"Hah!" the young boy reared back in delight, eyes creased with the full-effect of his triumphant grin, poised before his tear-brimmed sibling. "Got. You!" he smirked, feeling all too empowered at the young age of eight. "How does it feel, Ka-ta-ra?"
His little sister yawned her mouth wide and began to wail, scrubbing her overflowing eyes with the back of one small, gloved hand and using the other to swipe of the remnants of the snowball that was thrust in her face. Her brother flinched with a yelp as if he were kicked in the rear and flew face-first into the biting snow. Waving his hands frantically, he hopped over to her, falling to her knees crying. He tried to soothe her – but the funny thing about comforting a sobbing girl with pleading shush's was, it usually gains the opposite response. At a total loss for what to do, the panicked boy clapped his hand to her mouth. Before he had the time to let out his relieved sigh, a sharp voice barked his name.
"Sokka!"
The young boy whirled around, releasing his sister who tried choking back her sobs, in the intimidating presence of their father. The child gulped with blue eyes wide as his fathers imposing glare encased him in shadow. The chief was a gentle man; kind, compassionate, and caring. But on the few occasions the boy was allowed to accompany his father, he had seen the action taken against grumpy insubordination. Hakoda would transform from the just and sensible, his face would twist in rage and spittle would fly.. he would shout obscenities (only to be regretted later having uttered them in the company of his son) fling clubs, and his face would look as hot as fire. He was a terrifying entity, fury in the flesh. And Sokka feared that fury would be turned on him now.
His father glowered at the boy, face turned up as he stared down the hard line of his nose. He beckoned with two crooked fingers and marched away. Choking on the suffocating apprehension building steadily inside of him, the young boy knocked down the rising lump in his throat and trudged off after his father's blurry figure. He chanced a nervous glance back and saw his sister, little wide-eyed Katara, staring after them – him – in apology. Gran-Gran came out and shooed her into the hut briskly. Sokka wanted nothing more then to just sit beside his sister, next to the warm hearth roaring with life, eating Gran-Gran's deliciously bland sea prune gruel. Instead, he was left in the chilled wake of his father' flurries.
-x-
Sokka sat on his haunches, boats ever so slowly sinking into the cold earth. He drummed his fingers across his knee, mouth a thing and terse line as he waited for his father to speak. His ears picked at the soft sigh to his right.
"Sokka."
The boy gave his father his attention. The man was splayed out comfortably, elbow resting on a bent knee with the other leg straight out and soaking the ice. His forever-narrowed eyes were furrowed by his calculating and deep-set brow, as he stared out at the expanse of rocky white nothing.
"Yes, Dad?" his voice squeaked, a frown curling his lips at the pathetic sound. His utter sounded like a seal-lion pup.
Hakoda nodded his head, tossing it to the side to summon his son. Sokka crawled over and nestled curiously at the crook of his father's propped arm. The arm he used to hold himself up flexed and tightened to a comforting pressure, locking the boy in his father's one-sided embrace. Large blue eyes closed as he inhaled the wood-charred, sea-salty smell of his father. The scent that was all things good, safe, and home.
"Let me start this by saying," he began in the reassuring rumble of his voice. "How proud I am of the boy you've become."
Sokka's eyes blinked open. "Dad?" his eyes followed the hand clamped to his small shoulder in curious puzzlement.
"Your mother would be so proud to see the young man you have become too."
The young boy's mouth popped at the mention of his mother. He winced at the fresh pain of her passing and at the wash of guilt he felt for being relieved on that day. He remembered being ecstatic and triumphant. His village had fought back Fire Nation troops onto their steel vessels. They were retreating under the Water Tribe! Sokka cheered with the other men, whooping and spinning with a jump off the crumbling barricade. He recalled laughing and hopping from foot to foot in an excited, childish dance. But he also remembered feeling his grin slip from his features as he watched his father and sister sprint far off to his diagonal right, a tigerbeeline toward their igloo, his father shouting their mother's name. Sokka had yet to recognize that kind of fear and distress in his father's voice. He streaked past the celebration, knowing something was wrong – so terribly, terribly wrong – and could see their backs now. Hakoda skidded to a stop on the frozen earth and pulled back the tattered curtained door. Sokka was fifteen feet away now and nearly stopped cold as he saw the confusing image of black, pluming smog escaping the small hut. His small hut. He saw his father's back bristle then freeze, arm still holding the flap up to his home. Katara fell to her knees, stunned by something inside their home. Seven feet away when he was close enough to see, he tried, but his running cast a dizzying spell over his vision. He huffed and futilely squinted.
