Welcome everyone, and I hope you enjoy the first chapter of my first ATLA fic! I don't own anything here besides my own OC and her story.
The Boy in the Iceberg
Our tribe used to be full of stories about the old days, a time of peace when the Avatar kept balance between the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation and Air Nomads. For most of you, these stories may as well be myths. You don't need me to tell you that most of us have grown up in the war against the Fire Nation. But what you may not know is that everything changed one day, in the Southern Water Tribe of all places.
It had been four years since our men journeyed to the Earth Kingdom to help fight against the Fire Nation. Three children were left behind to protect the tribe. Sokka, our seventeen year old warrior and our final line of defense against invasion. Katara, his sixteen year old sister and our secret waterbender, hidden from the Fire Nation. And me, Anyanka, the sixteen year old daughter of the second-in-command and first female warrior in a long time, achieved only through desperation and many turned heads. In a world that was so much bigger than this small tribe, it had been easy for the Fire Nation to stay away, thinking they had taken all our benders and all our hope. And then one day, everything changed.
This was the day that three kids altered the course of their tribe, and the world. And for me, it began, as so many stories do, with a nightmare.
»»—- ➴ —-««
The wind whipped around me as I stood strong, attempting to keep my lower body rooted to the ice below. Dad's advice of feeling the energy travel through the body swam through my head. I pushed and pulled, bringing my arms and legs in and out from my core, occasionally swinging my hands, feeling the pull of an invisible but familiar machete. Despite the swings I threw, the sarashi wrapping my chest and waist was not nearly warm enough for the winter chill. My nose was beginning to numb. Winter had come at last.
"Anyanka!" Carried on the wind, like a ghost. The familiar voice spread chills up and down my body. Young and beautiful, like the clear softness of a flute's trill.
My heart and my head separated. I snapped my head around, following where the sound seemed to have travelled from. Our village was on the horizon, but I couldn't see anyone else out on the ice. Desperately I listened to the silence, knowing she wasn't there but hoping all the same.
A magnetic sensation spread within my gut. The wind continued to whip my unstyled hair, and through the pieces moving across my eyes, a shape began to take form in the distance. Everything within me began to push me forward. I took a step.
Like the snapping of a thread, the energy around me tightened as I broke into a run, seconds before the release battered me like a blow and once more the voice shouted my name into the wind. Everything became nothing but where I needed to be and how I needed to get there. The world moved me forward, acknowledging my pain and encouraging my desperation. My body ached, still battered by the wind, but my mind was clear. One word, one name filling my entire head, my entire spirit. The figure on the distance was becoming larger, slowly but surely. I yearned to hear my name once more from her mouth, relishing what had only been a memory for so long, praying that this implied reality. With every stride, I could feel the magnetic pull becoming stronger, but somehow I knew that it still wouldn't be enough. A garbled scream escaped my throat. There were no other options, I had to keep going. The figure began to shrink along the horizon. No, no, no. Please just one more time. My muscles screamed as I pushed forward futilely, as she began to disappear. Not again. All I wanted was to just hear her voice one more time-
"Anyanka!"
Sensation crashed into me. Sitting up so fast that spots dotted my vision, I inhaled sharply and deeply, as though it had been years since air had filled my lungs. I scrambled to grab onto the sheets that lay at my waist, unable to root myself in the present and in my breathing, which was erratic and belabored.
A shadow moved across the flaps of the tent, long and lanky. Familiar. As a hand reached in to push the flaps open, my heart jumped and my left hand grasped at it. Frantically I tried to slow my breathing and keep my expression neutral, but as soon as I looked into his eyes, his face dropped and I knew it was useless.
"What's going on?" He lingered at the entrance to the tent. My eyes dropped to the floor. My hair was wild and I was only wearing my sarashi. I hated these moments of weakness, and they were bad enough when I was alone. Tears welled in my eyes.
I looked back up to meet his gaze once more. Sokka. Those beautiful blue eyes, brimming with concern, desperate to fix whatever was wrong. My heart swelled. "Nightmare." I spoke softly, voice heavy with sleep and shame. Softly I nodded in my direction.
He melted. The nightmares had happened enough when Katara was around to notice that I figured she had to have told Sokka about them. He just had never seen the collateral like Katara had. "Oh, Anya." The words fell out of his mouth as he came over to my corner of the tent, stopping hesitantly.
"I'll be okay," I said, hoping to sound emphatic. I scooched over on the bed, and Sokka lightly sat down by my knees, keeping his eyes on mine. He was quiet.
