The small iceberg danced on the waves at the mercy of the currents, its tusk-like shape nodding cheerfully in the sharp sunlight. From the Northern Water Tribe catamaran's deck, Kei could just reach out and pass her hand over the icy sides, breaking off a small fragment in the process. She carefully studied her new acquisition for a few moments, testing its strength and adhesion, then she simply threw it back into the ocean with a bored expression.
From here, she had the perfect opportunity to check out her mirror image in the ocean: her wide features and narrow black eyes made Kei quite a beauty, and her traditional Kyoshi Warrior makeup only enhanced the effect. Her strong body was hidden under the bulky Kyoshi Warrior uniform and armor, and her long black hair was restrained in the usual triple-ponytails, giving Kei a very professional look she had found increasingly embarrassing over her journey.
One of the sailors finally noticed the iceberg and with a fluid motion, he waterbent it away from the ship.
Kei turned back to the deck with a deep sigh. This voyage had introduced her to a whole new level of boredom, and with that came thoughts. She had been pondering a lot lately about how she had ended up here, on a ship en route to the Northern Water Tribe.
Memories waxed and waned in her mind just like the moon on the night sky. With each passing, things had made more and more sense for her. At least they had enhanced… the mistakes she had made.
She was chasing Asha down on Kyoshi Island's main road, the one that connected the central village with the harbor. She kept up a steady pace, even allowing herself to enjoy the warm summer sunlight, and not using her power to catch Asha. The young girl was running in front of her as fast as she could, occasionally shouting back something impudent to Kei to keep her attention on the chase. She sounded confident, but it wasn't hard to miss the fearful tone in her voice – she knew too well what Kei would do with her if she managed to catch up.
They turned into the central village, and Kei sped up to finish the hunt. She deemed the village an appropriate place to teach Asha some respect. She grinned, and reached down into her body with her mind, tapping the spiritual energies lying within. Her will called forth these energies to boost her physical form, carefully arranging the flow of raw spiritual power so that it would grant her supernatural speed.
The world slowed down around her, but she could dart forward with her normal speed. She was just about to grab Asha's shoulder…
…when the girl suddenly took a sharp right turn and disappeared behind the conveniently opened door of a nearby house.
First mistake. She should have been more suspicious. Asha was a wild and reckless girl, who liked to take the fight head-on and not slip away like this. She was the only one other than Suki who sparred with Kei even with super-powers allowed. The other Kyoshi Warriors were far too flimsy for this kind of rough treatment, but Asha seemingly enjoyed it, and her savage tenacity allowed her to shrug off the pain of defeat quickly. She was much tougher than the other girls thought, and Kei really liked this in her.
Kei stormed into the house with the momentum of a frenzied Elephant Koi. She looked around and immediately noticed Asha in the middle of a room not far away from the door. She had her backs towards Kei, and it looked like she was quietly talking with someone.
Wasting no time, Kei launched herself towards her younger warrior-sister. Her reward for this rash decision was a small, sharp pain in her ankle as she snapped a thin metal thread, and a loud "Surprise!" from the room.
She could recognize Kitara's voice before something hard hit her head. Then the world turned dark.
Kitara was not a mistake. She was a phenomenon. The young weapon specialist was always light-minded and goofy, but behind her silly smile, there was a deadly warrior. Kei found this duality curious at best, and highly embarrassing at worse. She laughed on Kitara's jokes and watched her defeat everyone – even Suki - in sword duels, yet her sister was simply beyond her understanding. So for her part, Kei simply didn't bother and treated Kitara with respect. Unfortunately, the girl took an advantage on this way too often.
With the darkness came the bitter cold. Kei screamed up as the bucket that had fallen onto her head poured ice-cold water into her neck, finding every little opening on her loosely-bound Kyoshi Warrior uniform to reach her body.
She lost control over her power. Her instincts took charge, and they drained all the energy from her speed and put it into her flesh, in an attempt to increase her toughness. But it only made things worse, as her skin became much more sensitive to the freezing water. It felt like she had been fallen into a pit filled with ice cubes.
Kei screamed up again, now with some real pain in her voice, then tumbled to the ground and crashed against the door.
