Katara couldn't help but feel that the lingering heavy gray clouds were foreboding, ever present and threatening to unleash a tide of equally relentless rain. Did it mean something when the sky they traveled through was always so gray?
The clinking of metal on metal brought Katara's eyes from the clouds to the small leather pouch in her brothers hand. He held it out to her, and she tucked it away into her belt.
"Do you think that's everything?" she asked. "Or do you see anything else that we might need?"
"There's a butchery -"
Katara cut in before he could finish. "Aang doesn't eat meat, Sokka, you know that."
"But I do, and you do, and Toph does, so I think he have him beat," Sokka said, quailing under the look Katara gave him.
"We just need to get back to Aang. He might have woken up by now."
She turned to fight her way through the crowd of people, who seemed to be stocking up in preparation for the storm as well. The forest where Katara knew Aang and Toph were was in full view when a startled yelp sounded behind her.
Recognizing her brother's cries immediately, Katara whirled, a hand already to her pouch of water.
Sokka was already running, fighting through the crowd, and yelling. Katara following his bobbing ponytail over the heads of a crowd of children, and into a space between two buildings, built close enough together for the overhang of the roofs to touch.
"There's no one here," Katara felt she had to say. Sokka turned to her with a red face and pinched lips.
"I've realized that!" He exploded, his voice cracking.
Katara hid her smile with a hand. "Well, it's a good thing the Earth King was with us. We have enough money to get more supplies." She jingled the money pouch and let Sokka snatch it from her hand.
The crowd had thinned by the time they had gathered all of their supplies once more, the sky dark enough for the street lamps to be lit. The streets were now flooded with a dull green light.
Katara, rather than Sokka, was now carrying the bag in which all of the food was in, when a shriek made a chill run up Katara's body.
Window's flew open as Katara and Sokka took one look at each other and ran towards the sound as fast as they could without dropping their supplies.
They rounded a corner, and entered a alley that was wider than the other had been, but barely. The lamp light did not reach the very end, but Katara could still tell that a group of men - three, maybe four of them - were circling something, backs facing out. Then, before the siblings could react, a girl was thrown out of the circle, landing hard on her shoulder.
The girl scrambled to her feet, but a man was already in front of her. Katara reacted without thinking - a water whip lashed out, striking the man across the face and sending him reeling, but more had come to replace him.
One man, bald, but with a heavy mustache, grabbed for the girl, dragging her up, and another two bolted towards Katara and Sokka. A jet of water sent the man after her flying into several barrels that splintered and leaked a blood red juice. Katara froze him to the wood and wine, spilling fruit from her bag, and turned to see Sokka grab for his boomerang, but a man that no one had seen was creeping up behind him, a stubby knife in her hand. Katara felt his blood rise, and her arms were spinning, but after a blink, he was gone, replaced by a pillar of rock.
Katara thought wildly of Toph, the blind earth bender waiting back at camp, but turned instead to see the girl, her pale eyes set, and her legs spread into what was an unmistakable earth bending stance. Strings of hair had fallen from her short braid and into her pallid, heart-shaped face.
But before Katara could say anything, a grunting came from behind her, where Sokka stood with his boomerang locked with a large mans sword. He was subdued with a jerk of Katara's arm, blasted away and slumped to the ground.
"Took your own sweet time helping, didn't you?" Sokka said, re-sheathing his boomerang.
Katara ignored him and turned to the girl, who suddenly looked as if she feared attack from them as well.
"Are you okay?" Katara said. "Did they hurt you?"
The girl was backing away, towards the back end of the alley. "No, I - thank you, I'm fine." She stopped when her back bumped against the alley wall, looking trapped. Katara noticed her fingers twiddling in mid-air nervously.
Katara frowned. "Are you sure? We could. . . ."
"What's your name?" Sokka demanded suddenly, his voice hard.
"Nothing," The girl replied quickly.
"Well, Nothing - catch!"
Katara let out a cry of surprise as Sokka whipped out a dragonheart fruit from his bag and sent it sailing straight at the girl.
But it never connected. It dropped to the dirt floor like a rock, suddenly encased in ice.
Sokka looked pleased with himself, but the girl looked horrified.
"You -"
"What's going on here?"
Katara and Sokka turned to see a crowd of people at the entrance of the alley. An old shop keeper hobbled into view, holding a lamp. "What's going on here? Vandals!"
"No, no, we just -"
But the crowd gasped and Katara and Sokka turned to see a large rock protruding from the ground. The girl was gone.
Sokka stilled looked smug when they left the village, even after being smacked around the ankles with a cane by a disapproving lady.
"I still don't get it," Katara said as they neared the end of the road to the forest. "She did waterbend, I'm sure she did."
Sokka nodded, a broad grin on his face, walking with his chin in the air.
". . . And," Katara continued after he said nothing. "She did some earthbending too. I saw her with my own eyes." Katara blinked up at her brother owlishly with her cerulean eyes. "And how did you know to throw something at her anyway?" She added.
"She was already water bending, before the fruit-throwing," Sokka said wisely. He was acting far too pompous. "Didn't you see? She was churning the wine on the ground."
Katara had seen her twitching her fingers, and now that she thought of it, those moves certainly could have been waterbending moves. . . .
"There you are! Could you have taken any longer?" A voice called from the dark, young, and with a slight whine to it. A small girl stepped from the tree line, her hands on her non existent hips, and her frosted eyes narrowed irritably. An animal with giant ears and round eyes peered out curiously from behind her massive bun of black hair.
"We ran into a little trouble."
Toph almost smiled as she turned back into the forest. "Don't we always?"
Katara trotted to walk beside her. "This was different though - but I'm thinking there was just another bender that we didn't see."
Sokka appeared on the other side of Toph with a scowl. "Then why did she look lake a caged platypus-bear when I threw the dragonheart? Huh?"
Katara threw her hands up into the air. "Maybe she didn't want that person to be seen! We've had to-"
A small, dirty hand was shoved into Katara's face and she stopped talking. A similar hand was shoving Sokka's face farther away from Toph. "Both of you stop. Just explain, your not making sense."
Katara had finished telling her what happened by the time they reached camp, with the occasional outburst from Sokka.
A large white and brown creature with a flat, furry tail moaned in greeting.
Toph ignored Appa, and raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Are you sure she did both of the bending? I mean, maybe you bended without realizing it Katara."
"No, she didn't, that girl did all of it, I saw it!" Sokka said crossly.
Katara shook her head. "I don't know, Sokka. I think we misunderstood. It would probably be best if we forgot about it for now."
Something stirred by Appa's many legs, and Katara was immediately distracted. The boy with a short cap of fuzz on his head, grimaced in his sleep, his fingers twitching.
Katara's face contorted, but Sokka laid a hand on her shoulder. "Don't wake him. Let's just pack up, we'll wake him up when we need to go."
Packing up didn't take long. They didn't have as much as they once did, not after Ba Sing Se.
Aang didn't seem to want to wake up, but Sokka put on a show of talking to him and animating his limp body while they hoisted him onto Appa's head, who stood with a groan. Katara pointedly ignored this and shooed Sokka to the back. Toph planted her feet and threw her fists out so that the earth flipped, leaving the dirt undisturbed. No one would know that they had ever been there.