"Hey, what were you coming here to tell me?" I asked and gave him a small smile.
Sokka grinned slowly at first, and it sent a wave of happiness through me. When my smile became genuine, his eyes lit up. "Katara and I wanted you to come fishing with us." I began to groan in refusal, ready to protest that they both know I'm not a huge fan of their tiny boat in the giant ocean, but Sokka interrupted. "I've missed your company out there."
His cheeks reddened, and I could tell that mine were heating up too. My eyes dropped to my hands, which were fidgeting with the sheet still draped over my legs. I opened my mouth once more to refuse, but Sokka cut me off again.
"And I could really use some of your handiwork too," Sokka interjected. I met his eyes once more, an eyebrow slightly raised. "With the spears," he added quickly.
"Sokka," I said softly.
"Anya." He placed a hand on top of mine. I stopped fidgeting. "Come with us, please?"
A smile grew on my face, sabotaging any resilience I had left in me. In return, Sokka gave me the cheeky grin that he always had when he got excited. It was that grin that always persuaded me to follow him into whatever silly thing he had planned. And it was that grin that tugged on my heart strongly enough that I knew I would follow him wherever he went.
"I'll meet you at the watchtower in ten minutes," I shooed him off the side of my bed. "Now get out of my bedroom, no show for you today!"
I didn't have to see his face to know his blush was back. His cackle lingered in the air.
»»—- ➴ —-««
I nicked my finger with the spearhead. It was a silly mistake, borne out of my lazy desire to keep it in my hands rather than place it safely down and pick it up again once I was ready to attach it. It was a small cut, nothing too painful. Standard mistake when fashioning weapons like ours. But it still shocked me. Usually I was smarter than that.
So I placed the spearhead down onto the bench next to me and grabbed the pole itself and the twine. Once I had gotten everything in place, I carefully moved the spearhead where it needed to be and I wrapped the twine tightly around, keeping the spearhead firmly attached where it was safer to grasp. Knotting the twine securely, I tried to loosen the two pieces. Nothing budged, so I reached for the machete attached to my waist and cut off the extra string. Then I slid the machete back into its holster and held out the spear to examine my handiwork. It was the second one I had made just today, since Sokka always had this funny habit of losing them in the ocean or managing to break them in half. And while he was able to fashion his own, he insisted that I was the better knotsman. A likely story.
Sokka was carefully perched on the bench in front of me, the spear I fashioned at the beginning of our trip in his hand and at the ready. Even with his back to me, I knew his face was scrunched up, determined not to let another fish make a fool of him. His stance was focused and solid, but I knew from all of our practices that his upper body muscles would start to ache soon, if his attention span didn't finish him first. I smiled to myself. He was a skilled warrior, but both of us always found more success in short, powerful bursts than in endurance.
I placed the spear down next to me, balancing it between two benches within our canoe. Katara made a soft noise from behind me, and I turned to see her examining the water, and a fish swimming around in it, eyes narrowed in concentration. Where Sokka was brute strength and attacking a problem head on, Katara was softer and craftier, in a way that made her such an impressive bender. Something Sokka and I would likely never really understand.
"It's not getting away from me this time." I heard Sokka say from the front of our canoe, true to form. The last two had gotten away, and I don't think he would handle another loss very gracefully. "Watch and learn, ladies. This is how you catch a fish."
Exhaling in a soft laugh, I looked around for the first time, noting that we had gone far enough from home that I couldn't quite see our wall on the horizon. We were surrounded by ocean and ice. The glaciers all around were beautiful, all different sizes and shapes, down to the tiny pieces that had broken off and floated along the water beside us. No matter how much I came to distrust water, I could never bring myself not to feel completely enamored with the view in our home.
"Funny, I think that's what you said the last two times."
"Oh ha-ha, very funny."
Katara snickered. From the corner of my eye, I saw her slowly begin to move her arms up and down, bending from the ocean a sphere of water just large enough for the fish she had been watching to swim around in. Something prickled in my stomach. I pushed it away. "Sokka, look!"
"Shh Katara, you'll scare it away!" He remained turned away from us, arm raised and ready to strike. I rolled my eyes and reached for the basket in between me and Sokka and lifted it carefully, moving it over to Katara. "I can smell it cooking already."
"No, Sokka, she actually caught one." I explained, laughing. "Here, Katara, try to move it over the basket."
