"So what's the deal with you guys and Scar-guy anyway?" I ask Katara as we try to start a fire for dinner.
"Zuko?" she replies as she dries out the twigs. I nod. "He's basically been chasing after us for about six months, ever since Sokka and I found Aang in an iceberg in the South Pole. He nearly destroyed my village." The water she had been extracting begins to simmer. "He's followed us throughout the entire world even to places where we were sure would be safe. But somehow, he always found us and tried to capture Aang.
"We managed to evade him, but soon he stopped showing up at every turn. We thought we had finally lost him, but he was replaced by his sister, Azula. She was worse, way worse, than Zuko had ever been. She was a Fire bending master, and she could bend lightning. Azula managed to kill Aang in Ba Sing Se."
"Kill him?" I glanced over at Aang and Sokka, who were running through the temple. "But he's…"
"I managed to revive him with water from the moon spirit's North Pole sanctuary," Katara explains as the water she carefully threw into a bowl now begins to boil. "But at Ba Sing Se, I was captured with him beneath the city. We had a deep conversation, and I thought he had finally turned around." Her eyes flashed. "But when the time came to fight, he sided with his sister. That's when she shot a bolt of lightning at Aang. And to think, I was going to use that spiritual water on his scar!"
The water in the bowl was now slopping over the side. I move to settle the water, but it splashes me, burning my hand.
"Here, let me help," Katara soothes my choice words of pain. The water that burned me soon rises up to Katara's outstretched hands and begins to glow. Before I can protest, she locks her glowing, water-oven-mitted hands around mine in a death grip. The water, instead of being scalding, is cool and before my very eyes, I can see my burns quickly healing back to smooth skin.
"All better?" Katara asks as she goes back to bending water from the fire wood.
I give my head a shake to clear it, still staring in wonder at my hand. "This whole bending thing creeps me out."
"You've never seen a bender before? But they're all over! Earth, Fire and Water, though Aang is the only Air bender…"
"Where I'm from, there are no benders."
"A Fire Nation colony?"
"What the hell is a fire nation?" I scoff. "Back home, there are at least a hundred different elements, not four. And nobody could magically bend it to their will."
Katara brushes her hands and retrieves a fire starter from her bag. It's not so much a fire starter as it is a rock and some weird stone she begins striking together over our measly camp fire. "Well here, bending is all over. The Northern and Southern Water Tribes have Water benders, but I'm the only one from the South Pole."
"North and south poles?" I rub my temples. This is giving me a headache. "Nobody lives there, and isn't the North Pole melting because of global warming or something?"
"I wouldn't say nobody lives at the South Pole, but it's pretty small. The North pole, though…it's huge! I think it's about the size of Ba Sing Se."
"What's Ba Sing Se?"
"It's the capital of the Earth Kingdom. The Earth benders are spread over the whole world. The Fire benders tried to take the capital, but Aang and our group showed up and put a stop to that.
"The Fire Nation is mainly settled in the south western part of the world, and they produce the Fire benders. They're the only ones able to actually produce their element from thin air, but then the rest of us have it everywhere."
"Wait, these guys can just make fire? From nothing?"
"I know, it would come in really handy right about now, but the Fire Nation launched a war against the world one hundred years ago. The Fire Lord wanted to rule over everything. The one who started it, Fire Lord Sozin, completely wiped out the Air Nomads."
I take the rocks from her and try starting the fire myself. "Then how did Aang survive?"
"He was trapped in an iceberg near the south pole for a century. That's where Sokka and I found him. But he's the last Air bender, the only person in the world who can control the air around us. That's why Zuko has been chasing us for so long, because the Avatar was born into the Air Nomads after Avatar Roku died."
"I'm guessing my definition of avatar and yours doesn't match up." I finally manage a spark and set a leaf on fire. I grab a nearby stick and push it closer to the twigs.
Katara laughs. "If you don't have bending where you come from, then I'm sure you've never heard of the Avatar. He's the master of all four of the elements. The cycle goes from Fire to Air to Water to Earth. Those are the nations he's born into when the last Avatar dies."
I blow on the flickering flame and it erupts into a roaring fire. Katara and I stumble back to avoid the heat and are joined by Sokka and Aang. Before long, we have a piping hot dinner of foods I've never heard of, but taste oddly delicious. We all soon feel tired and Aang leads us to rooms left over by the monks who used to live in the temple. Even before my head hits the pillow, I'm out like a light.