And suddenly he was airborne. Coasting – flying – through the skies in a slow-motioned arc. Time had seemed to slow for that moment, frozen in space as still as the land around him. He landed in a mound of snow with an oomph from impact. His father barked something at him, stepping to block the opening of their home. Hakoda tried his best to shield him from view, but it was too late. Sokka's breath hitched, tangled and strewn in the snowy pit. He didn't have to look up to hear the tears streaming down his father's face – his thick yells were enough. He couldn't, he wouldn't, comprehend the image that flashed before his eyes. All that the boy saw was one boot, a boot as blue as the ocean at midday, burned and charred with the rest of the clothes – simmering in ashen cinders. The once vibrant blue winter apparel was sullied by smoke and fire. Through the fog of his unregistering mind, he heard Katara's keening breaths, her head raised up as she screamed her horror and heartbreak to the emotionless sky. The only response it gave back to her was the whitening of snow, changing from black to gray as the deed had been done and the enemy ran with their tails between their legs.
He saw through cloudy eyes his father sweeping her into his arms, closing the flap to that place. Something cold had gripped the boy, coiling him tighter than his fathers arm. Sokka became a jostling package in the surreal ropes of his father's presence. He felt like he was drowning, drowning in ice, like the time he fell headfirst into a fishing hole at the ice lake. But worse. So much worse. Staring back at the tunneling smoke stealing away from the igloo, the cold spread like a venom, to his toes and creeping along to his fingertips, until his mind went numb and his body felt leaden. Katara clung to their father as he choked on her arms and the pain.
They had defiled it. His home was no longer a home. His home had become his mother's, and normalacy's, grave.
"Sokka, are you listening to me?" The boy answered by burrowing deeper into his father's side, reeling back into reality and clinging to the man as an anchor to the present, to the real and the cold and unfeeling. "I want you to know, Sokka." Hakoda cleared his throat densely. "I will have to go into the war."
The child blanched. "What?" his voice cracked as he sprawled back, away from his father. Away from the truth he saw in the forlorn expression that stole the content light from his father's sharp eyes. He gaped in horror. "Dad, you can't go!"
Hakoda lowered his eyes. "Please, Sokka. My son. I don't expect you to fully understand yet, but I need you to accept it."
The boy shook his head furiously, squeezing his eyes out. Squeezing away the nightmare that became his life. As if the haunting dreams hadn't plagued him enough, now he had to face a reality that was just as bad as reliving that day. The spirits didn't think losing a mother was awful enough – now they were trying to take away his father too. Well he couldn't let them.
"No! I can't!"
"Please, Sokka – I need you now more than ever, my son. If you can come to accept it, then that will make it easier on your sister and for her to." Sokka brought his head up in slow horror as he thought of what this news would do to Katara. It was like a jolt through his stomach. He had never known what it would feel like to get pierced by a Water Tribe dagger – though he had seen it hundreds of times done on the native animals. And now he did. "I won't be going away for some time, though. We have to build a fleet and an army. We have much time to prepare."
A bubbling hope fountained inside Sokka. "We?" he crossed his fingers within the wool of his gloves.
"My men and I," Hakoda stared out in deep contemplation, features hard and thoughtful. As he looked onto his sullen son, head sagged on all fours, he realized his mistake. Wincing, he pulled his son closer along the ice, back under the safety of his wing. "But I have a very important job for you, Sokka."
The child tried to smother the happiness he felt at being useful, and the thought of proving himself to his father, but he perked up regardless.
"Yeah?"
"When I'm gone," he leaned forward as if divulging a secret with his son. "I will need you here to protect your sister, and Gran-Gran." His face fell and he groaned, flopping face-first into the snow. "And you would have to be chief in my place." Sokka's face shot up, a light frosting of crystallized water dusting his face as pearly white as his grin.
"Of the village…?"
