It took three days for Appa to fly Aang and Katara to the highest mountain in the Earth Kingdom, Mount Xiangchen. Katara spent the time alternating between marveling at the feel of flying - Appa was fast, but not so fast that she couldn't be fascinated by the patchwork land passing under them - and worrying about the tasks. The main problem she faced with this one wasn't taking the snow back to the Fire Nation. She could handle snow, she was a waterbender. No, it was getting to the top of the mountain. She and Aang had agreed that the Spirit of Fire would not be pleased if he just flew her to the top of the mountain; it seemed like cheating, and Katara didn't want to cheat with something as important as this - or at all, really. So she would have to climb it on her own. Aang had lent her a heavy cloak ("It gets cold up in the southern Earth Kingdom," he'd explained with a wide smile) and taken her right up to the foot of the mountain that morning, where a small town called Gaoling rested.
"I believe in you, Katara," Aang said, clasping her arm before she slid off of Appa.
"Thank you, Aang," Katara replied warmly, managing a smile to give him, making him turn the slightest shade of pink and rub his head, bashful.
"Well - good luck," Aang told her, and she nodded. "Appa, yip yip!" The sky bison lofted into the air and wheeled, heading toward the Northern Air Temple.
Katara let herself take one big breath to try and calm her racing heart before she set up the mountain.
It wasn't hard going at first. The mountain had some gentler slopes near its base, and it was summer, so the trees were green and there were meadows with sparrowkeets and jackalopes. But the trees started to become shorter and more scraggly, and the wildlife became less and less prominent, until she'd climbed to the point where the trees were nearly nonexistent, and all she could see was hard rock. It had become harder and harder to breathe as she went on, and her legs and arms were exhausted - it felt as though there were weights attached to them. After she'd been climbing for about six hours - the sun was now directly overhead, Katara sat down to rest for a while. The hardest part of the climb was still ahead - jagged stone cliffs rose above her, ice glistening in their crevices. She would have to climb all the way up them, and then back down - !
Thankfully she had some supplies left; she'd bought some moose-lion jerky from the town the previous night as well as some extra drinking water, along with the water she had in her bending pouch. Aang had offered his food but most of the vegetarian fare of the Air Nomads was light, and she needed something a little more⦠substantial if she was going to be climbing mountains.
Refreshed after her break (though the exhaustion returned quickly), Katara turned to the cliffs. She managed to make it up quite a ways before she started even using her bending (though she had been keeping a small platform of ice beneath her so if she slipped, there would be something to catch her). She used her water to create ice spikes, sending them flying into the rock and sticking them there to use as hand- and foot-holds. Then, after she climbed up past them, she'd bend them up after her and use them again. After fifteen minutes of this, Katara had to bend herself a ledge of ice to sit on. She was terribly out of breath, and the sun reflecting off the ice was starting to make her head ache. And a new fear was entering her mind: what if she didn't make it back before dark? She didn't want to fall and break her neck or something equally horrible; this far up on the mountain, no one would be able to help her in time.
The wind had picked up as the day wore on, and Katara was glad for the cloak Aang had given her. Her borrowed Air Nomad clothes (her old Water Tribe ones had been burnt in Agni's attack) were warm and tough, but another layer definitely helped block the wind. The tips of her fingers were going numb, even with the gloves she had bought along with the food.
But she had to keep going.
It was about four in the evening when she finally reached the summit. The air was extremely thin, and she was breathing heavily just standing still. She wouldn't be able to stay up here for long. The wind pulled at her, reminding her of the top of the ice cliffs before Vaayu had swept her away. She quickly bent a large chunk of snow from the side of the glacier - even that was an effort - and turned back toward the cliffs. The sun was still fairly high in the sky, though the shadows were growing longer. Katara's lungs ached, and her head still hurt. Gritting her teeth, she dug her feet in and bent herself a sort of ice slide down the cliff a ways. Then she bent herself a spike of ice to slow her momentum and slid down, taking from the top as she went down to add to the bottom of the slide. When she reached the bottom of the cliffs, she stopped to take a breather. Her hands were shaking from the strain of bending so much without as much oxygen as she was used to.
It took Katara about ten minutes for her to regain some energy - ten minutes of lost daylight, she thought, forcing herself to stand up and continue on. She was past the worst part, really. It's all downhill from here, she thought, laughing slightly. The snowball was clutched tightly in her left hand; she didn't want to change it from its original form in case that violated the terms of the task, so there would be no storing it in her bending pouch as water for convenience.
There was no warning - one moment she was trudging down the steep mountainside, the next she was lying flat on her back, gasping up at the darkening sky far, far above. All the air had left her lungs, and her not-quite-fully-healed burns flared in protest with the impact. All she could do was gasp until her lungs finally decided to work again, and she sat up slowly, blinking the white dots out of her eyes. Gingerly, Katara felt the back of her head and winced. There was a goose egg forming already, and she probably had a concussion. Moving slowly still, she pulled some water out of her bending pouch, covered her hand with it, and set her hand gently to the back of her head, sighing as the cool water healed her.
It was then that she realized she was no longer holding the snowball, and she leapt up in a panic, looking around for it frantically. She spotted it a few yards away and dashed over to it (a movement she regretted as soon as she did it, due to her injuries), snatching it up. It looked fine, but she was afraid it would start melting; this cave - or whatever she'd fallen into - was sheltered almost entirely from the icy wind and so was much warmer than the mountainside. Then she shook her head. She was a waterbender. She'd just have to keep an eye on it.
Suddenly, Katara heard an ominous rumbling from her left, and whipped out a stream of water, ready for an attacker or to bend herself out of the way of a rockslide or cave-in. She did not expect a massive badgermole to come bursting through the wall, coming to a halt right in front of her. She also did not expect the small girl who appeared from behind its leg, with pale eyes and a familiar smirk.
"Hey, Sugar Queen," said Toph. "What are you doing here?"
A/N: I'm back! I took a short break from FFN for a while, but I will now be back on and Chapter 10 is in the works! Thank you, Guest, for the review on Chapter 8. I love hearing your thoughts - everybody's thoughts!
So, with that in mind... Thoughts on this chapter? ;)
