After trailing the trio for a while, I notice someone buried in one of the patches of ice. Buried half in snow and pointing out of the whiteness is my staff. I reach a hand down to pick it up. As I hold it before me, I attempt to send a blast of air up it, but nothing happens. Maybe the same lethargy that affected Appa is also affecting me. The wings are frozen to the wood, too. I have to melt them.

So I turn, staff in hand, and begin my way toward Aang again. I'm slowly making my way along the patches of ice. Slowly but surely. A while ago Appa disappeared into the horizon, taking the noise of Aang and the newcomers with them. With their disappearance, went all my distractions, and the cold starts to set in.

Oh, how I would kill for something warm and welcoming. Something friendly. But all that is here is barren land and a descending sun and a never ending landscape of ice and snow. I know that stopping will be the end of me, that I would freeze to death out here, so I continue in the same direction as Aang, hoping for some obstruction in the horizon.

Hours seem to pass as I keep hopping and the sun never sets, as if it's frozen on the horizon. I can finally see a village in the distance. I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep out here because, one, I have no idea where I am, and, two, I might freeze to death. But I now have hope, as the village means people and people mean warmth. So I continue, tired and hungry and very, very cold. I can't feel some parts of my body and wonder if I ever will, knowing what frostbite can do to some.

A bright red flare shoots into the air, not too far from the village, and I vaguely wonder what's going on. There's also something wrong with the snow, I begin to realize. It is no longer white; it has turned a dark shade of black, and the snow is falling, thick with darkness.

That is so not normal, I think. But then again, I just woke up in an iceberg and left there, so nothing is really normal now. I land on solid ground, well land no longer shifting with the water, but still not very solid seeing as one misstep could send you back to the watery deeps. The village is still a good deal ahead of me, so I walk and run at intervals, my breath coming out in pants that cloud in front of my face. I am desperate now, desperate to get closer to whatever is happening.

I'm fairly close to the village now, and I watch as a ship that must be the cause of all the black snow pull out of the village. This has me running at full speed to get to the ship before it fully pulls away from the village. What if something bad, like Aang leaving me on the ship, happens and I never catch up with him?

The cold air seems to wrap around my body and give me a boost forward. I am nearly there by the time the ship is off. But when I slow, panting and wanting to sleep, it is gone and I'm stumbling into the village, cold and exhausted. The people that live here are busy at work trying to repair their village, packing snow to create the walls, stacking cubes of snow and ice together to fix their house, and many other things. I understand now that the ship was not friendly, that this village is not a port, that something drastic has occurred and I may be too late.

I spy a girl and a boy chatting somewhere near an igloo, their voices sending a spark of recognition through my body. They are the two that went with Aang, but where's Aang? I stagger, falling and landing roughly on the snow. Despite its coldness, I feel myself curling into the warmth of sleep.

I curl into a ball and drift away, aware of the coldness that is my body. I can barely feel my fingers and hands; the warmth has left them. Far off I feel someone pick me up, lifting me away from the cold ground and carrying me into an igloo, where it is warmer, and I can feel someone rubbing my hands and legs before I pass out.

I'm falling through the air, my body cold and wet. I'm back with Aang, falling through the sky on the stormy night, straight to the sea. Aang's yelling my name and I plunge into the dark depths of the water.

My head comes up and I take in a gulp of air. I catch sight of Aang's tattooed head before going under again. My head comes up once more and I try to scream for Aang but water fills my mouth, dragging me down deep. A bright light shines before I lose consciousness. It stops my decent and I feel air come into my lungs. I sleep still, sleep with someone nearby, waiting to arrive and maybe save me.

I jump awake, my body shivering from the dream and the cold. Somebody is next to me. I look at her and look into the warm eyes of an elderly lady.

"You're awake," she says. Her cocoa brown skin, which probably was once smooth, is wrinkled. She has blue eyes that twinkle and gray hair that was most likely brown a long time ago is done with two hair-loopies that hug her face. The woman is dabbing some kind of cloth with warm water on my shaved forehead, but it doesn't help the cold, the cold that has its fingers wrapped around my heart.

I try and sit up, but I can hardly feel my fingers, let alone sit up.

"Are you perhaps an airbender?" the lady asks.

I ponder how she knows, and answer, "Yes; how did you know?"

"My granddaughter, Katara, found a boy with similar clothes in an iceberg. There's not many new people here, so I assumed you were with the boy named Aang."