Hakoda smiled at his boys dreamy tone, brushing the snow from his face.
"And you'd have charge of the remaining men to train. Do you think you would be able to handle all that?"
Sokka's eyes watered with the prospects. He nodded vigorously.
"Well. My fleet would be ready in four years time," he stated, playing as if he were simply thinking aloud. "And then this village will be all yours."
A, a, a… a twelve year old chief?" Sokka swooned at the image he depicted for himself, girls fawning over a muscle-bound stud version of himself.
The chieftain smiled again. He saw his son quietly, almost reverently touch the side of his shaved scalp. Sokka gingerly places his covered fingertips to the prickly razor edges of his trimmed hairs.
"Is that why you gave me the Warrior's Wolftail?" he stared down at his feet, picking them up and dropping them back into the snow. He studied his fur boots intently, hoping he wasn't too presumptuous.
Hakoda favored his son, tilting his head up as an emotion tugged at his lips.
"Sokka. Do you know why all warriors wear this style for battle?"
The boy stared up, jaw opened in wonder. Hakoda's heart ached. He looked so small, and young. Vulnerable. And he had to leave the village in his son's care, while he fought in a war that deprived his two children the right to a proper childhood. Though Hakoda had never known one either – he wasn't able to when worrying about when next the Fire Nation would raid, when next would they take more and more from the poor tribe. But even still, he knew the injustices of not having a childhood, and the thought of his children going through the same hardships he had disgusted him.
"Um…" the lower corner of his mouth dragged down. "No." he sagged his head in comical defeat.
The man chuckled and placed his hand upon his sons head, shaking him out.
"Well, it actually comes…from a story."
Sokka perked up instantly, a happy squeak escaping his thin lips. "A story?" he was absolutely thrilled, delighted. He loved hearing his father's tales. It was likea thrumming life beating on its own, spilling a froth of magic from his mouth as he spun and wove extraordinary tales of fighters and warriors and justice and loyalty.
"It is a lore form our tribe. Would you like to hear it, Sokka?"
"Yes! Yesyesyesyes – yes!"
"Alright," he said, placing his finger up to halt the jittering mess that was his son. "But you'll have to walk with me someplace first."
-x-
Father and son sat atop a cliff face of ice rock and snow. The snow hung off the sides of the raised, spiked earth like fingers dipped in sugar. The village lay cradled far below their dangling feet. The form of Gran-Gran's hunched silhouette as it bustled through the village quarter was quickly spotted, and pointed out, by the young keen eyes of the boy.
Sokka rested his palms on his knees and swayed forward, to and fro, in a lilting rhythm. He tilted a little too far but before he could cry out and plummet, a hand cuffed him by the fur-lining of his hood, like a mooselion cradles its cub by the scruff. Sokka tottered on the edge, staring saucer-eyed at the ground seventy feet below.
"Uff!" his face scrunched as his father yanked him back by the collar to sit properly on his backside.
"Are you ready to hear about Brother Amorok?" he rumbled warmly, staring down at his young cub with pride.
The boy gave him a quizzical look back. Hakoda gave him a grin.
"It means wolf in the old tongue."
Sokka stuck his tongue out, inspecting the pink muscle with crossed eyes, quickly slurping it back in as his father drew a deep breath and began the tale. The sky seemed to darken more, setting the mood perfectly, and a brisk draft blew with the sound of a whistling moan.
"Long, long ago – on a night much like this – now, you must remember, son, our people have not always been united under one village. We were hunters, gatherers. We traveled in packs – and spread out far."
"L-like the Air Nomads!" the young boy exclaimed, gasped, and then covered his mouth immediately, sorry to have interrupted. He trembled but his father shone, pleased at his son's knowledge.
"Yes, just like the Air Nomads. Each pack warred with each other for territory. But one camp had the bravest, wisest, and most loyal warrior."
Sokka inhaled the crisp air, and colors of navy, orange, and gray dusk swirled into one as he was taken by the sound of his father's voice, and the tale of his forefather's forefathers' past.
