Hi to you all.
Hope you enjoy this latest extension to the prologue.
The rest of the prologue has been drafted out, and should be up in about two weeks to two months, depending on how fast I can get through the final revisions.
Prologue 6: Fading Hopes
The little pep talk that Tavaki had given Katara had boosted her morale for nearly a week.
The next day, the young child found herself just that little bit more alert, with a slightly more heightened focus. She listened intently to her mentors' morning lessons, putting in even more effort to engage with and digest the verbal tutoring that the adults were putting forth.
And even still, she doubled her vigour when it came to physical practice.
After the guards had given them their bread and water rations for the morning, the elders decided that today would be a training day.
While most of the other adults did their own exercises and katas, Katara was once more tutored by Sinaya and Tavaki.
The child observed the two adults as their arms flowed perfectly in tandem with one another, the movements of both individuals matching those of their partner's right down to the rhythm. After completing a basic kata, both adults turned their gazes upon Katara as she proceeded to attempt the kata herself.
To their immense pride and happiness, the young girl got it exactly right.
"You did it!" murmured Sinaya with great joy.
"Well done, little one," whispered Tavaki, "When we get out of here, you'll be able to waterbend freely and effectively. You have shown great potential and promise even whilst only being able to execute your katas in a restricted space. Just imagine what you'll be able to do when we're free."
Katara couldn't help giggling with ecstasy. A bright, cheerful, and genuine smile formed itself upon her face. It was moments like these that made the continual enduring of the prison's harsh living conditions bearable for her.
At the end of the sixth day, however, yet another nightmare would snap her back to anguish and despair.
Another full moon had recently come and gone, and the prisoners were all in the midst of recovering from another three days' worth of severely reduced water intake. The oldest and weakest amongst the prisoners suffered from spells of delirium and hallucinations.
Even Katara, the youngest of the prisoners and the one with the most energy borne by her youth, found herself slipping in and out of consciousness, with visions of places and people from her memories fading in and out of her sight from time to time.
Her mind's loosening grasp on reality could sometimes be fixed by thumping the open palm of her hand against her head. But at other times, she'd have to resort to carefully knocking her head against the bars of her cage to fully regain a sense of clarity and coherence.
She wouldn't hit her head too hard. Just hard enough to focus her mind away on a different kind of pain, one that was not caused by a desperate lack of water.
Most of the elders were currently passed out as of now. Some of the younger adults were too. The rest of the younger adults either lay or sat very still in their cages, doing nothing and thinking about nothing except for focusing their efforts and energy on taking their next breath.
It was then that pain blossomed in her cranium. She bit back a scream, whimpering pathetically. She knew that it was just her body complaining, protesting against the constant dehydration it was subjected to. Any ill effects were simply to be expected, natural causes brought upon her body by the unending trauma.
That didn't make it any easier to accept the consequences, though.
Her lower limbs ached most of the time. Her lips were chapped and painful. Her head throbbed and spun. Her mouth felt sticky and dry. Her throat was parched, gratingly raw from the complete and total lack of moisture.
And why does her chest hurt so much?
Before the Fire Nation ruined everything, she never thought that there could be this much pain anywhere in the world.
It's not like she didn't have mental and emotional pain to deal with, either…
She did her best to keep her hopes up, but sometimes, she just wanted to forget.
Forget where she came from, what freedom was like, what home was like, and the faces of her friends and family.
Because in spite of her deep desire, her fantasy to go back, she was not blind to the fact that not all stories ended happily, especially in wartime.
It was during times like these that she cursed herself.
Cursed herself for being a waterbender, a danger to her tribe. Her home. Her family.
Why did the Spirits bestow this ability upon her? Upon any of them?
It hadn't done any good for her brethren in the years before she had been born.
It wasn't doing any good for any of them now.
There would have been far less suffering for them and their loved ones if they had all just been born as nonbenders.
Why, oh why, did fate see it fit to rip them away from their homes and families?
Why had Tui abandoned them?
She whacked her head several times with her hand again.
Sometimes, the dehydration-induced headaches were just unbearable.
Lying down on the floor of her cage, Katara buried her face in her hands, and fought back the primal urge to scream in despair.
This prison was a grim, forsaken place of horrors untold.
The horrors of this place would only be known to the prisoners — the unfortunate victims who were unlucky enough to be caught in the first place — and the soldiers and guards who kept watch over them, and tortured them.
Nobody else would know.
Nobody else who cared would ever know.
Katara just wanted to go home. To be carried and embraced in her father's arms. To feel Gran-Gran's lips nuzzling against her cheek. To hug her older brother and play with him in the snow.
Was it too much to ask to have any of those desires fulfilled?
Even just one?
An indescribable ache bloomed in her heart when she realized that the answer to that was yes.
Tearlessly, wordlessly, internally, she cried, her soul howling and screaming in anguish.
She wouldn't find a sliver of solace until the night grew late and stole her into its dark embrace, whisking her away to an unearthly abyss where memory met fantasy — for better, or for worse.
The first thing that she's aware of is laughter.
Someone's laughter fills the air.
As she feels her legs racing underneath her, and sees flashes of friendly faces filled with warmth, love, and mirth, she remembers this very day. This very moment.
The laughter that she hears is her own.
Her brother is chasing her, trying to land a hit on her with a snowball — to no avail.
There's a mound of snow the perfect size for a little girl to hide behind.
She takes her chance, diving into cover just as another snowball whizzes by overhead.
Her brother is taking cover in a little makeshift fort of his own creation.
She forms her own snowball and waits for just the right moment, firing only when her brother peeks his head up to see, and managing to nail him in the face.
He tumbles backwards comically and she giggles in triumphant glee.
Her brother, splayed out on his back, with his face covered in snow, is a hilariously undignified sight to see.
She wishes that the rest of their friends were here to see this.
But their friends have been getting more chores to do around the tribe as of late. It's only because Katara and Sokka are the youngest that they're still able to have lots of free time to play around in the snow.
But, Katara finds, she doesn't care all too much.
She has her older brother all to herself, and they're having fun together.
Then all of a sudden, black snow is falling from the sky, and she isn't laughing anymore.
Mom!
She rushes past her brother, who's still lying flat on his back. She doesn't stop to help him up, even as he calls out to her, worry and concern in his voice, nor does she stop to tell him what her intentions are.
There isn't time.
But maybe, if she runs faster, if she moves quicker through the village, she can get to her mother sooner this time, and she won't have to die.
She reaches the igloo soon enough, but she finds that the monster is already there. Her mother is down on her knees on the icy ground.
She's too late.
"Mom!" she cries out in anguish.
Her mother's blue eyes widen in fear when she spots her daughter. The woman turns to the Fire Nation soldier.
"Just let her go, and I'll give you the information you want!" her mother says sharply, her voice filled with desperation.
The monster turns to regard her, levelling his eyes on her.
Those eyes…
Those horrible, amber eyes full of vicious cruelty, and burning contempt.
A fresh wave of terror washes over her and she nearly decides to run right then and there.
"You heard your mother. Get out of here!" the monster snarls at her.
But she doesn't.
Instead, she stands her ground.
"No! She's not the waterbender! I am!" she declares, defiant and brazen. Brave, yet so very, very foolish.
"Katara, what have you done?!" her mother shouts in anguish.
Hearing her mother's tone, desperate and accusing, stings Katara far more than any icy breeze ever could.
Why was her mother so upset at her for telling the truth? Why was she so distressed at her daughter for trying to save her life?
Couldn't she see that her child was trying to protect her?
Couldn't she see that Katara didn't want her to die?
There is no time to ponder these questions, as the monster's eyes flash dangerously, and now — only now — does she listen to the overwhelming instinct inside her mind screaming at her to run.
Run!
"Katara, run!" her mother yells, hurling herself at the soldier.
