Disclaimer: If you recognize it, that means it isn't mine.
Without Hitting Two
by Looly
"Love, can it hit one without hitting two and leave the one lost and groping?" -- Carl Sandburg's Little Word, Little White Bird
"Pakku—Kanna. Kanna—Pakku."
Two children smile at each other, shy and curious, as they shake hands. The boy's father murmurs an order under his breath, and the boy shakily lifts the girl's hand to meet his lips. The girl giggles and blushes, bashfully pulling her hand away from his and turning to hide in her mother's legs. Frowning, the boy turns to look to his father for answers, but finds only a pleased smile.
"How boring," she says moodily.
"What do you mean?"
"What? You don't see it? Look at them!"
The teenager looks, squints, and then turns back to his friend. "I just see a bunch of healers—"
"Exactly," she mutters. "A bunch of healers. Female healers. Healing."
His brow furrows. "…So?"
"Well, that's all they're doing, isn't it?"
Pakku tilts his head, not understanding what Kanna is getting at, and she lets out a disgruntled sigh before leaving in a huff. He's just a stupid boy, anyway.
Just like all the rest.
She can remember the first boy she ever truly liked. He had long hair that she daydreamed of running her fingers through and dark brown eyes that reminded her of the earth they so rarely got to see. He was different, and the boy that most of the other girls secretly wanted but often brushed off.
His name was Hakoda, and he was beautiful.
She can remember kissing this boy, and meeting him in secret, and lying to her parents about where she was so often running off to. She can remember watching him waterbend and loving him all the more because of it—for the way that he worked with his element, rather than brutally forcing it into compliance. She can remember hours spent talking with him, and how he listened, really listened, to what she had to say.
Nobody else listened like he did.
Yes, she can remember this beautiful boy. Just as she can remember the day that Pakku discovered them, the day that her parents locked her up in her room, and the day that Hakoda eventually stopped coming for her.
"Forget about him, Kanna," Pakku says to her. "He wasn't good enough for you."
She smiles and murmurs "I suppose so" beneath her breath.
But oh, he had been beautiful.
When Pakku kneels down on one knee and presents the necklace, she is at a loss for words. There are tears in her eyes (of joy or of anger, even she can't tell) and the people are crowding and staring in anticipation and the grin on his face is so confident.
She turns to find her mother, to seek advice in the eyes of the only person who truly understands her… and finds only her father, his hard eyes digging into her, expectant and impatient for her to answer.
Without a word, Kanna ties the necklace around her neck and nods.
"You'll learn to love him, darling."
Kanna can hear her mother's unspoken, I did.
Perhaps it should be a comfort that her mother learned to love her father. That love was something that could be learned, rather than something that was either there or not there. Almost like the ability to bend.
Kanna imagines non-benders trying to learn to waterbend, and smiles.
She doesn't know much of love. Not really, anyway. But she can recall the eyes of a boy she once liked very much, and she can hazily remember the surge of emotion she felt at the mere thought of him. And surrounding the small reminder of a past happiness is an ocean of pain—that he was gone, that there had once been a time that he wasn't gone and that she would never get that time back.
Kanna wonders if that is love.
A part of her hopes that it isn't.
"Is it really that easy?" she asks.
Her mother smiles and touches her face. For once Kanna sees not her mother, but a woman; a woman who is aging and tired and perhaps content but not quite happy.
"You'll learn."
Kanna thinks of the feeling—of the surge of warmth, of the pain that accompanies its loss, of the inability to get rid of any of it when one wants to—and wonders just how much learning she has to do.
His hands are warm and his kisses are filled with devotion. People have made promises to her before, but she knows that nobody else could promise her the ocean and mean it as he does.
But when she looks at him, she doesn't see freedom, but a collar. Though there is room to stretch and wander, she will always be bound to him. She can only run so far before the familiar tug of her master will eventually call her back.
The necklace around her neck is so beautiful. The man who wants her is everything a peasant such as herself could hope for. Shouldn't she be happy?
"Do you love me?"
The question is out of the blue, laced with fear (because the answer might not be the one he wants) and sadness (because he knows it won't be the one he wants) and hope (because he wishes he didn't).
