This was a fic I wrote for flameohotwife last December and I had only posted it to ao3. So now here it is on ffn. I originally thought of the concept for this as part of the final chapter of Lion Turtle (it's not abandoned! Life just kinda has been making it hard to write for me the past year).
When Katara was young, she learned to make cloudberry tarts.
She learned where the cloudberry bushes grew and when they bore fruit. She learned to find them before the wildlife did. She learned to cook them down with angelica seed and seal the preserves in jars for use through the rest of the year.
The cloudberries were the easy part. It was the sugar and pastry crust that made the tarts special. Flour came from the Earth Kingdom, where vast plains were easily farmed for wheat, and earth benders ground it into flour with minimal effort. Sugar came from the Fire Nation, as it grew readily in the hot and humid climate. But extracting the sugar from the cane involved intense manual labor which drove up the price. Both flour and sugar were imported to Kyoshi Island, which was just about as far south as any other nation was willing to travel. By the time the Southern Water Tribe had the opportunity to buy the ingredients from Kyoshi Island, the price was usually prohibitive, so it was a rare purchase.
During the war, trade stopped entirely. All of the tribe's seafaring vessels were put to use by their warriors. And besides, Kyoshi Island was no longer getting sugar, and they were unwilling to share their infrequent imports of flour anymore. There were very few times that flour and sugar found their way home during Katara's childhood. Once was in the pockets of a fallen soldier's uniform sent home. Otherwise, maybe twice a year, small packages of them were sent home by way of the monthly resupply that the ocean perimeter vessels ran from home to a mid-sea rendezvous with the warriors.
Katara thought it seemed frivolous for a warrior to look for cooking ingredients while their life was on the line. But as she watched her mother mix a mere scoop of cloudberry preserves with a spoonful of sugar in a bowl, she learned that that particular pastry was intended for their neighbor who was expecting her first child soon. The tribe elders kept rations of the coveted ingredients and only ever doled them out when there was a significant event to be celebrated, like an elder living to 70, or a new baby. In good years, every new baby earned their mother a treat. In bad years, only first-borns who made it past 6 months could be celebrated that way. But the fathers of those babies were always thinking of them, trying to send their love home in the form of precious commodities.
Katara paid close attention to the baking lesson after hearing that. She couldn't count on having another chance to learn any time soon.
She learned that the key to a flaky crust was to mix the flour first with salt, and then move away from the hearth to cut in the lard so that it stayed in solid little pieces instead of just melting into the flour. Add ice cold water and mix it until a ball of dough forms, and not a second longer. Roll it out on a cold surface, place the cloudberry filling in the center, and fold the dough over to make a half-moon shape. Then, after sealing the edges with some water and pinches, bake it over a small flame for as long as it took Sokka to recount his afternoon hunting trip, which felt like a very long time.
Though it was not a year later, Katara felt much older when she learned to run at the sight of ash raining down. She learned to store bowls and cups upside-down because she hated the thought that a piece of soot might settle inside one. She learned to cure meat with salt instead of cooking it because she couldn't linger by the stove for too long anymore.
She learned to grieve and to hate.
Without her mother, she was even more determined to be there for her community to celebrate any win they got. She made only three tarts in the years after her mother's death. The first one wasn't very pretty because she was worried about overworking the dough. The second one had a better shape but was overcooked from her reluctance to be near the fire. For the third one she learned to temper her anxieties and made a perfect tart.
She was proud of herself for powering through. Eventually she channeled that discipline toward keeping Sokka in check. And some time after that, her resilience brought Aang into her life. When they left home with him, there was a cloudberry tart in the bag from Gran Gran. Katara gave it to Aang without telling Sokka and without giving Aang any of the context around it.
That was the other thing about cloudberry tarts. Everyone knew how special they were, but they were never given with any fanfare. They were always dropped off by a neighbor on their way out, leaving no opportunity for extended thanks. It was a natural gesture; that's just what neighbors would do. Making a big deal of it might make the recipient feel indebted, and that was antithetical to the spirit of a cloudberry tart.
