Hi, I'm ScarletWaterBender, And Welcome To Once On This Island! (applause)
Okay, first of all, it's great to be here! Nice to meet you all! Second, here's a little reference guide to the gods so no one gets confused:
Agni: God of Life, Death, and Fire
Tui: God of Water, Wind, and Sea Creatures
La: Goddess of Love and Affection
Toph: Goddess of the Earth and of Nature (Not the Toph we all know, just the person she's named after (In my opinion, at least))
And third: Enjoy!
"Mama, who is Katara?"
The woman paused at the stove before looking up. "Why, it's you, sweetheart."
The little girl shook her head. "No, I mean the real Katara. The first one."
The woman smiled, took the pot in her hands, and placed it on the counter away from the heat. She picked up her little girl and held her in her arms.
"She was a beautiful young woman who traveled very far and gave up everything she had to be with the one she loved. She was very brave, and that's why I gave her name to you."
The little girl leaned against her mother's shoulder. "Tell me the story," she begged. "Please?"
The mother relented. She took her daughter into the next room and, still holding her in her arms, sat down on an overstuffed armchair.
"A long time ago, in a frozen land very far from here, there was a terrible storm.
"Everything was blown to the ground by winds faster than anything you've ever seen before. Rain pelted the snowy earth until the ground could not be seen through all of the water on it. Only one village was spared—the village where Tui, the god of water, kept his favorite temple. Everywhere else had been destroyed, and many people died."
"Why did Tui kill all of those people, Mama?"
"They made him very angry. I'm not sure how, but they did."
"Did Katara live in the spared village?"
The mother chuckled. "No, not at first. That's where her story begins. Tui saw her lying next to her mother's body, sobbing, and plucked her out of the storm. He asked his good friend Toph, goddess of the earth, to shelter her in a tree while the storm passed, and she agreed. So Katara was safely hidden in one of the only trees left standing, one of the few trees there had been to begin with in that frozen empire, until Tui's anger at the people abated.
"When the stillness in the air told the villagers that the storm was over, many left their homes to investigate. Among them were Chief Hakoda and his wife, Kya. Although they were the head of the tribe, they worked like the lowest of peasants, because their tribe was small and much needed doing. They were the ones to find the little girl in the tree."
"Hakoda, look! There's a girl up there!"
The man with the neatly trimmed beard and small, wild ponytail looked up. He saw the girl's frightened face and her thin, knobby knees. "Why are you up there?" he called.
"What is your name?" the woman asked.
The girl was silent to both of their queries. Tears of fright slid down her cheeks.
The couple gaped up at her for a moment. "Tui probably meant to kill her in that storm," Hakoda said.
"Then she'd be dead," Kya scolded him.
The tall man shrugged his big shoulders. "It's possible he forgot."
"The gods do not forget."
"Then they had some reason to spare her life. It's best that we don't know why." They both looked up at that one small girl in the tree, but then shook their heads and in unison said, "Better not." They began to walk away, but something prompted Kya to stop. She looked pleadingly up at her husband.
"We are too old to have our own children," she said. "And I remember, years ago, La promised me a daughter."
They looked back at the child together, then at each other. "We do not have enough food, or room," Hakoda said.
"The gods will provide," Kya answered back, reaching up for the child in the tree.
"And somehow, though food was scarce and their hut small, they got by. They called the girl Katara, or "tree child" and before Kya and Hakoda knew it she grew into a beautiful young woman."
"How old was she?"
"No one knows for certain, but it is said that when she left the village she might have been about sixteen years of age."
"She left?"
"I told you, she traveled a long way. Now hush and listen to the story."
A ship's horn bellowed in the distance, and Katara looked up. Across the frozen expanse of the southern pole, a large ship could be seen sliding gracefully across the water, a thick plume of smoke trailing behind it. She gasped.
"Mama! Papa! Look! A ship!"
The girl's adopted parents did not look up from the meager garden they were weeding, the garden that Mother Toph had allowed them to eke out of their frozen soil. "That's nice, dear," her mother said distractedly. "Don't squish those tomatoes by stepping so carelessly. Maybe if you watched where you were going instead of always gazing into the horizon at ships people would stop calling you a klutz."
The young woman paid them no attention. She leaned dreamily on her gardening hoe, looking out at the ship. "Someday, I'm going to sail away on one of those ships," she said. "Just you wait. One of these days I'm going to get up and just walk away from all of this."
Her parents exchanged a glance of mild alarm. "Sweetheart, what ever would possess you to say such a thing?" Kya asked. She kne the answer. It was a question she'd asked a million times before, and she always received the same reply:
"The gods chose me for something special, and I have a feeling it's out there."
Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? Review!