Summary: The history mingles with the imagination of the commoners, and so, legends are born.
Word count: 1871
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: [Insert funny text here that tells you that I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender]
The Legend of Fire Lady Katara
When great people – powerful warriors, celebrated politicians, wise philosophers, members of the royalty - die, the sages write down the story of their lives, all facts and dates and places and events – there is no place for emotions or sentimentality there. When the scrolls are written, they place them in a secured place, and guard them for an eternity. From then, their history is set in stone, so to speak.
But it's entirely different with the simple people of the country. They don't want black and white facts – they want romance and beauty and miracles. So they forge and shape history until legends are born.
And it didn't happen differently with the life of Fire Lady Katara. She was a wondrous woman, who lived a life worthy for legends. Legends, which were born mere decades after her death.
The legend says that she was born to the ocean and the moon after a great storm, when the waves were so high that the waters and the skies kissed.
Really, she was born in the icy South Pole, to parents Kya and Hakoda. Neither the ocean nor the moon played part in her conception, though she did know the Moon herself in her youth.
From her birth, she was special. She was exceptionally beautiful and talented in waterbending – she had no match in her home. She was pure, kind and had a warm hear, she was always helping others, putting their needs before hers, but she also possessed the spirit of a true warrior.
Now, this is something that even the most strict historians wouldn't argue about.
Then one day, when she was bathing in a stream, soaked in the moonlight, the young prince of the Fire Nation, whose quest was to take back the egg of the sacred dragon of his country passed by, saw her by accident and fell in love with her instantly.
Really, the first time Zuko and Katara met was in the South Pole, where people rarely bathed in streams where anyone could saw them, and their encounter was less than pleasant. Also, it involved no traces of love or gentleness, only hatred and violence. And, just for the record: Zuko was hunting the Avatar, not some kind of dragon egg.
But the girl fled, running through the world, the prince after her, chasing her through canyons, mountains, rivers and plains. Across the sky and across the ocean, in scorching heat and in freezing cold.
Zuko did chase after her and her companions, but, of course, his final goal was not the girl, but the Avatar – it took him months to recognize the girl as other than the Avatar's friend.
Then one day he cornered her in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se. There, he kneeled before her, spoke of his undying love for her, and presented her with necklace, adorned with a heavy pedant, carved from the crystals of the catacombs. She took the necklace, and admitted that all her flight was done only to see if he was following her, if he was worthy of her love.
As if… Though they did meet under Ba Sing Se, nothing really happened there, at least nothing they wanted to be remembered. And even though the necklace made of the crystals from the catacombs really do exist, and it really belonged to Fire Lady Katara – it is still on display in the Fire Nation's National Museum, alongside with many objects and artifacts associated with them -, it wasn't carved until much later, until about two years after the war.
After that, the young prince went home, taking his new bride along with him to the Fire Nation capitol, where they held their wedding three days later. The event was splendid – it is said, that even the most powerful spirits sat at their table while the feast lasted.
The legend speaks of no war. It speaks of no battles, death, blood, torn families, or other horrors of the war. It doesn't speak about how Katara first hated Zuko, what journey they travelled until they finally found each other. Also, it doesn't speak of the battle they had to fight to be together, their biggest opponents being the sages and the council member, who hated the idea of having a foreign woman as the consort of their monarch. But their wedding was splendid – though their most prestigious guest was the Avatar himself, not a spirit.
Their life together was prosperous. The Fire Nation was growing, it had plenty of riches. The people were happy and content, and there was no draught, war or epidemic threatening the country.
This wasn't remotely true. Especially in the first few years of Fire Lord Zuko's reign there were numerous – though smaller – uprisings and commotions, since many people wasn't happy about his policy on stopping the war. It didn't help the case that he was banished, on more than one occasion and that he married a foreigner – even though the people quickly grew to love her. And, of course, there were other problems as well, problems they could do nothing about – draughts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, but it didn't mean that they didn't do everything to solve them.
The royal family's private life within the walls of the palace was admirable as well. All thorough their lives they shared the same sleeping chambers, and the Fire Lord, unlike his predecessors, didn't keep one concubine – he was more than content whit his wife. Their marital bliss was apparent to the people as well, since the new Fire Lady gave birth to seven sons and seven daughters, all of them firebenders.
