Part 5 Chapter 7 – I Simply Cannot See Where There is to Get to
In the corridor formed by the protection of the root system holding back the soil, darkness stretching before and behind them, the five treaded a long journey following the light of the firefly. The air was humid and had been warm, but in the process of their walk had gradually become chilly, much like a cave or true basement. While the library's complex was indeed large, he thought they must have long ago walked past its limits, and yet nothing had changed and the root-bound tunnel continued threading in a twisting line through the earth. He provided his standard-colored flame and Azula, two places behind him, her own blue. The repetition as they crawled over laced roots and ducked slipping through organic turns was mesmerizing between the three light sources. By that time Zuko could sense the firefly itself as if it were a small fleck of flame, the same as the true fire of life the dragons had taught, and he was certain that, like the foxes, if it had once been a natural creature it was no longer so but had been enhanced by the spirit magic provided by the owl.
The tunnel remained provisioned widely enough for their passing and never dithered or turned into dead ends. The firefly was leading them safely and truly, but he couldn't imagine where. He'd thought at first it may be an armory, or a tomb of clay soldiers they could take command of, but neither seemed in the style of the owl to keep at hand. Toph, through struggling with her crutches through uneven footing, was happy enough being able to see there. After a time she announced, "There's something ahead." In a minute they came to a widened area bordered in slate stacked as walls. In a circular room they looked up and found the ceiling had opened wide and far above them, like being at the bottom of a deep man-made well. A staircase wrapped around it leading upwards. The top was boarded in wood but seemed constructed to open as a trap-door.
They looked to the firefly. It slowly began floating upwards. Jet hastened to scoop Toph up to carry and they ascended. Azula had gone first, and at the top found a keyhole and clicked the lock open, then pushed the wooden door up. It arced on hinges and toppled open with a dull thump. Brisk air thin and dry raced in, sending a chill down his spine. The firefly raised into the air unperterbed by the swift gusts tearing across and levitated unfaltering while they finished their climb.
Winter's cold bore down on them. They were at high altitude in snow-capped mountains, the sky above dark with night and traced in silver glitter of the Milky Way. With no light pollution it was apparent there could be no major settlement around. The stony ground was traced with frost and piled snow continuously being swept and replaced by the wind, which cut an intolerable bitterness that sapped his strength already and numbed his fingers. The deep well structure formed, at surface level, an old stone fountain which a sapling was growing out of—a yew tree—from the same root system as in the caves and in the cellar of the library. As they were left astonished in the new world they'd arrived to, the firefly descended again. A swirling tendril of root pulled the door closed after its passing.
He moved next to Katara and increased the intensity of his hand-held flame. It was hard to see anything through the snow and overcast. Having been an hour ago in the center of the former desert territory they seemed to have arrived at the other side of the world. Zuko was puzzled as the location didn't look like any place he'd ever been, and he'd been everywhere. No lights shone through the mountains or valleys and the atmosphere brewed thick, shortening his distance of visibility. He shivered involuntarily and clenched his jaw against his teeth chattering. They'd come unprepared for such temperatures and their thin desert clothing was insufficient.
I'll barbecue that owl, Agni help me, I'll make him into rotisserie. He raised the flame higher wishing for a bonfire. It felt like the night he'd taken his ship to the South Pole for the first time, the unfathomably bitter cold that gnawed at his bones with stunning intensity.
The mountain before them, which they were on a lesser peak of, had a strange silhouette unnatural. It looked like a tree with its upper branches lopped off by lightning or storm-wind and came to an abrupt summit with a few too many geometric shapes to be untouched by human hands, but neither could he discern any intact structure there. There were makings for such, but either it was unfinished or collapsed. His heart thudded with sudden realization that he had been there before, though at that time it had looked completely different. This was the Northern Air Temple, though something catastrophic must have occurred as most of the structure was destroyed. When he had come through while still banished and on the hunt for the Avatar, a small group of refugees led by an eccentric mechanic had been dwelling there in the ruins of the airbenders, but the entire temple had been wiped off the mountainside.
Wait. At that time the mechanist had mentioned they were having trouble with natural gas leaks. If the gas reserve had been large enough, could an explosion have caused this? It was only a few years ago. But in that case there's certainly no one living here now. Everything is gone.
Katara whispered, "Zuko, we need shelter. We'll die if we stay out here in this cold." She knew better than anyone the threats of hypothermia and frostbite.
