The world rocked beneath him as he woke up. The wind and rain pattered on his face, and the ground- no, the curve of the boat, rough cloth over wood, continued to roil around him. Daiki coughed, choked. He spat up sea-water and bile, and rough hands pounded him on the back and kept him down in the boat all at once, yelling "DOWN, STAY DOWN." Daiki stayed down. He felt ill and terrible. All up his side he ached like he had been swimming too long, like he had run into an igloo wall.

Around them the ocean raged like a polar bear dog in full fury. The sharp specks of salt water thrown up pelted the faces of everyone in their boats, many boats tiny in comparison to the wreckage around which they circled warily. The entire village had turned out to try and save the passengers of a ship going down in the waters just out from Kiyoshi Island.

Daiki clung miserably to the side of the boat and coughed and coughed. He wasn't the only one. A woman he didn't know was sitting up and helping a man vomit out over the side of the boat, and the man who had made him stay down was reaching over the side of the boat for someone else, dressed in the blues of the Water Tribes, being propelled up towards him by an unsteady waterspout Their boat hung back from the grim chaos of the wreckage outright, and was larger than the tiny skiffs being propelled by white-faced Waterbenders struggling to control their boats in the face of the wind and rain, of the ocean's fury. They picked out survivors and tried to direct them to the bigger boats hanging, they tried to lever apart the wreckage before it could go under and take everyone they had not yet saved. They didn't have enough Waterbenders, thought Daiki, and those they did have weren't strong enough to contend with all this and more.

They fought the ocean for every person they hauled up onto the boats, and the ocean made them pay. Rain and waves pelted onto Daiki's head in equal measure. The woman had pulled herself to the center of the boat, and her arm around Daiki was an iron bar. Daiki heard a loud noise cutting through the shouts and the wind, a long belling horn. Heads turned all over the boats, and Daiki saw looks of mingled relief and disappointment, weariness cutting lines into their faces visible even through the storm.

"Back to the village," muttered the guy standing over Daiki. The Waterbenders were moving now in tandem, pulling away from the ship and sweeping the boats and the skiffs back to the shore, looking hunted and afraid.

Daiki was afraid. He looked in every direction and it didn't seem like they were going to make it, that the waves would take them down. They weren't- they needed to get to the shore, they weren't going to get back to the shore, none of them would. Other boats with more people were coming into view, and they were also struggling. He couldn't- he closed his eyes, and with every bit of his body felt the sea roil below him, water everywhere, trying to move in one direction as the benders tried pushed them home. It was like fighting the moon for control of the tides. He felt it deep within himself. Push, and pull. Move with the ocean, not against it. Push. Pull. Move-

Screams were muffled in the crash of a massive wave, and the another, and another. The people left on the shore ready to receive the rescuers watched in horror as the waves came on. They fled up the shore as quickly as they could, but some didn't move fast enough, reduced to clawing at the sand and trying to fight the swirling chaos of crashing waves. Some boats came apart entirely in the first giant wave, and the ones which kept their shape vanished into the the water. Only some bobbed up again.

Daiki scrabbled onto the sand choking out seawater. He was seized by a- he couldn't see, he was still gasping water out of his lungs and blinking it out his eyes, but their grip was strong and sure and they handled his limp body with as much ease as one could expect. He was dropped onto grass and soil- solid ground, blessed solid ground- and other strong hands took him up and pulled him further in, away from the water. Maybe Daiki passed out. He wasn't really sure. He could still hear the storm even in his sleep.

When he woke he had been changed into dry clothes, and was lying on a pallet next to others, others he recognized in a vague way from the . He didn't see the woman who had held him on the boat. He didn't see the guy who had been piloting their boat. He started to try to speak and immediately had to vomit again, throwing up into a bucket placed nearby.

A girl came running down the line of people calling to older folks that someone else was awake. She put her hands over his and helped him hold the bucket steady, put her hand on his head when he was done. A man made a face at the bucket and called water from another one further down, pressing it over Daiki's chest with a weak glow. He was exhausted. He had been one of the waterbenders out there circling the ship.

"Are you okay?" said the girl, looking at Daiki right up close and concerned. "Are you? We think you came from the ship."

"His lungs are clear," said the Waterbender. "You'll be alright, kid." He pulled at his face, then said, "More than I can say for a lot of us." Daiki did not think that he and the girl were meant to hear him say that. He could see the bender was shattered with tiredness, though.

"My dad-" said the girl, looking up at the bender as he stood in response to another call.

"They're searching, Satsuki," he said. "You'll be the first person to know, I promise."

Daiki looked at the girl. "Satsuki?" he said. His voice didn't sound right to him. It scratched and hurt, like he had been screaming and not known it.

"Yes," she said, and tried to pat his head again, holding onto him with trembling hands. She was warm. "That's my name. What's yours?"