Katara heard Zuko calling her distantly, but did not respond. She didn't want to see him right now, or anyone. Swiftly, she moved over the frozen ground, warm in her parka and thick, fur-lined mukluks. Dad's house was on the edge of town, and she put the settlement to her back, heading into the low, snowy hills beyond. She put a rise behind her, and another one. Zuko's voice receded in the distance, below the edge of hearing; soon there was no sound but the wind, blowing lightly in her ears, her footsteps crunching on the snow crystals. The sky was overcast, which was a good thing; if it had been too light out, the sun on the snow would have blinded her without snow goggles.
Zuko doesn't really think that, she tried to tell herself. Come on, Katara. You know that's not what he really thinks. He was just upset and scared. Sokka sure wasn't helping. He doesn't think that…
But what if…what if he did?
Even if it's not what Zuko really thinks, she thought slowly, it's almost certainly what everyone else in the Fire Nation thinks. That was exactly what Zuko had sounded like back when they had first known him, when he had still been pursuing Aang. He had to have gotten those attitudes from somewhere, and she had seen enough other Fire Nation people to know that contemptuous attitudes toward the "Water peasants" and "Earth Kingdom barbarians" were pretty much the norm. What's it going to be like when I'm surrounded by people who think like that?
She stopped where she was, rubbing her head.
Zuko had not been having a good time here. He had said little, but she could tell that from watching him. He was out of his depth trying to deal with Water Tribe customs, and her father's disappointment and Sokka's veiled and not so veiled hostility hadn't been helping. The whale hunt scared him. Did it ever… He had looked white as a ghost when she had seen him on the beach afterward, and had seized on her almost like a shipwrecked mariner seizing a piece of driftwood.
He shouldn't have gone out there, she realized. He just didn't have the skills. I should have tried harder to talk him out of it. But the defining trait of Zuko's character was the fact that he never walked away from a challenge, no matter how hard; nor did he ever give up until he had been pounded flat into the pavement. And sometimes not even then.
It was what she loved most about him.
The hard-packed snow crunched under her feet. Even as she walked, she was subconsciously taking note of the position of the sun, the locations of the tall mounds of snow that marked or hid the direction stones her people had put up as guideposts; one of the first things any Water Tribe child learned was how to navigate across the frozen wastes. How to find the way home. There was not a child born in her community who did not know that by the time he or she could walk.
Over the past couple of days, Katara had watched with growing unease as Zuko struggled with Water Tribe customs. He's having this much trouble now, here, surrounded by people that are at least trying to accept him for my sake. The Water Tribe didn't have anything like the elemental supremacy notions of the Fire Nation, and as complex as it was, she was willing to bet that Water Tribe marriage custom and ritual was orders of magnitude less complex than that surrounding the wedding and coronation of the Fire Lord. So if in spite of that, he's having this much trouble here…what's it going to be like for me in the Fire Nation? Zuko had no family to cushion them, not anymore; even if he had, the only one who had ever cared for him was Iroh. He's said that most or all of the Fire Nation hates him for killing his father and losing the war….won't that make them love me that much more?
And there was another thing too, something she hadn't mentioned to Zuko or anyone, but that she had found herself thinking about a lot, more so now that they were back. When we go to the Fire Nation….Zuko's going to be Fire Lord. He's going to have duties, responsibilities, to his people, that he will have to fulfill. Which meant…
…that it was a one-way trip. When we go to the Fire Nation, we're not coming back.
Katara stopped in the middle of a hollow of snow, a slight cup surrounded by white-covered hills. She was chewing her lip. The thought of herself, far from her home and her family—from her community—in an alien culture, surrounded by people who uniformly despised her as a savage barbarian for being Water Tribe, and being forced to live there for the rest of her life with no possibility of returning home, scared her. It scared her a lot. The elders always said, the life of a Water Tribe man or woman is in their community. The community can endure anything. How could she endure what she would most likely face on their return to the Fire Nation without her community?
How can I stand never being able to see Dad or Sokka or Gran-Gran or Master Pakku again?
She knew that if the situations had been reversed—if she had had to assume the role of Chief of the Water Tribe, and Zuko had had no title or position, no duty to perform, Zuko would almost certainly be willing to join her in the Water Tribe and never visit the Fire Nation again…but Zuko has nothing to leave behind. He never had. Being adopted into the Water Tribe as Chieftain's Husband would probably be a step up for him.