"There might be part of the structure remaining we could shelter in, but what caused it to be destroyed the first time might still be dangerous to us. I don't know if it's safe to go over."
As they were discussing it, Jet gave a shout. He was still holding Toph, as, barefoot, it would be cruel to set her on the snowy ground, but he flicked his chin upwards. A large shape moved there approaching them. It was larger than any bird but, by silhouette, certainly was not a dragon. Six legs dangled above them, weightless in the air, before Appa landed and a bald young man in orange leapt from the reins. "Katara, Zuko!" Aang smiled ear to ear and hugged them in turn. "What are you doing here?"
"Aang?" Katara asked, "What are you doing out here?"
"I felt spiritual energy and came to investigate. The fire was easy to spot from the air." He had turned and seen Toph, her leg in a heavy cast, and his expression fell. He briefly greeted the other three and then said, "I'll take you inside. It's freezing out here." Appa was still saddled and they were conducted up with a gentle lift from airbending to catch a ride with him. They flew a brief stint to the ruins of the main structure. Much was blackened and toppled, but new construction efforts stood out obvious from their lack of char and damage. From the appearance they'd been made with earthbending and formed entirely of the present stone remains in the area, but the new structure was small in scale, the size of a generous cottage, though other failed attempts were scattered across the area.
Inside was blissfully warm and Aang had a hearth going to take the chill off. A special sliding barn door admitted Appa to a connected stable, where he nestled in hay enjoying residual warmth. The main living space had furnishings recovered from the ruined temple, including a table of wood splintered and weathered, a bookshelf, and a wooden trunk. Momo's soft shape was curled in sleep in a purpose-made bed for him, resembling a small crate packed with linen scraps for warmth, and he did not rise even as the group settled in. Appa as well was lethargic with the late hour. Aang pulled a kettle and began preparing tea for them at the hearth, saying, "I wish I had known you were coming. I only have one bed here, and it doesn't look like you have any supplies with you. How did you get here?"
Katara set Toph's crutches down next to her seat on a floor-cushion, then replied, "It's a long story, but for now let's call it spirit magic."
He sat down with them, the blue arrow at his forehead vibrant in the warm light of the shelter. "We have some time before the tea is brewed. It seems like I've missed a lot." With the kettle put on, he fished around for blankets and any spare clothing he could gather and passed them around. Most of the garments were in airbender colors, warm tones ironically reminiscent of fire and bright compared to the stone-bare, lofty peaks they had inhabited. Zuko shrugged on a large tunic with lopsided stitching, but which at least was in heavy linen, imagining it had been a failed attempt by Aang to make his own garments. After all, no storefront anymore sold such garments. The color splotched unevenly from home-dye by unmastered hands.
As she recounted the story for them, Zuko went to greet Appa, who nosed at him affectionately. He still had some extent of scarring and patches where the fur would not regrow, but seemed healthy otherwise. "Do you remember me?" The fondness in the brown eyes was answer enough.
Fragrance of pineneedle tea filled the space as the cups were poured out. Aang resettled, then began his own explanation. "Since I parted ways with you after we'd returned Song and Teo home and you two to the Fire Nation, I'd come back here to try to rebuild. I remember what the temple looked like, but rebuilding from memory hasn't been so easy. I tried drafting plans but they look like a child's drawings, not schematics, and haven't been useful. I was using earthbending but it isn't enough. There have been times I've made pillars or arches only for them to collapse again. The initial forms were precisely engineered, but I don't know how to recreate it. And I never realized, but the mountain itself is very much in motion and not inert rock. Small earthquakes barely enough to perceive can topple my structures or run cracks through their foundations. A mountain summit is inherently unstable ground. It's ironic, but to build an airtemple I think you need to be a master earthbender. I'm just not there yet."
"Have you been alone up here all this time?"
"Yeah, for about a year. I guess I don't have much to show for it." He paused to sip the tea then looked over to Azula. They regarded eachother wordlessly. It was hard to tell exactly what Aang felt about her, the woman who once deceived him and had him drugged and abducted into the hands of his enemies. While he didn't seem the type to hold a grudge, he wouldn't blame him for still being wary and a little bit resentful. Azula kept her face blank in the style politicians of their country used to hide their true intentions during negotiations. As she worked for the Earth King now, Aang wasn't her enemy, but there were likely bitter feelings as he'd been the fish to escape her hook and led to her downfall.