At her mother's command, Katara starts to turn around, but still pauses to risk a glance back at the fight.
She shouldn't have.
There is a blinding flash of blue light and her mother lets out a horrible scream as she falls to the ground.
Then the monster turns his attention back on her and she's running this time. Running away for real.
She bursts past the curtain that forms the entrance to the igloo, and she's running, running, sprinting as hard as she can, sprinting so hard and so fast that she can barely breathe, that it's agony for her lungs to suck in the cold air.
She's trying to find someone, anyone, who's hiding in the other igloos nearby, trying to reach them, get to them, before the monster gets her first.
She has never run this fast in her life.
It still doesn't matter in the end.
It's hardly an effort for the monster to keep pace with her.
She's a small, helpless little child.
He's a trained and experienced soldier. A firebender. A killer.
He leaps and for a moment, she can see his shadow in the snow, large and threatening and ominous, rapidly closing in on her from behind.
Then his full weight smashes into her, sending both of them tumbling to the ground. There, he pins her down, trapping her within his grip.
She screams and tries to wriggle loose, desperate to get away.
But the monster is stronger than her, far more stronger, and she feels her arms getting tugged roughly behind her back. Her face is pressed down to the snow, muffling her screams and making it impossible for her to breathe. She can feel the sharp ice pressing against her clothes, digging painfully into her chest as the monster holds her down.
There's a snapping metallic click, and her arms are firmly restrained. Her wrists are shackled. She can feel the metal rubbing painfully against her skin.
He yanks her head up, and finally she can breathe. She starts screaming again, more louder than ever this time, but a gag slips over her mouth moments later and her screams are muffled once more.
Then the monster gets to his feet and hauls her over his shoulder, running towards the big metal ship.
She tries in vain to cry for help through her gag — she screams for all she is worth — but no sound she makes is loud enough for anyone else to hear.
No one else from the tribe takes notice as the monster sprints through the battlefield. She tries to look for Dad, or Gran-Gran, or even Sokka, but she can't find them in all the chaos. She can't even have the small mercy of getting one last look at them before the Fire Nation takes her away.
Takes her away from her home and her family forever.
She wants to scream now, more than ever, but even the freedom to do that is beyond her.
Soon, the monster is hurtling up the steps of the entrance ramp of the ship, and once they're inside the hull, the door begins to close.
From inside the metal hull, she can see the battle still raging on throughout the village. There are ashes and flames everywhere. Cries of fear, screams of pain, and shouts of rage fill the air. The blood of people, too many people, stains the white snow.
She watches, eyes wide in fear, as the metal door closes with a resounding clang of finality.
She's hurled into a metal cage, too small and too cramped to effectively move around in. She still struggles however, like a wild animal.
Because even wild animals deserve to be free.
She shrieks and howls in unimaginable terror and anguish.
No one comes to help her.
There's a flash of orange light behind her, and slowly turning around, she comes face to face with a squad of Fire Nation soldiers, watching her futilely struggle in a hopeless attempt to escape her cage.
Their golden, amber eyes light up with cruel amusement at her pointless endeavour and her inevitable doom.
It ends like last time.
Flames rush past the bars and consume her, burning her until she is nothing but ashes.
Katara wakes up with just enough clarity of mind to clamp her hands over her mouth before she screams.
Instead of a piercing, bloodcurdling cry, what comes out in its place is a muffled, quiet whine. Several of them, in fact, before she's able to calm herself down.
Her heart thumps rapidly and painfully in her chest, and a wave of nausea hits her hard.
She swallows it down. Whether she thinks it's fear or stress or her stomach churning in tormented despair, she doesn't know. And she decides it is best not to give it too much thought.
Throwing up now would only waste the meagre amount of water that her body still retained.
She turns her attention to the other aches and pains that her body is feeling.
Her lower limbs ached most of the time now, since she couldn't exercise them in the cramped confines of her cage.
Her back muscles and shoulders ached. Even her neck felt a little painfully stiff.
She suddenly hears the quick rhythmic footsteps that are indicative of someone running.
She throws herself to the nearest corner of her cage, whimpering. The cage lurches and swings, rocking so close to Uki's cage that the rush of air from the near-collision seems almost as loud as the rattling of the support chains. Their cells had been mere inches apart from impact, and had they impacted, the noise would have woken everybody up and brought the guards running.
Running.
She remembers now why she had moved so suddenly.
Somebody was coming, approaching rapidly from the shrouds of the darkness.
She curled up on the cage floor and shut her eyes tight, covering them with her hands for good measure.
The footsteps that she had heard now faded out, only to be replaced with the echoes of several more sets of footsteps.
Her heartbeat spiked.
One soldier looming over her was more than enough to frighten her, but several?
Her heart would give out from the stress and terror of it all, she was sure of it.
She had been born into a world overtaken by war. She had grown up in a tribe scarred by bloodshed and brutality and injustice. But it was only on the day of her mother's death — of her murder at the hands of the Fire Nation — that she had truly come to understand the final and ultimate cost of war firsthand.
And it was only during her time here in this prison that she had begun to come to grips with her very own mortality, of how fragile life could be. Of how much pain her body could feel when its most basic needs were denied.
I'm gonna die here…
I'm gonna die here…
I don't want to die…
I don't want to die!
Mommy, Daddy, Gran-Gran, help me!
I don't want to die here!
I don't want to die!
Help me, Tui and La, help me!
I don't want to die!
I don't want to die!
I don't want to die…!
I don't want to die…
I don't want to die…
I don't want to…
I don't want to…
I… don't… want… to…
And just when she thought she would completely lose it, she heard a boy's voice laughing.
Even more stranger than that, the voice sounded awfully familiar.
It sounded like… it sounded like…
Sokka!
She spun around to where she thought her brother's laughter was coming from. Pressing her face to the bars of the cage, she looked around, her eyes scanning the gloomy prison for her brother.
Two more sets of laughing voices joined in.
Females. Girls around her age.
And the girls who were closest to her in age were…
Niyok! Nutha!
She turned her head this way and that, frantically searching for her friends and her brother.
Were they prisoners here now too?
No, they wouldn't be laughing if they were.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw them.
Three little shadows scampering about on the nearby walkways.
They were soon joined by more shadows, more of their friends, laughing and playing and dancing and singing.
Iluak? Nirlik?
Spirits, were they all here now?
Alpa! Auka! Ahna! Atka!
She wanted to cry out to them, but she didn't for fear of raising the ire of the guards.
But how could her brother and friends be playing here with no consequences?
She made motions with her arms and hands. Silent, signalling gestures. She wanted them to know she was here. She needed them to know she was here. She needed them to rescue her, and all the other waterbenders in this horrible prison.
But no matter how much she moved and waved and whirled about, desperate and frantic, her friends did not see her. Her brother did not see her.
Her big brother did not see her, notice her, or save her. He did not come to her rescue.
She didn't understand.
She didn't understand!
"Don't you see me?" she thought desperately, "Don't you see me?!"
It almost drove her insane wondering how all the other children could be running about so liberally in this prison.
So frantic was she, that in a few moments she decided it was worth the risk to cry out.
"Sokka! Nutha! Niyok! Help us!"
There was no reply from her brother, or her friends.
Only the sounds of the other prisoners stirring from their sleep.
She cried out again, louder this time, and more desperate.
"Can't you see me?! I'm here! We're here! Help me! Help us!"
Still no reply.
"Help us!"
The other prisoners nearby looked at her worriedly.
"Katara…?" Uki murmured.
"Help us!" Katara all but screamed, "Please!"
That's when a pair of soldiers came striding up, materializing from the darkness.
"So! The little maggot has found her voice again," one said.
"She only had another nightmare, I assure you," Uki said quickly, "Please, you need not be so hard on her."
