously, Uralia," he said, "be on my team?"

She looked like she was considering it, but then she got a mischievous look on her face. "Maybe I will," she said, and Berwald moved back to her side, putting his hand on her arm and looking at the other boys with a smug expression. She looked up at him, the sly expression still on her face. "Maybe," she said, making Berwald glance at her with slightly narrowed eyes, "if, and only if—" she paused, looking around at the other boys "—you call Finny your wife from here on out." She turned and winked at Tino, and his face blushed scarlet. She looked back up at Berwald, who was glaring down at her. She was obviously trying not to flinch, working to keep her face light and smiling. "Well," she said, "what's it going to be? Do you want to win dat bad?" she laughed. "You have to want it, Berwald." The older guy was trying hard not to laugh; I was waiting for him to pass out from lack of oxygen, his face was so blue.

Finally, Berwald threw her arm away from himself, nearly making her fall over. Seeing her toppling, his expression became gentle once again, and he barely reached out his hand in time to catch her before she hit the ground. "I'm so sorry, Uralia," he said.

"Yeah, sure, Berwald," she replied, rolling her eyes like it was no big deal. This had obviously happened before. "I know you didn't mean it." She kept her voice light, but she wouldn't look at him, and I'm pretty sure only myself and the eldest saw her expression break for just a second. The eldest boy's expression went from holding back laughter to holding back anger in a split second. Of course, in that split second, the girl's hurt expression disappeared, and she turned back to Berwald with a carefree expression carefully back in place. After a moment, she turned back to face the others. "Anyway," she said, her carefree expression no longer needing to be faked when she turned away from Berwald. "Since Berwald—" her voice cracked a little, but, again, no one but the oldest boy and I seemed to notice "—doesn't have what it takes to be on my team," she said, looking around at the other boys, "I guess I'll be widd duh youngest. Come on, Lukas, Emil. Let's show deez guys." The boys looked immensely glad that they got to be with her. They walked over to her, and they huddled together, discussing strategies. The eldest looked at them before trying to decide who to pick to be on his team. He was obviously torn between Berwald and Mathias.

Finally, Uralia looked up from her team's conference. "Come on, Scandia," she called out to the older guy, "Pick someone, already!" She was teasing him, and everyone knew it. They were all grinning at this point. It looked…amazing. Happy.

The guy, Scandia, I guess, finally laughed and said, "Sure ting, little sister." His accent was somehow both Scandinavian accents combined, and his voice was very deep. His comment seemed to make Uralia angry, but not too much, because she started laughing midway through the glare she was giving him. Scandia picked Mathias, so Berwald and Tino were the last team. They all started throwing snowballs and yelling and laughing at each other as the vision faded out.

Hi!

Yes, I know the vision is weird.

Yes, they are really supposed to talk like that.

Yes, that's the right name for him.

No, this is not SuFin.

Like it? Tell me if you don't, I'll try to help fix it.

Happy reading!

Anya