Disclaimer: None of these characters or places belong to me, they belong to the great ones who created the world of Avatar, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.
This story is being rewritten from a story that I started about three years ago. If you've read it before, I would suggest starting back from the beginning. I have decided to make a lot of changes concerning the AU Legend of Korra universe.
The ages and backgrounds of the characters in this fiction will not match up perfectly with the ones in LoK. After all, it is an AU.
Concerning the "romance" part of the fiction, I have to admit right away that it will not be the driving force of this story. I like to think that friendship is a stronger motivating force than romantic love. The "romance" that many of you shippers (and myself) love so much is best when it comes naturally, unexpectedly, and powerfully. Just like it does in real life. None of that "love at first sight" crap.
Thus, I humbly present for your entertainment...
Chapter 1: Searching For Spirits
Disturbed pieces of ice drifted apart as two boys rowed their small canoe through the cold northern water. The sun was beaming down on them brightly, and although it didn't warm them very much, it caused the ice, water, and snow around them to glisten so brightly than they had to squint their eyes.
They hadn't found anything, and this was the farthest north of the village they had ever been. Rarely anyone from the village came out this far, and not for a lack of hunting game.
The younger of the two eagerly looked out across the frozen land around him, bringing his hand above his eyes to block the sun. It didn't work well, since the glare was coming at him from all angles, but the blur in his vision inspired his imagination to fill in the gaps.
In his mind, the frozen shapes around them became a tall forgotten city. The water filled with golden dolphin-guppies, and everything was frosted with moonstones and pearls.
This was his vision of the Spirit Oasis.
There was a legend in the Northern Water Tribe that thousands of years ago spirits walked on the earth just as humans did. They eventually left for their own world, but there were still places where the connection between the spirits and the human world was not completely severed.
Nothing was left but stories. The old ice cities on the coast were abandoned, and the villages had moved inland for their safely. Children of the villages were taught the hard facts of life, not magic fantasies. But legends were still whispered and sung around a fire from time to time.
If anyone knew that they were leaving the safety of the village in search of one of the lost spirit connection places, they wouldn't only be in trouble with their father, they might have to face the council. But he had hope that there was something else out there, something just out of his reach, that would answer the questions that were constantly swarming in his head. He knew that that one night he had seen something… something that had a message for him… but he could not explain this.
Realizing that his steering was leading them both into a snowbank, he diverted his thoughts to the present and straightened up. The older boy raised an eyebrow to him, and he smiled sheepishly.
The winds had started to pick up on their journey, but the clear skies had thus far kept them from thinking about turning back. This was changing quickly.
A storm was rolling in from the south, which was unusual in these naturally calm waters. If they were to turn back, they would face it head on in their small boat. If they didn't turn back soon enough, and had to turn around once the waves picked up, they stood the chance of capsizing. If they were stronger benders, they would have risked it to continue their trip. They were farther than they had gone before, and felt just on the cusp of something new. Instead, they turned their boat home to face the storm sooner rather than later.
The sky darkened quickly as the storm grew overhead. Lightning streaked across the sky, which was a very rare occurrence in the arctic. It mesmerized and terrified them. The boat began being tossed around in the water.
Even though it was their element, it no longer felt safe. They fought to keep their little bought from tipping over.
Their boat was tossed forward so quickly that it sped ahead in the water. The ice cold water splashed on them, soaking their parkas and sending daggers into the places it touched bare skin on their face and necks.
The older boy, more certain and practiced on the water, focused on steering away from sharp ice floes. Noatak was less certain. Out of fear, he took control of what he could. He took in a deep breath and then pushed out his arms, first forward, and then sweeping around.
The angry waves against the side of the boat froze, as well as the water extending in a circle around them for about ten yards. Their boat was no longer floating; it was stuck inside of a large chunk of ice that held its own against the current.
Noatak grabbed his brother and stepped out onto the slick ice. It was still shaking from the waves, but the uneven surface of frozen waves made it easier to keep from slipping. He froze the water ahead in chucks and the two of them leaped from ice to ice until they reached showy ground, and they collapsed onto it.
Exhausted from the bending as well as the running, Noatak lifted his shivering head from the ground and looked around frantically. They needed a way to get warm. They needed help.
As if his wishes were answered, the lightning struck again and illuminated two shapes ahead of them. They stood out in the distance because unlike the white snow, they were brightly colored in red and blue.
The young boy's eyes widened and he cried out in relief, "Tarrlok, look there! We can get them to help us."
The boy, Tarrlok, looked up and saw what his brother had seen. Eyes wide, he clasped a hand over his brother's mouth and pulled them both around the snowbank and out of sight. "Let's just wait here a second. You know who could be out there." His firm statement was lessened in intensity by the stutter from his light shivering. He had taken on more water than his brother, and was freezing in his drenched clothes. The small boy attempted bending the water out of his older brother's parka. A thin shell of ice had already started freezing on the tips of their fur cuffs. He wasn't very skilled at it, and being exhausted didn't help.
"We can trust anyone outside of the village," Tarrlok continued, much drier than before. He moved his hand to rest on his brother's shoulder. He remembered that naivity his brother held, and wished he could go back to that. Boys of the Northern Water Tribe had to put childhood behind them long before they could call themselves men. It was a violent place, and as early as age 6, boys were being trained to defend their home from the exiles of the empire.
"They can't all be bad." His brother looked back at him with pleading eyes. There was that innocence again; that childish belief that there was goodness inside of everyone.
"That's exactly the reason they are here. We could be lucky, these could be just average thieves. But I won't take that chance. I don't want them anywhere near you. We'll find another way, Noatak."
His brother sighed. "We can't make it back in this weather. We need to take cover and we need a fire, or we'll be two blue popsicles in a few hours. I can bend us an ice fort, which will some heat in, but not enough. We need tools to make a fire, and you know it too. We need to talk to them. They could help us."
Tarrlok sighed in the same way his brother had. Then, he reached down to his hip and grasped his whale-tooth dagger.
"When did you become reasonable?"
The younger boy smiled sheepishly again.
The boys fought their way up the snowbank towards the figures It was clear that they were not of the tribe. The bitter wind was at their backs, pushing them forward, and before long they had made it close enough to finally get a good look.
It wasn't what they were expecting.
Two bodies were frozen into a small glacier. It looked as it had been part of a bigger one that was nearby, but it had broken apart and started to melt. The lightning around them eerily illuminated them so that they didn't look human, but like creatures from beyond the grave.
The boys were sure that these people were dead, and they wanted to get away as quickly as possible, but a morbid curiosity drew them closer. They were too shocked to remember that since these were not rescuers, they were still lost and cold in the middle of a storm. They descended down the snowbank that they had just climbed, toward the figures.
One was female, in a long blue parka that looked almost like a dress their grandmother would wear. The other was a man, and wore a red… something. The ice was too blurry to tell anything besides that they looked funny.
At that moment, another bolt of lightning cracked. Not only did this one split the sky, but it split the whole world around them as it struck the glacier. Noatak and Tarrlok were thrown back by a shock of heat and light. The glacier before them lit up like the moon.
Sensing through his bending the energy collected in the ice that was yearning to break free, the younger boy reached out to his brother.
Not even a second passed before the glacier exploded in a burst of light and ice.
Noatak opened his eyes just long enough to see a huge chunk of ice flying towards him.
Then everything went black.