Aang had refrained from fussing over Toph's injury, but he glanced at her too many times with a look of concern for even her to miss, and she grew increasingly irate and began rapping her fingers on the table with a frown. She'd specifically asked them to not involve Aang but they'd encountered each other anyway through the enigmatic machinations of the spirits. Zuko and Katara had left out any explanation for why she was there with them to begin with, an obvious hole in the story which Aang had certainly noticed but politely declined to comment on, but that only left it unstated for the time being.
As Aang was telling them tales from when the temple had been populated, during his childhood but a century ago for the rest of the world, Toph huffed and shifted miserably. Finally, her patience at its limits, she shouted, "We didn't come here for a history lesson! To stop the merchants we need to find an army and take them back with us through that tunnel." Everyone paused and averted their eyes. She was upset to the verge of tears, and it expressed as unreasonable anger at Aang, who was only patient and polite in return. This was intolerable to her, and she continued berating him, "While you've been up here playing house and knitting sweaters I was busy trying to put a stop to those bastards, and you're just sitting around in a little paradise of your own like a recluse. Some Avatar you are! You haven't done a thing for anyone. You haven't helped us." Her voice broke and she wiped roughly at her cheeks sniffling, her nose red from cold and emotion alike. "So I don't want to hear about your stupid air nomad stories and your temples and meditation sessions. I want to go back there and finish what I started, and I don't have time for this."
He waited patiently for her to calm down, his expression soft, and she swore and shifted her cast leg with a painful expression. They hadn't brought her medication and it was likely her pain was returning without the solution of the flower to dull it, and it was doubtful that Aang had any medical supplies of use. When she was quiet, he replied, "I'm not an army, but I might be able to help."
"I don't want your help," she retorted. "I want real soldiers, not someone content to sit around all alone digging at ruins."
Unoffended, he stood to fetch an item from the bed and then returned to the table. "Well, I haven't just been doing nothing. Here." He lifted the item to his lips—a polished wooden flute—and a note rang melodic and crisp. She paused in her rant and listened as he continued through a melody, intricate and difficult in execution but conducted flawlessly. Momo shifted and resettled with an accompanying trill that faded to resumed slumber. Aang's fingers shifted over the holes to guide each note with easy mastery, like he'd practiced that song a thousand times. Toph's expression was surprise, and it was obvious she recognized whatever was being played. She held her hands in her lap and closed her eyes, listening intently with her eyebrows knitted, until he finished. The last notes played out pure and lingering, then the silence of the dwelling after felt desolate by contrast.
He waited for her judgement. She said softly, "That's the song I mentioned to you."
Aang smiled. "I learned it for you."
She'd stopped crying. Instead, she said, "I'm tired," without any of her prior bitterness.
"You can have my bed. In the morning we can figure out a solution, okay?"
He went around to help her up and guided her to the narrow cot. Finished their tea, the rest of them settled where they could find. The fireplace continued burning through the night with the brightness of pinesap and mountain grass, casting a gentle flicker through the warm interior. Aang, content himself to sleep sitting up, leaned against the wall by the hearth, toying with the flute as if nostalgic while the others fell asleep.
#
Katara awoke with Zuko still at her side, though it was mid-morning and he must have been up several hours. His eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling in thought. She shifted and he looked over and said, "Good morning."
"You could have gotten up."
"It's cold out. I would rather be here with you," he whispered. They were settled with hay softening the ground and a blanket above it, tight beside each other sharing another. Appa was gone, as were Azula, Aang, and Toph. Momo, though, was curled on Jet's belly asleep. He was sound asleep in his own makeshift bed and looked peaceful for once without the depressive shroud the alcohol brought. "Aang left breakfast for us. Just rice and pickled vegetables. He mentioned there are rivers in the valley we could fish in later."
She was concerned for his health. If he'd been up there a year in isolation with no community around, she wondered what he had been eating, especially after frostfall when agriculture was finished for the season. They moved together taking the entire blanket with them to the table where the ricepot was covered and wrapped in fabric to retain warmth. Zuko heated leftover tea for them and they breakfasted quietly with Jet's soft breathing in the background. He must be tired. Maybe the mountain's cold air helped his insomnia.
Finished their meal, they tried to rouse energy to confront the cold outside. She ran her fingers through her hair—they'd left all their luggage behind and she didn't even have a hairbrush, and Aang certainly didn't—with the blanket over her shoulders. Zuko finished tying on what clothing he could find and they slipped out the door quickly, trying to keep the heat in. She pulled the blanket around herself and shivered. "It feels like home." When she said that word anymore she had a double vision of Caldera City and the South Pole.
