Avatar: Without Water
Chapter 1: The Unearthing
It is now almost two hundred years since Avatar Aang ended the Fire War, and over 100 years since the rebellion against the benders that Avatar Korra turned back. A lot is better now than it was then, I've heard. No great walls divide the nations like the Fire Nation battlements over 200 years ago, or the great gates of the Northern Water Tribe and the Wall of Ba Sing Se. Nor is there any anger between those who can bend the world around them, or who can't. The nations of the past have been United Republic for as long as my parents can remember. There are cities, and benders, still, though. I wish there weren't. At least the benders.
I should start at the beginning. My name is Kaala. My mother named me a Waterbending name, in honor of the great Avatar Korra. Nothing different than many children I'm sure. We live in L'Rawn, a coastal city founded by Avatar Aang's grandson, built by benders. People from all the historical nations live here, it was the first great place after the Republic City for everyone to experience all the bending arts. It's wonderful.
Every year there is a festival, where non-benders and benders alike can display talents, prize crops, and their wares to sell. My favorite thing to do was watch the waterbenders perform. The only thing lacking was to see a bender who could've added to the performances by bending the other elements, but that was impossible. Korra died not long before I was born. I wish I could've seen her bend, but even alone the Waterbenders were fantastic. For moments the central courtyard of L'Rawn seemed flooded, than in an orb of ice. One moment we'd be surrounded by whirling water, the next by shards of ice. Every other bit of bending seemed like a chant, though I never saw Airbending much due to the benders being so very rare, but Waterbending was a dance. They moved so fluidly, with such grace… I decided at a young age I wanted to be one. My mother and father and brothers shook their head at my foolishness in trying to become a bender, but I wasn't deterred. I spent hours sitting by the fountain in the center of the city, staring at the water and dancing around. I tried so hard….I remember being rather lonely when others would try to console me and I'd push them away. Even my two brothers, one older and one younger, teased me for being so foolish. They learned to dance with the fire benders and danced in the festival with benders and non-benders alike. I hadn't gotten anywhere near the level of grace the Waterbenders had, and I'd had Waterbenders try to teach me! I suppose I was good enough to have joined them, my parents always tried to convince me too, they claimed I was a dancing prodigy. Maybe so, but I wasn't a Waterbender. I must've been twelve or so when my frustration really got to me. I remember storming off, out of the city and into the forest.
The next morning I woke up, my face clean from crying myself to sleep, completely in shadow. I was inside of a boulder. Panicked, I tore at the sides…and they fell. I remember being mesmerized by my own hands, and sitting alone in the forest for what felt like hours before slowly mimicking the Earthbender's I'd seen occasionally. It was a dreadful theory, but I had to test it.
The earth shuddered as I moved my shaking hands. I would never be a Waterbender. I was locked into the blocky talents of Earthbending.
My eyes were red and my face was bathed in tears when my father found me in the forest late in the day. I ignored the fear I saw in his face, and refused to tell him what was wrong. He was a determined fellow though, my father is, and when asking failed to work, he tried to tempt me with a handful of dancing flames.
Did I mention he was a fire-bender? He didn't bend much, except in meditation. He was taught in a school started by a daughter of Fire Lord Zuko, one of it's first students, and found fire to be entertaining and calming. When my brothers and I were growing up, he'd entertain us by doing tricks, while Mother tended the hearth. She was from the Earth Kingdom, where occasionally an elder would rage about their parents stories and the threats Firebenders had for the Earth Kingdom, and though she trusted Father she didn't trust his fire as much. From what the elder Waterbenders or the great-grandchildren of Avatar Aang, who visited the city occasionally, said, the Waterbenders suffered more. Firebenders were shamed, and distrusted, but nothing more. Airbenders…it seemed that only being born with Airbender blood made you one of them, and always made you one of them. Anyway there were very few around. Earthbenders still suffered the least in the history of battles between the nations. Mother said it was their resilience. Anyway, it kept me farther from my dream.
Seeing him demonstrate his bending only upset me more, and without controlling it I whipped away, sobbing anew, and a block of earth threw him across the clearing. For a while it was silent, as the light began to sink with the sun, and my father recovered from the shock he must've felt and sat to play with fire. In time I stopped to notice the glow out of the corner of my eye, and my jaw slackened at the tricks he was doing with the fire. It spun around him and bloomed in large flowers around me and performed feats i'd only seen some I'd only seen the benders at the festival do, or that I'd never seen at all. Then he picked me up and began walking home, talking all the way. All I remember is him telling me "Just because the talent is not one you've wanted, doesn't mean it's any less beautiful."
That was five years ago.