When the Wind was Reborn
Chapter Two
The prince didn't see the figure buried in the snow a mile away, and neither did his protector or his many soldiers. From underneath a blanket of snow, invisible for all intents and purposes, Sokka's single eye watched them. He watched them hit the iceberg like fools, watched the airbender emerge and watched the skirmish that followed.
Sokka squinted at the remains of the iceberg for a while, baffled - what was an airbender from who knew where doing inside an iceberg in the South Pole? It's not like icebergs just grew overnight, that one had to have been there for a hundred odd years, he thought. A hundred years, he repeated the thought. That's when he put two and two together.
"Eshka," he whispered. A little bundle of snow right next to him shivered, spread its wings and revealed itself to be a falcon. She was small for her kind, but bright, and she turned those pale, intelligent eyes on his. "Follow." Sokka's eye flickered over to the rising plume of smoke that the Fire Nation ship was spewing. Eshka took off like a swirl of snow and in seconds she was a part of the sky.
Sokka slithered out from under the snow but didn't shake it off his furs, that which clung to him would help him blend in, keep him from being spotted - not that he expected trouble, but one couldn't be too careful. He padded across the snowy plains with the driving wind at his back. Home wasn't far and it wasn't long before he reached it - something that worried him, in actual fact, that the Fire Nation ship had come so close to finding his home.
The village didn't look like much - in a heavy enough storm it looked like a few mounds of snow and wasn't even recognizable as a settlement until inside. Hard to spot, but for Sokka he could have found it with his eye shut - he knew from the feel of the hard packed snow road underfoot, from the smell of people, food, leathers and furs. The communal firepit was the centre of the village, with tents set up surrounding it, the occasional igloo in amongst them. One in particular caught his eye, a larger igloo etched with symbols of faith and spirituality, a small chimney atop it puffing out smoke. A small driftwood sign read Ikiaq's Hut. Ikiaq had passed three months ago.
It was hot when Sokka crawled into it. He shrugged off his heavy sealskin parka and slung it across his shoulder, already sweating and near to panting - he was half tempted to strip off his undershirt too, such was the heat. A fire roared in the middle of the place, casting blood red light and shadows black as night across the walls, all dancing like wild men, and smoke swirled around the inside, stinging Sokka's eye and tickling his throat. Any idiot could see that this was no ordinary house, this was something deeper, something closer to the spirits.
"Can I help you, brother?" If the heat and smoke bothered Katara she didn't show it beyond the smallest beads of sweat pricking her skin. She sat with her back to the fire, her legs crossed, her hands resting on the chest of a figure lying before her. He was an old man of nearly a hundred years, with skin that sagged badly enough that Sokka was convinced they could get another person inside there if they really wanted. Katara's hands hovered over his chest as she swirled glowing water around him. The healing looked like it was doing little, Sokka thought - the old man's breaths were shallow and so slow that each time seemed like the last.
"He looks dead," Sokka remarked. Katara's head snapped around and she scowled at him, but it only made Sokka chuckle - so easy to get under her skin.
"I'm not trying to keep him alive," she replied tersely. "I just want to ease his pain. Nobody deserves to die in pain." Sokka thought nothing much of that - a dead or nearly dead man wasn't his concern.
"I saw something when I was out scouting," he told her. Her back was to him but he had the distinct feeling that his sister was rolling her eyes.
"Scouting?" She scoffed. "Playing soldier, more like." Sokka's eye narrowed at that and he considered not telling her what he'd seen after all, but that thought lasted only a second - no matter her flaws and how she sometimes annoyed him, she was his sister and, if he was being honest, his best friend.
"Fire Nation ship." He didn't need to say anything more. Katara tensed for a moment, but that was all the distraction she afforded herself from her task at hand and went straight back to healing.
"How many?" She asked evenly.
"One." She paused for another moment.
"That doesn't make sense."
"No, it doesn't," Sokka agreed. "They'd need a fleet for an attack, right? So why just a single ship?" Sokka wasn't sure if his sister heard him because at that moment she let out a sigh and he realized that the old man had drawn his last breath, for real this time. She took a few seconds to gather herself then stood and turned to face him, masking whatever she felt at the old man's passing.
"So?" She pressed, as though nothing had happened.
"You okay?" Sokka asked. She wasn't prepared to be the village healer and it was written plain as day on her face - she'd barely even begun her tutelage under Ikiaq when her predecessor and mentor had passed. He doubted it was a job she even wanted. It was a burden he didn't envy her of.
"What are your thoughts?" She pressed, and Sokka dropped the subject.
"The ship isn't even the weirdest part," he said, a smile coming to his face involuntarily. "They hit an iceberg, cracked it open like an egg, and you know what comes out?"
"Enlighten me."
"An airbender." Sokka was full on grinning by now.
"Is this the beginning of a bad joke?" She asked, skeptical.
"I only tell good jokes, but no," he replied, mildly insulted - his jokes were good, weren't they? "Come on, sis, think! Airbender! Iceberg!"
"So, what, we have an airbender with a really bad sense of direction? An Air Nomad refugee who's really, really lost?"
"No!" Sokka groaned. "Forget it, look, I have a plan, okay? I need you to come with me and convince dad." He didn't wait for an answer, he just turned and slid through the doorway and back out into the freezing cold.
