'Cause all I know is we said "hello",

And your eyes look like coming home.

All I know is a simple name...

And everything has changed.

- "Everything Has Changed" by Taylor Swift ft. Ed Sheeran

Katara

I wake to a sky that is clear blue and free of clouds, the sort of day that promises to be chilly and beautiful with the smell of spring in the air, and I allow myself a smile.

March is my favorite month right after October. I've tried to put into words why I love it so much, but Charles Dickens described it more eloquently than I ever could: "it was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade". March is an equinox between winter and summer. The world is still drowsy and rubbing the tiredness of winter from its eyes. It is a tipping point, like standing on a ledge, halfway to safety and halfway to a free fall.

I get out of bed, the well-worn floorboards cool and creaking under my feet, and I shuffle out of my room and down the equally-creaky stairs to the bathroom. I can hear Dad in the kitchen, can hear the pop-pop of bacon grease in a frying pan. The smell of coffee permeates the house.

Well, it's not actually a house. It's an old church that Mom and Dad bought for a ridiculously cheap price to turn the sanctuary into Mom's art studio and the basement into a small, but comfortable, apartment for Sokka and I when we were older. That was before Mom died, before life fell apart and plans changed.

The sanctuary is empty now.

I step into the small kitchen and head for the coffee pot. Dad is at the stove making scrambled eggs and bacon. He smiles up at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that feels like home.

"Good morning, snow pea."

I smile back. "Morning."

I grab a mug from the cupboard and fill my cup. He's left the hazelnut creamer on the counter for me, and I add a splash to my coffee and stir it before I take a sip and let out a contented sigh. I've never been a morning person, and coffee is a requirement for me to be a functioning human being.

"What are your plans for the day?" Dad asks me as he shuffles the dripping bacon from the frying pan to a paper towel-lined plate.

"I'm going to go down to the beach," I say as I move to sit at the small kitchen table. "Hopefully I can see the whales. They'll be migrating soon."

"Is that all?" He shuts off the burner and moves the pan with the eggs to a cool burner.

"I guess so." I shrug. "Am I supposed to have any other plans?"

"No, I guess not." Dad dishes up two plates and sets them down on the table before he joins me. "Me and the guys are going to go fishing later. We probably won't be back for dinner. Will you be okay?"

I smile reassuringly at him. I know by "fishing" he really means he's going out on the boat with Bato and Pakku and drinking beer while the radio plays country music, talking about things that old men talk about. Not that Dad is really that old or anything.

"I'll be fine," I say. "I'll order takeout or something."

"Maybe you can call up Toph and have a girls' night or something." He says this around a mouthful of eggs.

"Dad, no one calls up anyone anymore. We just text." I don't tell him that currently, Toph and I aren't talking. Instead, I smirk at him. "Well, except for you. When am I finally going to convince you to get a cell phone?"

We're one of the only families I know who still has a landline. At least it's wireless. Sokka and I convinced him to upgrade a few years ago.

"I don't need one. And I definitely don't need one of those fancy smartphones." Amusement dances in his eyes, but then he grows more serious. "I just think you're spending a little too much time alone, kiddo."

My fork stops halfway to my mouth. I recover quickly and take the bite, although the scrambled eggs suddenly taste like ash on my tongue. I look up at him.

"I like being alone," I say quietly. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

Dad watches me for a moment. His mouth opens, and then he closes it again. I can hear the words he wants to say but doesn't: you never used to.

"Alright," Dad says instead. It's an almost-lie, a half-truth, a veiled response. It's his way of being honest without actually saying it.

He smiles at me, but this time the crinkles don't make an appearance.

An hour later I'm walking down the familiar cobbled sidewalks through the heart of town with my hands tucked into the pockets of my windbreaker. The streets are quiet because it's the off-season, and I recognize almost everyone I see, if only by face and not by name. Most of them wave to me in greeting.

I'm Hakoda's daughter. I'm Kya's daughter. I've been known here since the day I was born.

I press on, heading for the sea. I can see the sunshine shimmering on the water. I can smell the sea salt spray, a scent that smells like my childhood, of long days spent building sandcastles and throwing jellyfish back into the sea. I can't imagine living some place where the ocean isn't a stone's throw away.

The town is still mostly asleep, and I bask in the quiet. The shops are familiar. I've been into most of them at least once or twice. It's barely eight o'clock and most of them aren't open yet. During the summer season, they will be open at this hour, and they'll be packed with tourists browsing the wares, looking for souvenirs from this tiny coastal town.

