Oh, gosh, I have no idea what I'm getting myself into while I write so many stories at once. Then again, three isn't that bad considering what I could do. And two of these three are going to be short.
Anyway, sorry this one's short. But the other chapters should be longer than this one. This is only a prologue of sorts, but it's just the first chapter, not a prologue. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender. Blah, blah, blah. All that good stuff sadly doesn't belong to me.
The world is a haze of cold and warmth to him. How those two adjectives came when he thought of the world is a mystery. There are figures standing above him, figures whose names are nothing but letters he has yet to find out. He can hear words being said, but he can't place a finger on their meanings. "We can't just leave him," one of the figures say. A girl's voice.
A warm, fuzzy hand grabs him. Strength, belonging to that of an adolescent boy, pulls him up and over the boy's shoulder. A girl, not much older than the age of ten, walks behind him. "Thank you," he whispers, his voice husky as he dares to speak some of the words he knows. Thank you, two simple words that mean the world to the girl.
"Hurry up, Umimaru!" the girl says after smiling to the boy, ushering him to walk faster. "It wouldn't be good for him to freeze out here."
"He's not cold, Mizu. He's oddly warm." At the boy's words, as if to test the words for herself, gloveless fingers touch the unnamed boy's cheek. And her hand recoils fast.
"How is that possible?" she whispers, her hand now back in the warmth of her animal skin glove.
"We'll leave the questions for someone higher than us," the boy, Umimaru, states. Then, without knowing, the boy whose name is yet to be found, fell into sleep.
Warmth that does not belong to him awakens him. The smell of meat baking adds to the quick rising of the boy. The sound of chatter rises from the other room. "Oh, you're awake," a voice says. The owner of the voice is not Umimaru or Mizu, but that of a grown woman with brown hair. The world is still a blur to him, but this time not as cold.
More words come out of his mouth, unknowing and a tad frightened. "Where am I?"
"The North Pole, dear," the same woman states, standing with a bowl in her grasp.
"North...North Pole?" The boy's words tumble out of his mouth, slipping over each other as if they were ice-skating for the first time.
"Yes. Here, eat some of this. It will warm you up." And she hands him bowl, steam trickling out and above until it disappears in the cold, frosty air.
The boy needs no warming up, though; his body is already warm, despite the coldness around him. He can feel, as he thought about his body temperature, snow and ice below his feet beginning to melt. He lifts his feet up, not knowing they were once before touching melting ground, and gathers them under himself.
"Where are you from, boy?" the same woman asks, her words unsure of themselves as they're asked, as if she's treading on unknown ground in a storm.
When the boy thinks about the question, he places a hand to his hurting head. Puzzled by the sudden hurt, he places the bowl on his cot. Blankets and animal skins surround him. "Mika, come here please," a different voice says.
The woman, Mika, stands, leaving the boy alone for a moment. A girl, the one from before, scurries in behind the adults, a smile spread across her face. She truly looks young, nine at the least now that he looks at her better.
She is so close, her blue eyes the color of the sea and her brown hair matching her mother's. "The boy in the melting snow," she whispers, her hands holding his face so she can look at him. "Such a young boy surrounded by melting snow and nobody to look after him." Mizu, as the older boy had said before, is quickly scolded for bothering him.
"What did I tell you before about bothering him?" Mika asks, her hand pointing at the young girl. She disappears swiftly, running behind both parents before they come over to the unnamed boy.
The man, the one who must be Mizu's father, steps forward. He looks into the boy's eyes, searching for some answer. "Your name, son. What is it?"
The boy, just like before, thinks for a moment, searching for something in his head. And his hand is suddenly holding his head. "I...I don't know." His voice comes out almost silent.
Mika's husband meets his wife's eyes, a question rising deep within their different eye colors. Blue conversing with brown. "How old are you?" the women asks, breaking the connection with her husband. "You don't look younger than our daughter, Mizu."
Again, his face turns a shade of white that matches closely to the snow and his head spins. "We don't want to hurt him, Mika. Let's just settle on the age of ten. Simple." The mother's hand holds the boy's face, staring into his eyes.
Mika lets go of his face, stepping back. "His eyes, Manirak. His eyes." The boy becomes puzzled again at what the mother said, watching as the husband walks over to him. His hand tentatively touches the area around his eyes. Nothing seems to be wrong, nothing at all.
Manirak, as his hand comes away from the boy's face, says, "Your eyes are a beautiful shade of brown. Almost like they are golden." The older man pats the unnamed boy. "There's nothing to be worried about. My wife was just startled by their odd appearance. Mika," he tells his wife, standing, "I believe we should let the boy sleep; he seems rather tired. We'll question the boy and figure things out tomorrow, when he's rested."
They leave, sending the boy alone in the room surrounded by cold ice. Their matching footsteps disappear in a moment, letting the boy to place his feet back on the ground, now certain that he had melted some of the packed element. He has no idea what he is doing, not why he's touching the ground or why it's starting to melt.
So many questions run through his head. So many that nobody seems to hold the answer to. Why was Mika frightened by his eyes? Why was his body so warm outside in the cold? Why did his head hurt when he tried to answer their questions? And the question that bothers him the most as he experiments with touching the ground with his bare feet is the one nobody seems to hold the answer to: Who exactly is he?