Of Ice and Snow // A Victuri Fanfiction

Chapter 1

Among the sounds of the Wednesday morning market, beneath a sky of sleet grey, a young man, hands sunk deep into the pockets of a reindeer hide coat, waited beside a towering pillar of day old snow. The apathetic tilt of his frost-chapped lips, and the deeply ingrained dips beneath his hunger hollowed eyes, kept the few feet around him clear, yet still his breaths caught in his throat at the overwhelming sounds around him. The pounding of boots, the scraping of barrows being dragged across pavement, the cries of sellers and accumulated murmurs of buyers. 

In the business and bustle, Yuri waited, until the great bell tower chimed eleven and Yuuko appeared, pulling three girls at her side.

"Yuri! You came!" she smiled warmly, letting go of the hands of the two daughters she held so that they could find other means of entertainment than listening in.

"Of course, Yuuko, but what is it?" Yuri asked, returning the smile as warmly as his stiff cheeks would allow. Takeshi, her husband, had called by on his way into the forest with a message from his wife, asking that he meet her at eleven that day by the church building. Yuri had agreed of course, worried for his friend, but she seemed as full of joy and life as ever- if not more so.

"A moment, a moment, but I haven't seen you in such a time- where where you?" she chided, five years as a mother giving her a sternness that stirred guilt. 

"There's a storm coming. I had to hunt before the forests became too wild to wander. There's few reindeer these few weeks, and yet even fewer predators to see..."

"Ay, I'm sure they're all sensibly hibernating. You know we'll help you if you need it- and don't let pride drive you hungry- Takeshi's doing well in the shop, and the girl's are helping me sew and cook- thing's are so well, I know we both want to share our luck with you."

Avoiding her warm gaze in favour of the sludgy snow about his boots, Yuri breathed a soft sigh that was too gentle for her too notice.

"What did you want?" 

"Well," she began, expression hurt by his refusal of her kindness, "I thought that you might want to know that there's a great bear that's been seen in the wild around-"

"An Isbjørn?" Yuri interrupted, suddenly alert. Bear's were common enough, and he had killed his fair share for their fur and meat, but an Isbjørn...

"That's what they're saying. Last night, under the light of the moon, with hair thick as a tree trunk and eyes like the stars themselves," she murmured in wonder, eyes darting around them as though afraid of spies. 

"Why would a great white bear come here? There's no riches, or even good ground to hunt..."

"They say, when an Isbjørn comes to the land of man, he's searching for a beautiful young maiden to take as his companion-"

"Well, there's no princesses either," Yuri muttered sarcastically, dragging his gaze back to the ground in an attempt to still his wildly beating heart.

"-and whisk them away to a great palace of snow and ice. It doesn't have to be a Princess- bear's don't mind that sort of thing- just a blooming lotus flower that will give him somebody to talk with." 

"But why are you telling me this?" Despite his best efforts, Yuri knew that his voice shook, because his body was shuddering from something other than the cold. 

"You," Yuuko grinned, reaching a hand out to his shoulder, "are the finest hunter from here to the desert lands. Bring back an Isbjørn and it'll make you a rich man."

***

On the outskirts of a forest so vast that it's heart lay yet untamed, beside a river that had so often frozen and thawed that it shivered wearily in it's icy banks, Yuri sat in the doorway of his small hut and watched the sun fall beyond the tree tops, the moon set flight. It was early afternoon, but the days had grown short, and the nights endless. Silent, watching. Yuri's heart had finally slowed.

Elaborate snow was dusting over the single set of boot prints that led to the place where he sat, and there was a dangerous wind beginning to swell somewhere west of the moon, bringing with it whispers of castles of gold, and a deep well of garnet red.

Yuri stood, stomped the snow from his boots, unlocked and opened the door, and stepped into his surrogate home. 

The walls were hung with bows, spears, and throwing knives, and the small collection of rickety wooden furniture thrown with animal hides and fur. A table, one stool, a chair, desk and bed; all dark pine wood, smoothed with lacquer, crafted by Takeshi's hands when Yuri was sixteen and his parents were lost. An iron stove stood proudly in the corner, spilling ash onto the stone tiles that served as an uneven floor, and sporting a chipped pot of stew covered with a mismatched lid. His hunger having abandoned him, Yuri pulled off his boots and trudged over to the bed. 

Shrugging his thick parka from his shoulders and flinging it carelessly to the side, Yuri slipped underneath a thick, woven blanket and allowed his eyes to close against the biting cold. But try as he might, he could not tear the beautiful yet terrible image of a great polar bear from his mind. Isbjørn. The graceful predators who governed the Winter, who spoke with the snow storms and did not fear the winds. 

Yuri fell asleep with his head filled with folktales, and so the great white bear who slunk towards the weathered walls of his lodge slipped effortlessly into his dreams, and laid in wait in front of the door.