He breathed deeply and exhaled, warming himself with his internal fire. She envied him then—such a technique would have meant the difference of life and death in the South Pole. The sky was crisp-blue and air light from altitude. They'd been the previous day at sealevel in the oasis city Shambhala and the adjustment was difficult for anyone to transition so rapidly. Zuko said, "Don't exert yourself too much. It's easier to get lightheaded up here."
She huffed and went to look around. Toppled columns of new stone crossed the blackened rubble of old. Aang had not exaggerated his efforts—the temple's campus was littered in his attempts both to clean-up and to reconstruct. Traces of strange machinery were scattered and she knelt to pick up a screw of corroded metal. He continued, "You should have seen it before it was destroyed. The machinist's group had pierced the temple through with experimental machinery—Aang would have had an anneurism if he'd seen the extent. They'd all but destroyed the temple as the air nomads had left it."
"They were up here by themselves coming up with all that? What was the purpose?"
He kicked at the snow settled between stones. "They were making weapons for my father. I don't have the heart to tell Aang, but he might have found out by now if anything had been left of the equipment. The remains of the temples are all he has left, so I didn't want to ruin their memory for him. In a way, it's good this place was destroyed. By the time the explosions went off there wasn't any unadulterated section of the temple remaining. Well, except for that well. It was so far from the central part it must have fallen outside their plans, especially as it appears to be dry."
"Did Teo know?"
"When this happened, he must have only been fifteen or sixteen. His father might have kept him in the dark. Regardless, it doesn't make a difference now. I'm sure you've figured out why the owl sent us here."
"Aang—the Avatar. He's the 'army' we need. Unfortunately that means we need to explain what's been going on."
"He's not a child anymore."
"He was a child when I found him." She shrugged the blanket tighter and kept exploring, wondering where they and Appa had gone. "Do you think he's eating enough?"
"Well, he seems to be growing tall enough, so probably. The real question is what is Toph doing to him right now."
The mountaintops were uniform snow in the depth of winter, but the valleys were lofted in pine. Any wildlife in the area would have descended for the season and, at the height of the temple, nothing stirred at all. She paced through collapse and partially-intact halls, interiors missing a roof's shelter and covered in snow blowing against doorways cluttered by rubble. At one end of the mountaintop a deep crevice with crumbling edges cleaved the mountain apart. Zuko put a hand on her shoulder and held her back. "This is the origin of the explosion. If I were to light a fire here, the gas deposit would ignite. I hope my sister isn't off holding a practice drill. If she died right after sucking up that oasis water I would curse her grave."
They continued touring the area until noon when they heard the sound of wood being chopped. Thinking it must have been Aang returned, they went to look but instead found Azula hefting an axe to split logs for the hearthfire. She paused and wiped sweat from her brow upon seeing them. "Are you going to stare at me all day? Come do this. I've already split most of it." She shoved the axe-handle towards Zuko.
With a frown he grabbed it from her and went to the pile to pull the next to split. "Why are you out here doing this? What have you been up to?"
"I happen to enjoy warm food and thought it prudent," she quipped. She sat nearby and placed a hand on her leg. The tremble previously there was gone and she looked to Katara before averting her eyes. "If I have to eat this peasant-gruel at least it might be served hot."
He slammed the axe-head down, cleaving the wood apart to split logs, then lined up the next piece and anchored the axe on top. "You've never seen Aang in the Avatar State, have you?"
"Of course not."
He replied, "You wouldn't be speaking about him like that if you had. Our mission is finished. He's all the army we need." The blade-head slammed down with a deafening crack, then he tossed the resulting pieces aside to the finished pile. "As soon as we're finished with these merchants you'll be out of my hair and back licking at the Earth King's slippers."
She narrowed her eyes and watched him work, not replying and sore from the insult. While he finished the logs, Katara took a seat next to Azula close enough that their legs touched. She bristled. Katara leaned over and whispered, "The water healed more than the recent injuries, didn't it?"