"Shut up, you old bitch!" the second soldier snapped.
Uki held one hand over her mouth, and reached out another in the direction of Katara's cage. What the elder was hoping to accomplish, even she herself did not know. Whether it be an attempt to signal to the child to cease her hysterics, or a futile effort to shield the young girl from the soldiers' wrath, Uki couldn't decide. And it wouldn't matter anyway.
She couldn't protect Katara from herself, or from the savage brutality of the soldiers.
It was up to the child herself to make herself calm down.
And, after ten more seconds — ten more very long seconds — Katara ceased her cries for help and found her voice dissipating into panting gasps for breath. Eyes wide, she looked around. The prisoners in the nearby cages were peering intently through the bars, glancing anxiously at her, concerned for her. The soldiers, on the other hand, stared balefully at her, their cruel gazes all but divulging their intent to bring about fatal harm to her if she gave them the slightest reason to.
Realizing her precarious position, Katara suddenly felt very small, very young, very foolish, and very, very alone.
Shrinking back from the threatening glares of the soldiers, she just slumped down on the floor of her cage, sprawling to one side.
Eyes open but unseeing, she stared vacantly past the soldiers, past the cages of nearby prisoners, towards the metal wall on the far side of the building, shrouded in shadows.
She didn't know what to do anymore.
She felt like she could do nothing now. Only exist.
She could tell by the glint in the soldiers' eyes that they found a deep, sick, and twisted amusement in her catatonic state.
They didn't laugh at her. There was no need. Their cruel desire for being able to flaunt their dominance had been wholly satisfied. She had been completely and utterly humiliated and petrified.
As the soldiers left, she kept her eyes focused on the far wall. Shadows seemed to dance across it, moving in motions that heralded the presence of other human beings, sneaking about in the near-blackout gloom of the pre-dawn hours.
Even though her heart had accepted that no other humans were in the prison aside from the guards, the other prisoners, and herself, she could not shake the feeling, the instinct, the thought that she had seen other people from her tribe lurking freely in the darkness.
She desperately insisted to herself that she wasn't insane. That her mind wasn't playing tricks on her. That the constant dehydration and hunger hadn't damaged her critically or permanently. That she was still of sound body and mind.
"I'm not insane. I'm not insane. I'm not insane. I'm not insane. I'm not insane," she chanted desperately in her mind, her eyes squeezed shut. The voice in her head mumbled it at first, repeating the mantra at a steady rhythm, before she felt herself screaming it in her mind.
I'm not insane! I'm not insane! I'm not insane! I'm not insane! I'm not insane! I'm not insane! I'm not insane! I'm not insane!
A whimper escaped her as she did her best to stifle an anguished scream. She forced herself to sit upright, her thin arms buckling with frailty as they tried to support her. A tidal onslaught of misery threatened to drown her, and it took everything she had to not be devoured by the torrent.
Where was her brother? Her friends? Her father? Her tribe?
They were here.
They were here.
They had to be here.
She was sure they were here.
They wouldn't just leave her to die.
They wouldn't just leave their fellow tribesmen to die.
Don't you see me?
Don't you see me?!
I'm here!
I'm here!
I'm here…!
I'm here…
Dark thoughts entered her mind, and she realized she was in denial.
Bleak notions and negative feelings suddenly overtook her.
Of course they don't see you.
Do you really think they're here?
Do you really think they'll come and save you?
Do they even know you're still alive?
Uki had said it herself. The tribe could very well think they're dead.
And there was no point in hoping that her family would come to save her. There was no point in hoping that the tribe was on their way, racing to the rescue.
Outside of the general knowledge that she was imprisoned in the Fire Nation, they had no idea on where exactly she was. Where the prison was. Let alone what kind of prison she was locked up in.
She and the other waterbenders were on their own.
Despair suddenly sapped what little of her strength remained and she found herself slumping over backwards, her outstretched arms only just managing to catch her and break her fall. She scooted over backwards until her back met the cage bars. Then she hugged her knees, crying softly, so as to not draw anyone's attention.
She cried until she was completely exhausted, her body dehydrated to the point that she had no tears left.
She wanted so desperately to sleep.
Even her nightmares were better than this. At least they weren't real, and whatever torture she would be put through would eventually come to an end.
Reality was neither so kind nor so merciful.
She had to persevere for quite a while in her attempts to find sleep, for her body was in great discomfort from the constant dehydration. The lack of proper exercise was also affecting her frequently now too. Her lower limbs ached most of the time, making it difficult for her to fall asleep.
She did not give up, however. She wanted — no, she needed — to take herself elsewhere. She needed to lose herself in her mind as it drifted away in dreams of both the familiar and unfamiliar, the comforting and the terrifying, so that she could at least keep herself grounded. So that she could at least pretend that she wasn't trapped in a horrible prison, slowly and inevitably being pushed towards the edges of insanity.
Mercifully, as she was agonizing over the current state of her sanity, she felt herself drifting off as her tired body shut down again for the remainder of the night. She felt her line of thoughts slow and fade away as sweet, black nothingness overtook her senses, and she let herself slip into the void, finding a blissful yet fleeting solace in oblivion.
She spoke nothing about her experience last night when the day came.
She had heard hushed whispers, softly-spoken words too far away to be distinguishable. The other prisoners whose cells were not positioned close to hers were murmuring amongst themselves, their voices indistinct and covered up by the sounds of the prison machinery operating.
They were probably talking about her again. About her wellbeing and mental state. About her morale, her lucidity… and her family.
Oh La, she had rambled about her friends last night. And her brother.
She hadn't gone any further in detail than just their names, but still, she hoped that the adults wouldn't pry. That they wouldn't persist their attempts in learning more about her friends and family. Especially her family.
She did not have it in her to deal with the painful memories right now. She wouldn't be able to cope.
She had no intention on speaking about her family.
And after last night… well, the others weren't going to get any further information about Sokka. Only his name. They wouldn't even find out that he was related to her. That he was her brother.
She had no intention on speaking about her family.
It was a subject that all the other waterbenders had previously learned was a sore one for Katara. And it still was even after all this time.
The first time the other waterbenders had asked about her family — who they were — she had fallen silent, tears rolling down her face as she cried quietly, the only sounds from her being an occasional sniffle.
Other attempts from them at learning more about her family were met with the same miserable failure.
As in, their failure to get any information out of her, whilst their questions only ended up making her more miserable.
After a while, they learned not to push the subject with her, seeing as how she looked just about ready to break down into tears each time. And often she did.
She was trying — and failing — to forget about home.
About her friends and family.
Because the thought of dying here, alone in this cage, far away from home with only the other imprisoned waterbenders for company, was too distressing and frightening for Katara to think about.
Even as her "New Prisoner" status faded more and more with each passing day, a part of her refused to make herself fully understand the hopelessness of her situation. The cruelty and brutality of the soldiers was on such a level of depravity that her young mind could not fully and wholly comprehend it. She still struggled to accept the fact that a person could be this atrocious and vile and ruthless to their fellow human beings.
It was this refusal, this denial, of her grave predicament that made Katara want to cut herself off. To isolate herself from the world that she now lived in.
Because how could such a world exist? A world where evil prevailed, ruthlessness dominated, and the heartless ruled over all.
How could her family and her tribe be a part of that world, and win against the darkness?
How could they save her, and bring her back, when the tides of the war were hopelessly against them?
Her and her brethren's imprisonment was grim proof of that.
So, at times like these, when helplessness and despair banished away dreams of hope, rescue, and freedom, Katara let herself forget about the life she once lived, in a faraway land, not so long ago…
And despairingly, times like these were slowly starting to become more and more frequent.
One… Two… Three… Four…
Katara counted the seconds as they slipped by.
Five… Six… Seven… Eight…
Counting seconds.
