---
Princess Katara let out another sigh and again bothered her older brother, Prince Sokka.
"Do you mind?" said Sokka in a soft growl, keeping his eyes on his fishing sinker, ever alert if it should begin to bob up and down in the water to indicate that a fish had taken the bait.
His sister narrowed her eyes at his back and Sokka winced involuntarily when Katara loudly complained, "I thought you wanted me to go with you on your fishing trip so that you could advise me about Prince Zuko.
"Shh! Keep your voice down! You'll scare away the fish!"
"The fish can wait. You have to help me with my betrothal."
"I will. After I catch one fish."
"We've already been out here for an hour and you still haven't caught one."
"That's because you're noisy. We're fishing, not hunting for walrus-leviathans."
"Don't you go blaming me for your incompetence."
"Just keep quiet. Fishing first. Your fire prince problem later."
Making a soft growl of her own, Katara placed her hands on the boat's side for support before leaning over to peer at the water's surface. Not too long after, a respectable-sized fish in a waterbended bubble of water smacked and splashed respectively against the back of Sokka's head.
"There's your fish. Now, we talk."
"No fair using waterbending to fish-"
"You know very well that I wasn't competing with you in fishing. Sokka, be serious. I'm really worried about this betrothal."
It was Sokka's turn to sigh out loud. "All right all right. Sheesh. Relax, won't you? It's not as if you're the only one who's betrothed-"
"You can't compare Princess Yue to Zuko; Yue's nice. I know her; I don't know a thing about Prince Zuko."
Sokka didn't reply but instead held out his hand to Katara, indicating that she give him some time. Katara almost let out an outraged scream when he began shaking himself dry, spraying seawater droplets all over the boat, including on his sister.
"Sokka!"
"Hey, be fair. You're the one who got me wet."
A while later, when both royals were dry and the fishing tackle and fish carefully stowed away, Sokka, his face now quite serious, looked upon his younger sister with some concern for indeed Katara still appeared worried about being betrothed to the FireLord's heir despite her brother's considerable attempts to distract her by being annoying.
"You do know that mom and dad wouldn't had agreed to this arranged marriage if they thought you would be unhappy with Zuko, right?"
Some relief came over Katara's face. "... Yes, I do know that, Sokka."
And he then added, "Plus, there's still more than two years to go before you have to marry him while I have to marry Yue within this year. Two year's plenty of time to get to know someone, even if he's in another country, and I hear those Fire Nation messenger hawks are pretty speedy in delivering love letters."
Katara made a face at him. "Haha. Very funny, Sokka," she said sarcastically, but there was now an amused light in her blue eyes which told Sokka that he had succeeded at least somewhat in cheering up his younger sister. Now, if only he truly felt as confident about his impending marriage and Katara's still-a-way-off marriage as he pretended to be.
Suddenly, without warning, their boat picked up considerable speed. Sokka barely had time to realize that they were caught in a fast-moving surface current when Katara attempted to slow their speed down by waterbending. She succeeded partially but she simply didn't have enough time to deal with the two ice floes which sandwiched their vessel between them. Instinctively knowing that they would be crushed along with the boat, Sokka quickly grabbed his sister by the waist before jumping both of them out of the boat and unto the ice floe on the right.
---
"Katara, are you all right?"
"... Yes."
"Sure you're not hurt anywhere, are you?"
"... Yes."
"Good, cause mom and dad would kill me if anything happened to you."
An irked Katara leveled a frown at her brother before turning her attention back to what she had been trying to do before Sokka disrupted her attention, which was taking stock of their current situation, which could summarized as stranded on an ice floe somewhere in the South Pole Sea.
"Wonderful," she muttered and fought down the temptation to inform her brother that she hoped their parents were still going to kill him for the mess they were in and instead grumbled, "I take it this means that I have to waterbend us all the way back home."
"Exactly," declared Sokka in an annoyingly cheerful voice. Katara refused to dignify that remark with a reply and instead took a deep breath to calm herself down and in order to prepare herself for a great deal of waterbending. However, just as she began the first maneuver, the waters around their ice floe began to glow with an eerie bright light.
---
"Sokka, I think there's someone inside the berg."
"... You're just seeing things, Katara. No one can survive inside an iceberg, not to mention get inside one in the first place."
