Writer's Note: Written for Avatar_500 over at Livejournal, under the prompt "Element".
Katara learned at a very young age that waterbending was very, very hard. She didn't have anyone to teach her, and she didn't have any written instructions to peruse, either. Being a waterbender was very hard and very confusing.
When she was still alive, her mother would encourage her to try her best and do what she could. She was always told to be discreet and careful, always told to do it in a place that no one from the shores could see her, but how she did it was always up to her.
Her mother wasn't a bender. In fact, as far as she could see, no one was a bender besides herself. It was strange, and it was lonely. But that loneliness wasn't enough to make her quit. Especially after her mother died, and most of her family became sad and withdrawn. She had to keep going, maybe to fight away the sadness, maybe to keep her mother's pride alive within her breast – it didn't matter why. It just mattered.
So she watched the waters. When summer graced the South Pole with its brief embrace, she sat beside the shores and watched how the water moved, standing on shaky feet and trying to mime the ebb and flow of the frothy liquid in between slapping away mosquitoes and black flies.
Sometimes she got it wrong. She just knew, deep in her bones, that what she was doing was wrong, and that it never would be right. When that happened, if she wasn't too frustrated, she started over again and tried to pinpoint the exact moment it went wrong (was it a movement of the arm, a shifting of the weight?). If she was too frustrated, she would yell and shout and kick at the water, only to stomp away her rage and try to ignore the fact that her raw emotions only brought up puffs of raw foam and sandy ice from beneath her feet.
But she would always come back and try again. She couldn't help it. The water would always call her back, tug on her insides, make her want and need to come back to the shores and try again, keep trying and trying, until finally - finally - she felt her blood sing with the power she used.