A wolfs howl. A man's head shot up at the sound, pupils like pinpricks. He yelled something in a foreign tongue and other heads rose, each eye narrowed in stealth. Another tribesman galloped up on a ledge and blew into a hipporams horn. The sound echoed through the tribe, rousing every warrior. A lithe man, muscled and strong, ran up beside the Caller. At the sight he saw, he gave a start and shouted to his men. An army of a hundred scaled across the icy planes, sprinting in battle gear and spears clanking.
"You see, Sokka, all across here," Hakoda spread his arm wide across the flat expanse of land below them. "The clans waged their war."
As he glowered down at his men, surprise and dismay flitted his features to see they wore their walrusseal hide chest plates. They cried in adrenaline and pumped ferocity, ice hawk feathers shaking with their bulged muscles. The man grimaced at the prospect of another battle.
"Amorok was the bravest and strongest warrior of the nomadic tribes. But he hated the wars and wanted them to end. But his loyalty to his friends forced him to keep fighting and protect them."
The boy ignored his father, opting to immerse himself deeper in the plot. He swam through the words, muddling the present, and broke through the realm of fictitious stories. Sokka gargled on reality and spun out into the lost time of ages old.
Amorok braced himself at the rear, gripping his slim spear of bone and flint with white knuckles. His face was twisted in chagrin as he looked upon the hardened and happy mugs of his brethren, geared up and excited for the hunt of precious life. Throwing their fists up, they cried out and charged, pounding their feet into the snow. Amorok jogged after his men, two-handing his weapon before him and slunk low. As the sounds of battle bent screams neared, the wolf gasped and pulled back at the sight. The men were clearly stronger, with superior defensive strategy in place, as they charged in a phalanx. The wolf bit back his curse as anger swelled within him. And then a thought seemed to pierce his mind. It left his face blank, like a slate of ice. The same ice they skidded and hopped across, before it was marred by blood. Blood, blood. No more blood.
His teeth clamped down on his lower lip, viscous crimson spilling from the punctures, as his canine tooth took the quality of a fang in his decision. He surged forward, his calves corded as he pounced on his thought. Amorok knew what he had to do.
"He made it to the front of his formation," Hakoda's glistening eyes furrowed as his brow hardened as if to contain his suddenly steely gaze. He swept his hand out, voice lowering in pitch, yet making up for that in volume. "'Stop!' he had shouted—"
- and all around, the clans halted their advancing, leaving a ten foot radius between the poised warrior. The long stretch of land sizzled with uncapped tension and searing hatred.
Hakoda lifted his head and in Sokka's vision, Amorok did the same. The image of his father blurred to the scarred defender as he huffed from exertion and thrumming energy that filled him, body and spirit.
"'My friends – brothers – please!'" Amorok/Hakoda pleaded.
The world swirled around the wolf as he took in each ferocious glare.
"Why must we fight, to what good is this? To what purpose? For land?" he stated with incredulity. He stared between the two clans, eyes wide and disbelieving. "We are of the same tribe, we are of the same womb. We each come from the icy lands – why must we fight for the land of us all?"
A man dressed in heavy cloth and hide, decorated in dull brown with the fur trim of white lining his silhouette stepped forward. Feathers dangled at the knotted straps all about him. He spat on the ground, the leader of the enemy. No. not enemy – brother. The biggest man in Amorok's tribe stepped forward, snarl curving his lip menacingly. He only stood there so as not to hurt his brother. The two neared one another and simply glared, piercing stares as hard as a pikeshark's fang.
As custom, the warriors nodded, acknowledging the others presence. The leader of Amorok's clan latched arms with his friend, the wolf's back exposed to the enemy as a sign of good faith and trust. Then he turned and showed the other clansmen the underside of his forearm. The subtlest of head movements, and the leader gripped forearms with Amorok.
A pact, a treatise, had been made that day. And a pact had been broken on the same breath.
Simpering wickedly, the man drew back his free arm and stabbed Amorok the Peacekeeper with all his might and steel. The wolf gurgled as the spear sliced out of his abdomen with a sigh as if it had slipped from its place at the notch on the clansmen's belt. The enemy let Amorok fall to his knees before his brothers. Wind whimpered its sorrow on a tearing gale.
"'Amorok'?" Hakoda gaped at the ground as if he had seen his brother of long ago felled.