Katara swirled her arms around, trying to keep her sphere intact as it followed her motions. It managed to stay whole as she waved, though she couldn't quite control where exactly it was moving to. The sphere drifted over her head, and then over mine and too far past the basket I had moved for her. I grabbed the basket and tried to hoist it in the other direction. Katara continued to move her arms but couldn't quite seem to find her way to the basket, when all of a sudden Sokka let out a noise of excitement and raised his arm, sending the spear straight into Katara's sphere, popping it. The water fell, drenching Sokka and sending Katara's fish flying back into the water.
All at once, Katara yelled "hey," Sokka let out a visceral "ugh" and my mouth dropped open and made a noise that sounded like I was being strangled, very poorly trying to cover a laugh. Both siblings glared at me.
"Katara," Sokka shifted his eyes past mine to his sister's, "why is it that every time you play with magic water, I get soaked?" He shook his arms out, sending a few stray droplets of water down into the canoe.
Here we go again. I looked down. It never became any easier to listen to the two of them have this discussion.
"It's not magic water: it's waterbending!" Katara responded curtly. "And it's-"
"Yeah, yeah, an ancient art unique to our culture, blah blah blah," Sokka said, turning back around from the two of us and reaching for his wolf tail and squeezing the water out of it. "Look, I'm just saying that if I had weird powers, I'd keep my weirdness to myself."
My stomach twisted. I could feel myself frowning.
"You're calling me weird?" Katara asked. I glanced over at her. She had an eyebrow raised in her brother's direction, ready to send the final blow. The tension inside me lessened just a little. "I'm not the one who makes muscles at myself every time I see my reflection in the water." Looking me over carefully, she smiled, even though I could tell by her eyes that she had noticed my reaction to what Sokka had said.
We both turned to look at Sokka, who had indeed just gotten caught in the act. He was staring into the water besides the canoe, sleeve rolled up and arm flexed, as though he actually had some massive biceps to admire. After a moment, he snapped his head towards his sister, lips pursed and ready to make a witty retort.
The canoe lurched. My stomach dropped. The three of us screamed nearly in unison and reached out to the left side of the canoe to steady us as we began to pick up speed. I looked ahead, realizing that the chunks of ice around us had gotten much larger and the narrowly shrinking path forward was picking up speed and headed straight for a decently sized glacier. In a flash, the memory of a wave washed over me and dragged me under then and now, drowning me.
Then Sokka grabbed an oar.
The switch inside me flipped. The second my bare hands, ungloved from spearmaking, wrapped around the other oar, everything besides reactive instinct disappeared inside me. Sokka and I began to paddle frantically, attempting to steer the canoe between the icebergs. "Watch out!" Katara yelled from behind us. Just as we passed two on each side, I heard them collide together. No time, keep pushing.
Sokka led us slightly right, and I followed before quickly realizing we would be needing to bank left soon. We slid between a couple of icebergs on either side. "Go left!" Katara screamed, hoping we could maneuver around the icebergs immediately to our left, but there was no time. "Go left!"
Sokka and I steered us right and then left, until immediately in front of us were two icebergs without a throughway large enough for us. I frantically paddled left, hoping to steer us around, but it was too late. All of a sudden the two icebergs collided with another immediately at our right, sending the three of us sliding onto an iceberg, crushing our canoe and sending my newly fashioned spear into the ocean.
Katara slid all the way to the ice's edge and Sokka managed to stab his spear into the ice, slowing his momentum and skidding right into my own path. I crashed into him, quickly reaching out for the spear to keep myself from ricocheting off of him and into the water. He reached an arm out and wrapped it around my torso, steadying me. Between his arm and my own grip on the spear, I stopped sliding. Sokka sat up, and I flipped over onto my back, looking up at him to make sure he was okay. Katara pushed herself up quickly and scooted back to where Sokka and I were unmoving.
The three of us paused for just a moment, listening to the silence. We were stopped and safely on the slab of ice. I let out a sigh of relief and lowered my head onto Sokka's leg, resting alongside me. All around us, everything suddenly was quiet and still. Icebergs surrounded us, lazy and absently floating wherever the water took them. Briefly I wondered how we were going to get ourselves out of this one.
"Some left that was," Katara muttered, shooting a glare at Sokka even though I knew it was probably intended for me too.
"Hey, we tried. That current didn't exactly announce itself in advance for us," I countered her softly, hoping to deflect some of her annoyance from the inevitable silly thing Sokka would be saying.
"If you don't like my steering, then maybe you should have waterbended us out of the ice," Sokka retorted, lifting his arms in a wave in a slightly exaggerated imitation.
