Roku swore under his breath. Evening was falling, and he was sick and tired of being ceaselessly pummeled by water whips and ice daggers without a manner of defending himself. His black hair dripping, he yelled out to his waterbending teacher.
"It's useless, Master Shui, I can't bend water!" A quick left dodge and fire burst from a punch vaporized the incoming attack, surrounding him in steam.
From across the still canal, the gray-haired man shook his head, unrelenting. "I told you before, no firebending. Giving up on water is not an option, young Avatar." His teacher was no stranger to training stubborn pupils, as evidenced by his full head of grey hair at fifty years of age. "You must continue training."
Roku grimaced. "It's cold, I'm soaked, and I want to take a break." He was just beginning to picture a hot plate of arctic hen when a powerful jet of water knocked him off his feet and into the icy water.
Master Shui's face was stern as he approached Roku while standing on a floating piece of ice. "You haven't so much as lifted a drop of water yet today, and the moon's more than half full. There are no excuses. I'm not going to take your complaints about it being your opposing element." The tone of his voice was more chilling than the water that Roku was treading. He knew there would be no resting until Master Shui saw results. Angered, Roku fought the urge to singe the fur trim of his teacher's cloak and instead used airbending to lift himself from the water.
His time at the Southern Air Temple was much more enjoyable than here at the North Pole. Airbending was easy enough to learn, once he became nimble enough to control it properly. Not only that, but he was free to goof around with Gyatso without much disapproval from the head monks. After becoming an airbending master, the twenty-year old Avatar was disappointed to leave his newly-found home.
But here, it was different. The waterbenders here had customs as rigid as the ice that formed the walls and streets of the city. Even the food took some getting used to. The cold that gripped him, too, often made Roku feel frail. Matters weren't improved by being soaked most of the time, leaving the native firebender quite literally out of his element. Four months of training hadn't taught him anything yet, except that he was an aqueous disaster.
Being reprimanded did hurt him, however, and gave him enough incentive to try again. "I understand." Standing on solid ground near the pool's edge, he set his stance and prepared his mind for concentration. He stole a look at the cloud-cloaked moon before running through a tedious practice sequence. He had finally managed to conjure a weak whirlpool before his focus was disrupted by a distant roll of thunder.
Master Shui, now standing behind him, vocalized disapprovingly. "You can't be distracted so easily. Try once more."
Roku shook his head, embarrassed to have prematurely ceased his sequence without much cause. He began again, trying to divert his mind from his state of physical discomfort and mental tedium. Though his teeth were grinding together, he was managing to perform his task at a reasonably acceptable level of competence. Upon completing the sequence, the ground shook with another growl from the skies.
"It's going to storm," Roku said automatically. He'd never been in an arctic storm before, and his nerves began to bother him slightly. It wasn't something he was looking forward to. "We have to stop, right?" he asked his teacher hopefully, now thanking the weather gods for this luck.
"Hardly," came Shui's response.
Roku's face fell into an expression of disquietude. "But, Master Shui, there'll be wind, snow, and ice. It's dangerous to be outside in a storm." Although he knew argument was futile, the idea of training in the midst of a storm was something he couldn't quietly accept.
A water whip caught Roku off-guard and pulled him back into the water by the ankle. Master Shui looked over the water's edge and shook his head. "Roku, I understand that you want to run from the weather to avoid putting yourself at a disadvantage." He froze the water beneath Roku's feet, and the ice platform lifted the young man to the surface. "But water is the element of change." While speaking, Shui froze his own platform and leapt onto it. "We adapt to any situation and find new advantages instead of preserving any single one." With this explanation, he bent the canal water to push the two of them down to the open ocean outside the city.
Roku, unable to make much sense of his lecture, merely tried his hardest to remain balanced on his ice block while the ocean water was becoming angry from storm winds. "What does that have to do with endangering our lives out here?" he asked, stealing a desperate glance at the black storm clouds closing in on an already darkening night sky.
"A storm presents you with a new and unique obstacle. Just as water can change state from ice, to liquid, to vapor, so must you learn to draw your power from sources different than when you are in kind weather on solid land." Even while the sea below them picked up intensity, the ever-graceful Shui fell into a steady battle stance, silently indicating for Roku to follow suit.
Although barely able to hold himself up, Roku did as instructed, irritation showing itself through his rigidity. "What am I supposed to do now?" he asked, fists balled together tightly in front of him.
"Start to stream the water," Shui directed. "We'll start off slow. Feel the flow of the liquid as you manipulate it, completely under your control." He demonstrated the simple move, swinging his arms slowly and methodically in front of him to beckon some water to float in front of him and stream in his instructed path.
Roku watched, envious that the old man could still manage physical grace while on a perilously shifting platform over frigid, choppy waves. "Alright," he grunted, and pointed roughly at the water. With a harsh upward motion, he attempted to mimic his teacher. Instead of streaming any water, however, he ended up pulling a wave that merely knocked him back off the ice.
"Master Shui, this is stupid! We'll die out here." He scrambled back onto his platform clumsily, shivering as the wind picked up.
The gray-haired master met Roku's gaze evenly. "You need to stop trying to force the water so severely to do your bidding. This isn't firebending; it's not powered by rage or brute strength."
