Water. Earth. Fire. Air. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days: a time of peace when the Avatar kept balance between the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation and Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar mastered all four elements; only he could stop the ruthless firebenders. But when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years have passed, and the Fire Nation is nearing victory in the war. Two years ago, my father and the men of my tribe journeyed to the Earth Kingdom to help fight against the Fire Nation, leaving me and my brother to look after our tribe. Some people believe that the Avatar was never reborn into the Air Nomads and that the cycle is broken, but I haven't lost hope. I still believe that, somehow, the Avatar will return to save the world.
Katara sometimes wondered if she was the Avatar. It was pure fantasy, of course, one of many ridiculous ideas that she had loudly concluded long ago to be beneath her. Yet if she couldn't be the Avatar, perhaps it was still possible that she would be the one to find him. Or her. Become his apprentice of sorts. She gazed at the floating mountains of soulless ice around her. Oh what she would do for any excuse to visit some place up north, somewhere with a warmer Sun and less snow!
A subtle shift in the balance of the canoe snapped Katara out of her blasphemous daydreams. Sitting at the other end of the simple boat was her brother, his whole body slightly leaning into the ocean, spear at the ready.
"It's not getting away from me this time," Sokka muttered for what must've been the sixth time that day. He glanced over his shoulder at his sister, a huge dung-eating grin on his face. "Watch and learn, Katara. This is how you catch a fish."
Katara sighed, certain that he would miss again. She turned back to her side of the boat and stared at the passing ice, noting with some worry that they were perhaps floating too far away from the village. It would be best to turn ba-
Katara's eyes widened with sudden excitement as the dark silhouette of a fish slithered out from beneath the canoe and into her field of vision. She shot a quick glance at her oblivious brother as she slipped the glove off her left hand. Taking a deep breath, she stretched out her arm towards the fish and began to slowly wave her ungloved hand up and down.
At first, the water struggled to obey her commands, ripples forming unnaturally over the fish as it weaved around the boat in confusion. But it quickly learned of its master's true intentions, and with a final upward flick of the wrist, Katara's prey found itself suspended helplessly in a rising bubble of water.
Katara stifled a giggle. "Hey, Sokka..." she said.
Sokka was still wholly focused on his prey, barely aware of his surroundings. "Shut up, you're gonna scare it away," he whispered furiously. "Mmmm...I can smell it cooking."
Katara maintained her grip on the water bubble, now using both her arms to shift it squarely above Sokka. Despite being a year older than her, he was somehow always so...moronic sometimes. "But Sokka, I caught..."
Sokka raised his spear for the kill, piercing the floating bubble over him in the process. Katara felt her intangible connection with the water melt away, and the bubble seemed to shatter into a rain of cold saltwater that assaulted Sokka from above. The fish landed on the canoe, but it had already flopped off the canoe to freedom by the time Sokka roared out his first "HEY!"
He tossed his spear aside and made a few more incoherent noises of frustration before finally putting his thoughts into words. "Why is it that every time you play with magic water, I get soaked?"
Katara crossed her arms. "It's called waterbending! And it's..."
"Yeah, yeah, 'an ancient art unique to our culture' blah blah blah..." Sokka grabbed the wet clump of hair that was his warrior's wolf knot and wrung the water out of it in disgust. He stopped mid-wring and smiled at something in the water, undoubtedly his own reflection. "Look, I'm just saying, you've got some weird powers, and..."
Katara raised an eyebrow. "You're calling me weird?" she scoffed. "I don't make muscles at myself every time I see my reflection in the water!"
Her brother's smile disappeared. "No, seriously, the Fire Nation..."
She barely caught Sokka as the canoe suddenly lurched violently and began accelerating at a dangerous pace. He quickly recovered, snatched up the paddle, and began working furiously to steer the fragile boat as ice floes zipped by them.
"Left!" Katara shouted. "Left, left...right...left!" Everything was beginning to spiral out of control, the rapid current growing ever-increasingly agitated.
Someone screamed "Jump!", though whether it was her own voice or her brother's she wasn't quite sure. Wood snapped, ice cracked, and Katara flailed her arms as the world spun into a dark abyss...
...When Sokka finally came to, he found himself staring at a hard, thin sheet of white snow. He quickly but carefully lifted himself from the cold surface, his eyes drinking in his surroundings, his body feeling the ice supporting him bobbing up and down ever so slightly. Katara was near the other end of the floe, groaning as she slowly awoke. An iceberg towered behind her, silently mocking the two stranded children.
So they were on drift ice, somehow. For how long? He glanced up at the Sun, noting its position. Not too long, only a few seconds, judging by the wooden scraps that were once the canoe floating about. Spear? Probably still sinking into the abyss, and the paddle likely met the same fate. War club? Sokka checked the sheath tied to his waist and sighed in relief. At least something useful survived.
Katara turned to Sokka, bitterly brushing white powder off her fur coat. "You call that left?" she hissed.
Anger stirred inside Sokka. "You don't like my steering? Maybe you should've, I dunno, waterbended us out of the ice."
His sister scrambled to her feet. "So it's my fault?" she asked indignantly.
Sokka replied with a dismissive wave and began mindlessly poking at a large hole in the floe that had caught his interest. "I knew I should've left you home," he said. "What a great help! Leave it to a girl to screw things up!" With that, he quickly turned his back on her, suddenly realizing his mistake, and braced for impact.
"You are the most sexist, immature, nut-brained..." Katara began. Sure enough, Sokka could hear the waves crashing against the floe growing larger with each pass. "I'm...I'm embarrassed to be related to you!"
