"And he was never heard from again…" Katara whispered eerily as she, her brother, and Aang all sat at their shared fire inside an igloo at the Northern Water Tribe. Aang sat to Katara's right and listened intently at her story.
"Wow Katara, you're such a good storyteller," Aang commented, eyes wide open as his gaze remained fixated on Katara's face. "This story was especially good. My spine is tingling already!"
"Thank you, Aang," said Katara graciously.
"It was okay, I guess," Sokka interjected, a somewhat condescending attitude emanating from his words. "It was just lacking a certain...something. The stories mom used to tell us were way scarier."
"Sokka, that was one of the stories mom used to tell us," Katara clarified. "Don't you remember? She told it to us when I was three."
"Yeah, but one can only hear the story of the man-eating otter penguin oh so many times before it gets boring," Sokka complained, his head resting in the palm of his hand. "Plus, it's a kid's story. We're not little kids anymore, Katara, in case you've forgotten."
"Well, do you have a story for us, Sokka?" Aang wondered curiously, his focus now shifted on Sokka rather than Katara. "I'd love to hear it." Sokka glared over in Aang's direction as if he thought he was mocking him, only to see Aang's eyes open wide in eager anticipation. Katara merely crossed her arms and smirked as she too gave Sokka her attention.
"Yeah Sokka, what story do you have for us?" Katara teased. Sokka placed his finger on his lips and looked up to the ceiling of their igloo, tapping his lips with his finger as he thought about what story to tell.
"Well, there is one story I think is pretty scary, but it might be too much for you two to handle," Sokka remarked.
"Then tell it! Come on, we're ready!" Aang ardently asserted. "As you said, we're not little kids anymore, so we can handle it!"
Sokka released a sigh and looked over to Aang and his sister before speaking. "Alright, if you insist, but just know that this is a true story." Sokka took in another deep breath in preparation for his story. All the while, Aang stared in great anticipation. Katara stared as well, but with less of a look of anticipation, more with a gaze of derision. "Way back when, when I was just a little kid, I was having fun and exploring as little children tend to do, and wound up at the outer edge of the Southern Water Tribe. I was stupid back then and-"
"Just back then?" Katara jabbed, smirking and chuckling at her own joke. Upon hearing Katara's joke, Aang snickered a bit.
"Hey, let me finish!" Sokka complained. "Anyways, I was stupid back then, so when I was exploring the outer edge of the tribe, I slipped on a patch of ice! And then, once I slipped, there I went tumbling into the icy waters of the South Pole!"
As Sokka smirked, having concluded his supposedly scary story, both Aang and Katara stared at him in confusion.
"Uh Sokka? We were supposed to tell scary stories, and that wasn't really all that scary. It was just you falling into water as a kid," Aang pointed out, perfectly bewildered by Sokka's rather poor attempt at a ghost story.
"Oh he's just detailing the time he fell down and became scared of the water is all," Katara teasingly proclaimed. Aang snickered in response to Katara's jesting remark before he replied.
"What? Sokka, you're afraid of the water?"
"It's not something I like to talk about," Sokka muttered.
"But you've been on the water so many times already on our adventures," Aang stated.
"It's part of the warrior's code, okay? Warriors aren't supposed to show our fear, alright? It makes us seem weak," Sokka replied.
Aang was still perplexed with his friend's newly revealed fear. "You've shown your fear for other things in the past, so why-"
"It's just a personal thing, okay? That's all!" Sokka exclaimed before storming out of the igloo into the cold night air of the Northern Water Tribe. As he exited the room, he mumbled incoherent sentences and statements about how he's never taken seriously and how both Aang and Katara are stupid for thinking less of his story. Within mere moments, Sokka's mumblings were inaudible, leaving them out of earshot from him and vice versa.
"Whoa, I didn't expect that kind of reaction," Aang admitted. "He must really be scared of the water if he's reacting that violently about it."