"Oh, so it's my fault?" Katara asked incredulously, standing up and glaring down at her brother.
Sokka shrugged. "All I'm saying is that this never happens when I'm the only one fishing. Maybe you two are the ones who screwed it up." I raised my head and slugged him in the arm. "Ow!" He yelled, cupping the injury with his hand. Rolling my eyes, I pushed myself a free feet back from him, in between the two siblings.
Katara's eyes were flaring. She pointed a gloved hand at Sokka. "You are the most sexist, immature, nut-brained…" With each adjective she listed, her flailed her arms back behind her in exasperation. The iceberg began rocking as if in choppy water. I held out my arms, a bit nervous by the sudden movement. Katara moaned in frustration, as if searching for the right words before shouting, "I'm embarrassed to be related to you!" With another flail, the glacier behind her let out a grumble and a crack appeared inside it, right at the angle Katara flung her arm.
Oh. Oh. Sokka's eyes widened in panic. I started, "Katara—"
"Ever since Mom died, I've been doing all the work around camp while you've been off playing soldier!" Katara flailed her arm again, sending another jolt through the already made crack in the glacier.
"Uh, Katara?" Sokka pointed timidly behind her, but it was too late. She wasn't listening to anyone else.
"Sokka, I even wash all your dirty clothes!" Katara shouted, and I winced. She was making some incredibly valid points, even if she was putting us in a bit of danger while doing it. I would never say so, but I knew that I would probably be getting a similar diatribe if it wasn't so close to the anniversary of everything that happened. "Have you ever smelled your dirty socks? Because let me tell you: not pleasant!" Once more, she bended two large cracks going up the glacier.
"Katara, please just calm down for a minute—" I tried to pull her away from her brother, which sometimes helped her when she got particularly upset.
She rounded on me, eyes still flaring. "No, don't take his side! You know he acts like a child!" Directing her attention back to Sokka, she screamed, "I'm done! I'm done helping you! From now on, you're on your own!"
She punctuated her final scream with a massive jerking of her arms, sending a massive splash of water upwards and breaking the entire glacier apart. Sokka's jaw dropped and finally she turned to notice the damage she had done. Just as she could admire her work, the glacier shattered into even more pieces and landed into the water, creating a massive wave that tilted our own iceberg backwards. We all scrambled to grab hold of the side as the force of the water forced us nearly vertical. Launched backwards, we all closed our eyes and clung on as the water and wind battered our faces.
There were a few seconds where all I could picture was sinking down to the bottom of the ocean, but soon the iceberg settled and we were horizontal again. I took a deep breath. "Holy crap."
"Well, you've gone from weird to freakish, Katara," Sokka looked past me and over to his sister, who was staring distraughtly at where the glacier had just been. I glared at him. He just shrugged.
"You mean, I did that?" Katara asked, eyes wide. She was still looking out into the water.
I moved my right hand on top of her left and squeezed.
"Yep. Congratulations." Sokka said bluntly. Always the wordsmith. I couldn't wait for the conversation we'd undoubtedly be having later tonight.
All of a sudden the water directly underneath our heads, which were still popped over the side of the ice, turned a bright luminescent blue. It appeared about the size of a fishing basket, bright enough that the shine from the light made me raise my hand to my eyes. The light was hypnotizing, the color and strength of unfiltered energy. Then it started to grow. Wider and wider the luminescence grew, expanding so large that it was nearly the size of the ice we were floating on. As we looked into the water, behind the light, something was moving.
All at once we pushed back from the side of the ice and stood quickly. I braced myself, hoping to stay grounded for whatever exactly was about to happen in or out of the water.
In a moment that felt like a lifetime, Sokka, Katara and I stood waiting for the moment of impact. That's when it erupted. A glowing blue iceberg burst from the water, sending a splash of water into the air and lapping at our feet. Our own iceberg was pushed back just a little as the new, glowing one rose completely to the surface, bobbing in the water.
It almost looked sculpted. Most of its mass was a giant sphere, almost perfectly formed but with ridges as though it had been cut by something elemental. It was beautiful, in a very strange and almost eerie way. The glow it was emitting seemed to be coming from the inside, illuminating two shadows from within. One, massive and long, the other, small and what looked to be the shape of a person. They were so deep within the iceberg it seemed unlikely that, if these were once living beings, they could still possibly be so.