But then I pass by a building that is both familiar and strange. It used to be a secondhand store, but the owner retired last fall and put the building up for sale. The sign had been in the plate glass window for months. I hadn't seen it disappear.

The difference now is that the sign has disappeared, and the building has been sold. The canopy has been replaced and the words The Jasmine Dragon is emblazoned in gold on the green canvas. The door is propped open with a brick, and there's a moving truck out front. Burly men in matching dark blue t-shirts are unloading tables, chairs, and things I recognize but don't have a name for into the building.

I pause to watch them for a moment, feeling the light breeze lift the small wisps of hair that have escaped my braid, and then I peer in through the large window. It's a little dusty, but the lights are on inside, and I can see the movers shuffling things around. A portly older man with a gray beard is pointing around the open space. His voice carries through the door: "...just set those over there by the wall. Yes, that's fine. We've still got some cleaning to do…"

I wonder what this place will be, if it will be a store or restaurant that I'll enjoy visiting from time to time.

I step off the sidewalk and into the street to stay out of the way of the movers, checking to make sure the road is clear. I pass along the side of the truck and step back onto the sidewalk in time to collide with someone who's coming down the flight of stairs that lead up to the apartment above the building. Most of the old buildings in this town are built that way.

I don't know who's at fault, me or the stranger I've run into. I didn't see him, and he didn't see me, so maybe we're both at fault. Maybe it's neither.

"Oh spirits, sorry. I didn't see you there—" A hand on my elbow steadies me, and I look up into a faded pink and red smear.

I blink. It's a scar. I force myself to look away from it, into the rest of the face it occupies. It's a handsome face, my brain registers quickly. And then I realize I'm still standing in his personal space, close enough to notice that he smells like bamboo and teak wood and that his short-cropped hair is damp from a shower. His hand is still on my arm. A blush rises in my cheeks. I step back and he lets me go.

"Sorry," I say. "I didn't see you either."

The boy offers me an apologetic smile—no, he's not a boy. He's a young man, probably around my brother's age.

"Me either." His cheeks redden as he realizes he already said that. "Are you okay?" His voice is husky, like leaves crunching underfoot in October.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I offer him a smile. My eyes drift over the scar again, before they land on his honey-colored eyes. I look down the road to the ocean. If I don't get down to the jetty soon, I'll miss the whales. "I should go. Um, I'll see you around?"

He takes a step back, toward the open door. "Uh, yeah. See you."

He spins on his heel and checks his shoulder against the door. He recovers gracefully, but I wince for him.

Then I turn back toward the sea and resume my walk to the beach.

Zuko

My cheeks are burning and my shoulder is smarting when I step back into the shop. Uncle looks up at me and beams a smile. I haven't seen him this happy in years.

I wish I felt the same.

"You slept in, nephew," Uncle says. He gestures to the thermos of tea he brought down from the loft. "Tea? It's Earl Grey."

I scrub my hand down my still-warm face. "No thanks. I think I need coffee."

"Blech." Uncle pulls a face. "How can you drink that sewer sludge?"

I ignore the jibe. "Do you need me here?"

Uncle waves me away. "Go on, get your coffee. But when you get back, I'm putting you to work."

I step back onto the sidewalk and glance in the direction the girl had gone. Only the term girl is inadequate. She looked like she was about my sister's age, so she's a young woman. She was heading toward the beach.

I see the ocean glimmering beyond the rise of the buildings. It reminds me of the young woman's eyes, and I shake my head to push her out of my thoughts.

Great, I think as I start in the direction of the drive-up coffee stall I saw the other day when Uncle and I drove into town. The first person you meet in this town and you just about run her over.

The walk helps me shake off the last dregs of sleep. I normally wake up no later than 6 am. I always have, even as a child. And I'm usually snoring by 10 pm. But I had a hard time sleeping last night, tossing and turning on the unfamiliar bed in the unfamiliar room with anxiety pooling icy-hot in my belly.

A new house, a new town. "A fresh start," as Uncle calls it, but it feels like anything but. It feels like running away.

I reach the coffee stall. The barista, an over enthusiastic girl with a peppy smile and a thick ponytail trailing down one shoulder, takes my order: tall Americano.

When I walk back to what is soon going to be the Jasmine Dragon tea shop, I pay a little more attention to my surroundings to get a better feel for this place that I now call home.

If I have to pick a word to describe this town, it's quaint. Most of the buildings are old, either made of brick or clapboard. The coats of paint are bright and cheery, and the signs displaying the names are eye-grabbing. The sidewalks are clean, and everything is coated in a layer of sea salt. I can feel it on my skin.

