Disclaimer: I do not own Sokka, Zuko, Iroh, Kana, Aang, Ozai, Azulon or Katara. Nor did I create the Fire Nation, Air Nomads, Earth Kingdom or the Southern and Northern Water Tribes. These belong to Mike and Brian, Avatar God-s.

Hello readers. Would like comments on whether I should continue or not. Next chapter: Zuko - The Wanderers.

One: Katara

The Hunt

"Sokka, are you sure that there's a herd out here?" Katara asks her brother for the tenth time. The quiver of arrows slung across her back has begun to feel heavier than it should and the muscles in her legs throb dully, promising cramping muscles for later tonight, when the cold really sets in.

Sokka whips his head around to glare at her. "Yes, okay?" he grunts exasperatedly at his younger sister. "I tracked them all yesterday."

Katara lifts a hand to her brow, shading her eyes against the dull summer sunshine. The plain ahead of them is flat and grassy, with the occasional fir tree spreading its needle-leaved branches out over the clear blue sky. There is no animal movement, not even a stale pile of dung that might suggest the past presence of the moose-bear herd. Katara rolls her eyes and shifts the bow on her shoulder so it no longer presses into her collarbone.

"I know you were out tracking, Sokka, but is this the place that you found them?" she demands, raising her eyebrows questioningly. She sees her brother's shoulders tense and imagines that he is glowering at the mountain range in the distance.

"What are you implying?" Sokka snaps. Katara shrugs.

"Oh, I don't know…maybe that you're leading us in the wrong direction?" she retorts, clenching her fists and walking faster so she can meet his stride. "Come on, it's not like it would be the first time."

"Last time doesn't count!" he insists, widening his eyes at her and waving his club over his head. "Those trees all looked the same!"

Katara sighs, reminding herself never to come hunting alone with her brother again. "Are you certain that this is the right place?" she enquires again, tiredly. He nods firmly.

"Positive," Sokka assures her. "The ground gets marshy just ahead, so you'll want to tighten the laces on your boots. I lost one of mine yesterday."

Katara kneels to pull the rawhide strings tighter on her calf-length moose-bear skin boots, grumbling. Letting Sokka get well ahead of her, she kilts up her ocean blue skirts and tucks her hunting dagger into her sash. "Marshy yet?" she yells. Sokka doesn't answer for a moment and then she hears a faint squelching. Her brother leaps about triumphantly, throwing his arms into the air in a comical display of his joy.

"I told you!" he crows as she jogs to catch up to him. "Look, Katara! Marshy!"

"I'm very impressed," she tells him dryly. "Quit jumping around. You'll fall on your face and I didn't bring anything to clean you up with."

He waves a nonchalant hand in her direction but obeys her instructions none the less. All of sudden his chest swells and his nostrils flare. "The herd's got to be close. I can smell 'em."

Katara goes to cock her eyebrow at him in question to this statement, but pauses halfway - what he's saying is right. The lukewarm breeze rustling the waist-high grass around them carries the thick, musky scent of moose-bear, and Katara is almost certain that she can smell the fermenting, digested grass that is the animals' dung. With the scent comes sound: a grunt stirring at the back of one of the great beasts' throats, the snap of heavy jaws being gnashed at youngsters who wander too close, a rattling growl ripping between furry, saliva-encrusted lips.

Sokka makes gestures for Katara to get down and she obeys; the tall grass towers over their heads as they crouch in the ankle-deep, stagnant marsh water.

"There," he whispers to her, pointing to the west. And all of a sudden, they're there - about twenty of them, including their young, ambling in an ungainly fashion over the muddy ground, huffing at one another and catching snatches of grass in their huge mouths as the walk. A single male lumbers in the centre of the group, its pointed horns wider than Sokka is tall, its snout lowered to the ground to snuffle about for root-plants. Katara's eyes widen when she feels the earth beneath her tremble with its every step.

"Sokka," she whispers anxiously but he silences her with a finger to his lips.

"It's okay," he assures her quietly, pulling his spear from his back. "We're not going to get him. See the old cow at the rear?"

Katara risks lifting her head slightly so she can squint at the oncoming animals: she spots the moose-bear Sokka is talking about. Its fur is raggedy and its huge eyes are milky with blindness. One of its mighty horns (though not nearly as big as the alpha male's) has been snapped off somehow or rather and instead her lice-ridden head sports a furry stump.