Tiny snowflakes were starting to drift down; Katara glanced up at the sky and saw that the cloud cover was getting thicker and darker, an ominous brooding dark gray toward the west, in the direction from which the wind was coming. She recognized it as a weather pattern she had known from her childhood—a snow flurry was on the way. They tended to be brief, but intense; while not especially dangerous, they could be uncomfortable, and if you tried to walk in them, you could easily find yourself stumbling around totally lost. Might be a good idea to huddle up for a while.
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She had left her mother's half-moon ulu knife back at the igloo, but she didn't need to cut blocks of snow to make a shelter for herself; quickly she transmuted some snow to water, bent it up and around her into an igloo shape, and transmuted it back, not to ice, but to solid snow, leaving an air hole open at the top of the dome. Through it, she could see the sky darkening, and flurries beginning to fly. Good fifteen minutes, half an hour at least. Katara wrapped herself in her parka, sitting down to wait.
It seemed as if she hadn't been waiting for more than a few minutes when she heard a voice outside, calling. Who could possibly be out in this weather?
She listened a bit longer, and realized she couldn't make out the words, but she recognized who it was. General Iroh! What on earth was Zuko's uncle doing out in the middle of the snowstorm?
If he gets lost…. From what she had seen of Zuko's uncle, it seemed to be a truism that everyone liked Iroh; she herself had come to care for him quite a bit. If he got lost, he could easily wander so far out into the snow hills that he would never be seen again. Quickly she opened a door in her igloo, transmuting one section of it to water; she looked out into the flying snow. Boy, it's almost a white-out already.
"General Iroh! General Iroh!"
After a moment came what sounded like an answering call. Katara listened carefully. "Here! I'm over here!" she called back. Straining her eyes to peer through the blinding flurries, she thought she made out a vague, shadowy shape at a distance from her. If the snow had been liquid water, she could have sensed Iroh's presence and direction by feeling the way the water bent around his solid mass; but that was not an option. She took the next best thing—bending the snowflakes themselves to the sides and out of the way, as if she were drawing back a curtain. As she parted the snowflakes for a distance of perhaps fifty yards, she saw Iroh's form at the end of the space she had opened. The old firebender was wearing a sealskin cloak over his Fire Nation armor, as well as Water Tribe mittens.
"Katara!" he called, seeing her. "Am I glad to see you!"
"Come inside," she said, gesturing to her igloo. "You shouldn't be out in this weather. It's too easy to get lost."
"You really can't see anything out here."
"No, not when the snow is flying. The flurry shouldn't last long, but you can get yourself completely turned around in a really short time. People from the village have gotten lost in flurries and not been found until days later." She didn't mention that they had also not been found alive.
She stood aside to let the firebender enter the small igloo she had built. "Quite cramped in here," Iroh observed, squeezing through the door.
"You're supposed to make them small enough so that they can be warmed by body heat," Katara explained. "But now that there are two of us—"
"I can heat it, if you enlarge it," the firebender offered, smiling.
Katara smiled back at him. "It won't take much." She quickly turned one wall completely to water, holding it in shape and pushing out the boundary out enough so that they both could sit comfortably; then she raised it up over their heads again, refreezing it into a new dome. The snow was spitting in through the air hole she had left. "Just a single flare should do it."
Iroh snapped a flare alight in the palm of his hand, warming and lighting the inside of the ice dwelling. The light cast a cheery glow over the snowy interior walls. "Amazing," he murmured, feeling the walls of the construction. "Truly remarkable work, young Katara. I am impressed."
"Thank you," Katara said, feeling herself redden with pleasure. She was rather proud of it herself, though she hadn't said so; it had taken her a while to learn how to change water to snow specifically rather than to ice, and she still thought it was a rather neat trick.
"It is said that water is the most versatile of all elements," Iroh murmured, still examining the construction. "That certainly appears to be true!"
"It's not as useful when you get away from the poles," Katara said modestly. Though Hue's lessons on plant-bending showed me that water has more uses than I had thought… "Seal jerky?" she asked, reaching inside her parka and pulling out a packet. "I freeze-dried it myself."
"Thank you," Iroh replied, accepting the strip of jerky cheerfully. "I do so love Water Tribe cuisine, and I so rarely have a chance to indulge in it."
