(Zutara) Hold it Gently; My Heart Burns For You

The Waterbending Master

The Northern ice gates are a sight to behold, but Katara's excitement whirls within a snowstorm of dread. Sokka and Aang are gasping in delight, watching the waterbenders shift the ice to their whim as easily as fingers drag through water. She should be joining them. But she can see it in their faces as they spot the rare sight of watertribe southerners.

Right now, the South Pole is a blip of memory, a footnote to this wonderous experience. It will have to be Katara herself who breaks the news.

She does her best to enjoy the splendour. The city, for it can only be a city to Katara's wide, experienced eyes, is tiered so the palace looks out upon it's subjects like a ponderous snowbear owl watching over its brood. Unlike the South's rudimentary huts penned in by bone supported snow walls, the North is carved from the glaciers. No summer sun can melt these walls, no mad scrambling of the city inhabitants to work before morning turns the ground to slush.

Icediving didn't become extinct, the need for them became obsolete.

Faced with the majesty, the fortification and power, Katara misses her home, her ice and her Gran-Gran as acutely as ever.

~ ~ ~

The first Waterbending Master Katara meets has to be the only man not enjoying the celebrations.

Chief Arnook, bold in nature as ice under a warm sun, welcomes the delegation with a feast and an embrace for Katara and Sokka each. "Brother! Sister! My father and myself thought us orphaned up here for decades. I'm so sorry we didn't send aid sooner. The Northern watertribe has abstained from the war for so long, but that is because all we are fighting for is here."

"We regret our inability to send aid," the sour-faced older master with a grey goatee adds. Formality drips from him, coating him in a vastly different essence to the jubilation Arnook expresses. If he thinks just saying it is the same as meaning it, spitting the words out while barely looking at them, sets Katara on edge.

"No longer!" Arnook announced then as he announces now, seated before his people on the high frozen dais. Low braziers burn at the peak of every table, bathing his people in warm, waxy light. "Tonight, we celebrate not only the arrival of our brother and sister from the Southern Tribe, but the south's resurrection. For so long we thought you lost, mourned our spirits being cleaved in half by this war. From the bottom of my heart I welcome you back from the dead." The man practically has tears in his eyes as he grips Sokka and Katara's forearms. "And they have brought with them, someone very special, someone whom many of us believed disappeared from the world until now... the Avatar!"

Aang waves cheerfully to the applauding crowd, and Katara is pleased to note he doesn't bask so readily this time in the attention like on Kyoshi Island. He's come a long way since they left the south pole. His summer was fruitful, and the world has indulged in a harvest of joy with the Avatar's return. But now the long winter is settling in.

"With the coming Ever Night, our reason to celebrate is high!" Arnook continues. As if waiting for the cue, a silver haired young woman placed farther down the table stands. "We also celebrate my daughter's eighteenth birthday. Princess Yue is now of marrying age!"

When the girl speaks, her voice tinkles like freshly fallen snow. "Thank you, Father. May the great Ocean and Moon Spirits watch over us during the Ever Night."

"What are they talking about?" Aang whispers from her right. Unlike Sokka, he is not as distracted by Yue to lift his cup to the Princess' toast to winter.

"The Ever Night is a watertribe tradition. In the poles the sun disappears for all of winter. See." She points to the thin streams bisecting the grand hall, where pale luminescent fish bathe the revellers in silvery moonlike light. "They're already preparing the starlight koi. They'll be the main source of light until the skies thaw in spring."