"I see her," Katara replies in a hasty whisper. "She's right at the back."

"That's her," Sokka nods. "We'll lie here until most of the herd pass us. Then, on my signal, I need you to shoot her before I take her down. Okay?"

Katara nods but she feels a little sick to her stomach. She's been hunting many a time before now, and is skilled when it comes to firing an arrow, but never before has she seen an alpha male so large. The sheer size of his bulk frightens her.

"Are you sure it's safe?" she whispers to her brother, her voice concerned. "If that bull charges us…"

"They don't charge, Katara," Sokka tells her in his I-Am-Sokka-The-All-Knowing tone. "They're like…glacial geese. Kill one and the rest scatter. It's in-stinct." He taps his forehead with a single finger.

The moose-bear are so close that Katara can smell the heavy, organic aroma of the animals' breath. Enormous furry hooves squelch in the stagnant water around them, and Katara catches glimpses of hairy hides as the creatures mosey lazily by, gnashing sharp canines and grinding wide molars.

Sokka begins to ease himself slowly forward, holding his spear poised above his shoulder. He makes a gesture for Katara to follow and she does, however reluctantly. She senses an elephantine presence pass by her with a waft of pungent musk-odour: she turns her head to see the hulking figure of the herd's bull striding languidly by, its pointed horns held high. Feeling her breath catch in her throat, she scuttles on past it, hardly daring to breathe.

Sokka pauses before her, raising a hand to signal her to stop. "Hold up."

Obediently, Katara pulls her bow from her shoulder and holds it in a position of readiness: she reaches back to pull an arrow from her quiver and slips the notch onto the thin rawhide string. Sokka peers through the grass, his eyes slitted with the effort of finding his target.

"She's fifteen metres that-a-way," he whispers to his sister, pointing in the direction of the animal. Katara does not need to strain her eyes to find the cow: she relies solely on his estimate.

"The rest of the animals have passed," her brother continues, still staring into the grass. "The cow's completely isolated."

Katara nods and makes motion for him to stop talking. Her eyes turn keenly in the direction of the oncoming elderly animal and she draws her bowstring back as far as it will go, her arm aching with the effort. She crouches, motionless, beside her brother, who squats tensely beside her.

"Easy," Katara whispers, more so to herself than to Sokka. She draws the bowstring back even further and settles herself into a more comfortable position, waiting for the telltale whisper of grass that suggests the distance between her and the cow: her eyes strain to find the animal.

With a final deep breath ('In…and out…' she whispers) Katara rockets upward, takes a thousandth of a second to pinpoint a target area at the creature's throat and lets her arrow fly.

It hits home; Katara hears a meaty thud as the arrow embeds itself deep in the moose-bear's throat. A great gush of blood shoots past the arrow's fletching, and Katara whoops.

"I got its artery!" she hollers. "Ten points!"

The moose-bear roars in agony, its lip peeling back from its sharp canines and its eyes rolling. It takes faltering steps toward the rest of the herd, bellowing sharply.

Sokka is on his feet is a flash, leaping through the grass to get a closer shot: a second later and his spear is deep in its throat and the animal falls to its knees; its mouth gapes but no sound is emitted. Sokka joins Katara in her victory dance.

"Water Tribe one," he crows, "Moose-bear none!"

Katara runs to meet him, standing before the dying animal, grinning. "Nice shot, brother," she congratulates him. The moose-bear snuffles piteously in disagreement and her milky eyes spin dizzily in her sockets. Sokka puffs out his chest.

"Well, you know how it is," he agrees, "I'm just great."

Katara falls to her knees and runs her hands up to the hollow of the creature's skull, knowing that it is too near-death to snap at her.

"Sorry, old girl," she murmurs, "But my tribe is hungry and you were close to dying anyway." Squeezing her eyes shut, she feels for the veins that feed the moose-bear's brain with blood and pushes, gently, with her Bending. She feels the veins squeeze closed and a moment later the animal is collapsed at her feet, its huge shaggy head lying peacefully on her knees.

"Yuck," Sokka groans, "You did that creepy Blood-bending thingy, didn't you?"