"What brings you out here?" Katara asked, then frowned in concern. "You really shouldn't have come out here away from the village, General Iroh," she scolded gently. "The weather is harsh and it can be dangerous for those who are not used to it."
"I know," he agreed, smiling. "I am really too old for these shenanigans. Nevertheless, I came out here with your father to look for young Zuko."
"Zuko?" Katara straightened. "You mean Zuko's out here too?"
"Yes, he went after you."
"I have to find him. He could be in trouble—" She started to stand, but Iroh waved her back down.
"I am sure you do not need to be concerned, young Katara. Your father is out here as well, and I am sure Hakoda will have found him. It is nearly white outside," he added, gesturing to the air hole, where the snow had fused into a blinding wall of white. "If you go out into that, you might only end up being lost yourself."
"I….guess so." Katara sat back down unhappily. Still, she knew Iroh was right. It was another lesson that all Water Tribe children learned—if there was nothing you could realistically do to help, to avoid wasting energy on tasks that would only make the situation worse. I'm sure Dad has found him. What her father would have to say to her betrothed, on the other hand, she could not guess.
Iroh looked at her closely, settling back against the wall behind him. "You know, Katara," he told her gently, "young Zuko cares for you very much. He would never want to do anything to hurt you or to offer you insult. He was…very much out of his depth today out on the whale hunt, I think. Not that that makes his behavior acceptable. But I suspect that it led him to say things he did not mean, and that he now regrets a great deal."
Katara pondered what he had said for a moment, then let out a long sigh. "I know," she murmured, staring at the ground. "When I met him down by the beach, he was as pale as—as, well, that." She pointed upward at the blank whiteness outside the air hole. But even if he didn't mean to say it….maybe he thinks it." She swallowed unhappily.
"I have known young Zuko for many years, Katara," Iroh told her, still gentle. "I know him even better than you," he added with a smile. "At his core, he is a fundamentally honest person. One of the consequences of that honesty is that he cannot deny to himself a truth when he sees it—such as the truth that fire is not the 'superior' element, and that the Water Tribe are not 'savage,' merely different. He has learned much about the world and about the other elements, traveling with you and with Toph and with the Avatar, and he has grown a great deal. I know, for I have watched him, as I have watched you and the rest of the Avatar's friends also learn and grow. What he said came from his past. It does not represent his present, nor his future."
Katara slowly nodded. "But the Fire Nation is his past," she said quietly, "and we'll be returning there soon. And in the Fire Nation, everyone still thinks that way, don't they?"
"Ahhh," Iroh murmured, looking at her. "And this worries you, young Katara?"
"Yes," Katara admitted hesitantly. "I've….kinda been thinking about it a lot since I got back here, and..." She drew a long breath. "It scares me," she finished. "I mean….looking at the problems Zuko has been having fitting in with my family, I can just imagine everything's going to be that much worse when we get back to his home."
"The Fire Nation is not his home," Iroh murmured. "I'm not so sure it ever was. He only thought it was."
"Maybe it's not his home, but it's his culture and his world. It's not mine."
Iroh was silent for a long time, in thought. The fire in his hand danced and shimmered yellow light off the crystalline snow walls of their small shelter; it was growing uncomfortably warm, and Katara unfastened her heavy parka a bit. "You are right to be worried, young Katara," Iroh said at last, gravely. His golden eyes glimmered in the firelight. "You are correct that it will be very difficult—more difficult certainly than it would be if you and Zuko remained here. You will not be asked to go whaling like young Zuko—but there are other perils, much more subtle, yet just as deadly. However….it might not be as bad as you think."
Katara frowned, and the old firebender smiled, seeing her confusion. "You are an intelligent girl, young Katara, and I will not lie to you. The Fire Nation has spent a good long time telling itself that fire is the superior element, and that the sons and daughters of fire are the superior race. I was able to overcome that with experience, as I acquired a deeper knowledge and admiration of the other elements; young Zuko has fought a ferocious battle with himself to do the same. However, many in the Fire Nation will not be willing to make that effort—especially now, after they have been defeated by the Avatar, and the warriors of the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe.
"As the fundamental flaw of the Earth Kingdom is stubbornness, that of the ancient Air Nomads was frivolity, and that of the Water Tribe is instability, the flaw of the Fire Nation is pride. And now, after the defeat, that pride walks hand in hand with shame. The pride of the Fire Nation nobility has been injured, and they are smarting with the blow. Many of them will see your assuming the role of Fire Lady as an insult. The idea that a Water peasant should sit at the head of the Fire Nation will seem as almost a sacrilege to many. Be not mistaken: you will encounter a great deal of hostility, even hatred."
