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Some dialogue quoted from "The Southern Raiders," a third season episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Chapter 1 - Kya
Last night, I dreamt of birds. My mother told me that when you dream of birds in great numbers, a great snowfall is coming, one big enough to bury the village so deep that even the waterbenders wouldn't be able to dig us free. I never really believed in waterbenders, though. By the time my mother reached her twentieth summer, they were all gone. Anerneq. Ghosts. Until Katara, I didn't really believe there were any left in the world.
My Katara. My beautiful girl.
Every morning, my girl and I get breakfast ready together. She can't bend very well yet, but she loves stirring the sea prunes without using a ladle. She used to try to bend the stew into bowls, but after she spilled stew on her father's boots one too many times, I gave her a bowl to practice with and told her to play by the sea until she got it right. She forgets most days. She's still a child, after all. When the cleaning is done, she goes to play with her brother, and I watch her, I make sure that she doesn't stray too far, make sure that she doesn't use her bending to shift the snow under her brother's feet when he teases her. I'm trying to raise her to be careful with her bending. Sometimes, though, there's a bent to her nature like fire, and the ice cracks behind her gesturing arms.
The shaman doesn't like her. I don't know why, because she's a gift to us, a gift from La, the future of the Southern Water Tribe. The Fire Nation took all our benders away from us, and it's taken over sixty years for them to return. He should be overjoyed. Before she was born, he told me, he dreamed of a departing ship with a wolf on the prow. Famine and death. When he sees her, he looks to the horizon and makes the sign of the closed door.
We pay attention to our dreams in the Water Tribe. A person who doesn't follow his dreams cannot become successful. When I was a girl, my father would dream of the sea so swollen at high tide that it was level with the land, and when he woke he knew that it would be a good time for tiger seals. When the sea overcame the land in a flood, it was polar leopards, and the tribe would eat well until the sea took back his bounty and receded. My father was an accomplished hunter who listened to his dreams. He was never wrong.
In my dream, a great flock of black birds flew so thick that they covered the sky. I had never seen so many birds, not even when the season turns and the blue gulls and arctic screamers return to us from the North. Then they disappeared, leaving Tui's scarred face covered in blood.
When I woke, even my husband hadn't risen for the morning hunt. I stood and checked on my children, and they too still slept, cuddled together like twin polar bear dogs. When I pushed back the tarp over the entrance to our home, my eyes expected to see the sky black and the moon red. But the meat still hung, and the wind still blew, and the ocean still sparkled in the pre-dawn glow.
I can hear what I dreamed of now. But then, all I could hear was the sea and the breath of my family. If I had known what the birds were telling me in my dream I would have taken them and run, run past the boundaries of the village, over the ice wall, and into the mountains at the heart of the pole. We could have hidden there until the ships left, until their thick black smoke became consumed by the snow. I'd have done anything to keep them safe.
But I didn't listen.
The blizzard comes when my children are playing by the sea. It falls like black feathers, and stains where it touches. I see a flame pass by my window out of the corner of my eye. I move to stand up, but an armored man thrusts his way through the skins hanging over my door. I see him, and I see the insignia on his uniform, and I understand the meaning of my dream.
"Where is the last waterbender?" he says.
My blood runs hot. I hear screaming. "You took them all. There are no waterbenders left in the Southern Tribe."
He smiles, and it's colder than the sea. "My sources indicate that there is one we missed. It's the reason we're here. You, the chief's wife, are in a position well suited to know who he is and where he is hiding. We would ask your husband, but he's otherwise occupied."
I shake my head. "No," I say, "It's like I said, there aren't any left. Please, let me go, my husband is out there. My children are out there. Please, there's no reason for you to do this."
"I assure you, the reasons are there. Now tell me the truth."
He steps toward me, and I stiffen, praying hard to whatever spirit is listening, when my daughter rushes in, the moon symbol on her parka plainly visible. Does he know? Can he know what that means? Will he take her right now, before I can get to her?
"Mom!" she shouts, and it is a moment before she sees the monster in front of her.
I can see him looking over his shoulder, his shrewd eyes narrowing as they pass over her. If he knew, he would have taken her by now.
"Just let her go and I'll give you the information you want," I find myself saying.
The man grunts. "You heard your mother. Get out of here!"
"Mom," she whispers, and her voice trembles. "I'm scared."
"Go find your dad, sweetie. I'll handle this."
She stares at me for a moment, and I am certain that she will disobey me. So I smile at her. Behind that smile I put every piece of resolve I have left inside me. I have to show her that everything will be okay. Even though I know for sure it will not. She nods, gives me one last, terrified look, and runs to find Hakoda. It will keep her busy. I know her father is fighting off the invaders. It will take a long time for her to find him. Long enough.
"Now tell me. Who is it? Who's the waterbender?"
"There are no waterbenders here," I repeat, desperate now. "The Fire Nation took them all away a long time ago."
"You're lying," he says, and the steel in his voice is soft and sharp. "My source says there's one waterbender left in the Southern Water Tribe. We're not leaving until we find the waterbender."
"If I tell you... do you promise to leave the rest of the village alone?"
He pauses, considering. Then, like Fate deciding to drown her son the sea, he nods.
"It's me. Take me as your prisoner."
"I'm afraid I'm not taking prisoners today," he growls, and the smile on his face is not like a knife, but an approaching ship, and every beam of it is on fire.
The second between his smile and my death stretches like soft seal skin. I can see my husband, Hakoda, tall and proud, his usually smiling face contorted in fury as he fights with a masked Fire Nation soldier. I can see my son, Sokka, grabbing a falling boomerang and throwing it at the attackers, though he is only as tall as the metal barbs on their knees. And I can see my daughter running across the snow. I can see my necklace shining against her skin. I can see her sweeping the hearth, tears falling down her face and splashing on the dirt. Every morning she forces her brother to get out of bed. She hugs her father as he stares blankly out at the falling snow, and asks him to find food, because it's all gone. There's ash on her face. I want to wipe it off her, but the bubble of my spirit has separated from my body. The dead cannot touch the living. We can only watch.
I do not regret what I have done. When I was a little girl, I dreamt of the moon as she walked across the frozen sky. I dreamt that a hunter shot her, and that the arrow flew up and up and up. I knew she was going to die. But then I became a cloud. I took the arrow into my body. Then I died.
I can see the shaman's face surrounded by smoke, the animal skins on his shoulders covered with a thin film of ash. He does not smile. He never smiles. But he takes my hand in his, and he says that he was wrong.
Every part of me hurts. He says it will be over soon, and I cough and ask when. He reaches into my heart, closes my eyes, and whispers, "Now."
I do not wake from the dream.