Nine… Ten… Eleven… Twelve…
It was quite simple, and very mundane, but it at least kept her mind busy.
Thirteen… Fourteen… Fifteen…
As long as she kept her mind busy, then she wouldn't have much time to think about how dehydrated she was.
Sixteen… Seventeen… Eighteen…
How thirsty she was…
Nineteen… Twenty… Twenty-one…
How… hungry… she was…
Twenty-two… Twenty-three… Twenty-four…
How much her head ached…
How dry her mouth felt…
How raspy her throat was…
How much her stomach hurt…
Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty!
That was as far as she made it, before realizing that she had rushed through the past several numbers far more quickly than she had intended. There was no way she was on sync with the passing of seconds now.
Sighing moodily, she began counting again.
If she was being honest with herself, counting seconds wasn't gonna do much for her. She didn't have the patience to count for several minutes straight. And even if she had, she'd only manage a few small minutes at most, before painful reality came smashing into her body's senses.
In the end though, it was all for naught. Time was of no importance in this place.
Counting the seconds that slipped her by only reinforced the painful and torturous reality of her existence. That the Fire Nation had won. That the Fire Nation had complete control over her life. Total say over her fate. That every minute, every hour, every day that ran its course was precious time lost forever. Time that was taken, stolen away from her, by the Fire Nation.
Still, when her body was too tired to move, her heart too burdened, and her spirit too downtrodden to hope and believe, it was all too easy and tempting to just mope and mourn and dwell on everything she had lost. Everything that had been taken from her. And everything that she had yet to lose.
She tried counting again.
One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six…
But that was as far as she got on her next attempt, before her stomach interrupted her counting with several inconspicuous rumbles. This was then accompanied by several sharp, aching pangs in her abdominal area.
Groaning in pain, Katara brought her hands over her stomach.
She was so hungry…
The pathetic bread rations given to them by the guards were just plain pitiful and inadequate.
At no point did her stomach ever stop aching with hunger.
How could anyone survive this?
And despite all that, her hunger didn't even hold a candle to how thirsty she was.
Why were they kept alive just to suffer through this?
Why couldn't the Fire Nation have just killed them instead?
Death would be more merciful than this.
She wanted to cry, but no tears would come.
It was like that, sometimes, nowadays.
She would want to cry but she would have no energy or strength left to do so.
The anguish was too much, sometimes. Under any other circumstances, grief would be enough to make her weep. Sorrow would be enough to make her scream. Misery would eat away at the emotional barriers protecting her heart — and her barriers weren't that strong to begin with.
In short, heartbreak would reduce her to tears.
But right here, right now, she had none.
That was when she instinctively knew that she had to talk to someone. Anyone.
She needed to distract herself, pull herself away from these thoughts before the burden of them caused her to snap.
She needed to hear wisdom from one of the adults. That would ground her and support her. She could hold on to her hope and sanity just by listening to them.
And so her eyes swivelled frantically, this way and that, trying to look for anyone nearby who wasn't yet deep in their sleep.
Fortunately, she didn't have to look for long.
A groan came from the row of cages behind her. Turning around, she saw Sikota stirring, her uncomfortable sleeping position getting the better of her.
When Sikota was fully awake, she noticed Katara staring at her with the saddest pair of blue eyes ever.
"Hello, child," she murmured softly, "What's up?"
Katara could only manage to hold herself together for a few more seconds before she lost it.
"I can't take this anymore," she sobbed, her chest heaving, "I wanna go home. I miss my Daddy. I miss my Gran-Gran. I miss my big brother, and my friends, and the snow and ice and water."
Sikota said nothing. She only watched with a pitying gaze as the child cried her eyes out.
And she also noted the fact that Katara had finally mentioned other relatives aside from her parents. All other previous attempts to talk to Katara about her family had just brought the poor child to tears.
"At least she hasn't entirely given up on the hope of going home," Sikota thought to herself, silently thanking whatever spirits were watching over them.
When she had been a child herself, Sikota had devoutly prayed to and worshipped the benevolent guardian spirits of her tribe. Needless to say, a few decades of brutal, horrible imprisonment, along with the deaths of countless of her brethren, had eradicated much of her faith and belief in the spirits.
Until Katara came along.
Destiny, Fate, whatever one might call it, must have had something special in store for this child. Whatever it was, the glory and honour of it would only be brought about through the immense hardship and unimaginable suffering that the child was being put through in this prison.
At least, that's what Sikota told herself.
She wanted to believe that Katara's imprisonment and suffering alongside them would not be in vain. That it was all ultimately a part of some higher spirit's plan to free the rest of them, and ensure that the Southern Waterbending Style would survive. That it would live on with the next generation of waterbenders. Starting with Katara.
That was what Sikota prayed and hoped for these days.
When it became apparent that Katara wouldn't stop crying any time soon, Sikota put her thoughts into words.
"Take heart, little one. You mustn't lose hope."
"There's no point in any of this. No point hoping," Katara continued, gasping for breath between sobs, "We're never gonna get out of here."
"Is that something you know for sure? Or something you just believe?"
"What difference does it make? How are you so sure that we'll ever be able to get out of here?"
Barely keeping the trembling out of her own voice, Sikota answered Katara's question.
"Young one… I don't know if we are ever going to get out of here, to be honest. I'm not sure. I can't be sure…"
And it hurt Sikota so much to see Katara's face fall at these words. The child's shoulders slumped and she hugged her legs, burying her face into her knees. The quiet sounds of her soft weeping filtered throughout the nearby area. It wasn't loud enough to wake those who were already asleep, but it was audible enough that Sikota could hear the complete and utter brokenness in the child's crying. And hearing that was like a knife to her heart.
She had to say something. Anything to console the child. Not words that would give her false hopes or uncertain promises, but simple, plain sayings of wisdom and honest truth that could still be seen as encouragement.
"But I do know this," she went on, "Whatever happens, we'll face it together. All of us."
At this, Katara's crying ceased. Her shoulders stopped shaking as her shuddering breaths returned to normal. After a few long moments she looked up, and though her face gave away the fact that she was far from assuaged, her eyes once more held small vestiges of courage and strength within them, at the very least.
It wasn't much, Sikota thought, but she knew that it was better than the state that the child had been in before.
After a few long moments, Katara then asked, "How are you able to just… not give up? Not give in? I find it hard to keep my hopes up. To keep going. Why do we do that? What's the point?"
"The point here, child, is to stay alive, get out of here, and get home. I can't promise you that's possible. You know that now. But that doesn't mean that we should just give up. Surviving here and going home? It's all I know. All I can do. All I can hope for. It's what keeps me going. What drives me forward."
Sikota gave the child a meaningful look.
"It's what mostly drives me forward," she finished. Nothing more needed to be said on her part, in regards to that. Katara still remembered what the adults had told her, of how raising and teaching the next generation of children — the waterbenders and warriors of the future — was what drove them forward, kept them sane, kept them going.
She was their first student from the latest generation. And they hoped that she wouldn't be their last. To them, she represented the dream, the hope that they would be able to escape, go home, and find many more eager pupils amongst the rest of her peers.
Again, she thought about how long her brethren had been imprisoned here. She was the only child amongst their ranks. The only waterbender from the latest generation. She was the youngest prisoner by far.
How many of the younger adults had grown up here, like she probably would?
She thought it best not to think about the possible answers, lest she lose what was left of her sanity.
Instead, she decided that her next best move would be to sleep and conserve her energy.
But not without first letting Sikota know that her words had had a beneficial effect.
"Okay," she said to Sikota, "I'll try to think about that more, and not give up."
"That's a good girl," Sikota murmured back, encouragingly, "Be strong. Be brave."
Katara nodded tiredly. She slumped back against the bars of her cage, and closed her eyes. She tried to ignore the tight feeling in her chest, and the aching in her lower limbs.