Iroh paused, and closed his eyes briefly, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. "In addition, young Katara, there will be those in the Fire Nation that will see young Zuko as illegitimate, as an undeserving Fire Lord who has no right to assume the throne, and no real justification for wielding power."
"Because he was banished," Katara nodded. "That's what he told me. We've talked about this a couple times."
"Have you?" Iroh asked, raising an eyebrow. "Young Zuko has part of the reason, but not the whole reason." He sighed. "As usual with him. Remind me to have this same chat with him before we return to the Fire Nation. Yes, some of the nobility will see Zuko as illegitimate because he was banished. However…." He trailed off.
"What?" Katara asked, looking at him.
"As I'm sure you know, after Lord Ozai fell, the Earth Kingdom and Northern Water Tribe both landed soldiers on Fire Nation shores, to keep the peace." He sighed again. "These foreign troops on Fire Nation soil are resented by many. In this context, many will see Zuko as a figurehead at best. At worst, he will be seen as a puppet, or a pawn of outside forces. Particularly any moves he makes toward reconciliation with the other nations."
"But—but that's not fair," Katara insisted, sitting up. "Zuko wants what's best for the Fire Nation. We agree that the Fire Nation should stop fighting—"
"Yes, that is what you think," Iroh told her, "but that goes against the wishes of a great many of the Fire Nation. Combined with the fact that Fire Lord Ozai intended Azula to be his successor, many will see Zuko as a humiliation—a banished, disgraced, incompetent prince foisted on them because he would be easy to control." He raised an eyebrow. "His marriage to a Water Tribe woman will not help. You will be accused of controlling Zuko, of being the real power behind the throne. And…." Iroh paused, looking very serious now. "There are almost certainly those in the Water Tribe or Earth Kingdom who will think the same of Zuko as his own countrymen—that he is weak and that he will be easily manipulated. You have spoken to me of General Fong, head of the Earth Kingdom forces. I know him myself. He is certainly one, but there will be others."
Katara was silent. The chill in her heart was spreading throughout her body. The picture Iroh painted for her was so bleak, so desolate that Katara could only think, It's hopeless. We're never going to be able to make it work. Why did we ever think we could? Iroh watched her for a little bit more; then his face softened.
"I don't mean to scare you, young Katara," he told her gently, "only to make you understand what you face. I may exaggerate a bit; things are perhaps not quite as bad as I have made out."
"No?" she asked, looking at him hopefully.
"I will tell you a secret about the Fire Nation," Iroh continued, smiling slightly, if not with particular warmth. "There is a saying about my people that I heard in the Earth Kingdom that is not so far wrong: that the children of fire are either at your throat or at your feet. And between the Avatar and the combined forces of the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe, the Fire Nation has been handed a resounding defeat—at what should have been the moment of their greatest triumph."
For the first time, Katara wondered what the old firebender thought of the fate of his nation; she decided against asking him that. She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer; instead she folded her hands in her lap and listened quietly.
"While this has created great hostility, there will be those in the Fire Nation who will see this as the will of the balance, reasserting itself and punishing them for their arrogance. This is especially because the Avatar was involved. They will feel it is their duty to swear their fealty toward Zuko and to bend their energies toward expiating their shame through toil and sacrifice. There will also be those who feel that since the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe have clearly proved their superiority over the Fire Nation, further resistance is pointless and dishonorable; all that remains is to accept the fact and bow to greater strength. I suspect that many of the older and wiser ones will see this as the course of action to take, and they should be able to exert a considerable influence on public sentiment.
"The Fire Nation," he added, raising an eyebrow at her, "respects nothing so much as strength. And you are very strong. If you show your strength, if you demonstrate that you are stronger than those who oppose you, and if you do so consistently and for long enough….my people will come to accept you. They may not like you, but they will accept you."
"You think so?" she asked hesitantly.
"Yes," Iroh reassured her. "It will not be easy, but you will manage." He paused. "You are Water Tribe, after all. Is not the essence of the Water Tribe the ability to adapt to new situations? That is how your people survive through any crisis. I have watched you, young Katara, and you truly embody the spirit of your people; you will adapt to this as well."