Someone finally stepped to her and generously removed the bucket from her head.
"Hope this will cool you down finally," Pema's mocking tone was impossible to miss. Kei wanted to answer it with a punch in the face, but the shock from the cold water sucked away all the strength form her limbs.
So she just grumbled something under her nose and watched as her three sisters unceremoniously left the house without saying anything else or even helping her up.
Now, this was her second biggest mistake: leaving Pema unchecked. She should have undermined her position before this incident, thus preventing Asha and Kitara from joining Pema for this "lecture". The signs had been there for quite some time that Pema had been brewing something against her, and Kei felt really stupid that she had chosen to ignore them. Pema was all about wits and low cunning, but all that wile couldn't wash away the fact that she was the weakest Kyoshi Warrior. Spending some time with her face under Kei's feet had always put Pema to her place, and it would have served her right before this incident too.
Kei felt terrible. She was sitting in her bed, shivering, and trying to overcome her nausea. That foul liquid she had drunk a few minutes ago helped a little, but she was still on the edge to re-introduce her breakfast to the people around her.
At least Nirmal hadn't minded Kei's poor condition. She had been checking her thoroughly, massaging Kei's body on a few spots under the robes, or placing her head on her sister's chest, and just listening to Kei's breathing and heartbeat.
Not far away from her sat a tall figure in black and white robes, silently watching Nirmal. She was Lady Shiela, Nirmal's healing teacher. Kei got the creeps from her plain face, lightless grey eyes and somber aura. She was colder than the water those three troublemakers had poured into Kei's neck a week ago, and the girl really wondered how Nirmal could bear this woman, let alone like her.
"It is Koala Sheep Wither," said Nirmal suddenly. She turned towards the door of Kei's room where Moritha – Kei's foster-mother – was waiting for the results. "It cannot spread between people; Kei caught it from the water." Nirmal turned back to her sister and gave her a short, heartening hug. It made the nausea go away, and Kei was really thankful for that. "You will get well again within a few days."
"Yes, it is Koala Sheep Wither," added Shiela quietly, with unmistakable disappointment in her voice. "But it took you far too long to recognize it, Nirmal." She scratched her chin and rolled her eyes as she tried to come up with a solution to this problem. "Let's refresh what we know about the Koala Sheep Wither, shall we? Or better yet, revise all the Withers while we are at it, just to be sure!"
Nirmal's pained face and half-hearted smile soothed Kei's sickness even further. It was just good to know that someone else was going to have a bad day too, even if she was her warrior-sister.
Not being more assertive with Nirmal was a small mistake compared to not beating some sense into Pema. Yet it was almost just as annoying. If Kei had insisted a more extensive care from the young healer, then things wouldn't have become such a mess for her. Nirmal was a nice girl, all things considered – even though she was picking up her mentor's cold aloofness a little bit too eagerly – and she was an exceptional healer, so she could have cooked up something when the disaster struck.
The world was just one, large, greyish blur. Her body was freezing one moment, and burning hot the next. Just to make everything even worse, powerful nausea surged through her from time to time, usually at the expense of her last meal.
Kei felt really wretched. Her condition had deteriorated rapidly, much to Nirmal's confusion. The sickness that should have been gone by now was still thriving in Kei's body, and the various symptoms had become more and more serious instead of disappearing. At least it had remained in Kei, and hadn't spread to anyone else.
Though, at this very moment she wished it did, so she could share her suffering with those who had caused it in the first place.
Her three sisters sat at the end of her bed, with varying degrees of remorse written on her faces: Kitara was crying like she had killed Kei, Asha was really embarrassed and clearly didn't know what was going on, and Pema just sulked without showing the slightest hint of regret.
The fifth person in the room was Moritha, who acted as a moderator now, but between Kitara just crying and everyone else remaining silent, there wasn't much to moderate.
"Come on girls," she said eventually, after it had become clear that the three girls wouldn't do much without a little nudge, "just offer an apology for what you have done, and let's be done with this."
"I did nothing I should apologize for!" protested Pema. "She deserved this!"
Moritha swallowed a strong rebuke, with both the intent and the effort clearly visible on her face. If not for her newly reemerging nausea, Kei would have even laughed on this.
