Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

Winter

They also avoided all Hidden Villages or places were ninja were known to frequent. This limited them to small villages mostly. They would stay in a village for about a week or so, mostly stealing food to live (Sasuke's money had long since run out), and after they known, they would disappear. Naruto sometimes wondered why no one ever pursued them, but dismissed it as due to their abilities of sneaking away.

None of them ever guessed that it was because the villagers pitied them, and took them for orphans who had been forced to live on their own. The children never stole money, and the food they stole was cheap, so the villagers ignored them, and before they were a true nuisance, they vanished and were on the road again.

This night was one of the better ones, even though it was raining. They had managed to find a small cave, and Sasuke had lit a fire for them, he still couldn't produce anything that could do much other then light a fire. The light from it gave them more time then usual to read. Normally, they didn't light fires, since they were easy to see from a distance in the open, but when they had some kind of shelter, they would. It was raining more often then not now. Sai said that it had to do with the fact that they were in Water Country. He told them that since it was fall now, they had better be preparing for winter.

Gaara looked somewhat horrified when they had described winter to him. Coming from Suna, he had never had to worry about cold before. The rest had looked at each other and wondered the same thing.

Will we live to see spring?

They were all in various stages of filth. Their hair was matted, faces dirty, clothes ripped and torn in various places, and there was no hope of stealing anything new. They didn't have any shoes anymore, and Sai was missing the lower half of his shirt because he had had to use it to bandage a wound around his arm.

"We should try to find a warm place to stay for the winter," Neji said thoughtfully.

"Where?" Sasuke sighed, "We can't go back to Suna, and even it we could, I don't think we'd make it before the first snowfall."

"We could try one of the closer countries," suggested Hinata.

"There's nowhere warm and close enough for us to travel, even if we were lucky enough to manage to stow away again," Sai told them.

"Maybe we'll find something in the next village," Naruto said, "We can't do anything right now, so let's train."

Each of them had a scroll that they were trying to learn, and all of them were learning just how difficult it was to learn from a scroll and not a teacher. While there were pictures of the seals, Naruto actually missed Iruka's long dull lectures. Somehow everything had seemed so much simpler back home.

Neji had already buried himself in his scroll about the special techniques of the Hyuuga clan. He had been reading hard ever since they had left Suna. He seemed to be looking for something in particular. Every so often he would look over at his cousin with a puzzled expression. When Naruto had asked him what was up, Neji had shock his head and said nothing. He seemed absorbed in something towards the back of the scroll.

Sai had recently stolen a blank scroll, some ink, and a paint brush. He was reading his scroll, and attempting to bring his drawings to life. Some came out, some didn't.

Hinata was practicing the forms of the Gentle Fist fighting style. She didn't seem to have any natural talent for it, but she was working hard to get past that. She carefully moved through every step and attack in slow motion, but she still couldn't summon up the Chakra necessary. Unlike Neji, whose talent was obvious, Hinata was going to have to learn the hard way.