A/N: Written for

The Love-Buckets Write-a-thon
Diversity Writing Challenge, h16 - write in third person omnipresent narration
Becoming the Tamer King Challenge, Steamy Jungle task

Was written some time last year actually, but I totally forgot I hadn't posted it waiting for the write-a-thon deadline. Whoops. :D

This is part of the Gods and Angels universe, same as Grounding Angel. It's set some time before Grounding Angel, though you don't need to have read that to understand this one. Enjoy!

Challenge of the White Bear
Chapter 1

Very few people passed the Challenges, but almost everybody tried. There was the odd person who didn't, but that was because they already had their minds set on another role in their world at the tender age of eight.

As for the rest of them: the ones who tried and failed… Sometimes, they wondered if the reason so many failed was because of how they were divided. Their people, who lived in the snowy mountains, faced the challenge of the white bear, but atop another mountain on the other side of the world was a fire dragon and in the valley between them a sleeping lizard whose scales were pink flowers instead. So the travellers told, and sometimes people from their own village left for those other places, or outsiders came in. Not everyone could or even had to be a God or an Angel, but they were two of the most highly coveted positions: the most powerful, aside from the Hall and their power, it was said, was purely in their decision-making capacity and their unreachability.

They were the governors who oversaw them and rarely came down to their plane and never at all to the mortal one. And it was the Gods and Angels who kept the peace: who fought demons and all other manner of creatures, who divided the lands and settled disputes. It was what every child wanted until they knew better, knew that power didn't equal happiness, and some of them never knew.

And most of them never really knew what it was like to be a God or Angel either, because they couldn't pass the trials.

Yutaka was one such person, or so he'd thought. He'd failed the test at eight years of age but he hadn't left the place. Ice was a good fit for him: the care the slippery slopes demanded was something he treasured and was used to. He couldn't imagine a life of climbing up hot volcano slopes or through forests that looked different by the day, and he couldn't guarantee he'd grow a pair of wings or become an Angel either. There wasn't a process to either of them, and no pattern at all to the former. They took what they got and he got the slopes of ice. He could handle them. And so he stayed with them.

He didn't expect anything to change when his brother took the very same trial seven years later.

But life had a funny way of throwing snowballs.

.

Yutaka had taken the Challenge of the White Bear seven years ago. He'd failed it. Along with a good number of other people because the bear still slumbered. But Tomoki didn't care about those people. They didn't care about him much, either. The old people smiled and patted him on the head and gave him lollies and cookies as he passed them by, but that wasn't the same. It didn't make up for how the younger ones always threw snowballs and ruined his sculptures and snow-art and tried to shove him down the slope.

Luckily, his brother was almost always on the slopes and thus ready to catch him. Even if he got a harsh scolding afterwards.

Like it was his fault those kids were mean. Like it was his fault the old people felt sorry for him. Like it was his fault he was only good at those puzzles the old guys occupied themselves with making, and that wouldn't be a bit of good to anyone unless he could venture out into the big wide world and make his way through uncharted lands and map them out. Or treasure coves that were too complex to get into, or things like that. Real adventures – but no-one just became an adventurer. Didn't just become an adventurer and survive, anyway.

He could do it as a God, though. Even if the very idea was laughable because he couldn't even get out of the house without coming home with bruises and frostbites. But he wanted to. He wanted to be strong, strong so those kids wouldn't laugh at him and shove him around, so his brother wouldn't give him that disappointed and reprimanding look, so that it wasn't only old people (and his parents), who'd pat him on the head and give him sweets. When a God and their Angels visited a village, they got a grand reception but it was more than that. They were appreciated. They were welcomed. They were special.

And there wasn't anything wrong with dreaming about being special, except the near guaranteed crash that awaited him when his hope turned out to be a fruitless tree with its bare branches out there for the world to see.

But he wasn't going to stay Yutaka's pathetic kid brother forever. He was going to grow. Find his own strengths and in a way that way that meant more than just keeping old folk happy and entertained.

And if the Challenge of the White Bear wasn't for him, then he'd have to find one that was because he wasn't going to make it out in the cut-throat wider world without something up his sleeves: powers others didn't have, power that could protect him, guide him, give him strength.

Where or where was the strength he was born with? He could oh so easily flee from the test before he even took it!

But the test was the only hope he had. He had to do it.

.

Tomoki was such a frail child. In all honesty, Yutaka didn't understand it because their lives growing up hadn't been so different – except Tomoki had an elder brother. Did he protect him too much? Scold him too much? Or was Tomoki's inherent personality so different, that this rift had grown between the two of them, and between him and the world.

Tomoki had stood up and declared he too would try the trial like the other children, but Yutaka half-expected him to pull back before the fateful day. And it wasn't a shame or smear upon their honour to do so. The trials were hard, and eight was too young and fresh an age for most of them. And, because of that, many who undertook the trials found the grip of their memories too strong, and could not escape it nor find peace until the memory was torn out of them like the scab that kept new skin from growing over.

Yutaka barely remembered his own trials, and he was lucky he had that little sliver with him still. Most didn't have that. It became as though they'd never taken the challenge at all – and all he really remembered was the terrifyingly aching feeling of being alone.

Maybe a part of him wanted Tomoki to turn away. That way he wouldn't have to face that. Wouldn't have to try. But there was another part of him that scolded himself as well. He didn't believe in Tomoki, did he? Didn't think he stood a chance.

No-one thought he stood a chance. Poor Tomoki. And yet he wanted to try anyway. He was going to try anyway, with or without the support of the rest of them – and could he, the older brother, provide even a little bit of support?

He was support on the slopes after all: the guide, the watcher, the playground monitor. It was his job to support people – and especially his little brother, who always went out there when he knew he couldn't handle it, knew he slipped on the more treacherous parts even if the other kids weren't around to push him around. And he'd try to navigate those slopes even when he knew he couldn't, knew he'd gotten banged up and bruised on them before, knew he shouldn't let those other boys get under his skin – but he let them, then he'd get hurt, and Yutaka would go and rescue him and chide him and hope he'd have the sense to stay away…

And be a little bit proud that he didn't, because it also meant his brother didn't know how to give up, even when he was terrified. And that – pretty much only that – was what made him think that maybe he did have a chance. Maybe Tomoki could go through that trial and come out victorious on the other side, and then go off on adventures like he wanted to: explore their world, and the human world as well. Explore and uncover new things. Fun things. More than just the games of old people who'd lived too long and had nothing more to do.

But the Tomoki who was clumsy but stubborn, seeing but blind – that was the Tomoki at the forefront most of the time and that Tomoki had no hope of getting through the trials.

And so his eighth birthday came, and nothing had changed up till then. Nothing at all.

And Tomoki's challenge of the bear was upon him.