Author's Note: This one took a bit longer than expected. I hope you enjoy it! The letter at the top continues the "A Friend In Need" story while the narration continues Piro's account.

As always, please leave reviews, comments, suggestions!

Katara,

I admit, I did not expect to ever receive a letter from you, again. I'd like to apologize, again, for how things ended between us. I realize now that rebuilding the Southern Water Tribe will always be the most important aspect of your life. it was selfish of me to try to take its place. I hope that one day you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

To answer your query, yes, I know of a number of ailments that present themselves with the symptoms you describe. In my experience after the symptoms manifest the decline is rapid and proves fatal, one way or another, in the end. I've found no treatment to slow the process or cure to restore a patient's mental faculties. With that said, if your gut tells you his decline is spiritual in nature, I would follow that to the end.

To aid your work, this packet contains all of old Yugada's research on the Spirit Oasis after Princess Yue's salvation by Tui and La. Her notes indicate a number of avenues to explore. Additionally, you will find a vial of water from the Spirit Oasis. Sadly, the water will not cure any mental decline, but perhaps you will be able to find another use for it.

Hoka

With Aang wrapped in furs for protection and sound asleep, Katara, Sokka, and I discussed options. Any number of villages or cities might have a healer with enough knowledge and skill to remove the arrowhead without hurting Aang further. Any number of villages or cities might also contain Fire Nation spies or saboteurs. I argued that Aang's only real hope lay in finding the last completely independent nation: the Northern Water Tribe. There we would find not only skilled healers, but also a waterbending master for Aang to learn from.

I honestly didn't expect for them to come around to my way of thinking so quickly. I found it a pleasant surprise, like finding one's prized hyacinths survived a sudden cold snap. Kids have so little respect for their elders nowadays, let me tell you. Katara and Sokka, I was certain, would've pushed for the easy fix. Not so. Your father was a great judge of character, even then.

We traveled a day and a night before taking our first real break where I gathered herbs in open meadows, mostly ginger and meadowsweet. The next day we came upon a grove of black willow where, while I cultivated some of its bark, I stumbled upon peppermint. I count myself lucky that nature provided to us in our time of need. You can see where I'm going with this, I'm sure. Though Aang's condition looked hopeful in the beginning, he developed a fever before long.

The journey north ended up being longer than anyone anticipated. Sokka pointed out interesting landmarks or cities along the way. He even spotted an erupting volcano one night to our south. Lava surged from the lip of the cone and bathed the world in a deep amber glow. Fires raged all around and lightening streaked from the ever growing ash cloud. It was beautiful, in its own terrible way. It was very disheartening to all of us, especially Aang, when we later found out a village existed at the volcano's base. In his mind, he should've been there to saved those people. Their deaths, like so many to come, haunted him without mercy.

Katara - hmmm - Katara seemed distant, though I don't think that's the right word. She centered her attention, her entire being even, on Aang. She wiped the sweat from his brow, fed him those times he came to, sung songs while he slept. Katara ate little and slept less in the days after we left Taku. Once, I witnessed her fumble with the knot on her pack and so I offered to help. She merely stared at me with this look of utter confusion and defeat.

Sokka tried to lighten the situation with a joke - something innocent. I thought it was funny. Katara didn't. She unloaded on him, screaming that he was being insensitive. They argued and shouted and through it all Aang slept blissfully unaware. They ended up going to separate ends of Appa: Sokka to the front to guide Appa, Katara to the rear to tend Aang. I quietly took stock from the middle and weighed my options. A sleeping draft may have made it into her water at some point during the third day.

Yeah? And what would you have done in my shoes? Tame the savage, frustrated, starving, and exhausted beast with a song? Maybe tell her to calm down? I'm sure that would've gone just swimmingly. She slept long into the night and only woke as we passed over the glittering shores of the Northern Water Tribe. The glaciers glittered like a sea of diamonds, bathed in the waxing moon high overhead. We soon made camp on a tundra with no visible landmarks as far as the eye could see. It was the flattest, most desolate land I'd ever laid eyes on.

Appa, too, suffered under the burden. His great body trembled with exhaustion and I am sure the paltry fruits and vegetables we had with us did little to slake his rumbling belly. While Sokka and Katara packed snow and ice to make a small shelter, he curled himself around Aang and watched their progress with one eye open. Those two finished with amazing speed. When we went to bring Aang inside we found Appa fast asleep. Poor thing. Did you know that flying bison snore when exhausted? His snores felt like they traveled for miles and miles across the frozen tundra.

Once we had Aang inside the shelter, Katara snuck a glance in my direction then to Sokka. I nodded, catching her meaning, and went inside to tend to your father. A family is like a garden: years of hard work may be undone in a moment of weakness. Left untended, an herb may whither and die unnoticed until you need it the most. Katara needed some time alone with Sokka and your father, well, he was looking more and more like he needed a miracle.