"You just sleep now, okay?" Sikota whispered tenderly, still focused on comforting and reassuring her, "Rest easy, child. And if you are blessed with happy dreams, hold on tight to them, and never let go."
And so, Sikota watched as the young girl tried to find sleep. She observed that the child was making attempts to regulate her breathing, trying to calm her nerves. Perhaps she had been influenced by Arihi's meditations. Oh, how Sikota wished to be able to speak to Arihi herself. Ever since Runik and Dimika died, she had no one from her row close enough to talk to her. She had to communicate with prisoners from the rows on either side of her to be able to express herself and keep her sanity.
There was a soft moan as the child stretched her aching limbs. This was followed by whimpers as she reacted against involuntarily trembling brought about on her small body by recent stresses and unease.
In response to this latest bout of distress, Sikota hummed out ancestral lullabies from the tribe — gentle, soothing melodies that had long since been known and passed down from ancient times. She hummed quietly, wordlessly, softly, so as to not draw the attention of the guards, yet still have her singing be just audible enough for Katara to hear.
Hearing the tender, assuaging tunes — and recognizing more than a few of them — was what finally allowed Katara to drift off to sleep. The young waterbender allowed a small smile to crease her lips as blissful darkness whisked her away to whatever fantasy that awaited her that night.
One evening, when the prison guards were complacent and not keeping a strict watch throughout the night, Suluk and Kesuk recounted another old Water Tribe legend to their fellow prisoners.
The words were whispered from cage to cage, repeated and passed on from one end of the cell block to the other.
The legend was about a family, from ancient times long ago, back when the travellers who had broken away from the North had landed in the South Pole. The children had been playing out in the ice fields that had formed over the sea during the winter. It was nearing the summer now, and though the children had been warned by the adults and elders to keep a look out for thinning ice, they hadn't paid much attention to the warnings.
Their lack of heeding their elders' wisdom would soon cost them a terrible and tragic price. Dark creatures known as the Qalupalik inhabited the waters below the ice, and they preyed upon any children who wandered too close to the water's edge, or over dangerously thin patches of ice.
The youngest of the children, a little girl whose name was lost to time, fell victim to a passing Qalupalik, and was dragged down through the hole in the ice that her kidnapper had made, down to the depths of the ocean below.
But though the Qalupalik had successfully taken its prey, the Spirits refused to let one so young die so cruelly.
They instead made her one of them, a spirit who would roam the oceans of the world, tending to and looking after the creatures of the sea, and guiding each sea beast's soul to the Spirit World once their life in this world had ended.
The Keeper of the Sea was the only known name that she went by.
Katara couldn't help reflecting on this story for the next several nights afterwards, pondering the similarities between herself, and the little girl that The Keeper had once been, thousands of generations ago.
Both of them had been taken away from their homes and families at far too young an age, and yet there was something special for them to gain in the aftermath of the tragedies that had torn their lives apart.
The Keeper had found her purpose. Her calling. Her destiny.
Katara wasn't quite sure what her own purpose or calling or destiny really was yet — and she prayed that it wasn't to be a prisoner here forever.
She thought of the words of her teachers. Of how she was their future. Their tribe's future. That the ways of Southern Waterbending would be passed down to her, would go on with her. Would live on through her.
So many of the adults back home said the same thing, minus the part of her learning the Southern style, specifically. Everyone back home was just glad that Waterbending would live on through her — in any way, shape, or form.
So much potential…
So much promise…
So many hopes and wishes and dreams…
All now ripped away, torn to pieces, crushed completely, and burnt to blackened ashes.
She felt her dry eyes grow hot — well, hotter still — and her vision go blurry with tears.
She blinked, letting multiple tears fall, completely blindsided by this sudden surge of emotion.
Before she knew it, she found herself wiping away at them, her hands rubbing vigorously against the flesh of her cheeks and her screwed-shut eyes.
She shook her head and made a small sound. Of anger, of frustration, of grief, or of agony, she didn't really know.
She didn't really care.
All she knew was that she had let them down.
Her family. Her tribe. Her fellow waterbenders.
All she had to do was not get captured in the first place, and she couldn't even manage that.
There was a brief — though intense — flash of anger at her mother, too.
Why did her mother sacrifice herself for her?
Why?
Why?!
Why?!
She wasn't worth it.
She was nothing but a small, useless little runt who couldn't even waterbend properly.
Hardly worth the life of anyone.
Then, her anger, brief and fleeting as it was, would morph into heartbreak, bleak and crushing and desolate.
That night, she slept with a heart burdened heavily by guilt and remorse.
No nightmares touched her that night, but that was of very little comfort as she drifted through the black voids of empty dreamscapes, drowning in her miseries and sorrows.
Then one day, things once more took a turn for the worse.
Uki woke up, not feeling too well. She felt dizzy, and her head ached more than usual. Her chest felt tighter than ever, and she felt stabbing pains in her arms and shoulders.
She groaned as she sat up, her joints and muscles protesting more than usual. Katara was the first one to notice that something was awry.
"Uki," she whispered to the elder, "Is something wrong?"
The old woman looked over at the child and saw the worry and fear etched on her face.
"No, little one," Uki replied once she had gotten her breath, "Do not worry."
Katara didn't look convinced, but Uki pacified her with a gentle smile.
The other prisoners kept their reservations, however.
"Something is up," whispered Patu to Ambo, "We need to get the truth from her."
As Patu turned to talk to Sikota, Ambo spread the word to Ligaya and Mayumi to keep an eye on Uki.
Mayumi turned to the elder in the cage beside her. She gave Uki a look that pretty much said that while she had fooled the young child amongst them, she hadn't fooled the adults.
Uki responded with a downcast gaze, and a slow shake of her head.
Mayumi, ever the gloomy defeatist, got the message that Uki was trying to send.
I'm not feeling well, but please don't stress yourselves out worrying over me.
Anybody else might not have assumed the worst, but Mayumi could tell with her own despondent instincts that the old waterbender was living on borrowed time. And that borrowed time would soon run out.
As the waterbenders ate their morning rations, Uki found it difficult to chew on her bread. Her jaw hurt whenever she moved it, and her neck ached profusely. She sighed heavily, rubbing a hand on the back of her neck in a futile attempt to ease the pain.
Katara saw this too, and this time she gazed at Uki with a solemn, scrutinizing stare.
"Do not worry, child," Uki murmured quietly, still pained. She took another bite of her bread slice and swallowed, cringing at the stabbing ache in her chest.
"It's nothing," Uki continued, trying to reassure the little girl, "Please do not worry."
Katara would've disagreed vehemently, but she didn't want to cause Uki any more anguish. So instead, she just stared down at her toes, feeling more helpless than ever.
When it was time for them to be shackled before they could drink, the other prisoners could see Uki visibly wincing when it was her turn to be chained up.
The guards didn't care though, and they went about their business at their own leisurely pace. They didn't bring around the rations of water punctually. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. But they certainly never went out of their way to be quick and efficient in distributing water to the prisoners. They always had to go through them one by one, and they never gave them enough water to quench their neverending thirst.
Sometimes, Katara just felt like bursting into tears whilst she was chained up. The thought of water was driving her insane, and it was those feelings of desperation and despair that turned into ugly, horrifying monsters of rage and bitterness inside of her.
A few days ago, Kesuk had told her and the others gallant tales of warriors and waterbenders who had been close to death. They had survived by drawing upon everything they had, by reaching down into the deepest part of themselves, in order to give it their all. To cling onto life until they found water. A small, scarce source of water, but enough to sustain them until they finished their quests.
Obstacles, trials, and hardships. They were nothing compared to the full, intensive, and wholly self-committed focus of a warrior.
And sometimes, that warrior's focus was attained by channelling all of their doubts, all of their fears, and all of their anger, so that they could defy the inevitable, achieve the impossible, and fight back even harder against all the odds.