This angered Roku. He wanted to correct Shui's perception of firebending having its roots in raw anger, but knew now was not the time. Instead, he swallowed his pride and decided to dispel his stubbornness for the time being. "It's frustrating," he said, "to have to be impossibly patient." He complained, but he did not directly contradict Master Shui.
"But it's not impossible." The corners of Shui's mouth were ever-so-slightly angled upwards, as if he knew some of his lesson was sinking in. "Now try again, see if you can do it properly before the hail sets in."
Uninspired, Roku wiped water from his face and squeezed out his hair before trying again. This time, he moved more deliberately, hoping that slowing down would have a positive effect on his move. Laudably, he managed to control a weak and trembling stream in the air in front of him. "Like this, Master Shui?"
From across the expanse of ocean between them, Shui nodded. "Remember, focus on the energy of the water itself, not of the energy from inside you." He saw Roku stumble for a moment, shifting his stance, and raised an eyebrow. "Let's see what your reflexes are like," he said casually, before suddenly performing a move to freeze the water Roku was handling.
Obviously inexperienced, Roku was caught by surprise and let the now-solid ice fall down in front of him, landing with a thud on his animal skin boots. "Ouch, I wasn't ready for that! Moving ice is like trying to lift a boulder!" Right after he said it, he realized the irony of his statement; a fully-realized Avatar should have no trouble doing either. What Roku wouldn't give to be in the Earth Kingdom already, learning something that wasn't such bitter work.
From the looks of it, the storm was coming far too near to them. Already, snow had begun to mix with the wind, and Roku could feel ice crystals forming in his hair. Master Shui must have noticed something, too, because he at last gave an order with a definitive time of termination. "Once you can throw one ice dagger towards me, we'll return to the palace."
"An ice dagger?" Roku hated solidifying water, but was heartened to work hard by the prospect of rest indoors. "Fine, it's just like freezing the end of a water whip, right?" A master at airbending as well, he loved to find shortcuts. He let loose an uncontrolled water whip, attempting to freeze the end. His rash movements caused the attack to prematurely cease, but he somehow got a backlash of ice hitting him on the head.
"Ouch, hey, I didn't think I froze anything!" Roku said, adjusting the headdress his best friend Prince Sozin had given him years earlier and looking upwards. He realized that the ice that had hit him was the edge of the hail storm.
Meanwhile, Master Shui stood with a stern look on his face. "You can't try to figure out tricks, either! Control the water first, then freeze it. You can't expect it to respect your orders without clearly defining them."
"It's a little hard to be specific in a hailstorm," Roku spat under his breath. The hail was beginning to come down now, stinging Roku's face with every gust of wind. He tried again, streaming just a little water at first, then attempting to use his hydrokinetics to freeze it. To his surprise, it formed a lopsided dagger, which levitated in the air for a few seconds before the wind caught it and knocked it into the ocean.
Master Shui opened his mouth to further instruct his pupil, but his words were drowned by a crack of thunder that made Roku flinch. "I can't hear— " he began, but shook his head in futility. This wasn't working.
The storm was fully blown now, surges of hail, snow, and icy wind pulling throes of water around Roku's platform. His feet were slipping; he couldn't bend without stability. He needed more room, Shui's shoddily crafted platform wasn't enough, Roku's usual source of power and stability were gone...
Something clicked.
Water is the element of change, Shui's words echoed in Roku's head. Just as water can change state from ice, to liquid, to vapor, so must you learn to draw your power from different sources.
Roku knew suddenly that he had the power to manipulate his surroundings for his benefit. Not wasting a moment, he clenched his teeth together and froze the water surrounding his platform, enough to give him ample room to stabilize himself. The slipperiness around his feet vanished, too, when he used his frost breath to solidify the water.
The wind and hail still fell, but with the larger platform came more steadiness over the abrasive waves. Roku took a deep breath now, closing his eyes while preparing for another attempt at waterbending the single ice dagger his master had ordered. His feet were rooted firmly as he found the inner patience to coax the water from the angry sea into the air (while fighting the reflex to shiver from the stark cold).
In a moment of intense concentration, Roku's eyes snapped open, his wrist flicked, and in a split second his ice dagger was zooming along the same path as traced by his forward arm swing.
He looked up in time to see Master Shui effortlessly cast it aside before hitting him, and Roku had to blink twice before he realized the hail wasn't causing any light tricks. No, Shui's face was making the first genuine smile Roku had ever seen from him.
While he was rendered speechless, Master Shui was the first to break the silence with a sharp but warm shout. "You didn't beat the hail, but we'll get inside before the lightning strikes!" The thunder roared again just as soon as Shui turned away to bend another wave to take the two of them back to shore, so Roku couldn't be quite sure if he heard the faint echo of a laugh from the old man.
The two of them made it back to the palace late for supper, but Roku somehow didn't regret Shui's seemingly senile decision to endanger themselves. For the first time, he felt like he had learned something from the past four months as a waterbending student.
Perhaps mastering all four elements wouldn't be impossible, after all. He knew there was still a long way to go before gaining competence as a student of waterbending, but today he proved to himself his capability for change.
For now, though, he'd just take a seat by the fire with his hot bowl of seaweed-squid soup, listening to the raging storm outside, grateful he was no longer inside his storm.