Aang shivered despite the pile of furs and blankets we'd wrapped him in. His skin was cold to the touch and his breaths were short and quick. I slid the blankets from his lower half and inspected the arrow wound. A red streak snaked across his skin from the wound towards his hips: blood poisoning, a disastrous sign. Aang would lose this battle unless we could find help. Of the handful of plants I knew of that might turn the tide, none tolerated the northern latitudes. Even Taku, with its mild climate, is unsuitable for them.

I expressed what I could, rewrapped the wound, and pulled the covers over him again. I think I even said a prayer. Hah! How foolish was that? When, over the last 100 years, had the spirits intervened in the mortal realm?

"Hey," Katara said from the shelter's entrance. Tiny snowflakes, glittering like jewels, danced outside behind her. She looked like she'd been crying. "How is he?" she said with a shaky voice.

I wiped his brow with my palm. Aang whimpered softly in his sleep.

"Would you like to hear the good news or the bad?" I stood up and got out of her way.

"Good."

"He's going to have one hell of a scar to show off to girls."

Katara stifled a laugh and wiped away a tear. She was remembering a happier time, perhaps?

"And the bad?"

"Despite all of my knowledge and experience, your friend is losing this battle. Unless we can find a skilled waterbending healer soon, he is not long for this world. There's more than an errant arrow in his thigh. More than a mere infection. However, I can't suss out what."

Katara knelt down next to Aang and stroked his cheek. "We should leave, now, then. We can find the Northern Water Tribes tonight. I know we can." Poor girl was at her wits' end. "We have to."

"We could, I suppose." I mused. "Appa might be able to fly us around an unfamiliar continent for a while, perhaps a few more hours. Once Appa can go no further, we could hike for perhaps a few hours more. Maybe we could split up to cover more ground. With the little food and water we have left, I'm sure at least one of us has a slim chance to be picked up by a patrol. That is, of course, assuming they patrol the tundra."

Katara looked at me askance. "He's this world's last hope!" she hissed at me. Katara balled her fist until her knuckles turned white and she closed the distance between us, "We can't lose Aang!"

Any other time I might've schooled her on the finer points of heaping all of your hopes and dreams on a single individual along with the realities of reincarnation. She looked like she had more to say, however, and I looked expectantly. I have no idea how long we stared at each other. What a trio we must've looked like. Katara burning with a determined defiance, my own countenance tempered by a lifetime of hardship and pain, and Aang shivering under his pile of blankets on the floor, blissfully unaware.

After what seemed like ages, Katara broke the silence and whispered through gritted teeth, "When I was 8, the Fire Nation came to our village looking for a waterbender: me. I was the Souther Water Tribe's last waterbender. To protect me, my mother lied and said she was the waterbender they sought. They didn't take her prisoner. They didn't interrogate her. They murdered her. Those monsters didn't even leave a body for us to bury! Just… just ash."

She blinked back tears, but they weren't from despair. "Her sacrifice for me, that - that has to mean something! It has to have a purpose and I know Aang is that purpose. I was protected so that I could help him save this world. If that means I have to carry him on my back alone through blizzards or Fire Nation soldiers or anything else stupid enough to get in my way only to reach the Northern Water Tribe with my dying breath, then so be it. If he lives to fight another day, to bring balance back to this world, I will bear any cost! Any burden!" She dismissed me with a quick turn and knelt by Aang. She busied herself getting him ready to travel again.

Yes, your father was a fabulous judge of character. Watching her busily secure Aang with rope and leather reminded me of myself of when I was her age. Determined, fiery, and quite foolish. She was growing on me. I gently placed my hand on her shoulder.

"Don't try to stop me, Piro." Katara warned.

"How can I? I doubt the Fire Lord himself could stop you. Still, fuzzy Appa is in no shape to fly, your brother hasn't slept since long before the sun came up, and you traveling by yourself on the frozen tundra with the world's salvation on your back may not be the best plan."

"And I suppose you have a better one?"

"A more insane one, at the very least," I knelt down beside her and pulled a strap taught. "Many hands make light work."

We traveled East from the shelter under moonlit skies, twinkling stars, and breathtaking ribbons of green and gold that rippled and weaved along the tapestry of the night. The plan, if you could call it that, was for Appa and Sokka to rest up until first light, then come from behind and pick us up. Our only hope, now, was that some patrol or another would find us. We trudged for hours in the bitter cold completely unaware that we were being watched. In fact, we found out later that our every movement had been tracked from the moment Appa first flew over Northern Water Tribe waters.

If only they'd come out to say hello from the start.