Cautious, she nodded, then self-consciously touched her leg. Katara had sensed it while working on her, but she had old injuries and atrophy from the duration in prison. If she'd had any injury at all after her fight with Jet, she wouldn't have received treatment for it from the Earth military, who were of the mind that she was to be executed before long anyway. Locked into a limiting position for so long and fed on the poorest quality rations, it was no wonder she'd had lingering effects. While the muscle tone being restored was her own responsibility, the oasis water had given her a clean base to work with again. Katara moved away satisfied that she'd repaid the earlier favor. If we fight again, she'll be closer to her old form and more effective now. Zuko might not have realized how bad it was.
The two helped him carry the finished logs to the storage hutch nearby the cottage. Jet was still asleep even after the wood had been loudly dumped in. They entered the shelter and Katara sat at the table while Zuko said he would make tea. No sooner had he set the kettle on than did Azula shove him aside, saying, "I'll make the tea. You always manage to make it taste putrid." Her brother cursed and thumped down beside Katara. Momo, having enough of borrowing bodyheat from Jet, stretched and flew the jaunt over to greet them while the latter still lied asleep. "Keep your voice down, Zuzu," she whispered. "He's much more pleasant like this."
"Do you know where Aang and Toph are?"
"I'm not their keeper." She huffed and began measuring dried tea, weighing it thoughtfully in her palm and examining it by firelight. "The tunnel might be able to take us elsewhere. We could gather a few more allies before the battle."
"No," replied Zuko firmly. "Aang is enough." He brushed Momo's tail from his face and took Katara's hand in his own as they sat on the floor cushions. "If Toph lets us take him back, that is."
Katara said, "She will," and smiled knowingly. "There are stories about wild beasts only able to be tamed with music." Azula scoffed as she began pouring the heated water—heated abnormally fast and doubtless aided with her own bending—into the pot. It was in a strange style and seemed hand-made by a novice, likely by Aang trying to recreate some Air style only he any longer remembered. Katara said, "He never told us, but he must be terribly lonely."
Azula sat down waiting with her own cup pulled in front of her for the tea to brew. "He could hire as many attendants as he wishes. Anyone would give money for the world's hope on two legs."
"It's not the same. They were his family, the nomads. Now all he has to remember them by are ruins."
She didn't seem impressed but neither did she mock the sentiment. By the end of the teapot a loud something landed just outside and the sliding door was opened to admit the air bison. Appa, heedless of Jet's slumber, loudly greeted them. Snorting and startled, Jet sat up like he was ready to fight, his fists in front of him, then cursed and grumbled before flopping back down. Aang waited as Toph tip-tapped her way inside on crutches and shut the door behind them, cutting off the frigid draft. Katara, of course, wanted an update, but neither volunteered anything and she held her tongue. Zuko reported that they'd chopped firewood.
Aang sat down with them, the flute in his lap. "Thanks. So will we be heading back to the oasis tomorrow?"
"You're coming?" Zuko asked in surprise, then glanced at Toph, who was seated miserably with her leg stiffly cast.
"Yes, but I don't think Appa can join us. He isn't a fan of the underground and the tunnels sound too small for him." The bison in question gave a grunt of recognition for his name in the background as he nestled into his hay. "Sorry, buddy. It'll be too slow to fly back. Momo can come, though; I'll leave him in the library with Wan Shi Tong. It sounds like we can get some fresh fruit for him there."
"It'll be dangerous," Katara warned.
"I know. But I'm the Avatar and this is my duty. You can borrow Appa to go down to the valley river in a bit. After he gets warmed up he'll be good to go, and you can get yourselves fish for dinner. Even if the surface is frozen at the edges, the fish are still there in deeper water. Early afternoon is when they'll be most active, right Katara?"
"Yes, and that's a good idea. One thing the oasis doesn't have is fish. Zuko, want to come with me?"
"Of course."
#
She was weightless with a gentle breeze embracing her. In the moment between leaving the saddle and touching down on solid ground again, wrapped in nothing but empty air, Toph truly felt blind and helpless for the first time in her life. That was what she hated about Aang most—his airbending, what he called freedom, was her deprivation. He didn't understand how she felt and was only cheery and considerate as usual. She set the crutches into position as he lowered her to the earth. Barefoot, the snow felt like fire on her soles and she wondered at how something could be so cold it burned.
"Are you okay like that? I have some socks you can borrow."