After the war, Katara wondered if that tradition would carry on the same way. She'd healed the sharp edges of her hatred and fear for the enemy. She'd forgiven her resentments toward her brother, who eventually outgrew his immature attitudes. With trade routes once again in full force and an air bender who would happily expedite any package she asked of him, sugar and flour became common ingredients at her home village. Like so many other habits only learned from a century of war, she guessed that baking cloudberry tarts for neighbors would probably carry on only when people particularly liked the pastry, and with less of the gravity it once held. Perhaps they would be forgotten entirely, the way she eventually lost her taste for salt-cured meats and now liked to store their prettier dishes on an open shelf above the kitchen sink.
She was sort of right. Each time Katara visited her father back home, she would take a jar of cloudberry preserves with her when she left, to have it on hand. As Air Temple Island became developed and settled with acolytes, she would keep up with her neighbors and make tarts for expecting mothers like she grew up seeing her mother do. It felt like keeping a piece of home alive, and it was a relief to do it without the nagging anxiety to enjoy the good times while they lasted. She never told anyone about the meaning behind it, and they simply enjoyed that she was sharing part of her home cuisine with them. It felt good to carry on the practice and the spirit of it. But being the only one who knew about it in her community felt a bit isolating.
She loved Aang dearly, and cherished the opportunity to restore his people with him. She was happy for the war to be over and for her own people to prosper and have access to whatever luxuries they could possibly want. Stepping away from the life she knew growing up should have felt like a relief; no more war, no more suffering.
But still, it felt lonesome.
She visited home often, and tried to have her family stay on the island with them at least once a year. Those visits helped her to feel rooted again. When she became pregnant for the first time, she waited to tell her family until their next visit to Air Temple Island, when she would be just starting to show. Hakoda and Gran Gran were instantly overcome when they saw her; Sokka too became emotional after shaking off his perpetual instinct to tease his sister.
Thanks to that particular visit from her family, with her baby growing inside her, she finally felt ready to make peace with the changes she'd been living through. The lightness was terrifying in a way—muscles she didn't know she'd been straining were loosening up. She found herself flinching in the way that oncoming sleep sometimes feels like falling. But she held onto her loved ones like never before. She still had her family. They were still safe and happy. Hard times were in the past, and she was growing the future inside of her. Those were the things that mattered, and they had new shapes now: a pot of stewed sea prunes in her father's luggage for her, and moon peach fruit pies packed up for their return home.
On the morning that they were to head back home, Katara walked out to the kitchen to see her family with their bags fully packed and Aang ready to fly them home on Appa. They planned to leave early to hopefully get home before sunset, and they'd tried to sneak out to let her sleep. She rubbed her eyes and scolded them for trying to skip goodbye as she hugged them. Sokka bickered with her even as she put her arms around him last, even as he walked out the door. She rolled her eyes at his back and her vision halted on the table.
There sat a plate with a cloudberry tart.
She didn't allow Aang to leave with them. Appa could fly them home and return without him. She needed him to stay, not for her to thank him properly, but for him to keep her tethered. For once, she felt in her heart the peace that he used to tell her about before the war, stories that always seemed so outlandish. Now she could no longer question them, and it was jarring enough to make her question her sanity.
He saw her. He sat her down, held her, hummed to her. As she stared at the tart, he told her about his experience of knowing only warm peace and waking up to frigid war. He recounted the tremendous reassurance he felt of being found by kind people and sent on his way with new family and an obviously special treat. He didn't know anything about it, or if it was really even intended for him, but the sweetness and the fuzzy feeling of receiving it still made him feel closer to his home.
He talked about wondering what she wasn't telling him every time she made a tart for members of their community. And when she told him that she was having her family over to reveal her pregnancy, he sent his own letter to Sokka to ask about the tarts. It seemed to him like the right thing to do. In the days leading up to this moment, he got excited for her to finally taste one too, and to be able to give that to her. She'd had cloudberries fresh and used the preserves in sauces and stews, but never tasted them sweetened and wrapped in a crust.