As one, the tribe raised their heads, an aura of black hate and revenge seethed behind the hardened combatants. Raising their bone-clubs and spears to the sky, they yelled in rage and began to charge the triumphantly retreating clan, laughing at the loss of a brother as bold as Amorok – and not yet knowing of the losses they would pay for this injustice.
And then a bright light stopped them.
Sokka's gaze shot up with his father's, searching the inky skies for that blinding light.
It was a beautiful mixture of color, swirling like a stream of turquoise, green, and aqua. The weapons of the Northern Clan dropped, clattering uselessly on the ice, as the body of their brother floated lifelessly into the natural light. A wolf's yowl rent the skies like the clang of shields, sharp and excruciating. Something took hold of brother Amorok, his body writhing and contorting – until he burst into a blazing white light. The men shielded their eyes, and upon glancing back, a figure floated down from the showering mists. The limp form of a wolf, as pure as snow, lilted down from the skies before each man.
"You see, Sokka, the spirit of the wolf that protects these lands is our symbol of bravery. And courage. The spirit had embodied itself in Amorok because he was the true spirit of courage, loyalty, and bravery. It had taken pity on the loss of a kindred soul and Amorok became the symbol all – even in those times – revered."
The young boy mouthed a 'wow' and stared out into the flied. His keen ears listened on as his eyes watched the scene unfold with misty figures from old memories of older tales.
The ransformation had changed nothing. The clan wanted blood for blood and their vengeance had yet to be sated. They reared back to plow into the other warriors, but the true wolf stopped them. His lips pulled back as he growled and ripped at the feet of his friends.
"Why not you bite at the feet of foes, brother?"
The wolf groused in response, a feral sort of noise. He strode on matted paws intimidatingly, stalking closer until the breath of his snout was felt on the shins of his brother.
Defeated and resigned, the leader picked up his machete—
-and razed the sides of his hair. The long locks fell away and carried like ash on the wind. The others, unquestioning, cut their hair the same. As a single unit – and a single heart.
"Why did they do that?" the boy asked in wonder.
"They shaved the sides of their heads in honor of Amorok – and the way he had always pulled his hair back." Hakoda dipped his head closer to his son's. "And do you know what they named it?"
Sokka shook his head curiously, frowning as he tried to imagine what the title of such a thing could be called. Or why it even had a moniker.
"The Wolftail."
His hand darted up to paw at his foreign hairstyle, patting the poof of hair down against his skull gasping.
"And, and, and what happened to the two clans?"
His father crossed his arms over his chest, face growing somber. "Because of Amorok's sacrifice, the two clans formed the tribe we live in today."
The child broke out into a huge grin and the chieftain didn't have the heart to tell the child of the years of strife and tension that gradually turned to stability – though not after much killing and murder between natives.
"Wow~" he flopped on his back languorously. He hopped to his feet in the next instant, without giving a time to rest. "I'm gonna go tell Katara – and Korin!" he took off with the abundance of energy that only a child can possess.
Lines of happiness creased at the corners of both eyes as he watched his son tromp back to the village, down the same path he himself had taken with his grandfather.
"You will make a fine warrior," the man's gaze lingered on the ebony night that enveloped him. "Brother, I hope you are proud."
Only the penetrating cry of a polar wolfhound met his words.
Hakoda let his burst of laughter carry on the breeze as he witnessed his son stumble and face-plant into the snow, fifty feet away. Oh yes. The future pride of the tribe. His breath hitched so suddenly, he nearly choked; for as the wind picked up, the dusted snow swirled around the boy in a whipping torrent - sending his parka flying around his frail body - and into the shadow of a hulking, white wolf.
A/N: So what did you think? Personally I am very proud of this fanfic. And if I don't get reviews I am going to shoot somebody. I'm starting to get a complex. I thought I was a decent enough writer - and yet not very many people comment on my stories! It's very disheartening.
I hope you liked hearing of how the Water Tribe started. Oh, and Amorok is the Inuit ("Eskimo") word for Wolf. Makes sense, don't it? The answer to this question is yes.
Oh, and the story of Amorok and the formation of the Southern Tribe is all mine. Mine mine mine. Hope you enjoyed it!
This is part one of three. The next is Zuko's story, of the Royal Topknot. And then Aang. See you until then!
Allons-y~