Historians confirm that this royal marriage was the most fruitful in its millennia – though it did not produce fourteen children – 'only' eight. And even from that eight, they had lost one at young age. And though all of them were benders, two of them bent water, not fire. That's also true that Zuko did not keep any concubines, but this decision was born long before his marriage. Women kept in the palace just for the Fire Lord's delight reminded him way too much of his father's ways.
Fire Lady Katara, besides being a great leader and faithful consort of Fire Lord Zuko, was a magnificent mother to her children as well. She looked after them and taught them herself, not confiding in any nurse or nanny.
That's almost completely true – Katara really nursed all her children herself, refusing to get a wet nurse, but as their number grew, she had to employ a nanny or two, to help her look after her darlings. But she really spent as much time with them as she could.
But then the unthinkable happened: an epidemic threatened the country, and all her children fell victim. It didn't matter that she had spent every waking moment by their bedsides, taking care of them, trying everything to save them – they died, one of them on each night. But the Lady didn't give up on them – she travelled to the spirit world, and begged to Agni to give her children back. Agni was so touched by the grief of the Lady that he gave back her children, breathing life to them again.
There really was an epidemic, but it was a simple dragon pox – common Fire Nation sickness, something almost everyone contracts in their childhood. But it really reached even behind the palace's walls, the royal children – there were only three yet at that time - caught it. Their mother really spent every waking moment taking care of them, even though everybody advised otherwise – the dragon pox was much more dangerous when contracted in adulthood, and since Katara wasn't native to the Fire Nation, she was in even greater danger of it. But she didn't care. In the end, she stayed healthy, while her youngest child – a little prince, barely a few moths old – got sicker and sicker, then departed to the spirit world on one cloudy morning. There was no prayer to bring him back.
Beside her children, she had always had pupils at her hands; young girls, both from the South and the North, wanting to learn waterbending from the first – and most powerful – female waterbending master. And she, over the decades, taught hundreds of them.
Again, slight exaggeration. She did take students – but only two, maximum three at the time. Thorough her life, she maybe trained fifteen girls altogether, including her own two daughters. It's not that she wouldn't have taken more girls under her wings – simply there was no more young girls with waterbending abilities who wanted to learn more than healing.
She was also loved by her people – both from her birthplace and the nation where she married. She had always helped where she could, healed the sick and helped the poor, visited orphanages and healer huts. She was just the Fire Lady who the Fire Nation needed.
It's not my place to contradict this. While the nobility of the Fire Nation was initially against her, the people grew to love her quickly – there's no better indicator to this than the legends born after her death and her shires in the temples.
But not matter how great she was, she was still mortal, just like any of us. And even though there was no weapon able to hurt her, her heart was still vulnerable – it was the death of her dear husband that made her depart to the spirit world. Fire Lord Zuko lived a long and fruitful life, was loved by his people and family, was a great warrior and ruler, but even he couldn't hide from death very long. And it wasn't long after that he'd taken his last breath, his Lady followed him to the home of the spirits. Her broken heart caused her demise, it is said. The royal couple was buried together, in a lavish ceremony, and their coffins were followed by miles-long river of white-clad people. The whole world mourned them.
Actually, it was Katara who died first, and there was nothing mysterious about her death. She was old, almost a century old, and one day she simply didn't wake from her afternoon nap. Her passing was silent and peaceful. Zuko survived her by almost three years, but did step down from the throne immediately after her death, passing the crown to his firstborn son's firstborn.
The legend also says that their spirits, just like the Avatar's, have reborn again and again, always searching for each other. This is something that history cannot traverse – they have nothing in their hands that would say otherwise. And, after all, the historians of the Fire Nation are still believers, who pray for Agni, and kneel before the statues of their late leaders: Fire Lord Zuko and Fire Lady Katara. And they want to believe that they will find each other again.
But let history and legend differ in many points, the legend of Fire Lady Katara remains as it is – full of wonders and miracles. This is the ultimate love story of the simple people of the country. Something to believe in, something to be told around the campfire. A way to proudly remember the great people of their nation.