"... There is someone in there!"
"... Hey, no! Katara, get back here!"
---
"He looks about your age, Sokka. ... Looks like he's an airbender."
"Airbenders wear gray robes, not brown ones."
"He has Airbender tattoos."
"Oh please, we can get fake airbender tattoos practically anywhere. You know how everyone wants to look like an Airbender nowadays."
"Shh, quiet. He's waking up."
---
The airbender's immediate reaction upon seeing the two water tribe siblings watching over him was to yell. Katara blinked and Sokka also yelled, both as alarmed as the recently awakened teen who quickly scrambled back on his hands away from them. As he disappeared back over into the iceberg, Katara, recovering from surprise, shouted, "Wait! Come back! Don't be frightened! We won't hurt you!"
"Speak for yourself," retorted Sokka, brandishing his treasured boomerang which their father had gifted to him on his fourteenth birthday, "he must have scared me out of a year's growth."
"Sokka, it's obvious that he's more scared of us than we are of him," said Katara loudly, hoping that the airbender would hear her words and calm down.
"Well, I don't care. We should get out of here."
"Not until we make sure he's really okay."
"Katara, it's none of our business why he's here and what he's doing here. Stop being so nosy and waterbend us back home."
Before Katara could reply to her insensitive brother that he could just go ahead and waterbend himself back home, a thunderous moan rolled out from within the shattered iceberg and over them, galvanizing Sokka into action. Quickly, with both boomerang and scrimshaw out, he positioned himself protectively in front of his sister.
"Katara, get back to the ice floe."
"... Sokka-"
"Now, Katara!"
Without another syllable of protest, Katara nimbly made her way across shattered pieces of floating ice while Sokka warily eyed the broken iceberg which the airbender had been frozen in. In the back of his mind, he cursed himself for not stopping Katara from shattering the frozen prison and freeing whoever that was.
---
There wasn't anything Aang could have done to keep Appa from yawning. He even felt like yawning himself, but he fought down the urge, whispered another command to Appa to make not another sound before peering over the broken side of the iceberg. He relaxed slightly when he saw that the two other teenagers were gone. Behind him, Appa made another low moan. This time not as loud and this time Aang didn't reprimand his animal guide for it seemed as though Appa's loud yawn had scared the strangers away.
"Thanks, Appa," whispered Aang, gratefully rubbing the bison's nose and unintentionally causing it to sneeze with its master barely able to dodge out of the green goo's way. Aang frowned at the close call but didn't bother to scold Appa; it wasn't his fault after all. With a soft sigh, Aang climbed up unto the bison's head and grabbed the reins. A yip yip however failed to launch Appa into the air as it should and the bison only landed with a tremendous splash onto the water's surface.
"Still tired, huh, Appa? Don't blame you," said Aang in a weary tone. He tried not to dwell on the fact that his old teacher Monk Gyatso was no longer with him and instead wondered where he could now go where he would be safe from those hunting the Avatar.
---
Irritated with Sokka, Katara found it very difficult to concentrate on waterbending.
"Can't you waterbend faster?"
Something inside Katara snapped.
"Hey, why are you stopping?"
"Sokka, you idiot! We shouldn't have just left him!"
"... Are we back to this subject again? Katara, he's a stranger. Not a good idea to help strangers. Besides, you heard that awful noise-"
"I don't think he made it."
"Right... than who made it?"
"Airbenders have flying bison, and we've heard them make loud noises just like that plenty of times."
"... Look, we've been through this already. He isn't an airbender; he doesn't have the right outfit. ... Hey, hey, don't you waterbend us back there."
"Sokka, all my gut feelings say we should help him."
"And what about my gut feelings?"
"They don't count. I'm the one doing all the waterbending.
Sokka sighed, "We don't even know if he really needs help, and how are you going to help him anyway?"
"I don't know. I don't know. But I really feel that we should help him."
"... Fine, we'll help him a bit BUT only if he's still back there where we found him. If he's gone, no way am I going to help you search all over the South Pole for your boyfriend."
"It's a deal, and he's not my boyfriend!"