"You don't even know the half of it. Why do you think he never showed up when you tried to ride the Unagi back on Kyoshi Island?" Katara denoted.
"I always just assumed he was too busy trying to get back at those girls that kicked his butt back then," Aang revealed. "but I guess it does make sense now that I think about it. I will say one thing. He has great control over his fear for someone who lived near it every day all his life."
"It does get annoying though, he keeps reciting this phrase he overheard one day over and over to himself to keep himself calm," Katara complained
"I'm sure it can't be that annoying."
"True, it's not a bad saying, but trust me when I say it gets old after a while."
"Whatever, can I still hear it? Maybe I've heard it before."
"You sure?"
"Of course."
"Well alright then," Katara remarked, smiling at Aang's usual enthusiasm. "He keeps saying the phrase 'Fear is only as deep as the mind allows' over and over again to himself when he thinks nobody else is around to hear it, but we can always hear it."
"Weird, I haven't overheard him saying that," Aang responded.
"Well, I've overheard him at the very least then," Katara explained.
"Oh well, at least he has control over it," Aang stated smiling.
"Yeah," Katara agreed, a silence befalling the icy room as the fire they all shared began to diminish. Within a few mere moments, Katara's eyes lit up, a smirk forming on her face as well. "Hey Aang, I just had an idea."
"What sort of idea?" Aang wondered.
"Just trust me, it'll all be worth it."
Moments later on the streets of the Northern Water Tribe, Sokka walked about, complaining to himself about Aang and Katara still. "Stupid Aang, how does he not find the water scary? He was frozen in it for a hundred years! If anything he should be the one afraid of the stuff."
Sokka continued walking off his feelings of animosity, all whilst looking down at his feet, occasionally letting his eyes drift over to the placid water where the people of the water tribe row boats to travel through the town. Sokka gritted his teeth as he stared into the icy depths of the waterways, his mind running wild with thoughts of what could be lurking down in the dark wet abyss. Sokka closed his eyes and stood still for a moment, holding his head to keep his fear contained and controlled. As he stood as still as a potato sack in the corner of a kitchen, he began to mutter his fear control mantra just as he usually does.
"Fear is only as deep as the mind allows. Fear is only as deep as the mind allows. Fear is-"
He was cut off from his mantra as he began hearing strange unknown sounds from around the corner, sounds that were both familiar and unlike anything he's ever heard before. To the young water tribe warrior, they seemed like splashes and sloshes, but also very strange as they also sounded more active and lively than when Katara and Aang practice their bending together. Sokka merely peered around the corner to see what was causing the strange sounds, and the sight that his eyes were met with horrified him to the core. The sound emanated from a strange mass of what appeared to be living water. Its body consisted of nothing but a large blob of more or less formless water with at least ten long watery tentacles flowing from along the mass's surface. Sokka tried to sneak away, but as he backed away, his foot stepped on a thick patch of snow, the snow crunching beneath his weight and resulting in a somewhat loud sound, one of which alerted the creature to his location. Sokka tensed up and shivered in fear as he heard the sound as his eyes fixed onto the water monster, the monster of which near immediately lept over to him. Sokka screamed and instantly turned to run away. He ran and ran across the icy pathways of the Northern Water Tribe, all the while the water monster gave sufficient chase, keeping up with his pace as it tried to catch him.
"I knew the water was out to get me!" he shrieked in utter terror as he raced along the ice. Sokka soon reached the end of a pathway, another wide waterway blocking his path of escape. In a frantic panic, Sokka looked around him as quickly as he could in a desperate attempt to find a new place to run. To his delight, there was an empty boat sitting along the waterway. Sokka's face lit up a bit in relief as he dashed towards the boat, the creature right behind him and seeming to gain on him fast. Sokka noticed this and hopped aboard the boat in his attempt to escape the monster giving him chase. Once aboard the boat, Sokka tried to get back up onto the next adjacent pathway to continue running, his jump unfortunately leading to him slipping up on some ice formed on the wooden boat's seat, causing him to tumble back into the boat and fall back first onto the hard wooden surface below.