It was a piece of wisdom that Katara deeply cherished. And it was that wisdom that she clung onto so desperately now, with all of the grief and terror and heartache gnawing away at her soul, as she knelt in chains, inside her cage, still completely and utterly powerless to quench her own thirst.
But though helpless she and the other waterbenders may have been, they were not yet defeated.
The guards came back after a while, and the prisoners were finally given some water to drink at last.
Things followed a similar pattern for the rest of the week. Every day, after waking up, the prisoners closest to Uki would take it in turns to watch over her, though Katara maintained her constant vigilance whenever the need for sleep didn't overpower her.
Uki, as observed by the other prisoners, got her chest pains more and more frequently as time went by. The duration of her acute chest aches got more and more longer too.
Katara tried not to think about the worst-case scenarios, the bleakest possibilities of what might happen. She was supposed to be a hope-bringer for the adults. Her mere existence was testament to that. Her tribe had found hope again when she had first started waterbending as an infant, even though her movements had been weak and wild and she had had no idea what was going on. Her parents had recounted it to her when she had been a little bit older, of how joyful and exuberant the atmosphere in the community was.
And she was still bringing joy to others here.
If only she could find it in herself to keep her own spirits up…
Recently, the mood in the prison was at an all-time low. The soldiers had been keeping a closer watch on all the prisoners over the past week, as the full moon approached. That was the expected monthly routine, but that didn't make it any easier to live with. The waterbenders had gone for several days straight without any meaningful interaction with each other, with the exception of an occasional depressed glance cast in another prisoner's direction every now and then.
The soldiers would probably keep a more thorough guard until a few days after the full moon was over, at the very least. Or they might keep it up for a bit longer than that.
Or, Tui and La willing, security measures would decrease back to normal levels the day after the full moon phase ended, if the soldiers got bored quickly enough. More security patrols meant less time to interact, after all.
She hoped that the soldiers would get bored quickly.
Cold ashes drifted down from the sky.
She ran and ran, until she saw her family's igloo.
She burst through the entrance, crying out to her mother in desperation and fear when she saw the monster cornering her mother.
She had to do something.
"Go find your Dad, sweetie. I'll handle this," her mother said.
She looked at her mother's face, with the way her sad eyes contrasted with her brave smile.
Did her mother know what she was doing by lying and giving herself up? Did she know that she would never see her daughter again by doing this? Or her son? Or husband? Or the rest of the tribe?
Again, Katara decided, she was not going to let things play out that way. She'd change everyone's fate, even if only in the dreamscapes of her mind.
Raising both hands, she executed a water surge using the snow in front of her.
She felt powerful as she did so, her instincts from training kicking in, granting her access to skills that she had never practically honed before, having only done so in theory.
The soldier, however, easily vaporized her attack with one of his own. It was a flaming wheel kick that utterly annihilated her attempted strike, turning it to steam.
Her confidence suddenly dissipated just as quickly as the steam did.
The soldier — no, the monster — growled at her. Contemptuously, mockingly, knowing all too well that she still stood no chance against him.
Confronted with this harsh, brutal reality all of a sudden, Katara turned to her mother. Terror and horror flashed across both their faces.
Then, her mother was engulfed in a blast of bright blue light that thundered and crackled loudly. However, it wasn't deafening enough to drown out her mother's screams. And her mother's screams were nowhere near loud enough to drown out her own screams.
When the light subsided, she wasn't in her family's igloo anymore.
Tall, dark metal walls rose up high all around her.
Crying out, she turned and ran, desperately searching for an escape route that would never materialize.
Her bare feet slapped against the metal floors, and the sound echoed throughout the endless hull.
She longed for the ice, cold and crisp, firm yet willing to melt and acquiesce during the summer months.
Metal was nothing like ice. Dark, lifeless and unnatural. Unfriendly, inorganic, and unyielding. Even ice gave way when given enough time and warmth.
The metal floor was uncomfortably warm against her bare feet, until it wasn't anymore.
A black void suddenly opened up beneath her, swallowing her up, and spitting her out face-down in the blindingly harsh brightness of the sun.
She was sprawled out on a dusty dirt road, and she lifted her head in a daze to see where she was now.
She shouldn't have.
Mobs of Fire Nation citizens surrounded her on all sides, sneering, mocking, and laughing at her. Some of them cursed and spat at her.
There was a girl her age with raven hair and amber eyes. She had a burning, cruel stare, and a serpent-like voice that could send shivers through her body despite the suffocating heat and the young age of the speaker herself.
"Oh, look at the poor little peasant! Wanna cry?"
And suddenly she was drowning. Drowning in a sea of merciless cruelty. She let her head slump back down to the ground, as silent sobs wracked her body.
She wanted nothing more than to just curl up into a ball and get away from it all. Block out the sneers, the mockery, the laughter. Escape the inevitable, horrible fate that awaited her.
But that was asking for the impossible.
Shadows swallowed her again, and when they finally released her, she was trapped in her cage all over again.
Her eyes darted around frantically, and her breathing was laboured. She scanned for any looming threats, looking around desperately, consumed by an almost animalistic fear.
She was right to be afraid.
Skull-faced demons with amber eyes materialized from the surrounding darkness, open flames igniting into existence on their upturned palms. They advanced towards her cage, slowly, steadily, savouring her silent terror.
She wanted so badly to scream, to cry, but her throat wouldn't work. She could only crawl backwards, in a futile attempt to get away, until her back met the bars on the far side of the cage, and she could go no further.
She shut her eyes, and whimpered.
She heard one of the soldiers laughing. A cruel, mocking, sneering laugh. She didn't need to open her eyes to know that the others were leering at her small, helpless, imprisoned form with pleasure.
Why do they take such a sick, twisted delight in tormenting her?!
Why?!
She could hear the sounds of the flames growing stronger, their increasing brightness becoming apparent even through the shielded darkness of her closed eyes.
It was then that her heart really began to race. She could feel the air around her, already hot and dry, growing hotter by the second. The flames were beginning to crackle, and for all she knew, the sounds may as well have been lightning and thunder.
The darkness within her closed eyes receded as the flames roared towards her. She could sense the fire lunging in her direction, a tiger seal of burning energy rapidly advancing upon its helpless prey.
She kept her eyes shut. She didn't need to see it coming.
The flames engulfed her, and suddenly she was burning. She opened her mouth to let out a scream, and…
She woke up, just about ready to cry.
She really hated that dream.
As it turned out, the dream would be the least horrible thing to happen that day.
No one amongst the prisoners could have ever foreseen the great tragedy that would befall them that afternoon.
The day started out like any other in the prison. Morning rations of bread, stale and meagre as always, were distributed amongst the prisoners. Then, they were chained up tightly, all so that they could be given the barest minimum of water needed to survive.
Whilst they were waiting for the watering guards to come along, Katara took this time to take a glance at the other prisoners around her, the ones that she could look at easily whilst chained up. She blinked to clear her bleary eyes.
Sinaya looked downcast. It seemed that she was in one of her gloomy moods again, which was more than understandable. Katara knew that she herself would have completely given in to despair in this hopeless place if Uki hadn't taken the plunge and introduced her to everyone else all those weeks back. It was only because she had bonded with her fellow waterbenders that she had had the mental and emotional support that had held her steady for so long during her time here.
She shuddered at the thought of what might have been if no one had had the courage or heart to interact with her when she was at her lowest point, right after Dimika had died.
Even with all the love and care and support from the older waterbenders, sometimes it was just barely enough to keep her from despairing.
Sometimes — well, a lot of the time, really — she felt all too ready to lose heart and give up on hope all over again.
A small part of her, deep within, was just glad that she hadn't ever considered giving up on life yet.
