Chapter Four

Katara returned to the house to find her brother sitting in his chair again. He was dressed for dinner, his hair tied back by its customary blue leather thong, the odd white streak standing out against his otherwise black tresses. But despite his carefully groomed appearance, he seemed distracted, barely even glancing at her as she entered the room.

Aiko and Hasue played on the floor at his feet with Zutara carefully watching over them. Sokka, however, was not really paying attention. His eyes were focused on the door that led to the bedrooms where Katara could see Suki moving back and forth.

She put Kodaso on the floor beside his cousins and went to see if Suki needed help. She was surprised to see a large puddle of water easily crossing half of the bedroom floor. Suki was busily spreading towels and wringing them out into a large dishpan.

"Let me help you with that," Katara offered gently and with a single sweeping gesture, bended the water off everything and into a large floating globe of blue.

In the common room, Suki could hear Sokka's intake of breath and then heard the front door open and close again. She rose from her knees and headed out to follow him.

She nearly ran into her husband as she dashed outside. He had stopped only a few steps from the front door, blinking up into the sunshine.

"I did that same thing," Sokka said as she reached him. "That water in the tub. I did just what Katara did. It looked exactly the same, only in reverse."

He took her hand in his, gripping it tightly, and walked to where Aang and Zuko stood before the huge water troughs that had been filled for Blaze and Appa the night before. One was still nearly full and Sokka half reached out to it. Then he stopped and turned to Suki.

"I am not a bender," he said firmly. "When I was a little boy, the tribal elders tested me, hoping to find another bending warrior to fight the Fire Nation. I couldn't move so much as a snowflake."

"But I just did what Katara did. How is that possible?" he asked.

He closed his eyes and half reached toward the water trough again, then snatched his hand back as if burned.

"I can feel the water, Suki. Not just see it. I can feel it deep inside me. I can tell without looking how much there is and what it's doing," he said, and awe colored his voice.

Then with his eyes closed, both his hands now gripping hers, he took a deep breath. Suki watched in shock as the water rose up from the trough. No gestures, no techniques, no forms. She saw the water rise up and flow in a slow circle around them, weaving up and down as it ran. Then the circle became a wall, and it spun faster and faster through the air until they were surrounded by a spinning globe of blue.

The air became colder and colder inside the globe until the crystals began to freeze and fall on her eyelashes and her hair as snow. Then the entire globe slowed and turned pale blue, then white as it solidified into a solid mass of ice that enclosed them.

The air inside was still and the light was muted and dim. Huge flakes of snow continued to waft down on them from above.

"How, Suki?" he whispered in confusion, leaning his forehead to hers. "How can I do this?" The sound of his voice had an oddly muffled quality in the dome, and the ground began to grow white beneath her feet.

"How?" he repeated softly.

Finally, he relaxed his grip on hers enough to allow her to reach up to his face, then to the white lock of hair that had begun to fall free of its leather tie.

She ran the long soft strands through her fingers and suggested softly, "I think you were kissed by the moon."

Suki watched as her husband's eyes widened in memory. Then the globe of ice shattered around them with the tinkle of breaking glass.

Toph had gone in search of Zuko when she met Mai and Jet on the path to Sokka's house.

"Have you guys seen Zuko?" she asked.

"Nope," Jet answered, Mai's hand tucked in his arm. "We haven't seen anybody."

"We're on our honeymoon," Mai explained straightforwardly.

"Sounds good to me," Toph replied with a grin. "Maybe Zuko and I will take another honeymoon as well."

"This island is a beautiful place for one," Jet suggested merrily as they continued down the winding lane that followed the harbor below. "We're in no hurry to get back at all."

"I thought you guys were in the middle of some big trade thing," Toph ventured. "Zuko said Aang was presiding."

"The crazy old men can handle it without us for a while," Mai stated firmly. "I didn't see anything on the agenda that Jet really needed to approve."

Toph nodded. She understood completely how their partnership worked. When it came to Earth Kingdom business, Toph frequently checked into Zuko's agenda as well, giving her input.

Interestingly enough, Toph had gone from Earth Kingdom to Fire Nation in her loyalties, while Mai had gone from Fire Nation to Earth Kingdom—specifically Omashu. It all came down to balance, she decided.

Aang and Katara balanced air and water; Sokka and Suki balanced water and earth; Jet and Mai and she and Zuko both balanced earth and fire. And they all balanced male and female.

But as they rounded the corner into the large open square where Appa and Blaze were housed, Toph could tell that something was seriously out of balance.

Sokka and Suki knelt in the center of what appeared to be a pile of ice. Zuko and Aang stood at a little distance with Bumi and Toma. With her enhanced abilities to see the earth in people, she could easily read their expressions as dumbstuck.

"What's up, guys?" Jet asked innocently as they arrived on the scene.

"You've got me," Aang managed, his eyes never leaving Sokka and Suki. "I think we'll have to ask Sokka."

But right that moment, Sokka was in no shape to answer any questions. Memory had begun to flood back with Suki's touch there in the dome of ice.

He had been kissed by the moon.

It was his own fault, he decided. He'd asked her to watch over his family. He'd called out to her.