"I'M SORRY!" continued Kitara with a heart-wrenching scream. She lunged forward to wrap Kei in a tight hug. "I'M SO SORRY!" Her tears fell onto Kei's face like rain. "I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I'M SOOOORRRRY!"
"Okay, that's enough," cut in Moritha. She gently peeled off Kitara from Kei and put her back to her place. "Now, the others…"
"I'm sorry." Asha presented her apology with confused awkwardness, like she was unsure what she should apologize for. Her grey eyes bounced between Kei, Moritha, and Pema, only to stop when Moritha nodded towards her as a sign of recognition.
"I'm not sorry!" Pema leaped up from sitting, and made a theatrical spin towards the door. "I have no regrets! She totally deserved it!" With that, the girl rushed out from the room, and quickly disappeared in the nearest corner.
"Well, this young girl needs some serious talking-to," noted Moritha coldly and followed Pema outside.
"I'm still sorry!" whispered Kitara with tear-soaked eyes, and she left too.
Asha crawled closer to Kei and drew out a small straw-doll from her Kyoshi Warrior uniform.
"I made this for you," she explained as she put the doll on Kei's pillow. It looked fairly average but pretty well-made. Its black hair was also strangely natural. "Her name is Seiwong, and she is a healer. I got the hair from Nirmal, so she must be a very good healer too. She will watch over you and make you feel better!"
Her youngest sister's innocent smile as she said this helped Kei more than any medicine. Her nausea was washed away, and the world returned to normal for her mind. She could even force out a small laugh.
"Thank you." Kei's feeble words widened Asha's smile. She kissed her older sister on the forehead, then hurried after Kitara, leaving Kei alone in the room.
The catamaran shook as it hit a large, black metal plate floating on the water. Two sailors immediately moved to that side and waterbent the dangerous object away, but more followed. Kei watched the increasing stream of black metal with growing interest. They looked like parts from a larger thing, maybe the hull of a ship. She had already heard about the siege of the Northern Water Tribe that had happened some five months ago, but she had never thought that she would have the chance to witness the battlefield. Speaking of missed opportunities…
"While your condition has improved a lot, Nirmal told me that you are still unfit to come with us." Suki's words cut into Kei like a nail, with Okako's obedient nodding being the hammer driving it deep into her heart. "So I decided to leave you behind for now. You will join us later, when you are fully recovered."
The air in Kei's room became colder with each passing second, and she, Suki and Okako had been sitting there for a good twenty minutes by now.
"So you are abandoning me?" chaffed Kei after a moment of awkward silence. "That's very nice from you!"
"We are not abandoning you," added Okako thoughtfully. "We are going to war, and you are in no shape to accompany us. We do this on your behalf Kei, and believe me, it was a tough call. But you can still come after us later. We will send letters as frequently as we can, and organize a proper transportation for you to us when you feel ready."
"I feel ready!" snapped back Kei, but a violent outburst of coughing quickly proved her wrong.
"You are still sick, Kei," Suki drew closer to give her sister a pat on the back. "Don't worry about us, we can take care of ourselves."
"I want to go with you girls!" Kei's voice quivered as a teardrop rolled down on her face. "I've already missed the Avatar and those Fire Nation jerks because of this stupid sickness, I don't want to miss all those awesome adventures with you too!"
She wasn't exactly sure if she had seen it right, but Kei could swear that Okako rolled her eyes upon hearing this.
"You do as we said," stated Suki unflinchingly. "No objections!"
Yes! Yes! This! This was her single biggest mistake! She shouldn't have crumbled like an idiot there, but put up a more assertive approach. She should have proposed an alternative solution, like forcing her sisters to stay with her unit she got better. Anything would have better than this. But no, her sisters had left without her, and their letters had grown rarer until they had stopped arriving altogether three months ago. That had been the point where Kei had declared herself fully healed and left Kyoshi Island to find her sisters. She had been journeying north ever since then, following hazy clues and cold tracks, only to catch a quasi-reliable rumor about Kyoshi Warriors being sighted in the Northern Water Tribe.
Now there she was, maybe just a short boat-ride from finally reuniting with her sisters.