After their first prosperous harvest, the cold weather started quietly settling in, the blue skies turned paler and paler as the clouds filled the view, and little white blurs began falling down on the little colony. Latte perked her head high and stuck her tongue out, catching a snowflake, it quickly melted, "Hmm, tastes like water!" She exclaimed, Meuphyr was standing next to her, admiring the snow coated landscape "It is water, just very very cold and frozen". At this point he finally accepted that Latte was his daughter, he was hoping she would let go of him more as she grew and the two could just continue as friends, but quite the opposite occurred. She was now entering her teens and it felt like she was glued to him.

The duo were standing at the outskirts of the colony, meanwhile another duo were busy checking the crops; it was Lavender and Macchiato, the latter being a young reef belemoid who was rescued and taken in, she and Latte became the best of friends, the two were the same species and roughly the same age, thus they instantly connected. Lavender however, became a little paranoid, she was Latte's friend much before Macchiato and feared her belemoid buddy wouldn't want to hang out with her as often. As the winter months were creeping in, the two were instructed to tend to the farm so the harsh cold wouldn't kill the crops, Lavender was spreading some mulch around with her paw, while Macchiato was throwing dead leaves out of her pouch like confetti onto the farmland, Lavender was getting irritated by this and snapped, "Hey, can you stop that, you're spreading the mulch everywhere!", "But it's much more fun when you do it like this!" Macchiato rebutted and threw a bunch of leaves into Lavender's face, some got stuck on her neck fur. "Well you're too childish" The tark'ee turned away with her arms crossed, the belemoid rolled her eyes playfully and continued to coat the farmland, Lavender admitted in her mind that that was actually really fun, but she still wasn't sure of Macchiato, she could very well be a friend stealer.

Deeper inside the colony confines, in one of the tents that served as sleeping quarters, Midnight and Kitty were playing cards, the latter was desperately trying to mask her despair as she was losing, totally unaware that Midnight was sweeping the cards with her tail when she wasn't looking, "Gasp, look! Someone left a thousand Zen on the ground!", "WHERE??" Kitty turned sharply, and Midnight sweeped another two cards out of the table. She was an aspiring thief and wanted to start somewhere, Kitty turned back around, annoyed, "I don't know why you keep baiting me like this, but I will get to the bottom of it!" She slammed her paw down, Midnight grinned and a snowflake descended on her muzzle, she looked up and noticed a tear on the roof, returning her gaze to her smug researcher, who exclaimed "So? All the others aren't around or are busy, it's just you and me now, it's about time you get to work Midnight!" She reluctantly agreed, letting Kitty climb up on her head to sew the tear on the tent. After all was done, Kitty said "See? That wasn't so bad, you could help out more around our colony like the others!" Midnight jerked her head around angrily "I don't want to help, I just stay around here because you give me food and shelter, if I could I'd live on my own no trouble".

Back to the tsabhua and his adopted daughter, Meuphyr was trying to find any usable vegetation to take back to the colony, he digged the snow with his claws and whenever he found any semblance of a plant he would pull it with his hands, most often only the leaves would come out and they'd be damaged and frozen, it was a waste of time trying to search for anything now and Meuphyr, he'd have to wait until spring. Another factor that made him stop was his hands, the ice and snow had damaged them and some of his fingers were bleeding "Brrr here's hoping I don't get frostbite", afterwards he was looking for Latte and found her building some snow structures, he questioned her, "I'm trying to make a snow tsabhua! The face is giving me a lot of trouble, all the snow falls when I try to make the snout, I don't know what to do Meuphyrrr" she whined, he smiled at her and felt bad when he remembered his sore hands, "Sorry Latte.. I'm afraid I won't be of any help, digging in the snow really messed up my hands-", Latte dramatically gasped when she noticed his injuries "Oh noo! Meuphyr!!" She scrambled around him, wondering what to do while he tried to calm down.

Suddenly a lightbulb turned on inside her head and she yanked on the scarf he was wearing, neatly wrapping it around his hands, "There, now your hands are protected until we get back home! And about the snow tsabhua, I think you can still help me". Meuphyr was still perplexed about his hands essentially being tied to his neck, he looked at Latte, a bit worried, "What do you mean about that?" he asked, "Well, you still have other limbs, right silly?" She replied playfully.

Back at camp, Lavender and Macchiato had finished mulching the crops and were now lounging around. Lavender was smacking around her favorite ball and chasing after it, she smacked it a bit too far away and raced after it, only to find Macchiato eyeing it under her paw, Lavender halted, and stared down the belemoid fiend, waiting for her to return her gaze. Macchiato finally noticed the giant tark'ee standing in front of her and excitedly exclaimed "Oh! Is this yours? It's so pretty" and returned to staring at the ball, Lavender angrily replied "Yes it's mine, give it back", "Ok!" and Macchiato smacked the ball, running after it "Come on, let's go play!!" Her voice fading away. Lavender, flabbergasted, ran after her.

On the other side of the colony grounds, Midnight was making a snow fort for herself, hoping she would have some alone time with her thoughts, and plotting her next big scheme. She laid on her back inside her circular structure of fluffy snow, looking up at the gray toned clouds, then suddenly everything went dark and she got up, startled, some snow had fallen on her head and she heard a voice outside her fortress, "Oops, sorry! I tried to knock but I guess I ended up pushing the snow hehe" It was the dorky researcher she was stuck with. She peeked her dark muzzle over the icy cold walls, "What do you want?" She inquired, "Would you perhaps be interested in some hot chocolate to melt that icy heart?" Kitty offered.

Midnight was eyeing the mugs for a while until she eventually gave in. Kitty began extending the tray with the mugs and noticed a little snowflake had fallen into the hot chocolate and turned into steam as it melted, she then looked up and noticed a snowstorm brewing. Midnight noticed it too and shouted "Inside. Now!" and jumped out of her snow fort, "But what about the others?" Kitty worried, "They know their way back, come on!".

Meuphyr was pushing some snow balls with his head and piled them up using his front legs, he had never tried using them like actual arms before. Latte was contented at the - not so - beautiful snow creatures they made together; snowdahs, snowkaps and snowjensts (huldahs, nukaps and hojensts respectively). However, in the blink of an eye the snow started falling in clumps and the wind began roaring, both of them knew it was time to return home, and fast.

Lavender was tussling with Macchiato, sometimes she rolled over her, other times she was carrying her around by her arm, it was rough play but the two were still enjoying themselves. Out of nowhere a massive chunk of snow fell on Lavender's head, breaking into a bunch of white fluff. The two scurried to the safety of the shelter they had built for emergencies. Ever since the heavy rains destroyed most of their housing they reinforced the roofs and built a massive bunk shelter for storms.

Most of them were all huddled inside the reinforced shelter with Latte and Meuphyr being the last ones to arrive, he found an empty spot next to Midnight and told Latte to go hang with her other girl friends, the little belemoid ran up to Macchiato and Lavender who were chatting excitedly while drinking hot chocolate. Midnight noticed Meuphyr's hands were tied to his scarf and snarkily remarked "I see you have your hands full", he tiredly asked her to untie the scarf, clearly not up to entertaining her edgy behavior. Sort of confused, she pulled on it and freed his hands, which fell limp into his chest. Shocked, Midnight looked at him, "Yeah, I had my arms held up all day, I can't feel them".