"But the strength of the Water Tribe is in their community," she said quietly. "I will be cut off from mine."
Iroh regarded her. "Less than you might think, young Katara," he told her. "Aang and Toph will certainly visit you and my nephew, and I would not be surprised if Sokka and his Kyoshi warrior visit as well. And," he added, "when you and Zuko return to the Fire Nation, it will be necessary for you both to work closely with the leaders of the other national presences there. The Fire Nation will need someone to speak for their interests to the Water Tribe and vice versa. It would not surprise me," he told her, "if it turned out that of all the people in the Fire Nation capital, you were the one best suited to do so—not only as the Fire Lady, but as the daughter of Chief Hakoda and the favored student of Master Pakku. So you see, you may not be so very isolated after all."
Katara stared at Iroh in the light of the fire he held in the palm of his hand; it had grown warm inside the ice shelter, and Iroh lowered the flame a little. His eyes were filled with kindness. How did you get to be so generous? She had no idea what he thought of the defeat of the Fire Nation, but whatever it was, it wasn't enough to stop him from volunteering that fact to calm her fears. She was suddenly filled with a rush of gratitude toward the old firebender; impulsively, she put her hands together and offered a seated bow.
"Thank you," she said with great sincerity. "Thank you, General Iroh."
"Call me uncle," he told her, smiling. "I will be soon enough."
"Uncle Iroh," she replied with a small giggle. It sounds strange to hear myself say that, she thought.
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"So tell me, young Katara, if I may ask you," Iroh said, settling back against the ice wall with a sigh of contentment. "You are certainly willing to undergo a great deal for my nephew. I know how Zuko feels about you, but what is it that makes you willing to endure this for him?"
"I love him," Katara answered simply.
"Yes, but….why?"
"Are you saying I shouldn't love him?" She was surprised at the strong rush of protectiveness that came over her. Iroh, seeing her bristle, began to chuckle.
"No, no," he assured her, still laughing. "Not at all. But I am curious. After all," he added with a grin, "the wedding of a fine Water Tribe lady such as yourself to the Fire Lord is something that does not happen every day. I am aware that my nephew is a fine young man, if a bit prickly at times, and he is surely a handsome youth, but there are many handsome, upstanding Water Tribe men that you could have chosen. And I cannot be sure, but I thought Aang had a crush on you for a while himself. Why Zuko?"
Why indeed…. Katara sighed, looking down at her hands. She thought for a while, trying to find the right words to express one of the most complex emotions she had ever felt in her life. Iroh waited patiently, the yellow light from the fire in his hand flickering over the icy interior; by now the walls were starting to become shiny with moisture. She turned the matter over in her thoughts, trying to think of how she could show Iroh what she felt.
"Do you remember…." she began hesitantly.
The old firebender said nothing, but raised an eyebrow.
"It was the very first time we ran into you. Or I guess you ran into us. We were there to rescue Aang from your ship, but by the time we got there he had already broken out. Aang went over the side, and I thought he wasn't going to make it, but then he went into the Avatar state…." She paused, biting her lip. "You've probably noticed, but when Aang's in the Avatar state, he can be….really scary."
"I've noticed," Iroh said, nodding.
"Aang came surging up out of the sea on this massive pillar of water, bent it around and just cleared the deck of the boat with this incredible shockwave, I'd never seen anything like it. He knocked everyone overboard, and I thought we were home free, but then Sokka went to get Aang's staff from the side, and….." She couldn't suppress a smile. "There was Zuko, hanging onto the other end. Somehow he'd managed to catch a grip on the way over the side and just hung on for everything he was worth. So Sokka gave him a shove and pushes him over, but somehow, by a one-in-a-million chance, Zuko grabs the anchor chain on the way down and starts dragging himself back up, hand over hand." She shook her head, laughing in bemusement. "I saw that, and I thought, 'Oh man, we're never gonna stop this guy.'"
"That's my nephew." Iroh nodded wryly.