Though she wanted her constant suffering to end, she wasn't desperate enough to give in to death yet.
Meanwhile, Tavaki was taking this time to nap. To catch up on precious sleep that was lost during the late hours of each night, when each of them struggled and laboured and fought against the torturous agony of constant dehydration — and all the cramps and aches and pains and ailments that came with it — just to get some sleep.
Katara wondered in silent awe how Tavaki was able to sleep in his uncomfortable, restrained position. She herself found the aching of her arms and the stiffness in her legs to be unbearable after only a little while of being chained up. Adding the interminable discomfort of dehydration on top of that, and sleep was nigh impossible to come by. If she forced herself to try and find it like this, she knew she would only end up even more miserable, frustrated, and in tears.
She glanced over at Arihi now. Arihi had her eyes closed, the expression on her face was peaceful, and the way her chest undulated slowly yet steadily indicated that she was calmly meditating. Now, Arihi was far from being the best waterbender warrior or healer, but mentally she was the strongest and toughest of the group. For all of her time in prison, Katara had only ever seen Arihi cry thrice. And that was only during the long, lonely stretches of late nights, when most of the prisoners were asleep.
Katara often wondered how Arihi could be so calm and reserved. She suspected it had something to do with Arihi's propensity towards meditation. Arihi was more likely to just quietly withdraw to herself in times of great distress and tribulation, refocusing and redirecting her energies and attention on stoicism and resilience, both mental and emotional. Such was her preferred disposition. Her natural inclination.
Uki was a different story. Though her visage was placid and betrayed no anguish that she might have been feeling, the elder's body looked even more frailer than before. Her neck drooped drastically, as if the mere act of just holding her head up straight was now too much for her. As if maintaining a healthy posture drained her too much of her energy. The elder was now trembling all over too. Whether it be from stress, trauma, grief, illness, or some combination of the lot, the end result was the same. Uki's quivering was of such intensity that the chains restraining her arms creaked and rattled with her involuntary movements. Her breathing was shallow and laboured, and raspy to the point that her wheezing could be heard above the metallic clatter of her chains.
Uki's body was straining to survive, and it was only a matter of time before her number was up. Katara didn't want to think like that, but even though the other prisoners didn't say it out loud, she could see the desperate helplessness in their slumped, defeated postures. She could hear the gasps of anguish and the sighs of despair, even though the others tried to conceal those noises and hide themselves away from her young eyes when their grief became too much to bear. She could see the looks of distress and terror on the others' faces, if she scrutinized them closely for long enough.
And all this dread and apprehension added to the pile of nerves already burdening her mind, stressing her mental faculties to the breaking point. She didn't know what she would do if yet another of her fellow waterbenders died. If Uki was to perish, then… then… then…
No.
No, she would not think about that.
She refused to think about that.
Whatever malaise or illness or disorder that Uki was experiencing right now, she would pull through it.
She would pull through it.
She had to.
She just had to.
Katara then heard the sounds of laboured slurping coming from the far end of her row.
It was almost time.
They would be given water soon.
For the first time ever, she didn't care that she would be drinking last.
Katara tried not to mind the suffocating heat as she performed from memory as much of the katas that she had learned so far from Sinaya and Tavaki. She was going to practice until she felt like passing out. She had to do something to keep her mind occupied, distracted from the dreadful, definite likelihood that not all of the prisoners were going to make it out of here.
Heck, none of them might make it out of here alive, period.
She flowed from one waterbending form to another, her movements fluid and flawless, executed with the utmost concentration to obtain the highest level of efficiency and excellence as possible. She was nowhere near master-level, she knew that, but she wanted to master the basics down to a tee in order for her higher waterbending education to go as smoothly as possible, whenever they got out of prison and got unrestricted access to water.
"But what if you don't make it out of here? What good is all this practising then?" a sinister voice questioned in the back of her mind, all of a sudden.
That was enough to make her hesitate. Enough to paralyse her in fear.
She really didn't want to think about the answers to those questions. At all.
Not now. Not ever.
And even if she did, she didn't have the energy or the mental capacity to do so.
"Just shut up. Shut up!" another voice in her head argued back against the first. She didn't know if it was her own voice, or that of a spirit watching over her.
Trying to force away the horrible thoughts and the desolate possibilities that plagued her mind, Katara shifted her overall position, from sitting on her knees to resting on her rump, with her lower limbs crossed over one another. She placed her hands on her knees, then she straightened the muscles in her back, trying her best to ignore the panging aches that sprung up in her shoulders. Lastly, she forced herself to take deep breaths, trying to regulate her breathing, in order to calm herself, clear her mind, and concentrate.
She wanted to try and be more like Arihi. Calm, centered, resilient, and strong.
To push herself in the right direction, she decided to try her hand at meditating. Outside of waterbending practice, that was Arihi's favorite pastime. Sikota had already explained to her how Arihi went about meditating. It was all about cleansing the mind, and the soul. And that required minimalism. Thoughts had to be evicted from one's head, the mind emptied so that it was completely free to focus on spiritual attunement. And how one went about focusing on spiritual attunement was a matter that could only be decided on and committed to by themselves.
For spiritual attunement gained via meditation, the practitioner should ideally focus on an important idea, concept, or goal that they wanted to achieve or gain a better understanding of. And it couldn't just be any mere objective, oh no. The selected aspiration had to be something that would help the practitioner gain a better understanding of both life and themselves, the more time they spent reflecting on it.
Serenity. Family. Spiritual Salvation. Waterbending Mastery.
These were the highest aspirations that Katara was wanting to attain. To accomplish. To obtain the best understanding of as possible.
She just had to choose one to focus on for her first attempt at meditation.
Unlike her waterbending lessons with Sinaya and Tavaki, the distance between Arihi's cage and her own meant that conversing with each other at a level of audibility that wouldn't attract the attention of any guards was completely out of the question. They were just too far away from each other to talk.
She would have to do her best to learn meditation on her own.
She mentally reviewed her options. Family and Spiritual Salvation were the two focuses with the highest chances of making her depressed. For family, the reasons for that were obvious. For spiritual salvation, she wasn't yet ready to accept her own mortality, or how imminent it might be.
That left Serenity and Waterbending Mastery. Serenity was admittedly high on her list of priorities. Specifically, she wanted to eventually attain the emotional maturity to accept whatever fate had in store for her, whether it be good or bad. But that seemed like such a difficult concept to understand, let alone accept and make peace with.
So in the end, she went for the easiest option.
The focus of her first meditation session today would be waterbending mastery.
As she settled into her silent, spiritual reflection, she dreamed of the day when she could finally be able to walk free from this place. She dreamed of the day when she could finally be able to waterbend freely, for the very first time. Not as a clumsy beginner, but as a dedicated student, apprenticed to the finest waterbenders of the tribe.
She cherished all these fantasies and more, longing for the possibility to make them reality. She wanted to be a great waterbender one day. She yearned for the chance to be an accomplished practitioner, a master in the age-old art of her culture.
She wanted to be free from this prison, free to accomplish mastery at the very least, before she died.
She managed to lose herself in her thoughts for quite some time, before her body's ailments brought her back to reality.
She coughed.
She tried to swallow, but her mouth and her throat were as dry as dust. Lips, chapped and painful, worked as she tried to wet them. Her mouth felt sticky and dry. Her chest felt tight, constantly aching from the hot, dry air that was pumped into the prison. She couldn't stop the moan that escaped her lips. Sometimes her body just couldn't deal with the constant dehydration it was subjected to. She trembled without being cold.
Despite her agony though, she knew that the other prisoners were suffering just as badly, if not worse, than she was.
And that mere knowledge was more than enough to disrupt her concentration. Try as she might, she couldn't regain the focus that she needed to rededicate her mind to meditation.
