QUILLBENDING
A/N: Another snippet I found. After-Avatar drabble, angsty.
Characters: Katara/Pakku
Word Count: 216
Rating: PG
Love Unknown
She claims to wear it in order to honor the memory of her mother, and her mother's mother, who passed on more than five years before. It is a simple thing, though carved with a careful hand into beautiful lines gracefully cut into the delicate ivory. Once white, it had aged into a warm creamy-yellow color, and the old master who had once carved it for the young woman he loved smiles to see it proudly hung around her young throat.
Still, he worries that she uses it to fend off the young men returned to the village and eager for her hand, for she is a war heroine and a formidable water-bending master, as well as being thought beautiful in their eyes. By wearing the traditional betrothal necklace of her grandmother, they believe she is already claimed, and her silence on the issue lets them keep believing it.
"You waste your youth," Master Pakku cautions his young student. "There is more to the world than fighting and healing, young Katara. I worry that you push away all the young men in the village. Your brother has found happiness and married his true love. I fear you will not allow yourself that same contentment. You have never known love…"
She just smiles sadly, and turns away.