Daylight Moon
Prologue, Part I
113 AG
The wedding ceremony was set to last a month, and the world was put on hold accordingly.
Dignitaries representing every nation, state, and nation-state, from the Avatar to Huu of the Foggy Swamp, made their way down to the Southern Water Tribe for the occasion. Their Chief, after all, had friends in every pocket of the world. Some she'd met in her earliest days of traveling, before the end of the war; others, in later years––after her quiet split from the Avatar––wandering through the nations, alone with the same old purpose. The war was over, yes. But the work never was. There was always another village to advise, another school to build, another hospital to assist.
And then she'd been called back here. Back home, for another sort of service. Another sort of role. The only kind that inevitably lent itself to this grandiose, public affair of a wedding.
It was nothing like the simple spinning romance that used to play in the back of her mind, a blurred face lifting her veil, snow falling all around. The daydream of a girl.
Bu what a long time it'd been, the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe mused, since she'd had time to daydream.
Katara looked out at the ships beginning to pull, one by one, into the harbor.
The Fire Nation entourage is the last to arrive at the Harbor of Kya, a massive crimson hull of a ship, horns ablast, dozens of fire flags lit up on deck. Katara lifted back the hood of her blue seal cloak, preparing to alight down the fort, bending the snow beneath her feet in one smooth motion.
"What an arrival for the Fire Nation." Nonraq murmured, just behind, his own bending of the snow falling in a crisp, unbroken cadence. His dark, long hair was tied back, save a few strands and the beginnings of a beard flying in the wind. Her fiancé's tone was light.
His tone was always light. The second nephew of Chief Arnook, fourth-in-line (third, after Princess Yue's passing) to the Northern throne since birth, tall and broad-shouldered, yet never hulking, Nonraq moved and spoke with the easy, exclusive grace of those born into royalty. Like Princess Yue. Like Zuko.
Entirely devoid of their softheartedness though. But Katara kept that thought to herself.
After all, had she hesitated for even a second? When he'd presented her with the sparkling necklace––now tied securely around her neck––six months ago at a state dinner in the North, to polite gasps and applause from dignitaries seated around the room. Hakoda and Chief Arnook beaming across from them, everyone feigning surprise (except Sokka, apparently, given the volume of his whooping).
The stone on her betrothal necklace, one of Yue's old friends had whispered to her later, could only be found in a dangerous ice cave to the West of the capital. Three days' journey on foot. (And Nonraq had most certainly sent someone else on the journey, was Katara's immediate impetulant thought.)
But there was no hesitation.
Nonraq was what the Southern Water Tribe needed: a royal son of the North, the smoothest of politicians. A key piece in the many moving coalitions and power plays it had become her duty, since three years ago, to build up and sustain, for the good of her people. And if nothing else, Katara knew duty like the back of her hand. She always had.
She had always had to.
The Southern Chief straightened her shoulders, and glanced back at her fiancé. "You've met the Fire Lord?"
"Not personally, but I've heard plenty from your brother." If not from you, Chief. "I'm very curious to meet Zuko–– Ah–– Fire Lord Zuko." He bowed his head slightly, then looked up. There was a curious glint in his blue eyes.
Katara wondered what he was thinking of. Assuredly, more than he let on. That was how he was. That was how they all were.
It didn't matter. It wasn't because of her that Nonraq, son of the North, wanted to know about the Fire Lord. They weren't even friends, the question of lovers aside. They would never truly be. Such was their world, and such would be their marriage.
The side of Katara's mouth twisted imperceptibly.
The daydream of a girl
And there he was, before she could begin to catch her breath, winded from her snowy descent.
A blurred face
The first time in three years, right across from her. Nothing but a few meters of white ground separating them.
The Fire Lord rose a little taller than she remembered (although he couldn't have grown, he was already 30, she thought dumbly) in his most formal robes, coming down the black ramp, that old aristocratic slope of his nose guiding the face looking around evenly, taking in the new expanse of the Southern Water Tribe, her Water Tribe, nothing like the little village he had attacked all those moons ago.
Slowly, so slowly, her took it all in, and then, turning his chin downwards, looked down at her. Gold eyes meeting blue.
But before she could blink, General Iroh swooped out from behind his nephew and closed the distance between them in a split second, scooping her up in a bear hug so tight she nearly squeaked in surprise. Besides her, Nonraq, who, she recalled suddenly, she'd never hugged before, shifted slightly, and then Iroh was clapping him on the back, introducing himself with a hearty grin, and they were talking and laughing like old friends as they turned back towards the city, and somewhere in there Nonraq had turned to bow and greet Fire Lord Zuko, but she didn't wait to see what he said back because Arra had suddenly appeared by her side––there was a Waterbending Academy emergency, an accident with several students, my lady, I'm sorry but you must come immediately––and Katara was swept away again, before she could read the look she saw, there in his eyes, for the briefest of moments.
Before she could register the thing once again rising in her chest, back like it was new.