She waved him off. "I won't get frostbite that quickly. Remember, I'm used to going barefoot, unlike you tender-foots." Satisfied that she could rebuke him for something, she left that thread be and moved on to extending her senses into the world around her. She could feel, tapping to send out vibrations with her crutch, the extent of his attempts to recreate the temple and surveyed it with her eyes closed, forming a mental map. It was possible to discern the old stone from the new he'd cobbled together—the old had been dense and solid, carved truly, while his had been recreated from bending together the scraps. Without taking the time to reduce internal imperfections in the material, it was no wonder nothing he put together remained standing larger than the cottage. She heard the crumple of paper. "I can't see those damned schematics anyway. Draw it there," she gestured with a crutch to the ground. "Earthbend a miniature."
He set the paper down and drew nearer, then crouched at the ground. She could feel his hesitation. "I don't know how."
"That's your problem. The paper is two dimensional, but earth isn't. If you can't make a miniature you can't hope to make the real thing. Perfect your form there before trying the larger scale."
He fumbled at it like a child making sandcastles. With slop misshapen he tinkered and frittered for several minutes trying to make it right, then paused at a loss. "It looked something like that."
She frowned. "You're living in the past, but what you're building has to be in the present. Stop worrying about what they had down and focus your intention on the here and now, because what the earth has to hold up isn't your memories, it's the stone in your hand."
"But I wanted it to look like it had been."
"Well, it can't. It's gone. Listen, it isn't like I'm completely ignorant of paintings. My parents had a bunch and went to art shows, and they talked incessantly of the practice. When a new painter is learning he does studies of the old masters, but nothing he does can ever be a perfect recreation. The paint under his brush has his soul in it, not the other's. The paint can never be the same as the old master's. If he's worried about getting it exactly like someone else made a long time ago, he won't be focusing on the present—it's as good as painting blind. You need to face reality."
He stood up. She thought he might cry, but he was still. "That makes sense." She waited for him to continue—he always paused too long and she found it insufferable. He even spoke like airbending. "That's wiser than it sounds. I was focused on what was in my mind, not what was in my hands, and didn't see the flaws and imbalances I was creating. That gives me a lot to work with. When I come back I can try again."
"It would be better for you to leave off on this, you know. You should go to a city and be around other human beings for a while. You're turning into a weird hermit. If you had hair it would be turning grey." Aang laughed. She continued, "You could come to Gao Ling for a while." He didn't laugh at that. Her voice had softened too much. She narrowed her eyes and turned her face away. "You're too damned skinny. You'll wither to bones up here."
Leaning on his staff he resembled her own form leaning on the wooden crutches. She'd always liked the sensation of wood on earth—it was something she couldn't see as well but had its own harmony, a crisp sound rich in potential. "Yeah. It might be better to leave off for the winter and go somewhere warmer. If you're inviting me, that is."
Her face felt hot. "I am. I guess after my father is imprisoned, he won't be able to ban me from coming home." It had killed her to explain, but he listened without remark the entire time and the warmth of the bison below them had kept her continuing through the burden of the revelation as passive encouragement. The story felt like the weight of the world to her but had only taken the passage over to convey.
He lifted off from leaning on the staff momentarily as if making to get up to walk over, then stopped himself and slumped again. "I'd like to see you more."
Toph tried to ignore both his emotions, pulsing through his heart and legs into the earth, and her own. "Fine. Slug those merchants one for me."
"It's a deal."
He was an element she didn't fully understand. Desperate to change the subject, she flopped down and tucked her feet up off the ground onto the tail of her jacket. "Play something. You'd better not only know one song."
"I know a few, actually. Maybe the library will have more sheet-music to learn from." Aang settled across from her while Appa grazed a distance off nosing half-dead wintertime shrubs as good as barren. He pulled the flute from his jacket and inhaled deeply.
Toph thought that music, too, was just another kind of airbending in the end, but that kind she loved.
#
Katara slid down the side of the bison to land gingerly on the frosted ground. The valley might have been comparatively warmer than the mountaintop, but snow covered the ground there as well. The clustered evergreen canopy darkened the area—in a way, it felt colder there in the perpetually shaded forest than it ever had in her homeland of sun-drenched tundra. Zuko shrugged his borrowed clothing to adjust it, as he and Aang weren't the same size and the fit was poor, and he breathed deeply as he did when adjusting his internal fire to supplement bodyheat. She wished for a fur-lined parka as she took his bare hand in hers and began walking towards the river. Appa's attention had already shifted to grazing and she felt the weight in her pocket of the agate bison whistle Aang had lent her—the same she'd found at the seafloor when diving with Suki. If he did wander off, they at least wouldn't become separated.
Zuko glanced around as if looking for something. When questioned he responded, "Something to make a fishing pole with." She smirked and shook her head.