Katara took a few steps forward as if in a trance. Sokka turned to look at me, face scrunched up in confusion. I shrugged slightly and looked back towards Katara and the shapes inside the iceberg that she was scrutinizing. The silence that surrounded us was the deafening kind, the kind that could only be followed by a storm. Every fiber of my being was weighed down with a gravity.
The figure's eyes began to glow, along with an arrow on their forehead and one on each hand. Each of us let out a gasp, recoiling in shock.
It was Katara who made the first move. "He's alive!" she exclaimed. "We have to help!" She reached towards Sokka's belt and removed his cub, and before he could hold her back, she pulled her hood over her head and took off at a run, hopping from one slab of ice to another and towards the giant iceberg.
"Katara, wait!" I yelled, immediately taking off after her, carefully trying to follow her path along the ice.
"We don't know what that thing is!" Sokka shouted from behind me, though I could hear his heavy footfalls as he followed the two of us.
Katara ignored both of us, continuing towards the iceberg. Once she landed, she ran to the sphere and immediately drew the cub back. Sokka made it to the iceberg moments after I had, spear in hand and hand forward to keep me from getting too close. Whether to Katara and his club or the iceberg itself, I wasn't sure. I smacked his hand away and drew my own machete from my belt. Katara hit the ice, leaving a decent sized dent, but not nearly enough to reach the figure. She raised her arms again, bracing to land another blow. Another dent. She continued to whack at the ice, though it became evident quickly to me that this would be nearly impossible. I began to walk to Katara's other side to assess her damage and see if my machete could help at all.
Suddenly a crack rang through the air and a powerful burst of air forced out of the iceberg, battering us. I felt Sokka's arm wrap strongly around my waist and pull me into a huddle. He gripped onto Katara and me, and the three of us braced against the ice as the air tried to force us back.
With another loud noise, the crack from the place of impact rose slowly, continuing up the iceberg and releasing more air as it went. The crack then split down multiple paths, branching out wide until it seemed to explode. Air and little pieces of ice went flying. I scrunched closer to Sokka.
Then a huge burst of light, brighter than anything I had ever seen before, shot into the sky in a concentrated beam and somehow gave off even more wisps of green light, like an aurora. It was incredible and terrifying. Noise filled the distant air, and I realized that the tiger seals must have been roaring. Goosebumps rose on my arms. Something extraordinary was happening. The light lingered in the sky for a while, and even though it was beautiful and almost unreal, I felt a pit in my stomach too. This could have some very bad consequences.
The beam of light itself suddenly disappeared, and the wind slowed down. The three of us looked at each other quickly before turning our attention back to the iceberg, only the bottom half of which remained, and the aurora that was still radiating overtop of it. Suddenly a figure arose from the ice. It looked to be a boy, small and skinny. And like I thought I had seen before, he had an arrow on this head, pointing at his face, and it was glowing with the same light that surrounded him. As he began to climb out, Sokka slid in front of me, thrust his spear forward and yelled, "Stop!" The figure continued to rise and stood himself upright, staring out at us.
Just as quickly as the light appeared, it lightened softly until it was gone, leaving the sky back to its regular blue and also leaving the boy without his glow. He stood, just a boy, adorned with yellow and orange clothes and a blue arrow on his forehead. I stepped out from behind Sokka. Almost immediately, the boy's legs gave out and he began to fall forward out of the semicircle in the iceberg. Katara ran forward without hesitation, catching the boy's figure just before he hit the ice, cradling him in her arms.
I followed Katara, keeping a bit of distance from the boy but close enough to examine him to see if he was injured. Sokka followed me and once more wrapped an arm around the front of my torso, trying to keep me back. He reached out the blunt end of the spear and poked the boy's head twice before I was able to break out of his hold and yank the spear away from him. "Stop that!" I hissed, as Katara swatted him away.
Gently, she cradled his head while placing him gently on the ice, slanted upwards so he could be positioned in a sort of comfortable, reclined position. The boy softly began to vocalize, like the quiet noises of someone having just woken up from sleep. His eyes began to flutter, and then he was awake.
The world seemed to still. His eyes were a soft gray, filled with sleep and the shock at being cradled by an unknown girl. But as he looked into Katara's eyes, it was as though his own were sparkling. It was apparent that this wasn't someone dangerous. Everything around me and inside me compelled me to trust him. Softly, he inhaled. Still gazing at Katara, he began to whisper, "I need to ask you something."
"What?" Katara replied, inching closer to the boy. Sokka and I felt the same pull forward.
"Please," the boy whispered, "come closer."
"What is it?"