I'm no stranger to the ocean. I grew up on Puget Sound, after all. But the open sea is a little different than a bay.

By the time I get back to the tea shop, the movers are hauling in the last of the supplies Uncle bought with his severance pay. Then it's just the two of us, and Uncle makes good on his promise to put me to work.

We spend all morning sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing. Then we start to unpack the kitchen. Uncle had paid for some remodeling to better equip the building for its new intended purpose. The secondhand store had a small kitchen, probably leftover from some business that had been here before that, but everything had needed a serious upgrade. Uncle spared no expense, and the appliances are all shiny stainless steel.

Uncle talks while we—and by 'we' I mean I—work. "I hope to have the place opened by the first week of April. The vendors should deliver our merchandise by the end of the month, and that should be plenty of time to get everything set up here."

"Sounds good to me," I grunt as I slide a booth along the wall where Uncle indicates he wants it.

"I think we ought to start putting our name out there. Social media marketing is a pretty big deal. Maybe we can make a page on...what do you call it? BookSpace?"

"Facebook."

"Yes, that." Uncle sits down on the booth with a huff, as though he's the one moving all this furniture around. "Do you know how to do that?"

I grab the edge of a round table and maneuver it across the floor. "I can probably figure it out."

"Yes, we can run a business page. That should garner some attention before the tourist season hits. There's no tea shops in this town. Just that little coffee stall you got that atrocity—" Uncle nods toward my cold cup of coffee. "—from, so we shouldn't have a problem with competition."

"We're no Starbucks."

"We're not trying to be Starbucks, Zuko. We're a mom-and-pop shop. Or perhaps, an uncle-and-nephew shop." His eyes are twinkling. "Besides, people come to these little towns not to drink Starbucks or eat at McDonald's. They come for the small-town culture."

"If you say so." I straighten up and my spine cracks. I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

"Thank you for your hard work," Uncle says sincerely. He smiles warmly. "Why don't you go find us some lunch?"

"Is that your idea of giving me a break?"

Uncle chuckles. "I think I saw a sandwich shop a few streets over. I think I'll take a turkey and Swiss on rye."

"Yes, Uncle." I throw a mock salute and leave through the back door.

My car, a fifteen year old Toyota Camry, is parked in the narrow alley behind the tea shop. The alley is lined with the backs of more buildings, but I don't know what they are. I haven't been on that side of the street yet. All I know is that the single narrow window in my bedroom looks out onto the weather-worn clapboards of one of these buildings.

I unlock my car and sit down. The car isn't that bad, but I miss my old one. It's one of the only things I miss about my old life.

I start the engine and nose my way out of the mouth of the alley. There's no traffic, and I pull onto the road. Raindrops pelt the windshield and I flick on the wipers as I peer up at the sky. The clear blue is gone. Gray clouds rolled in without me noticing, fat and swollen with rain.

When I pull up to a caution light I realize I don't know where the sandwich shop is. I know where we saw it when we came into town, but its location isn't as memorable as the coffee stall. I swear under my breath as I pull my phone out of my back pocket, eyes searching the road for a police car.

If I was in my old car, my phone would already be connected to Bluetooth and I could tell Siri to look it up for me. But I'm not, so I can't.

I drive through the light while I open my search engine. The rain is coming down harder now, working itself up into a full-on deluge. I turn up the windshield wipers and use the talk-to-text function to search for the sandwich shop.

Then I'm on my way. In a few minutes I'm pulling up in front of a store front that doesn't look all that different from the Jasmine Dragon: all plate glass windows and red brick. I quickly duck inside. The downpour has started, and my hair and the shoulders of my shirt are damp by the time I'm stepping inside.

The line is short, and I'm in and out in less than twenty minutes. The sidewalk has become a small lake, and there's a river running between the curb and the tires of my car. I hurry into the driver's seat and drop the sandwiches onto the passenger side. Then I'm driving back to the tea shop.

When I pull up to the caution light again, I see a figure jogging along the sidewalk into town. I peer through the rain-soaked passenger window at them, frowning at the poor soul caught out in this weather. I recognize the blue windbreaker, and then I realize it's the young woman from that morning.

I can tell that she's soaking wet, and her jacket doesn't have a hood. She's watching her feet.

Before I know what I'm doing, I find myself rolling down the window and calling out to her. "Hey, can I give you a ride?"

She looks up at the sound of my voice. Her ocean eyes find me. I see the recognition flash over her face, and suddenly I think this might be weird. The new stranger in town offering a pretty young woman a ride after he practically knocked her down that morning? It's like the plot of one of those cheesy romance novels my mom used to read.