And she'd heard him.

But instead of watching over his family, she'd watched over him.

As the water had closed in on him, filling his lungs and dragging him down to the seafloor, Yue had come to him.

The light of the moon had shone through the dark water upon him as he descended, but it did not grow dimmer. It grew brighter. All around him the water turned brilliant with light as Yue came to him.

She was so beautiful, luminous and glowing, her hair whiter than he remembered, her face more lovely. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

She was not the same girl he'd met in the Northern Watertribe city. That girl had become something so much more. It wasn't that she looked older—in fact she looked ageless. It wasn't that she was unfamiliar—in fact he felt like he'd always known her.

But she was utterly different, and he struggled to find the word to capture the change in her. At last it came to him.

Transcendent—that was the word he was looking for. She was transcendently beautiful, the expression in her eyes was transcendently gentle. She transcended this world and all its struggle and worry. Yue now belonged to something timeless, something unchanging. She was a part of the spirit world now.

She bent close to him, her hair floating out around her like a halo around the moon, and he was filled with awe. Then she spoke to him and her voice was like music.

"Sokka, what have you gotten yourself into now?" she teased. But even her teasing sounded like a symphony.

He couldn't speak for the water in his lungs, but drowning hadn't seemed nearly as important as it had just a few seconds before.

"Have you come to take me with you?" he couldn't say, but thought instead.

She shook her head sadly and answered, "No, Sokka, I can't take you with me. You don't belong there."

He felt a little bit of panic at that. Then where exactly would he be going after death?

"You aren't going to die either," she said with a tinkle of merry laughter. "I won't let you. Not like this."

And she moved even closer to him.

To say she kissed him was an understatement. He felt the sensation of her lips against his, but more than that he felt her connect with him, spirit to spirit. He could feel her, all of her essence, inside of him. He was overcome by her presence, by her generosity, by her love.

She reached deep inside of him and she marked him.

Then something flowed into him—a power he could not resist. The light that had been brilliant around her now became blinding and he closed his eyes against it.

But he could not shut it out. The light poured around him and into him and through him, coursing through his veins and down his nerves.

And it felt indescribably wonderful. Waves of complete physical and emotional pleasure poured through his system. It felt as if a dam had broken inside him and unleashed a flood of joy. He actually cried out loud at its peak.

Then he realized that he'd cried out.

Underwater.

But his lungs were no longer filled. The ocean no longer pressed against him.

He and Yue stood on the seabed with a globe of fresh, pure air surrounding them. The water was still there—he could feel it. But he could also choose to keep it at bay.

Yue's light had grown dim, faded out like the crescent moon.

"I won't let you die today, Sokka," she said again with a soft smile as she began to fade. "I will always love you." And she reached up to run her fingers through his hair, just to one side of his forehead. As she did, the strands fell away from her fingertips white as moonlight.

Then she was gone.

And he stood alone on the floor of the ocean.

It was dark. Utterly black. The ocean surrounded him, dark and brooding. One misstep, one slip of concentration and it would overtake him. He knew this.

So he began to walk.

It had been exhausting beyond measure.

He tried to think clearly, but the power that had run through him still held him in a daze and he was vaguely aware that something in his head wasn't quite registering.

As if in a dream, he walked across the uneven rocky bottom all night, then all day as the water lightened overhead in the sunshine.

In the corner of his vision he could see fish darting past his dome of air, but he couldn't spare a thought for them. His concentration had to remain unbroken or the ocean would consume him.

Then it grew dark again as he still struggled uphill.

Toward the end, staggering out of the surf onto the beach of Kyoshi Island, it was as if the ocean made one last effort to take him back. Wave after wave crashed against him, slamming him against the rocky coral, then the stony beach.

But the water could heal as well as hurt, and with every slash of coral into his back and chest, he felt the lingering spray knit the wounds, almost without his willing it to do so.

When he'd finally arrived in the town, all his reserves depleted, he'd been past conscious thought for hours, running purely on instinct. He'd crossed the courtyard, barely aware of the moon in the sky, barely aware of the glow that surrounded him.

Then he'd seen the light in his window.

And he'd opened his own front door and allowed everything that had happened to him to just fall away.

Now, it had all come back to him.

He knelt on his hands and knees in the snow he'd created with the powers Yue had given him. His hair hung down before his eyes and he could see the lock of white. He remembered the feel of her touch as her fingers ran through it. He remembered everything.

Suki knelt with him. His wife, the mother of his children, knelt with him on the snow, snow white as the moon.

"What happened, Sokka?" she asked gently. "What happened to you out there?"

He tried to make the words come. He tried to find some way to tell her that Yue had given him something, that she'd touched him in her transcendent way. That something in him now belonged to the spirit of the moon.

But how could he say that? How could he tell her that not all of him was hers any longer? Because as surely as he knelt there on the snow in the middle of summer, Yue had laid claim on a part of him that he had not been able to hold back.

He wanted to reassure Suki that he was okay. That nothing had changed. That he was the same person who'd left her only days ago to go fishing.

But he knew that was a lie. He was not the same. He had been kissed by the moon.