The boy blinked slowly, then his eyes shot open as he exclaimed, "Will you go penguin sledding with me?!"
There was a brief pause as Katara gathered herself before she responded, "Uh, sure, I guess." She straightened and looked back at me, eyes a little clouded over in confusion.
Suddenly the boy rose to his feet, somehow without using his arms or what seemed like his legs either. I stepped forward, intrigued and baffled by whatever was going on here. Sokka, on the other hand, yanked his spear from me and pointed it back at the boy, bracing himself and shouting "ah!" The boy seemed completely unaffected, looking around at all of the glaciers around us. He had a hand on the back of his neck and seemed to be just as confused as we were. "What's going on here?"
Sokka was prepared with a defensive response. "You tell us! How'd you get in that ice? And why aren't you frozen?" He began poking the boy again with the spear.
The boy, once more unaffected, swatted absent-mindedly at the spear while searching for something around him. "I'm not sure."
I grabbed the spear out of Sokka's hands again. "Would you stop doing that, please?" I hissed at him.
Suddenly a growl came from the ice and the boy immediately began to climb. Once at the top, he jumped into what was left of the iceberg. "Appa!" the boy yelled. I tried to recall what the other shape in the iceberg had been, but all I remembered was that it was massive. "Are you alright? Wake up, buddy!"
Sokka, Katara and I looked to the left of what was left of the sphere and began walking along the flat edge that still remained, hoping we could reach where the boy had gone that way. When we made it around the corner, what we saw made even less sense than a boy frozen in an iceberg. Sokka's jaw dropped and he slumped forward as if he had lost all the remaining sense in his body.
A massive animal seemed to be asleep on the ice, in the middle of a massive crater that must have been formed when Katara cracked open the iceberg. Its fur was a soft ivory and looked incredibly fluffy, but along its back there was a stripe of brown fur that led to an arrow on its forehead, just like the one on the boy. It had two large horns on its head, six legs, and a massive flat tail covered in the same soft fur. The boy was currently lifting its upper lip, presumably trying to wake it from its sleep. Suddenly it opened its mouth and lifted the boy with its tongue, showcasing its giant mouth and teeth. The boy laughed loudly and turned around, placing his arms around the beast's nose in what seemed to be a hug. "You're okay!" the boy shouted, and in response, the creature stood up and shook itself.
"Whoa, what is that?" I asked incredulously, walking forward to the pair of them. Sokka quickly moved with me to keep me from going off by myself. I poked him with the blunt end of his spear and he frowned at me.
"This is Appa, my flying bison!" the boy answered, smiling at us all. A flying bison. I had heard stories of them from a long time ago, but I hadn't realized that they were real, let alone still existed today.
"Right," Sokka replied sarcastically, narrowing his eyes and pointing to Katara, "and that's Katara, my flying sister."
The boy turned to look at the flying bison, which began to make a low rumbling noise. His nose began to twitch, and then he raised his head as his mouth began to twitch as well. If I didn't know any better, it looked like he was about to-
"Look out!" the boy yelled and ducked, narrowly missing the massive amount of snot that came out of the bison's nose...
...and landed all over Sokka. Sokka wailed and frantically began wiping at the snot on his coat, and when that was unsuccessful, he sank to his knees and began rubbing his head on the ice in order to clean himself. Katara and I giggled silently, shoulders shaking.
"Don't worry, it'll wash out!" the boy assured Sokka, petting Appa on his nose. Sokka placed a gloved hand onto his face and slowly removed it, Appa's snot sticking to the gloves and dripping down. The boy kept smiling and glanced at Katara, asking, "So do you guys live around here?"
Before Katara could even answer his question, Sokka snatched his spear from my loose grip, and pointed it at the boy again, jumping in front of me and Katara as though the boy was some dangerous soldier. "Don't answer that!" he shouted. "We saw that bolt of light! I bet he was trying to signal the Fire Navy!"
Katara shook her head and walked in between her brother and the boy, shooing Sokka backwards. "Oh yeah, I'm sure he's a Fire Navy spy. You can tell by that evil look in his eye." Her voice dripped with the sarcasm that ran in their family.
The three of us looked at the boy, who smiled and raised his eyebrow in an expression only a kid could make. Under other circumstances, it would be very possible to run into the Fire Nation outside the tribe, but this kid seemed different. For one, his clothes were a yellow and orange that were very different from the aggressive reds and blacks that so often adorned the Fire Nation soldiers. And judging from the way he ran to his air bison to make sure it was okay, he had a kind heart. Something about this kid just felt very...safe. Maybe even joyful. My intuition was telling me that this kid was good.