How could she, when she was surrounded by hopelessness and despair, listening to the sounds of those who were slowly dying? When she herself was slowly dying too?
She coughed again.
She hated how painful it was to do that.
Someone else was coughing now as well. She could hear the ghastly hacking coming all the way from the other side of the cell block.
She just kept her eyes closed, all the while. It was the only thing stopping tears from building up in her eyes. She wanted to cry. For herself, for her fellow brethren, for all the pain and suffering and agony that they were forcibly subjected to.
The sweltering heat was unbearable. The temperature in the prison somehow seemed to be even hotter today. Her head was spinning, swimming, drowning in confusion and pain. A dull ache throbbed in her skull. She felt like she was asphyxiating. She gasped for breath, but that only made her start hacking and coughing again.
Feeling an ugly mixture of irritation and anguish rise up through her chest, she tried her best to cast off any thoughts of indignation and resentment. There was nothing she could do to alleviate her suffering except to try and not think about it.
By now, whoever else had been coughing had also subsided, and she tried once more to meditate. She decided to try focusing on serenity now, letting her grief and anxiousness flow in and out of her soul, like a current of water through an icy cave. She didn't care how long her hard-earned respite would last. She only wished that things would get better afterwards. Somehow…
She actually managed to go uninterrupted and undisturbed in her meditation for quite a while this time.
Then another fit of coughing broke her out of her reverie.
It wasn't her who was doing the coughing, though.
And the one doing it sounded like they were coughing their lungs out. So violent was their hacking, that other prisoners were beginning to murmur. Some of those who were uttering in hushed tones were wheezing and rasping, their voices thick from the aftermath of sleep. Those who had been sleeping, after all, did so to both conserve energy and escape the bleak confines of the prison, even if only for a little while.
But even so, as she listened to the jumbled utterings of the others, Katara was able to make out bits and pieces of sentences here and there. And what she was able to decipher made her blood run cold.
"Uki!"
"It's Uki!"
"La above!"
"What's going on?!"
Katara's eyes snapped open. Blinking to clear the blurriness from her sight, she turned to see Uki panting, clutching her chest. Sharp gasps escaped her, a stabbing pain piercing her heart. Her breathing came harsh and quick and shallow, and yet she still couldn't get enough air.
She couldn't breathe.
Though she was incapable of speaking, the elder's eyes practically screamed, "Oh spirits, help me!"
She coughed, and tried desperately to take in another breath. It was a horrible, ragged, shaky gasp.
"Oh," said Uki slowly, horrified realization dawning on her face, "Oh no…"
Her chest started cramping up. She struggled to breathe, fighting against a severe feeling of tightness in her chest. Her old heart felt like it was being ripped apart.
But she couldn't draw in enough breath to cry out.
Katara, the poor child, had no idea what was causing the elder such pain, but she was terrified and desperate.
"Help!" the little girl screamed, "HELP!"
Even in the face of such raw, unbridled fear, the soldiers deliberately approached their cages at a leisurely pace, taking their time.
Katara only became more frantic.
"Help her!" she implored in the way that only a desperate child could, "Please, help her!"
To her incredulous horror, though, the soldiers began to laugh.
The clatter of chains echoed throughout the prison. Some of the other waterbenders had pressed their faces to the bars of their cells, trying in vain to get out, trying desperately and futilely to aid their distraught brethren. Several cages lurched on their chains with a rattle.
But the cruel jeers of the soldiers rose above the metallic din.
Tears of anguish spilled down Katara's cheeks.
"Why aren't you doing something?" she asked brokenly, "Why aren't you helping her?"
Uki was thrashing on the floor of her cage now, hands pressed over her heart, her entire body convulsing with unimaginable pain. She choked out squawks of agony.
The sight was unbearable.
"You must help her!" Katara shrieked, grasping the bars as she begged for all she was worth, "You must!"
The scene of pure and utter torture had been going on for several minutes by this point.
Uki convulsed several more times, each spasm more drawn out and worse than the last.
Katara whimpered desperately, but otherwise said nothing. It wasn't like help was going to come in this horrible place. She had been so foolish to believe so.
Several prisoners drew in a sharp intake of breath, completely on edge. Completely expecting the worst. And how utterly right they were.
The soldiers even stopped their raucous mocking. But for the wrong reasons. They only stopped laughing to stare.
Finally, Uki stopped writhing, and lay still all of a sudden. A small stream of saliva, mixed with blood, trickled out from the corner of her mouth. Her blue eyes stared unblinkingly upwards, her vision non-existent. A final, ragged gasp escaped her, before a harsh, rasping cough signalled her death cry. The sound of a departing life echoed heavily around the prison.
Then the soldiers went back to laughing.
"No…" thought Katara, unable to accept the unthinkable, "NO!"
"Shall we… call the clean-up crew?" one of the soldiers jeered, "And tell them to bring a body bag?"
"No, not yet," the ranking guard answered his subordinate, "Give these vermin the opportunity to mourn one of their beloved. Let them stew in their own juices. Or what's left of them, anyways."
The soldiers walked off, laughing smugly.
The waterbenders were left to wither in their grief.
"No… no…" Katara mumbled, her hands clinging tightly onto the bars of her cage for support, "No…"
Her already hoarse voice got even raspier with tears, her body using up the last of its moisture to express her sorrow.
"Katara… please, sweetie. Try not to…" Sikota started, but paused in her attempt to console the young girl when she realized the impossibility of restraining her own tears.
"I think…" Unnuk spoke up, his voice faltering and heavy with grief, "This time… this time it will be okay for us to mourn. To really, truly mourn…"
Unnuk sighed heavily, taking a few moments to regain his composure, before continuing, "Uki deserves that much, at the very least…"
That was all the permission that Katara needed to hear. Now unhindered, she let the tears flow freely, wet streams of unending misery cascading down her cheeks as she howled in unfathomable sorrow.
Around her, several of the other prisoners joined her in her mourning. Deep, tortured sobs reverberated from the men, while the high, painful keening of the women echoed in the cavernous prison chamber.
This wasn't like the death of Runik. Or Dimika.
Uki had helped Katara integrate with the other prisoners. She had helped her fit in. She had pulled her back from the knife's edge of insanity, the fatalistic brink of despair. She had made sure that she wasn't alone, that she wouldn't suffer in silence and lonely isolation. That she would get to know the others, and the others would get to know her. That the others cared for her, and wouldn't leave her alone to rot.
And by making sure that Katara could integrate with the others, Uki had restored the morale of everyone else. She had reignited their hopes, their dreams, their desire to survive. Their will to live.
And now she was gone.
Yet another life claimed by the Fire Nation.
Another innocent person cruelly murdered by an empire simply just for being born the way she was.
It wasn't right.
It wasn't fair.
And so, the imprisoned waterbenders of the Southern Water Tribe wept.
Sometime later, the pair of guards whose task it was to clear away the bodies of dead prisoners came along.
They unlocked Uki's cage and dumped her corpse outside, her body landing on the walkway with a sickening thwack.
As the guards dragged her body away, Katara reached an arm out through the bars, trying in vain to reach out to Uki as the guards strode past with her corpse. It was a pointless effort.
Trapped in her suspended cage, Katara could only watch, heartbroken, as the body of the elder — her teacher, her friend — was hauled away for disposal.
When the guards, and Uki, finally disappeared from sight, Katara broke down completely and wept. Grief crushed the air from her chest, and it was all she could do to keep breathing. Her heart throbbed against her ribcage.
The hot, silent air of the prison was shattered with her heartrending cries. The other prisoners could only watch sadly as their youngest member, a mere child, mourned the death of yet another member of their family.
At this moment, there was nothing to hope for.
Together, they were a family. But they were also a doomed one at that.
It would only be a matter of time before death claimed the rest of them too.
PUBLISHED ON = 15 / 11 / 2023