"Ow," Sokka mumbled to himself, rubbing the back of his head to ease the pain from the fall, as he looked up, he saw the formless monster looming over him menacingly, Sokka lying there, paralyzed with fear as he came to the sudden realization that he was more or less helpless and at the water monster's mercy. Soon, the monster lifted him up with one of its liquid tendrils, causing Sokka to scream more at the top of his lungs, fear overtaking him as he attempted to struggle and get free from the monster's clutches, to no avail to his dismay. Soon, the creature pinned Sokka to the wall of the nearby buildings and stared him down, more sloshing and ebbing sounds coming from it as he held him there forcefully. Sokka continued to try and wiggle out of the creature's grasp, but once again, he found it to be completely and utterly useless to do so. The creature closed more of the gap between itself and Sokka, Sokka still screaming in pure panic as he began to cry tears of fear.
"Please mister monster! Please don't kill me or drown me or do whatever you want to do to me! I wanna live! Please just let me go! Please, please, please, please, please!" Sokka cried out in fearful agony, struggling less and less as the fear and panic took over. As his screams of terror ceased, he began to hear more sounds other than the sloshing sounds of the monster. In his terrified state, he attempted to make out what sounds he was hearing. His mind quickly eased as he began to make out what the other sounds were, the sounds of laughter. "Wait, what?" Sokka murmured as the water monster soon melted into nothing but inanimate water once again, leaving Sokka to fall gently to his feet once more. No longer was Sokka in utter fear, but rather utter confusion as his fearful tears continued slowly cascading down his face, all the while laughter echoed through the night air. In his confused state, he looked up to where he heard the laughter coming from, his eyes greeted unpleasantly by the sight of Aang and Katara, both booming with hearty laughter. Katara wiped tears from her own eyes, her tears from pure joy rather than fear.
"Oh spirits that was priceless!" Katara bellowed in her intense laughter. Aang laughed alongside Katara, not as intense as Katara, but still rather heartily.
"Yeah, I never knew Sokka was capable of panicking like that!" Aang chimed jestingly. "Good idea using our bending to trick him like that, Katara!"
"Thank you, Aang," Katara replied as her laughter began to quell. "I'm glad to get some extra practice like that!"
Sokka was less than pleased as he watched the two of them laugh at his expense. "What? That was you two's doing?" He asked frantically. "Why? Why would you do that when you know far too well that I'm terrified of water?"
"Consider it us trying to help you face your fear instead of suppress it," Katara commented. "I figured it would be good for you to face it instead of continue repeating that stupid mantra of yours."
"Wait, you knew about the mantra?" Sokka asked, suddenly changing his tone of voice.
"I'm sure everyone in the southern water tribe could hear it," Katara claimed. "Ice isn't soundproof, Sokka."
"Well still...it was kind of rude to trick me like that," Sokka stated, still somewhat miffed at Katara and Aang for pranking him like they had.
"Yeah, kind of, but you're fine, right?" Katara asked genuinely.
Sokka looked over at himself, and other than a few wet patches on his parka and a bump on the back of his head from his fall in the boat, he was indeed perfectly fine. "Yeah, I guess so," he answered.
"Alright good, no harm done then," Aang stated. Come on, let's get back inside. You can warm up by the fire again." As Aang said this, three of them began to get back to their igloo, Sokka's eyes once again looked over to the water, his mind still running with thoughts of what else could actually be lurking underneath the gently ebbing and flowing waves of the ocean's depths as once again entered the sanctity of he and his companions' igloo for the night.
WRITTEN FOR THE PRO-BENDING CIRCUIT: 2383 words without author's notes. The bonus prompts were:
(word) potato
(location) North Pole
(quote) "Fear is only as deep as the mind allows " - Japanese proverb
Also, my element is plot relevant.