"The excessive one is Sokka, Katara's brother. I'm Anyanka," I said, pointing to each of us in turn, realizing that I had been calling him the boy in my head this whole time. "You never told us your name."
He smiled his bright smile again. "I'm A-" he began, then continued making that noise. He raised his head back and opened his mouth wide. Between that and his eyes twitching, he actually looked a little freaky. "ACHOO!" he yelled, bent down and released his sneeze. And then he disappeared, leaving a gust of wind behind. He shot up so quickly it was like he had never been on the ground to begin with. The three of us still standing on the ice looked up, only to see the boy slowly sail back down, catching the curve of the ice and skating back towards us. "I'm Aang," he said and rubbed his nose.
My mouth fell open. I could tell it wasn't pretty. The boy, Aang, just kept smiling. There's no way that kid could possibly be...
"You just sneezed...and then flew ten feet in the air!" Sokka exclaimed, pointing upward and staring at Aang like he was...well, like he was an airbender.
"Really?" Aang asked, turning around to examine the air he had just floated through. "It felt higher than that."
Katara gasped, putting it all together and voicing what Sokka and I couldn't. "You're an airbender!"
"Sure am." Aang nodded his head.
"That's incredible!" I exclaimed, smiling widely at Katara and Aang. If he was an airbender, that could change everything! Maybe there were others, frozen like him. For a moment, I wondered if every glacier around here contained a secret airbender and Katara would have to bend them all out. If this kid could survive against all odds… Maybe it meant others could survive too. Aang smiled back, but it didn't quite reach his eyes, like he was confused.
Sokka, on the other hand, looked like he was ready to go home, get into bed and sleep until he convinced himself this whole day was a bad dream. "Giant light beams, flying bison, airbenders… I think I've got Midnight Sun Madness." He turned around and began to walk away from Katara, Aang and me. "I'm going home to where stuff makes sense." When he reached the edge of the iceberg, he stopped. He must have just now realized that our canoe had been destroyed in the chaos from earlier. There was nowhere else for him to go. We were all silent, only now realizing that there was no way for us to get back to the Water Tribe.
"Well, if you guys are stuck, Appa and I can give you a lift." Before any of us could answer, Aang jumped into a spin, landing softly on Appa's forehead, and then jumped again and landed seated on the top of Appa's head, gripping reigns that I only just now noticed were attacked to Appa's horns. He kept smiling what seemed to be his signature smile.
Katara immediately walked over to Appa's side. "We'd love a ride, thanks!" Aang walked towards what appeared to be a saddle on Appa's back and reached a hand out for Katara to grab onto as she began to scale the bison.
"Thanks, Aang!" I replied, following Katara. I shot a glance back at Sokka, who was still standing back and gripping the spear as though it could actually help him if he needed to battle either the boy or the bison. "Come on, Sokka, don't be dense." Once Katara was comfortably in the saddle, she and Aang each reached down a hand to help me climb up. I heard Sokka exclaim a bit, and I chuckled to myself as I climbed into the saddle.
"I am not dense!" he shouted.
I turned around to shoot him a glare, and it was then that I realized how high up we were. Appa had to be at least ten feet tall. Not that I hadn't ever scaled any of the glaciers or snow mounds around our village, but being on an animal like this was so much different. It felt so much more...powerful. Over the last two years, Sokka and I were the protectors of the tribe, but suddenly there was an air bison underneath me, and I felt a little invincible.
"There's just no way I am getting on that-fluffy snot monster!" he exclaimed and stood in place, refusing to come closer.
It was Katara's turn to give her brother a look. "Are you hoping some other kind of monster will come along and give you a ride home? You know, before you freeze to death?" The two of them really were two sides of the same coin.
Sokka raised a finger and opened his mouth in order to protest, and then looked between me and Katara, each of us with an eyebrow raise, inviting him to disagree with us. When he realized it was a losing battle, he sighed, lowered his finger and his face fell.
"Oh, come on, pouty," I said, reaching down a hand to him. He pushed it away, grabbing hold of some of Appa's fur and trying to climb up its side by himself. Just as he was about to swing his leg over the side of the saddle, his leg slipped and he slid back down Appa's leg. His exasperation was written all over his face. I smiled to myself. Annoying as it may be for him, his inability to hide his emotions on his face has always been my favorite thing about him. "C'mon," I said softly, so Katara and Aang, immersed in their own conversation, wouldn't hear. "I got you."