"Because I love you," says the man beside her. "But…"
Perhaps there is a flash of something in her eyes, or she takes too long to answer, or maybe she was never that convincing in the first place. She isn't sure, but he looks stung, and the hand that engulfs her own lets go.
"I'm sorry for hurting you, Pakku."
Kanna says these words to him with one foot planted firmly on the block of ice that is their home, and the other planted shakily in the tiny wooden boat that will whisk her away forever.
"But I will never apologize for leaving."
"Kanna, please reconsider—"
"Please don't, Pakku," she interrupts. "Just… please."
The look on his face is a broken one, sadness mixed with a bit of resignation. She wonders if he's just too tired to fight back, or if a part of him always knew that this day would come.
"Blame me," she says, hands reaching to her neck and slowly untying the necklace. "Resent me. Hate me. Feel however you want about me, Pakku, you have every right."
Kanna spares a glance at the beautiful necklace in her gloved hand. There is a lot of love and labor in such a tiny, delicate thing.
On second thought, it's not really that delicate, is it?
"…But don't say that I was wrong for wanting something that this place would never allow me to have."
Soon she is sailing away, the necklace forgotten in the snow.
"Kanna!"
She doesn't know how long she's been asleep, but she finds herself forced into consciousness by a familiar voice and the soft spray of ocean water on her face.
"…Pakku?"
Sure enough, there he is, riding a wave of water only a few feet away from her boat. Once he sees that he has her attention he freezes the area of water around the boat and lands gracefully beside it, leaning in with an outstretched hand.
"What are you doing?" she asks, glaring at the hand. "Pakku, I'm not—"
"It's not that."
The fingers of his hand uncurl to reveal the necklace.
Her eyes only harden. "I won't accept that, you—"
"Keep it. Please."
She doesn't want to. The only thing she wants is to forget, and his necklace would only serve as another reminder of everything she had to endure.
"It is yours, Kanna. I made it for you. It will always be for you." He pauses. "Just you."
Her mouth is firm, the anger in her eyes still thriving; and yet, she slowly reaches for the necklace and accepts it. She hesitates before finally fastening it around her neck. Kanna hates the feeling of the familiar collar, but cannot bring herself to do otherwise. Old habits die hard, she thinks to herself.
When she looks back up to him, he is watching her with a thoughtful expression.
"It's really not that beautiful of a necklace, you know," Pakku says softly, a smile now playing at the corner of his lips. He reaches forward and takes hold of the stone, startling her with his proximity. One calloused thumb caresses it, recognizing the familiar grooves, and yet his eyes remain locked with hers.
"It was only beautiful because it was around your neck, Kanna."
And with that, the ice around her boat melts, and the man she almost married is gone as swiftly as he had appeared.
Kanna finds herself—yet again—jolted awake by a waterbender.
But this time it is a girl, no older than her, who freezes the water around her boat, who reaches in with an outstretched hand, and who examines her with sharp, startling eyes.
"My name is Hama," she says finally, a soft smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "We've been waiting for you."
Hama bends them back to the shore with perfect ease, working with her element in a way that reminds Kanna of someone she once knew.
"Welcome to the Southern Water Tribe, cousin."
Not one of the women is wearing a betrothal necklace.
"It's beautiful," the young boy in her lap says, taking the trinket delicately into his small hands and examining it.
He's a handsome boy, intelligent for his young age and brimming with confidence. But he looks too much like him, and not enough like his namesake, and Kanna can't help but feel an overwhelming mix of love and hatred for how things have a way of turning out.
"Where'd you get it from?"
From your father, she wishes to say, because the child will have to know someday. But that is a story for another day, so for now she vaguely responds, "From an old friend, my love," and leaves it at that.
Because I can't make a fully developed story to save my life, and am forever confined to tiny snapshots of ideas that could be multi-chaptered stories. Ah, well. Some parts of this aggravate me because I loved the ideas but felt like I couldn't express them how I wanted. But, this is it, I'm done fiddling with it and agonizing over it. I like the idea too much to just leave it rotting away in MS Word for the rest of eternity. The title also took me forever to come up with, but I really love the poem Little Word, Little White Bird, so I finally gave up and used a quote from that. So, here we go. Reviews are always appreciated and loved!