The river glistened white, edged heavily in frosted banks with the compacted flow as fierce as ever beneath a thin layer of ice. She knelt and looked through the dissipating steam of her breath to the crystalline blue depths. "The fish won't be big, but they're here. Do you have the canvas sack?"
He nodded and stood back to watch her work. When water froze into ice it always took on a crystalline pattern internally, something she could sense in a general way, maybe similar to how Toph thought about veins of various minerals intermixed in stone. The ice itself held a story for her, retaining patterns that were tell-tale of the wind and temperature conditions that had formed it. In the center of the river the ice was thin and clear, more fragile than glass, and fell away in sheets as she opened an area to work in. The river tumbled matching the shape of its boundaries, bumping across stones, twirling where a wide bank narrowed to restriction, dragging through rivergrass, and, as she focused, slipped around the elongated form of the fish.
Minnows. She felt along further, trying to find a better location where the larger fish would be, the deepest part. She left the first excavation and wandered downstream with Zuko following. The ice muted the flow but also altered its pitch. When they'd been kids, she and Sokka would slide rocks across the frozen bay listening as a wavering echo resounded in otherworldly tones like a foreigner's music or the orchestra of the spirits. Water was anything but monotone. At her finest senses she could feel the difference between sea and freshwater, or a lake heavy in organic matter versus a spring rich in minerals, the water at the surface's lightness versus the suffocating pressure of the depths, and ice had even more variety.
She turned to Zuko who had steam trailing from his nostrils giving away his attempts to warm himself. He blushed like she'd caught him in the act and tried to act aloof, like the cold didn't bother him. She asked, "Are there different kinds of fire?"
"Different kinds?" He paused to think. "Intensities would be the better word, though you can alter fire depending on what material is being burned. There are artists who create different colors of fire by adding different mineral powders to the fuel. What Azula does is different, though. And then there's the flame of the dragons, which is purer and more vibrant."
"Do they feel different to you? Like, different textures or weights?"
"No. The color doesn't make a difference other than visually, though lightning is another matter. The difference is in the intensity of the heat. Why?"
"The snow here is soft. It feels gentle. The snow in the South Pole comes from storms—it doesn't fall gently but blows in as blizzard from the seawinds. There it always felt cutting, and it seemed like a trace of the ocean salt stayed in it. The way it solidified from partial thaw and refreeze was almost like a fine crust and it kept the scent of the ocean. The snow here is purified by the pine. It's light and soft, like it fell and settled without difficulty."
He touched her arm and pulled her back to him, with his higher-than-normal bodyheat enveloping her as they embraced. "Feeling nostalgic from the snow? We should visit the South Pole this summer. I know you worry about your grandmother. After this, you deserve to see your family again and have a break."
She nuzzled her head against his cheek. "That would be nice."
Insulated from sound by the snow and forest, they could forget that anyone was watching from the ruined temple or the implicit violence that waited for them at the other side of the yew root-system. There were pine needles scattered through the snow in the deepest level where they had mixed as they'd fallen simultaneously. Winter came early to those parts and drew long and slow. They moved beside a tree sheltered from sight and wind. His lips pressed to hers. The forest's silence was unpenetrated by any distraction, protecting them as a loosened shirt's draft was replaced by the warmth of a palm and she placed his hips under hers. They grew warm together with the rhythmic motions and the cold was a refreshing contrast instead of a difficulty. The snow under their bodies retained their impression as she dusted remaining powder from her knees.
She found the deep river and sheared back the ice with a pull from her bending. With slow intentional form she felt in the water for the hint of their forms. At the bottom with their motion slowed to near-hibernation by the cold water, a cluster of fish were sheltering in rivergrass. So gently that they wouldn't know the difference between her bending and the current of the river, she coaxed their forms out suspended in water. Lifted to the sky they glistened silver. As the excess water was siphoned back to the current's flow they were isolated and lowered to the sack he held open. Only when the last of the water left them did they begin to thrash.
"Much better than rice and vegetables," approved Zuko.
"Put snow in the sack with them," she instructed, and scooped up handfuls the way her brother had taught her. "It will calm them." Packed in, their protests were dulled.
In the shortened span of daylight at such a northern latitude they budgeted enough time for cooking and expended the rest there together breathing the deep cold of the forest, ignoring their duties a short while. Without gloves they held hands, his body temperature bending-warmed and irresistable.