---
Though at his wit's end on what to do next, Aang refused to allow himself to fall further into despair and decided to let Appa get some real rest rather than traveling aimlessly around in freezing waters. With a goal in mind, which was to find shelter and nourishment for his animal guide, Aang picked what he felt to be a suitable iceberg for a temporary home.
While in hiding with Monk Gyatso, Aang had learned maneuvers from the other three bending arts with the use of bending scrolls which Gyatso had procured and prepared for him in advance. Indeed, his old teacher and guardian had long been expecting that he would one day had to flee with his pupil from the Southern Air Temple and had been storing provisions on several small deserted islands for him and Aang.
Remembering how Gyatso had sacrifice himself to distract the bounty hunters' attention away from his student, tears again began to blur Aang's vision and he had to pause in his firebending a deep cave into the iceberg in order to wipe his eyes dry. Sensitive to his master's emotional state, Appa nudged reassuringly against Aang's back and didn't move a muscle when his young master finally gave in into grief and turned around to cry silently into the bison's white fur.
Not too long after, Aang and Appa's shared sorrow was interrupted by what sounded like an argument.
---
"Great, just great. Now, we're lost."
"Sokka, shut up. It's not as if you knew where to go either."
"You've seen one iceberg, you've seen them all. You really should learn to listen to your big brother who knows best."
"If I hadn't wanted to hear what you had to say about my betrothal to Zuko, I wouldn't be out here lost with you in the first place."
"Yeah, have to agree with that. And... I would still have my boat and be fishing right now."
"Don't you dare blame me for what had happened to your boat!"
---
Quicky and as quietly as he could, Aang firebended a tunnel upwards through the berg until he reached a suitable enough height before making an opening out the side of the iceberg by which the water tribe siblings were floating by on an ice floe. From his vantage point, he peered down to the argumentative brother and sister, whose names he couldn't help but learn to be Sokka and Katara.
"Calm down, Katara-"
"Don't tell me to calm down!"
"Katara, we're right beside a berg. You know how your waterbending acts all weird -and- dangerous when you're upset."
"If you don't want me to be upset, stop annoying me!"
"Okay, okay. I won't say another thing. Here's me going mum right now. ..."
"... You're still annoying me."
Sokka rolled his eyes skyward and broke his short silence. "What do you want me to do? Get on another ice floe."
"I would appreciate that very much."
"Hey... I agreed to us going back here to look for your boyfriend-"
"He's not my boyfriend!"
"At least admit that us being lost right now is mostly your fault."
"...I know that... but you don't have to rub it in."
"You know, Katara, if you weren't so sensitive about making mistakes, I wouldn't be so tempted to rub them in your face."
"... Are you saying it's -my- fault that you like to rub my mistakes in my face?"
"Let's see... how can I put this delicately...Yes, Katara, it's -your- fault."
As Katara's jaw dropped in sheer outrage, Aang heard a sudden cracking noise from above. Startled, he looked up just in time to see a boulder-sized piece of the iceberg fall down towards the ice floe.
---
"... Sokka, did you see that?"
"I did... and no way could that chunk of ice had fallen over there if it came from up there. It should had fallen right on top of us."
"... It must be him - that airbender. He must had airbended it away from us."
"... Oh Spirits... that means we owe him for saving our lives... how embarrassing."
---
From inside the now closed off and darkened tunnel, Aang could hear Katara calling for him to show himself.
"Please come out! We don't mean you any harm!"
Sokka joined in listlessly. "Yeah, yeah, you don't have to hide from us. I swear my sister doesn't bite-"
"Sokka!"
"Well, do you bite or don't you?"
Katara gave him a baleful stare before deciding on another tactic to lure the airbender out of hiding.
"Please don't leave us alone out here! We're lost, we need help!"
"No thanks to you know who."
"... Sokka, if you're not going to be part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
With a grimace, Sokka sighed and tried bribery. "Perhaps you don't know, airbender, but we are members of the Southern Water Tribe Royal Family. You'll get a -very- big reward for saving our lives despite putting us in danger in the first place-"
"Sokka..."
"But you can only collect if you help us get back home. You need us to prove you saved us. By the way, I'm his Excellency, Prince Sokka, and believe it or not - this homely-looking girl with me is- Ow!"
"Darn it, Sokka! Quit annoying me!"
---
End Chapter Two