Title: In a Foreign Land
Author: Tiamat's Child
Word Count: 300
Warning: None
Summary: In which Aang has a moment of simpatico, and Katara is attentive.
Notes: Written for challenge #81: "ravenous" at theavatar100 at LiveJournal.
In a Foreign Land
Katara watched as the storyteller sat down within the circle of the firelight, her right foot settling on her left thigh.
"This is what my teacher gave me," the storyteller said, as her hands rolled out like sails.
Beside Katara Aang shifted into another sort of posture, one that looked like the one he used when he meditated, but wasn't quite the same. Katara looked close, and Aang was watching the storyteller talk with wide, deep eyes, as if the words she was spinning were made of freshwater and he had been on the sea for days without even a flask.
It made her ache the way her stomach hurt when Aang said that he was hungry.
Katara sat straighter. The storyteller had a wonderful voice, but Aang's face and the way his feet went and how he held his back made it hard to think about the story. Aang and the storyteller were talking to each other with the way they sat and the way they moved, and Katara didn't know the language.
She focused, and tried to form her body into the smooth shape Aang made. Her legs and back were strong, but she didn't quite know what Aang was doing and her joints weren't used to moving the right way – if she was moving the right way. She stopped.
Katara felt clumsy, out of place, like a leopard seal that had come up on the ice and could only wriggle. Her eyes stung. She squeezed her hands tight, and listened as hard as she could.
(Later Aang beamed up at her and said, "That was really great, wasn't it, Katara?"
"Yes," she said, because that horrible, hungry look was gone and there was only the way Aang himself brimmed over, open and giving and wise. "It was.")