At this, she laughed and nodded, finally raising the pastry to take a bite. It was flaky, juicy, and sweet in more ways than one. The sugar brought out a new depth of the angelica's delicate, earthy bouquet. It was surprising. It was surreal.
It was the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted.
But the best part was knowing that the spirit of generosity that she grew up with was still going strong, still spreading and following her away from home. While she'd kept to herself about the tarts hoping not to make Aang feel indebted, he'd gone and learned about them anyway because he saw that they mattered to her, and because they mattered to him, too. She looked down at her belly as she chewed and thought about her and Aang teaching their baby, someday. Just like how she learned from her mother. She barely managed to swallow before she burst into sobs.
Aang worried that it hadn't turned out just right. He apologized for using butter in the crust instead of lard, because he'd asked her family to bring some, but they refused to violate his home in that way, even though he insisted it would have been fine for this occasion—and she silenced his insecurities with a teary, sticky kiss.
After that, they found more and more reasons to bake cloudberry tarts together. Always for new babies, but now too for new acolyte recruits, new Republic City council members, pioneers of new bending techniques and non-bending inventions. The novelty of Aang's thoughtfulness never wore off for her, and nothing topped the surge of love she felt any time she came home to him covered in flour and bending a flame to the perfect size for baking. She was fairly certain that her appreciation of one such instance was how they conceived Tenzin.
They taught their children about the tarts, too. Or at least… they did their best. Without the doom of war hanging over their heads, the kids just couldn't keep track of what they learned about them, but that was just fine. Katara was more than happy to show them again when they asked for help one day.
Bumi said he overheard their teacher talking about being pregnant and wanted to give her one. Kya was uncharacteristically invested, too, as she held a fussy toddling Tenzin and shushed him any time he seemed to get near a breakdown. Katara's heart ached with joy watching their little kid fingers shape the dough and pile in the filling. They even encouraged Tenzin to help them pinch together the edges.
Aang got home just in time to help them with the fire. They put it in to bake and spent the next little while keeping Tenzin distracted from his sorrows. The tart was ready to come out when a fit seemed inevitable.
Bumi pulled out the tart and placed it on a plate. He corralled his siblings for the three of them to present the tart to their parents, who looked at each other briefly in confusion as Aang took the plate. When Tenzin's fussing started to grow louder, Kya told him it was ok, they were all done, and invited him to blow the tart cooler for mummy and daddy.
Katara was about to ask what they were celebrating when she immediately got her answer as Tenzin blew off the tart—not with a regular, spittly toddler breath, but the heaving gust of an airbender unfamiliar with his powers. Aang caught the tart before it went flying off the plate behind them and then chased the kids down for hugs before they could run out the door.
Tenzin's meltdown finally ensued in full force because they were supposed to leave, and he couldn't bear breaking another rule on top of their hour of deception. Katara took him and consoled him, and attempted to give him his first spiritual lesson as an airbender.
She explained to him that while traditionally you'd deliver a cloudberry tart to your neighbor and leave, sometimes you could make exceptions. Everyone is connected; babies are part of their parents, airbending is part of Aang, this tradition is part of her. This moment was a gift they all made together and gave to each other. In light of that, mummy and daddy don't feel indebted, because you can't feel indebted to yourself. But you can love and thank yourself, and love and thank your babies, and that's what they wanted to do.
She was going to tell him that the only reason her tribe growing up never stuck around to share the tarts was because of the war—most of the people receiving them didn't have family who were present or capable of making them, so it became a rule that neighbors would do it, and the giving part never came from family. But she didn't say it, because she realized that while she never gave her own mother a tart, her mother gave her every one she'd ever make in her life.
Aang stood up from hugging their two oldest to smush an elated kiss on Tenzin's head, then told him his mother was right. Everyone is connected. And if he needed proof, just look at the yellow-orange color of the cloudberries that grow in the arctic blue tundras where mummy grew up.
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PS cloudberries are real and they really do grow in arctic climates! Angelica is also a real herb that thrives in arctic environments (among others) and it's used for digestive and immunity health.