This marks the 3/4 completion of the Avatar Cycle. After I've finished the cycle, I'll start going into the Nations you see in the series. Although, since the Air Temples were dead by then, I may have to do them first...hmmmm...


Water Tribe

In the earliest days, there was only one Water Tribe. His skin was tanned, his hair was brown, his eyes were blue. Such an intense shade of sapphire, they were, that he was once told he had the eyes of the Ocean Spirit. Certainly, the Ocean Spirit, as well as the Moon Spirit, had chosen him to be their protector, and every day he went to the Spirit Oasis to speak with them.

The other nations were his friends as well. He loved to walk the streets and canals of his city with the Air Nomads, who would visit him once a month at least. Less often did the various kingdoms on the Earth Continent go see him, though he didn't mind too much: they were mostly stubborn, rockheaded fools who butted heads with each other all day long. Let the Fire Nation play with them.

Ah, the Fire Nation: a strange lad, to be sure. Youngest of all the nations, still reeling from the death of his mother, the Sun Warrior, at first, the boy barely came once every decade. He was a sage, different from the other nations, and the warrior Water Tribe had a hard time understanding him. In like, the few times they played together, the Fire Nation always seemed to scorn him for his lifestyle, which utilized only what the hard land of the North Pole could give him.

Yes, the Water Tribe would rather just be friends with the Air Nomads, who was energetic and friendly and knew how to have fun. She would bring him news of fantastic places around the world, then leave again to explore more. Often, she would bring him some sort of souvenir, a rare dish or plant, pictures of exotic places. His little hut was filled with trinkets of the outside world, all gifts from her.

Those golden times, when his people still had to struggle together to live in their harsh home, were too short, even for a nation. Because as he grew better at surviving in this land of perpetual winter, his people began to bicker, argue, the unity forced on them by their struggles to survive breaking apart as they started to live more easily.

One group wanted to continue with the old ways of things, where women were trained as Healers and stayed at home to protect the children and tend the sick and injured, which were starting to become less numerous. Others wanted the women to be allowed to fight as well, now that their advancing hunting techniques and weaponry lessened the demand for Healers that was once so pressing even men had to remain at home to tend to injured hunters. The Water Tribe just wanted everything to remain as it was, just wanted the happy times to stay.

But tensions grew, and he began to feel conflicted. Perhaps one side was correct…no, surely the other…but perhaps they…no! His mind began to fragment, slowly but surely, and in the space of a century he felt his people divide, and with them, his mind.

News came from the south that the Earth Continent had been united into the Earth Kingdom, and one day a beautiful young girl came to visit him. It had been years since anyone but the Air Nomads had come, and at first he was unsure of what to say to this stunning woman.

He settled for "Hello."

They briefly discussed the status of politics in the world, and then she left. He never saw her again, but he remembered her for the rest of his life. She told him of the increase in Air Nomads, in the change in the Fire Nation's government, in the building of her new city.

A year later, he fell completely into madness.

Brief flashes of sanity were all he had, when he would wake from nightmares to realize he had mutilated himself with a knife, forgotten suicide attempts or mere cuts to ease his agony staining the ground around him red. Once, he thought he saw the Fire Nation, no longer in his sage's robes, but that couldn't be, he was such a religious little prick he wouldn't dream of forsaking his "spiritual calling." The hallucination asked what had happened to him, why he was hurting himself so, and he replied with all his mad joy.

"My people are divided. They want me to die. They want to be two. I've gotta cut myself in half so they can each have a part—no!" Anger flew across his face, and he growled at himself. "No! They will unite again! I will recover, grow strong…" His rage faded, and a sort of insane joy overtook him. "Death to the Water Tribe!" He crowed, joy filling him at the thought. "Death to the Water Tribe!"

The Fire Nation hallucination turned and fled. The Water Tribe returned to his madness.

At some point, a Healer brought two infants to see him, and told him they were his. He didn't know who their mother was at first, but then the Air Nomads came to him with tears in her eyes, a two-year-old holding each hand, begging for him, for her love, to recover. But his people would not reconcile, and he died when his children reached the physical age of six.