I don't own avatar: the last air bender blahbidy blah blah
This is a story about an unknown hero. He happens to be my brother, who now lyes encased in a tomb of ice at the bottom of the ocean where the great water spirits will protect and preserve his now sacred body. I never understood him, his ways, his ideas, until I watched him slowly die in front of me, telling me an extraordinary and thrilling tale of adventure with the avatar. Not all these words I can say are true, but like all stories, legend is always and shall always be exaggerated in some way. I am proud to be the author of these pages, and hopefully these words will bring my brothers story to the ears of the world and he will become revered in the same divinity as the avatars.
The best place to start is..well…the start. To understand how my brother was, you need to know where he came from.
He was born one year before I did, one year before fire lord Sozen unleashed his army upon the nations with a firey hell of destruction. Our mother was a simple peasant, living in the northern water tribe with an abusive family. His father was a soldier, who happened to drunkenly rape her when she was a bar maid, and was killed in a fight against the Sha, the keepers of law. I don't exactly know why she wanted to keep him and raise him, despite everything her family did to try and discourage her from letting him live. But she named him Ara, which means fate.
MY father, a fishermen for our tribe, fell in love, and being the caring man he is, took her in, wed her, and supported both of them. Then I was born. And the whole war began. My father was drafted, and once again my mother was left alone, now raising two children by herself, with a dim hope of seeing her husband return alive.
Ara showed a lot of mother in him. He had the same ocean blue eyes, his hair icey white that he would tie into a pony tail with the front draping like icicles just above his eyebrows. But everything else was definitely from his father. He was tall for his age, and his body grew with natural strength and brawn.
I of course, turned out slim, skinny and weak. I cut my brown hair short, always short in the traditional warrior style, which was my dream. I wish I had my brothers eyes, but of course, I inherited brown.
Immediately, my brother showed the talents of a bender. The snow beneath his feet would float and move to his will, which he laughed at playfully, trying to make images or play games with it, unknowingly training himself in the ways of water bending. My mother was thrilled, proud to be the parent of a water bender.
As I got older, when I would see him do all these amazing things, I would try and do them myself, with no luck at all. Ara even tried to help me, but no use. I couldn't make a single snow flake flicker in any direction. Despite the fact that he was protective and loving of me, I was still extremely jealous, though I never let him know. That bottled up anger would lead to my brothers eventual exile.
Ara was soon placed under the guidance of a master, whose talents as a teacher made Ara's abilities grow further then anyone would have expected. By the age of ten, he exceded his master, and saught to increase his abilities on his own.
Now, you have to understand, the master of the tribe held much respect from the people of our town, and blowing off your teacher who taught you almost everything you know is a huge offence. So instead of displaying his obviously much more powerful aptitude at controlling water, he just stopped showing up for classes, wandering off on his own for hours on end into the snowy hills to practice his bending. He pretended that he could care less for learning the sacred arts. It was a huge disappointment to a lot of people, including mother, but somehow, he still held a little admiration from everyone. I couldn't stand it.
I was the only one who knew of his secret. I watched him one day wandering off, and decided to follow to see where he would go to instead of the temple. There I saw him do something master Tock could have never done in his life. Ara managed somehow to figure out how to create his own avalanche out of the snow, and control it completely. The force and power behind that much bending had to be enormous, beyond any known ability of anyone, even the avatars.
I kept his secret for months, and for those months he trained harder, gaining an almost God like grip over water bending. To this day, I can't comprehend the power that layed inside him.
The war continued, and so did the absence of my father. No news of his death was carried back to our village, but no news of his living did either. My mother was heartbroken. And to see my mother in such a state tore Ara apart. And soon he discovered absinth.
Absinth was a drink, distilled from some kind of special plant that was grown in the temple. It was mostly for spiritual use, but others found joy and recreation in the hallucinations it creates. My brother used it to blind himself from my mothers suffering.
Angered by his blind disregard, my bottled up jealousy and rage blew up, and I told master Tock everything.
It wasn't pretty.
Tock was never a subltle man, and his temper was never calm. Enraged, he ran off to the distillery, and challenged my intoxicated brother to a fight.
A fight in my village meant a challenge, not a death match. And under the influence, Ara was destined to ignore the rule of life.
With hundreds of onlookers, my brother took two steps, waving his arms in a form Tock was unfamiliar with, knowing he had never taught Ara anything like it.
Using his former teachers surprise to his advantage, Ara finished the bending move with an abrupt stomp to the ground, creating an icicle tower right beneath Master Tocks feet, and impaled his entire body.
Shocked and appalled, my brother was arrested immediately by the Sha, amazingly, without a fight.
Ara was tried in front of the grand court, and I watched him with a hardened heart as he was sentenced into exile, my weeping mother next to me.