But then her lips turn up in a shy smile, and she cuts across the sidewalk to my car.

Katara

The rain comes on suddenly, as it often does in spring on the coast of Oregon. What has started as a beautiful day quickly becomes a tempest, but I'm too enraptured in the tide pools that teem with sea life to notice until the first few fat drops pelt my head.

I look up and see that clouds have rolled in, and I frown up at them, as though my disapproval can make them vanish as quickly as they have come. It's barely lunch time, and a rainstorm puts a serious damper on my plans.

At least I got to see the whales.

After my literal run-in with the scarred stranger, I had made it down to the beach and onto the jetty. I had walked out to the end, where the waves crashed into the rocks and blew cold spray into my face. I watched the sea until I saw the familiar shapes cutting through the water and saw the spray bursting from their spouts, and a sense of joy permeated my bones.

Whales are majestic creatures. They're families, with hierarchies. They protect each other. They're intelligent too.

When they moved on, I did too. I picked my way along the same stretch of sand I've walked on since I was small and made my way toward the tide pools. They've always been my favorite. They're like small oceans, incredible and full of life.

Then the rain came, and I start to hurry back home. My windbreaker doesn't have a hood and soon my hair is drenched. My worn-out Keds are too.

It's a twenty minute walk home from the beach and I can shave a few minutes off of it by jogging, so that's what I do. It's pointless, since I'm already soaked, but it makes me feel like it makes a difference.

A voice cuts through the rain. "Hey, can I give you a ride?"

I look up, expecting to see a familiar face. Surely anyone who knows me would offer me a ride. But to my surprise, it's not really a familiar face. It's the scarred stranger.

I should really stop calling him that, I think to myself. But I hadn't caught his name that morning.

I quickly take in the car, and the timid half-smile on his lips. He's leaning across the center console with the passenger window rolled down halfway, and his eyes are earnest.

If my dad saw me, he would surely lecture me about getting into a car with a stranger, but the rain is saturating my jacket and my jeans and I'm starting to get cold, and the stranger seemed nice enough when we ran into each other that morning. And I'm only halfway home.

I smile at him and cross over the sidewalk. I hear the click of the lock and he grabs a bag off the seat—I recognize the label from Shyu's Sandwich Shop—and he drops it into the backseat. I reach for the door handle but he beats me to it and pops it open from the inside before he withdraws to his side of the car.

I slide onto the seat and feel a little bad that I'm going to get the upholstery wet, but the heater is on and it's warm. It smells like bread in the car and it's definitely better than walking.

"Thank you," I tell him a bit breathlessly.

"It's a little wet out there," he says, and a blush rises in his cheeks.

I chuckle a bit. "Yeah, it is."

We sit there at the caution light for a minute just looking at each other. Then the blush in his cheeks deepen, and I feel one rise in my own face, and I gesture to the road.

"Um, my house is this way," I say. "It's not far, if you don't mind."

"I don't. Mind, that is." He clears his throat and presses on the gas.

An awkward silence fills the car. I fidget in the seat, suddenly uncomfortable in my wet jeans. The radio isn't on, and I wish it was so it could fill the void.

I glance down at my soaked jeans. "Sorry. I'm getting your seat wet."

He glances over at me as he pulls up to a stop sign. "It's fine. It'll dry."

"It's a left on Pearl Street." I indicate which road I'm talking about.

He flicks the turn signal on, and its soft tick-tocking is the only sound. His hands hold the wheel in a death grip, and his back is ram-rod straight in his seat. He's a little awkward, this stranger, but I find it endearing. I'm sure he just doesn't want me to think he's some kind of creep.

I wonder who this stranger is, where he comes from, what his story is. I hope I get the chance to find out.

He turns onto Pearl Street. My house is at the end of the road, backed up against the treeline. It's set off on its own, a short distance away from the other homes and businesses that line this quiet street.

"It's right there."

I point to the church, with its fading pale-yellow paint and green trim. Dad's truck isn't there, so he's either still on the boat (a little rain wouldn't stop his fishing trip) or he and his friends have made it back into town and to the pub.

I see his brow furrowed in confusion.

"Yeah, it's an old church," I explain, a little rushed. "My parents bought it after they graduated from high school."

"That's...cool." It seems like he doesn't know what to say. I don't either.

He pulls into the gravel lot in front of my house and puts the car in park. The rain is still coming down steadily, and I didn't tell him to park on the other side by the "front" door—the door that leads into the living space, not the sanctuary. I have a key for the heavy oaken sanctuary doors, but we never use them.

