II Mysterious Eyes
The southern water tribe had grown significantly since the war ceased its destruction. Waterbenders from the northern tribe were confident enough to migrate and help with repairs. However, once repairs had been made, many stayed behind to live as a permanent resident.
The sister tribes were constantly trading and communicating. They would share resources and knowledge and pretty soon, the southern tribe was a thriving metropolis like its sibling in the north.
The only difference being that they lacked the large protective wall around its borders. In its place was a low barrier (made of snow) that protected the village from the harsh tundra winds during the long winter nights.
Katara, being a master waterbender, was personally in charge of training any young tribes people that showed any talent in waterbending.
Since the recent migration of waterbenders from the north, their numbers were increasing rapidly.
Aang sat happily on the sidelines during one of her lessons. The sun was setting slowly and a cast of orange light reflected from the tall glaciers close to the ice shore. Of course, since his coming to the south pole, he had acquired some ice-friendly clothes.
He had insisted on no furs, so they were stuffed with koala-lamb fur instead.
Finally the lesson came to an end and the avatar rose with a gust of air. Momo chattered happily and jumped onto his shoulder, tucking himself into Aang's hood. He walked over as she was drying a particularly wet pupil.
"That went better than yesterday."he said smiling widely. Yesterdays session had resulted in a very wet and angry sky bison after some beginners water whips. Aang has insisted that Appa stay away from the shore today.
Katara finished pulling the water from the child's clothes and smiled to the airbending monk.
"Definitely. They're picking it up really fast...even if it does require a lot more drying of wet clothes."
They both laughed merrily. It had been nothing but good times lately. The world hadn't had a reason to call upon the avatar's help for almost a year now, and it felt good for Aang just to let his hair down (metaphorically speaking).
The sun soon started to disappear behind the wall of sea. The orange light turned to a violet one and the wind was getting colder. Katara hugged her arms as she looked out over the glimmering surface. Sokka had not yet returned with his new batch of ice dodgers, and it was dangerous to navigate a ship in the dark when there were icebergs everywhere.
Aang hugged her shoulders and she felt and instead wave of heat go over her body.
"Don't worry, if they don't come back before nightfall I'll go looking for them."
She smiled and they slowly made their way back to the village.
He had been gone for a while now.
She had watched the full moon slowly ascend from its sleeping place as it took its position among the stars. She could feel the surge of power that only it brought to her and all the other waterbenders of the world.
During her time back at the southern water tribe, Katara had begun to practice bloodbending under its influence. Though she had hated the idea of forcing another's body to bend to her whim, it did have its advantages.
She would often use it if a warrior had returned home from a particularly bad hunt (usually involving more reckless spear throwers) to clot the blood and heal the wound faster. She also found that it could help blood flow quicker through the body, heating up the person.
Since she had started putting the technique into practise, she found that she was starting to use it through the daytime as well. Though it wasn't as strong as it was under the full moon, and usually resulted in low blood pressure and therefore a dizzy feeling, it was very handy for those times of hers that only came monthly. She was grateful.
Suddenly the silouhette of sails against the moonlight appeared, and so did the wings of a staff she knew all too well.
Aang landed on the fresh layer of snow in front of her...but the look on his face was worrying. It was sort of a mixture of excitement and fear, and it was only when Sokka came of the boat that she knew why.
A body lay limp in his hold. Its arms dangling in a lifeless way.
On closer inspection she could see that the body in question belonged to a woman, about her own age. Her strategically placed clothes were torn and had lost all their colour. They were nothing but rags hanging from her thin yet curved form.
What struck Katara as interesting was her hair.
In the dim light of the moon it was hard to see it for what it truly was, but at that moment it reminded her of sand. It was close to blending in with the snow.
Sokka quickly walked up to her from the shore.
"We need to get her inside...I think she's still alive."
With that they sprung into action. Aang flew ahead and cleared out the closest igloo he could see. Katara ran inside and prepped the bed, and Sokka followed close behind, lying the girl on the fur sheets that lined the frame.
Aang and Katara sat next to each other beside the bed, mostly looking on in disbelief that this girl was just found floating in the middle of the ocean.
"Aang, heat up your hands and try to warm her up." katara said as calmly as she could, though a hint of panic rose in her voice.
The avatar obeyed and pressed his palms on the woman's torso, shivering at the temperature of her frozen skin.
While he was occupied, she placed her hands on the chest, feeling for the blood in her body. It was close to ice and moving slowly but moving.
"Where did you find her?" Katara asked as she slowly began to move the blood through the veins.
Sokka jumped forward excitedly.
"There we were, just about to exit the run when this enormous iceberg emerged at our exit." he said making exaggerated movements with his hands. "We just managed to escape, but there was a loud POOOWWWOOOOSSSH!!!"
Katara sighed in annoyance as his sound effects went beyond what was desired of the conversation.
"Then we all looked over the edge of the boat,"he continued" and there she was, floating on an ice platform. We think she might have come out of the iceberg when we clipped it."
Aang looked at Katara, his eyes asking if it were possible.
"Well we did find you in an iceberg Aang. Who knows, maybe she was from a hundred years ago too."
The monks eyes lit up at the thought, and she could see what he was thinking. 'What if this person was another airbender? What if she managed to escape the fire nations wrath but was frozen?'
The idea of them reviving another airbender only made them more determined to be successful. Aang started to move to other parts of the body while Katara started to pump to blood through the heart at a quicker rate.
The moon had risen higher now, and was starting its descend. Suki had wandered into the igloo where Sokka was when he hadn't come to bed.
She had come from Kyoshi island knowing that Sokka was being trained for being the next chief. She knew he wouldn't be able to return to her for quite some time, so had requested that aang take her to him as a surprise.
But it was she who was surprised when she realised how cold it was. She stayed anyway.
And now all four friends were watching as slowly a natural colour started to come back to the girls skin.
"How come it didn't take this long for you to revive me?" Aang asked as he ran out of skin to heat (at least, places he felt comfortable touching)
"Because you revived yourself remember?" Sokka said, his back leaning against the door and his arms crossed.
"We cracked the iceberg open, a big light shot out of it and you cam stumbling out like you had only been asleep for the past hundred years."
"What strikes me as odd" Katara started" is that you had the power of your past lives to keep your from encasing yourself in an icy tomb. How did she manage to survive?"
Just as she pointed to the girl, her hand rose and reached her forehead. Both Aang and Sokka jumped back in surprise as the young woman groaned, most likely from the pain in her still frozen limbs.
Then she opened her eyes, and Katara cocked her head in amusement.
Thinking that this person was an airbender (seeing as airbenders shaved their heads, so some of them could have easily had light coloured hair) she expected to see stormy grey eyes like Aang. But instead, she was greeted by bright ocean blue eyes, ones that you usually only came across in a water tribe. Could she have been half waterbender?
"Where am I?"
She said, her voice croaky and almost too hard to understand.
Woot! Chapter 2!
Please Review :D