"Hey! Wait up!" He smirked as he heard Katara follow behind him - she followed every time.
The chief's igloo was the biggest in the village and it wasn't hard to find. It was a large, peaked snow hut with an entrance big enough to walk through without ducking. Sokka pushed past the sealskin drapes and made his way inside. It was big, spacious inside, lit by hanging lanterns that gave off a pleasant glow. It was warm but comfortably so, rather than the smothering, suffocating heat of the healer's igloo where Katara did her work.
A whalebone chair sat on a raised dais, and in that chair sat Chief Hakoda of the Water Tribe, Sokka's father, the man known as the Skua's Eye - he was named not after his prowess in battle, like most chiefs, but after his insight instead. He held a smoking pipe in one hand, a rare vice of his, and looked down at them with a face like a clay mask, impossible to read.
"Ah, my children," he spoke after a moment, a faint smile coming to his face for no more than a second, then stood up to greet them. When he clasped Sokka's hand it felt like a transaction, not a greeting. His father hadn't always been like this, but the warring and the raids of recent years had hardened him, had sharpened his wits but dulled his spirits.
"You look well, dad," Katara said. It was a lie, Sokka thought, his father looked tired, and maybe a little thin. Too much to do, too much to worry and think about, too little to keep him going since mom had passed.
"Thank you, Katara. So, what brings you here?" It was sad, Sokka thought, that they needed a reason to visit their own father.
"Sokka saw a Fire Nation ship, just the one, not a fleet," she explained. Their father's brow creased in concern. "Oh, and he also saw an airbender."
"Explain," Hakoda said. Not an order or a demand, exactly, but firm. And so Sokka told him from start to finish what he had seen. His father's brows only knit tighter together as his concern intensified.
"Just a single ship? A scout, perhaps...?" He pondered.
"Too big, I think," Sokka said. "They looked almost lost."
"And an airbender, you say?" Hakoda hummed to himself and took a puff of his pipe. "Odd." He didn't seem to think too much of it.
"It's the Avatar," Sokka said. His father was still as a statue. Katara just laughed out loud.
"That's ridiculous," his father said. He wasn't impressed.
"Sokka, you don't even believe in the Avatar," Katara reminded him. "You used to make fun of me when I was little because I still held out hope that he might be out there!"
"Yeah, look, I know, alright? But it's him, it has to be."
"How?" Hakoda looked down at him with those narrowed eyes.
"We know he was supposed to be an airbender, and everyone thought that he must have been killed in Sozin's Air Nomad massacres like a hundred years ago, right? You know, seeing as the Avatar wasn't amongst the survivors. Well, what if he didn't? Die, I mean. What if he's been frozen for a hundred or so years?"
"But -" Katara started, but she got no further.
"Yeah, I know it sounds nuts, but icebergs take generations to form, they don't just appear, so how else do you explain an airbender inside one? He must have waterbended the iceberg around him, and an airbender that can also waterbend is the Avatar!"
"I'm more concerned with the ship," his father spoke, and Sokka resisted the urge to groan.
"The ship hardly matters," Sokka dismissed. "We're talking about the Avatar here! He's what matters!"
"Why? What would we want with an airbender, no matter what other elements he can bend?" Hakoda asked shrewdly.
"What comes after air?" Sokka asked, a smug smile on his face. A moment of silence before Katara caught up to him and realized what he meant.
"Water."
"Bingo. We kill the Avatar and boom, he'll be reborn as one of us!"
"Or he's not the Avatar, and you were mistaken," his father suggested. "Or what if you're right and he's born to the Northern Water Tribe, half a world away? Or an unfriendly neighbour? Or what if he's not too pleased at your trying to kill him, and he decides to raze the village to the ground? What then?"
"Come on dad, it'll be fine, give me some guys and let me go after him!" Sokka pleaded. "He's probably frozen half to death in the tundra already, he won't be hard to take, we can do it!"
"We have Fire Nation intruders in our lands, and we have neighbouring tribes warring with us. We can't spare any amount of men for a snipe hunt like this." Hakoda's face was hard as stone.
"Then I'll go alone," Sokka decided. He wasn't going to let this pass, not a once in a lifetime chance like this.
"No!" Katara protested. "Not alone, it's too dangerous with the Fire Nation out there. I'll go with you."
"You will stay," Hakoda told her in a tone that brooked no argument. "We need our healer."
"There's a half dozen others in the village that can heal at least as well as me, and besides -"
"You will stay."
"I didn't even want to be a healer, I was just picked! I wanted to be a -"
"Enough!" Hakoda barked. "You will do as you are told and you will stay, Katara. And as for you..." He turned his stony gaze on Sokka. He gulped. "You can waste your own time on this fool's errand if you want, but don't bother me or put anyone else in danger. Do you understand?"
"Gotcha," Sokka muttered, then turned on his heel and left.
"Sokka!" Katara called, rushing to catch up with him.
"My idea was a great idea!" He insisted, raving like a lunatic, loud enough that some of the villagers were giving him strange looks.
"Wait there! Don't go and do something dumb!" Katara said as she fell into step beside him.
"I'm going after the Avatar!"
"Hey I said don't do anything dumb! Don't make me come after you, dad will be mad!" Katara groaned and chased after him, but Sokka was going and he wouldn't be talked out of it, he had decided.