"Yeah, it was pretty impressive," Katara agreed. She was silent for a moment, remembering. "Just the fact that he kept chasing Aang, after seeing him in the Avatar state—after really seeing what he could do…..Even after the North Pole, when…." Katara trailed off. Seeing Aang begin to glow and then to manifest as the massive, hundred-foot-tall embodiment of La, the Ocean God—the way he had effortlessly destroyed the Fire Nation navy….She knew Aang, and cared about him, but that had given her serious pause. I'd seen him in the Avatar state before, but that…That was when I really started to realize he was a lot more than just a funny little kid, and that some of what he was was pretty frightening. "Even then," she continued, recalling Iroh's presence with a start. "Zuko kept chasing him even then, after….If that had been me," she said quietly, "I would have decided right that minute that Aang was out of my league, turned in my tracks, and gone running back home as fast as my legs could carry me. But Zuko kept coming."
"Without the Avatar, Zuko could not go home," Iroh murmured.
"Yeah." Katara sighed. After a moment, she said what had been rolling around in her mind since she had heard the story from Iroh about Zuko's Agni Kai and his banishment. Zuko had not told her when she had asked. "I don't want to talk about it," he had said fiercely the first time she had asked, and repeated gentle prodding had only gotten from him a mumbled, "Go and ask Uncle." Even when she had asked him, over three years after the fact, the memory had been so painful for him that he could not bring himself to speak of it.
"His father didn't ever intend for him to find the Avatar, did he?" she said now. "It was just an especially cruel way of saying 'never.'"
"Yes." Iroh nodded, and a strange respect flickered in the old man's golden eyes. "You are perceptive, young Katara. It took Zuko a long time to figure that out. Though he may have realized earlier, and simply not permitted himself to know. I know I tried to get him to see. Several times, I told him his father had set him an impossible task."
"And yet Zuko decided he was going to do it anyway." Katara couldn't suppress a smile. "That's so him," she said with a sigh. "That's basically it, right there. For sheer guts, determination, persistence, courage, heart—I can't think of anyone else I've ever met who even comes close. Maybe Aang," she added on reflection. "But yeah. He'llkeep on going, even though the entire world is against him."
"You have a very high opinion of my nephew." Iroh's eyes sparkled with humor.
Katara raised one brow. "And I haven't even started talking about his sense of honor and duty yet." She smiled. "Or how sweet he can be. He wrote me a haiku once."
"My nephew, writing poetry? That doesn't sound like him."
"Well….he said it wasn't very good. But I loved it anyway."
"I can see." Iroh paused. When he spoke again, he was serious. "You realize," he told her, "that my nephew does not see himself as you do?"
"I know." Katara nodded. "He sees himself as worthless and a failure. Even now." She bit her lip. "Sometimes it scares me," she confessed. "The way he sees himself—it seems like it's just so far off from reality. I try to tell him sometimes, but….It's like, he can't even hear me. It's like he's listening to something else instead…."
"His father." Iroh was grim.
"His father." Katara agreed. "Let me tell you," she added with quiet intensity. "There are days that I wish Ozai was still alive, so that I could get my hands on him and wring his neck for what he did to Zuko." Her jaw set defiantly as she looked at Iroh, daring the old firebender to argue with her. He only nodded thoughtfully.
"I don't blame you. But what he did to Azula was worse."
"What did he do to Azula?"
"He took a talented little girl who wanted nothing more in life than to please her father, and he turned her into a monster. Maybe it's partly my fault for not trying harder to prevent it…." Iroh shook his head. "Never mind. It's over and done with now."
"When we were little," Katara said after a time, "us Water Tribe kids used to scare each other by telling stories about how in the Fire Nation, parents ate their young…."
Iroh chuckled quietly. "Not all of us, Katara. Not all of us." He glanced up at the air hole. "And will you look at that," he said happily. "It looks as if the flurry has died down."
Katara looked upward too at the roof of the igloo. She could see a slice of the sky from her vantage point; the white blank wall of snow was gone and the sky was a pale, translucent blue. "You're right," she said, refastening her parka over her inner tunic. With a push, she straightened from the ground, stretching to work the stiffness out of her joints, then opened one side of the door in the igloo with a bending gesture; the ice slumped into water which Katara pushed out of the way. Outside, the ground glistened white and bright with the freshly fallen snow in the sunshine. "Shall we go back to town?"
"Certainly." Iroh closed his hand, dismissing the flame he had called up; he tried to straighten, and gave a groan. "Can you give me a hand, young Katara? I am not as spry as I used to be."
"Of course." Katara helped haul Iroh to his feet, and supported him as they stepped over the threshold, from the warm interior of the ice shelter, into the crisp, glassy air outside.