Sokka sighed again, softer this time, and put his hand in mine. Together, the two of us helped him into the saddle, where he sat with his arms crossed over his chest like an upset child. A frown was plastered on his face, and he refused to look me in the eyes. I smiled. Classic Sokka. Katara, on the other hand, had her hands together like a caricature of an excited young woman. I looked around at all the glaciers and the brilliant blue of the sky. It seemed almost impossible that we might be able to travel in the air and so far away from the water. It was exhilarating.
Aang turned back to us and smiled his cheeky smile. "Okay! First time flyers, hold on tight!" He turned back around, and shook the reins. "Appa, yip yip!"
This was the moment. Every kid always wondered what it would be like to fly, and now we were about to come about as close as we possibly could. Appa growled, and flapped his tail, sending himself and his four passengers up into the air. I felt butterflies in my stomach, watching the world fall away beneath us.
And then we began to fall. Appa spread his legs out and belly flopped right into the water. A massive splash surged all around us, spraying just a little onto everyone. Katara crawled over along the saddle to Aang, still seated on Appa's head. "Come on, Appa," he tried to encourage the bison. "Yip yip!"
"Wow," Sokka said, "that was truly amazing." He rolled his eyes.
"Appa's just tired," Aang replied. "A little rest and he'll be soaring through the sky. You'll see!"
From my position in the middle of the saddle, I pushed myself towards the back with Sokka, while Katara sat up front with Aang. Sokka's eyes drifted to me and for just a second his expression was soft, but as soon as he noticed I was looking at him, his frown reappeared and he looked away, blushing ever so slightly. I focused on the glaciers we were passing as Appa floated through the water, figuring I would give Sokka a break.
"Why are you smiling at me like that?" Katara asked. I looked at Aang and noticed that he was, in fact, smiling at Katara. I couldn't blame the kid, though. Katara was definitely cute, and I'm sure if someone pretty broke me out of an iceberg, my heart would be fluttering a bit too.
Aang's eyes widened. "Oh, I was smiling?"
Sokka groaned loudly beside me, throwing his head back. "Uuuuuuuuugh!"
»»—- ➴ —-««
Most of the rest of the afternoon passed in a comfortable silence with occasional remarks from Aang about where we were and answers from Katara, along with Katara's questions about Aang being an airbender. When the sun began to travel further down in the sky, Sokka began to nestle himself down into a sleeping position. Again, classic Sokka. The boy did love a good nap.
I watched Sokka carefully, waiting until the heavy rise and fall of his chest was even. When Katara and Aang seemed to be preoccupied by their own conversation, I gathered some of the water droplets along the side of Appa's saddle. Each time he bat his tail, the water would splash and some of it got high enough to stick to the bison and its ornament. Once I had gotten enough in my hands, I wiped it along the small cut I had from the spearhead that was now lost to the water. Already it felt like forever ago.
With one last glance around to make sure that no one was watching me, I began to concentrate on the water beginning to seep into the cut. I felt the cut itself, small and shallow but still broken and a source of discomfort. I felt the layer of water, cold but soothing, soft and comforting. I concentrated on its restorative ability, visualized the soft closing of the cut, and then I closed my eyes. The darkness began to glow blue ever so slightly, and that's when I began to feel the gentle pull of my skin, matched with a coldness that wasn't painful but invigorating. When I opened my eyes again, I saw the wound slowly begin to close.
In a few minutes, it was nearly gone. With one final glance around to confirm that everyone else's attention had been elsewhere, I shifted myself so that I was also lying down. It had been a bit of a long day, and for once, Sokka had had the right idea. Soon enough I fell asleep, wind softly blowing on my face and a sense of betrayal growing in my gut.
»»—- ➴ —-««
While I will not often reappear in the pauses in this story, I do feel the need to step in to defend myself, just a little. I may not have given you the entire story at the outset, but not even the rest of the important players did then, either. Be patient, for these stories always take time. You all reached for this story to hear the tale of the last airbender, and while his friends' histories do each fill out some of the gaps in the gossip, you will have to come upon them in time. The complete story is always much more complicated and dark, but all things unravel eventually.
Hey everyone, thanks for sticking around if you've made it this far! So this fic will essentially be a darker following of the first season. Older kids, more loss, darker feelings, more complicated relationships and things of that nature. Basically a more grown version of the original show, currently seen through the eyes of someone new. My plan is to update once a week, so stay tuned and drop a review if you enjoyed!