Something let out a terrible crack, and Sokka spun back to face Katara with as blank of an expression as he could muster. Her face was pure rage, but what terrified him more was the iceberg behind her. Did it just...
"Ever since mom died," she said, pointing to herself, "I've been doing all the real work around camp while you've been off playing soldier!"
Katara swung her hand for emphasis, sending a surge of water for emphasis. The iceberg let out another cracking sound, but she didn't seem to notice. Sokka's blank face melted into one of horror. Oh fuck.
"Uh...K-Katara..." he stuttered, pointing at the iceberg behind her.
She only seemed emboldened by his visible reaction and began moving even more furiously, waving her arms back and leaning in to emphasize every other word. The waves were now rocking the floe, doing their best to beg her to stop. "Have you ever smelled your dirty socks? Let me tell you, not pleasant!"
The iceberg was now visibly splitting apart, a branch of cracks sporadically traveling up its height.
"Katara, settle down!" Sokka screeched.
"No, that's it! I'm done helping you. From now on, you're on your own!" And with one final, furious swoop of her arms, Katara split the iceberg in half.
She spun around and gasped. Sokka screamed.
He pulled Katara down towards him just as a large wave struck the floe, and even though his eyes were shut in fear Sokka could feel the slab of snow and ice tilt dangerously downward behind him. Almost instinctively, his right hand snatched up the club and stabbed at the hole he found earlier, rooting himself and his sister as the wave subsided and the floe flopped back to horizontal.
Sokka pushed Katara away from him. "Okay, Katara, you've gone from weird to freakish."
Brother and sister stood up together to observe the grave of the fallen iceberg. For a moment, it seemed like Katara was finally at a loss of words. But it was a brief moment, unfortunately. "You mean...I did that?" she asked, and her lips began to curl into a smile even as her eyes remained wide with astonishment.
A hint of pride welled up somewhere inside Sokka. He nudged his sister with an elbow. "Congratulations," he said, with just the right amount of sarcasm and feigned indifference.
The ocean seemed to chortle in agreement, bubbles spewing forth from where Katara had struck down the massive iceberg. It laughed, and it laughed, and it laughed, more and more bubbles rising and popping...
"Um, Katara?" Sokka asked.
Katara took a step back. "Not me," she said.
The water began to glow. Sokka took three steps back.
Like a new Sun, the source of the blue light rose to the surface. It was a massive iceberg, almost as large as the one that once stood there, a jagged dome of glowing blue ice and snow. Two shadowy shapes seemed to be locked within the ice: a large, indistinguishable blob on top, and some human-like figure perched in lotus below. Arrow shapes on the smaller figure's hands and head glowed with even greater intensity than its surroundings, perhaps the sources of all the blue light. Other chunks of ice surfaced randomly around it. A more imaginative part of Sokka wondered if it was a mystical iceberg guardian spirit, floating from some hidden world beneath the waves to take bloody revenge on Katara.
His sister seemed almost mesmerized by the light, and she began to take a step towards the mysterious dome. And another. And another.
"Katara..." he warned.
"He's alive!" she shouted with joy.
The figure opened its eyes; they shone with that same bright blue glow. Much to his dismay, his angry iceberg spirit theory was looking to be increasingly plausible.
"It's alive!" Katara gasped, suddenly ripping Sokka's club from his grasp. "Alive...we have to help, come on!"
She hopped from the safety of their floe to another piece of ice. She clambered on to a small ridge of the iceberg, face to face with the human figure. Was she just curious, or was that thing actually hypnotizing her?
"Get back here!" Sokka cried as he chased after her. "We don't know what that thing is!"
But it was too late. Katara was already hatcheting the iceberg with her...his club, and she had barely gotten out of the wave as a gust of air suddenly burst forth from the dent she had created. The dent became a crack, the crack spread into a larger fissure, and the fissure began to snake and branch across the icy tomb of what seemed to be a young boy. Or an angry iceberg spirit.
Sokka followed a beam of light as it into the sky; the iceberg was falling apart and melting at an unnaturally quick pace. He felt Katara grab his hand and pull him down to the ground as the light washed over them, blanketing them with sudden warmth. He closed his eyes, but it didn't seem to matter. The light consumed all of his senses and filled his mind, and for just that one moment, Sokka truly believed that everything was going to be all right.
The boy stood frozen on the metal deck of his ship, ponytail fluttering in the wind, as he gazed at the beam of light with widened eyes. The dying flicker of hope left within him had suddenly roared back to life like an inferno.
"Finally!" he cried, eagerly spinning himself to face a much older, rounder man sitting at a small table he had set up for a lonely game of pai ji. The man looked up. "Uncle, do you realize what this means?"
"I won't get to finish my game?"
Like his nephew, the man was in uniform, and once upon a time that uniform meant something to him, but he was a much different man now, the boy noted ruefully. Age had gifted Uncle wisdom and patience but also robbed him of ambition and honor.
The boy sighed and pointed at the pillar of light; it had already begun to dissipate.
Uncle narrowed his eyes at where the boy was pointing, and for a brief moment they seemed to flash with understanding. But they quickly became disinterested again and fell back to the cards on the table. "Or it's just the celestial lights," Uncle said. "We've been down this road before, Prince Zuko. Please, sit. Why don't you enjoy a cup of calming Jasmine tea?"
Zuko tore his eyes away from the light, back to Uncle. "I don't need tea! I need to capture the Avatar!" He directed his fiery gaze at the helmsman perched above near the smokestack. "Head a course for the light!"