"It's not creepy," she snaps. Two moons ago, at the end of the last winter, a foreigner had arrived at the shores of their village, his long hair hanging in a tangle down his back and a narrow bone poked through the cartilage separating his nostrils. He had taught the Waterbenders in the tribe how to manipulate the blood of an animal in order to kill it faster and more successfully: it could be done at a distance, he assured the Benders, but only with years of practice.

"I have to do it if I want to learn in properly," Katara protests. "And it would help us hunt-"

"We do fine without it," he argues, glaring. "We just took that moose-bear down!"

Katara stiffens. "But it was suffering-"

"That's what they're meant to do when they die!"

"It's not nice!"

"But-"

"Sh, Sokka!" Katara hisses suddenly, her eyes going wide. "Be quiet!"

Sokka breaks of in mid-sentence, his arms raised high above his head in exasperation. He stares at her bemusedly. "But I was ranting."

"Your ranting is disturbing the moose-bear."

Katara points to the herd, who are not twenty metres away. The alpha male bellows in panic, eyes rolling, prancing with sudden grace through the quivering females. One of its black eyes lands on the brother and sister standing over one of its herd.

Katara can imagine the animalistic thoughts running through the creature's head - Dead, predator, threat…trample.

"RUN!" she hollers to her brother. "Sokka, they're going to stampede!"

As if cued, the bull raises his head to the sky and bellows angrily. A single cloved hoof paws the ground restlessly and the bull throws its head about, snorting furiously: and then all of a sudden the entire herd whirls around to stampede straight toward Sokka and Katara. Sokka throws his arms in the air and screams, running full pelt in the opposite direction.

"Come on, Katara! Move!" he yells over his shoulder and Katara obeys, tearing her wide eyes from the tonne of muscle thundering along the plain toward them.

"You said they don't charge!" she screams at her brother, her tone accusatory over the rumble of approaching hooves.

"They don't!" Sokka yells back, glancing over his shoulder, his arms pumping. "But they do stampede!"

"I am never, ever hunting with you again, Sokka!" Katara snaps. "Never again!"

"You might not ever get to breathe again if you don't hurry up!" Sokka reminds her, and she spares a panicked glance behind her. The moose-bear are gaining, and fast: only twenty or so metres away, they show no signs of slowing. Mouths froth, eyes spin, nostrils flare: their hairy haunches are caked with foamy sweat.

"Can't you use your magic water or something?" Sokka pleads, his eyes wide and scared. "We can't out run them!"

"It's called Waterbending!" she corrects him stiffly. "And that's not going to stop them! It'll only panic them further!"

"But it might slow them down," he tells her. "It might be enough!"

"I can't run and Waterbend at the same time!" she protests. "And if we stop running-"

"Just DO IT!" Sokka commands furiously. "They're gaining!"

With a groan of frustration, Katara whirls around, her arms spread and her fingers splayed. The water beneath their feet moves on her command and she pinwheels her arms rapidly, sweat breaking out on her brow: a great wave rises up from the marsh and creates a thin, murky green wall between humans and moose-bear.

"They'll run through that!" Sokka barks, waving his arms in panic. "Make it frozen!"

Katara breathes in deeply through her nose and closes her eyes, focusing on the water before her. When she breathes out, the wall solidifies and Katara is amused to find that there are several twitching insects trapped inside. Sokka's arms wrap around her waist and he squeezes her happily.

"We're not gonna die!" he hollers gladly. "We're not gonna-"

The thin ice wall shatters as the herd, either undeterred by the wall or too panic-stricken to take any notice of it, breaks through, bellowing and biting and sweating. Before Katara even has time to draw breath, she's being pounded against the ground and sucking water into her lungs. Hooves land either side of her, the animals powering on in fright: all she can see is hair and water and grass.

"Sokka!" she cries, her voice sounding oddly strangled and choked. "Where-"

A heavy, mud-caked hoof clips her ankle and a second comes down on it and she hears the sickening snap of breaking bone. A sharp bolt of pain shoots up her left side and she screams, reaching back to clutch at it. "Oh, Yue-!"

A calf, not yet fully grown but tall enough to tower over Sokka, thunders toward her, braying for its mother. Katara's eyes widen and she goes to roll out of the way, but her broken ankle sends another jolt of pain to her brain and she cries out-

Then all she knows is mud and pain and confusion and the taste of blood in her mouth, before her vision fades to black.

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