"Aang? Where is he?" I stammer out and try to sit up again, this time succeeding.

"I'm sorry, but he is not here anymore. Neither are my grandchildren."

"Where is he?"

"A Fire Nation boy came and said that Aang was the Avatar."

"Avatar? Aang the Avatar?" My mouth falls open, surprised because the children at the temple were right. And I wonder why in the world Aang never told me, never told his friend. Or why I never believed them.

"Yes, my grandchildren went off in search of him on that flying bison."

"Appa!"

She nods at my exclamation, understanding that I've missed out on the trio that was really my only success in following Aang.

I stand on cold feet and run out of the igloo to be met by the same thing that I saw earlier. People are still working on filling the gap in the ice, others are sitting before fires and trying to stay warm. But there is no Aang. "Wait, where am I?" I ask, turning around to look at the old woman.

"The South Pole," the woman simply says and hands me a bowl of soup, the warmth leaking into my fingers.

"The South Pole? But how is that possible?" I stare at the bowl, looking at the liquid as it swirls in the cold, as the dark liquid sets steam off its surface. Attentively, I take a gulp of the warm soup and it tastes just like water and something else that I can't quite name. It makes sense, since the positioning of the Southern Air Temple, but is this where Aang was headed?

"I'm assuming you've come from the Southern Air Temple, which isn't terribly far from here.. What is your name, dear?"

"Zia."

"Zia," she whispers my name like she knew it before, "what a beautiful name. Mine is Kanna."

I nod, finishing the soup in one last gulp and staring at the black dot that is the Fire Nation ship. "Where are they going?"

"Aang was taken prisoner on a Fire Navy warship, like I said before. My grandchildren went in search of him on Appa." She walks out of the igloo to point at the sea. "See where there is a break in the ice?" I nod. "The warship was headed that way, but there is no way that you will catch it in a canoe. Which is why my grandchildren took the flying bison."

"I can improvise," I tell her and begin to head for the dent in the ice. I forget to thank her, and look back briefly to wave at her. The feeling has come back to all of my body parts and I'm well rested and fed. My staff lays next to the igloo. Grasping it, I look it up and down to make sure it is no longer frozen.

I open it and take to the air quickly, feeling for the air currents, gaining some speed to catch up to them. It's cold, and I want to take breaks, but know that it would be disastrous. I begin to think of why a Fire Nation boy would take Aang if we are not in a war. No good reason comes to mind.

But the whole situation feels off, like I have stopped experiencing time and aging, that the world has flashed by, that since Katara and Sokka said something about the Fire Navy and flares that it's been longer. I have no real way to tell, no way to know how much time has passed, so I continue forward.

I finally catch sight of a warship piled high with snow. "That must be the ship Kanna was talking about," I say to myself. I circle down and land softly on the deck. Firebenders are working hard on trying to melt snow, but I don't see Aang, or Appa, or the other two.

One in particular catches my eye, even though I can only see his hair, which is pulled up in a ponytail. Suddenly, as if he can sense me, he stops bending and turns to look at me. He has a burn covering his left eye and his eyes are a golden color, the bright amber of a firebender. I step back, surprised, when he begins running up to me. Once he's upon me, a hand wraps around my throat, and I can no longer breathe.

His touch is warm, like many firebenders, and it hurts. I can't bend; it hurts to just breathe. I try to make words come out but nothing does. "Prince Zuko," someone says behind my dwindling sight. "Prince Zuko, let go!" His voice is stern.

His grip lessens, but it is still there, painful and unrelenting. A man in his sixties walks up behind Zuko. The man has gray hair pulled up into a top knot with a beard that points down and sideburns that point to the side. The man puts a hand on Zuko's arm. "Uncle," he whispers.

"Move," Uncle replies, voice gentle. "You are hurting the poor girl." I can't breathe. Everything is drifting away, as if I am dying. Oh, I am dying, I think, realization hitting me.

"Uncle, she has the same clothes as the Avatar," he whispers back.

"So it seems, but now is not the time to interrogate her, we must get the ship out first. Put her in a cell below deck."

Slowly, Zuko removes his hand, but my neck feels burnt, and it still hurts to breathe. I fall to the ground, gasping for breath. "I'll take her down," Uncle says, and Zuko returns to melting the snow, a grimace on his face. "Come on, dear," Uncle says, taking my staff from my hand and leading me uneasily down the stairs. Everything is a blur, and I have a dim understanding that I am being held captive, being eased down the stairs into the dark bellows of the ship.