Those Stolen Moments

For Demonlord Zamael

Pakku loved the way the water bent.

He loved making it shape and change form beneath his hand, curling it around his fingers, whipping it into the air like a bolt of lightning. He loved pulling water straight from the air around him; when no one was looking he suspended it in front of him and molded the water into items of fancy. A dove, a rose, a sparrow. A necklace. One morning knelt as the dark rose around him and pulled a watery betrothal necklace from the air.

For a moment as brief his breath, Pakku forgot old age. He forgot the ache in his bones, how every morning his steps grew slower until one day they would stop completely. Reminders of his fading memory disappeared into the brightening skies around him. For that one moment, he wasn't losing his hair, or his wisdom, or his agility. He'd already lost what mattered years ago.

Kanna.

xXoOoXx

Kanna rarely allowed herself to reflect on anything. Living in the past only made one stupid―that was the motto that life thrust upon her, and so she had no choice but to live by it. When one had warriors and women, children and babies by the dozens to take care of and a war to guard against, one couldn't afford to so much as stop and breathe.

Therefore, she did not allow herself to think about Pakku.

Until the sun went down, that is, when no one was around to see her crumble.

xXoOoXx

One day, he arrived. Kanna didn't expect him; she'd been examining her old lotus tile that morning completely by accident, and would swear by it. She didn't notice him at all at first. Neither had she planned to until a small child ripped open her tent. "Gran Gran! There's a man and an army! The man, he wants to see you―mmph!"

A veined hand had the child around his mouth. Kanna stood up from the clothes she'd been washing and raised her eyes from the struggling child, to the man's arm, to the man's serious and angled face. The intruder broke into a wrinkled grin.

"Do you remember me, Kanna?"

"You've put on weight."

She folded her arms. Kanna was more aware of the the white lotus tile that burned against the spot where it was tucked against her bosom than she was of Pakku's falling face.

He let the child go. The boy looked up at him with wide eyes before he bolted―a wise move, thought Kanna, and thought about doing the same. Pakku closed the tent flap behind him. "Well, you've put on weight too."

"Excuse you. This is all muscle," said Kanna. Beneath her thick clothing, she drooped, flabbed and wrinkled in all the wrong places, but he couldn't see that. So there. She was right as always.

Pakku stepped closer. They hugged.

xXoOoXx

Pakku loved the way her hair fell over her eyes and how it was too much effort for her to push it out of her face. That meant he could lean over and do it for her, tucking it behind her ear and getting his first real look at the woman he loved in more than fifty years.

My, she'd gotten old.

Kanna looked up sharply from her tiny cup of tea. "Stop staring and close your mouth. If you're trying to make an old woman blush, it won't work."

It worked.

She might have aged but her spirit stayed the same. Of course, Pakku loved that too.

xXoOoXx

Pakku told his men they'd only stay for a week, two at the most, long enough to stabilize their sister tribe before they moved on to the other divisions of the Southern Water Tribe. If there were other divisions left. Every time that thought wormed its way into his mind he grew another wrinkle.

Every time he saw Kanna, he forgot about every single one.

They were sewing furs when he touched her again. His hand on her arm. He thought he could feel her pulse through her coat, or perhaps that was just his, in his palm.

Perhaps it was both. Two hearts and one beat.

That was the way Pakku wanted it. The only problem was, he worried whether she wanted it at well.

xXoOoXx

On the third night of his stay, Pakku was not at the grand fire for dinner. Kanna couldn't have been the only one who noticed, but she was the only one who thought to take him a bowl of food in case he was hungry.

The master was, as she suspected, in her tent. He was also without half of his clothing, which she hadn't exactly suspected. "Meditation" was Pakku's excuse.

He wasn't completely bare, of course; they both knew he had to do a bit more training before he was ready to show all of that to her. Still, she felt herself go completely red in the face and stumble out―as he fumbled about for his own coat and pants―before she remembered this was Pakku.

She picked up the pants at her feet and hurled them to his face. They hit their mark. He had to peek out between pant legs to see her. "I can't wear these. They're yours. They go under your skirt...thing."

"Put them on."

He did.

xXoOoXx

Pakku rather liked Kanna's pants. He never took them off for the entire two weeks of his stay there, and didn't plan to give them back because she didn't seem to miss them. Manners, however, taught him on the last day of his stay to say:

"May I keep these?"

Kanna kept her eyes locked with his. "Don't get blood or mud or food on them. If you get them stained, soak them for two hours minimum in a cool stream and hang them up to dry. A little sealsoap never hurt either. I'll find you some." A pause. A realization. "You're leaving."

"I'm leaving."

She nodded. Pakku felt just as he had that early morning a month ago when he pulled the water necklace out of the sky and it melted as soon as the sun rose. His heart, he thought, in a rather clichéd manner, was melting right out of his chest. If it had only been made of ice to begin with, he could bend it back together.

"You can come too, Kanna. I want you there. I could protect you, take care of you, it wouldn't have to happen like last time--"

She gave him that same, leveled stare, right into his eyes and his mind and to his melting heart. "I can't go. I have to stay here and protect my tribe, my village. You know that."

This time, Kanna was the one to give him the hug. She wrapped him tightly against her chest, against―and he felt it―the white lotus piece. He smiled against her ear. "It won't happen like last time, Kanna."

They would be married.