I turn towards him, and he meets my gaze. His eyes are pretty, like golden suns, or pools of honey. Even the left one, which is scrunched and pinched against the pink scar tissue, giving him a permanent squint. There's no eyelashes, no eyebrow. I wonder if he can see out of it. There's no cloudy film and the pupil seems to dilate and follow the other one, so I don't think so, but it's hard to say.

I can see his scar more clearly now. It starts near the corner of his eye and follows the line of his cheek and brow bone, disappearing into his mussed raven-colored hair. It's mottled pink and dusty red, smooth and shiny in some places and puckered and ridged in others. I wonder what it would feel like under my fingertips.

It looks like a burn. I wonder why it looks so...damaged. Even if it happened when he was a child, modern medicine and skin grafts should have been able to heal it better than this.

"Thank you," I say. I offer him a grateful smile. "It was nice of you to give me a ride. I hope I didn't put you out of your way."

He smiles back at me, that same timid smile. It makes his eyes seem brighter somehow. "It's no problem. Really."

"Still. Thanks again."

This is the part where I open the door and go inside, but I find myself reluctant to do so. I live in a town where I know all of the year-round residents, and where the summer people, while interesting, never stay long enough to figure out. But I feel myself drawn to this young man, like a moth to a flame.

I find a way to hold onto him for just a little longer. "I'm Katara, by the way."

"Zuko." I like his name. It's crisp and succinct, but melodic too. I want to taste it on my tongue.

His eyes flicker between me, my house, and something behind me, out the window, before they fall on my face again. I think he wants to say something more, but he isn't sure what.

I fill the void for him. "Did you just move here?"

"Yeah, I did. Well, me and my uncle. We uh, bought that place. You know? Where I ran into you this morning—" He inhales softly, and the timid smile and the blush are back, and he looks as sweet as honey, too. "We're opening a tea shop."

"A tea shop?" I repeat curiously. "Like, one of those hipster bubble tea places in Portland?" I've been to some, when I've gone to visit my brother in college.

"Not exactly. I mean, we'll probably offer stuff like that. To, you know, appease the hipsters—" I chuckle. "—but it'll probably be more like a...I don't know. It's my uncle's thing. Not mine. I'm just here to...help."

His mouth presses into a thin line to stop his nervous rambling, but I wish he would keep talking. His voice is soft and raspy, like wind through the bare tree branches of December, and I want to hear it on repeat like a favorite song.

I don't know what's gotten into me.

"That's cool," I say. It's inadequate, but I can't think of anything better. Something about him has my brain short-circuiting. "When do you guys plan on opening?"

"April, I think."

I flash him a smile. "I'll be sure to be there. I mean, it'll probably be the most interesting thing that happens here until the tourist season."

He snorts out a laugh. One hand reaches up and rubs at the back of his neck, where a pink flush is creeping up the alabaster skin. I wonder if he's trying to be polite, and he really wants me to get out of his car already. Or maybe he's just shy.

"I should go inside and get changed." I glance down at my wet clothes. When I look back up at him, his eyes are on me. I reach for the door handle and my fingers grip the cool plastic. I rub my thumb over the rough texture. "It was nice to see you again, Zuko."

I like the way his name feels on my tongue.

He blinks at me when I say his name and I wonder if he feels the same. His lips curl up in a soft smile. "You too...Katara."

Electricity crackles across my skin. I open the door before I find some way to anchor him here, and I step out into the rain. I slog my way across the muddy gravel and throw a look over my shoulder at him. He's watching me, and when our eyes meet he gives me that smile again before he shifts the car into reverse. I listen to the tires crunch on the gravel as he backs out, and then I unlock the door and step inside.

Our housecat, a lanky Siamese named Momo, greets me at the door. He rubs against my legs before he shies away when he realizes that I'm wet, and he meows at me indignantly.

"Sorry Momo," I apologize. I kick off my shoes and leave them in a pile by the door. Even though I know Dad isn't home, I still call out to make sure. "Hello? Anyone here?"

When silence answers me, I strip out of my clothes and carry the dripping mess to the bathroom.

I realize suddenly how cold I am. Gooseflesh has cropped up on my skin, so tight it's almost painful. I turn on the shower and let steam curl through the air as I let my hair down.

The water is warm and soothing and I let my eyes fall close. This is not how I expected my day to go, but I'm not sure that it's such a bad thing. This is a change, and I'm willing to welcome it.

I hope I see Zuko again soon.