Korik stared in horror at his trembling hands, blood dripping down from his fingers. "I... I just..."
"What's the matter, dear?" He recognized Zoris's voice in an instant. "Isn't this what you wanted? To be stronger?"
"I... Yes, but..." He turned towards her, trembling voice barely above a whisper. "Not like this."
"Oh, come now, Korik, you'll never be truly strong if you get so worked up about a little mess." Her eyes glowerd brighter, and Korik gasped as he felt his energy start to ebb. "Unless you'd prefer to go back to being the scrawny little boy you were before?"
"NO! Please, I..." Korik looked down at his blood-stained hand, then clenched it into a fist. "If this is what it takes to get stronger, I'll handle it."
"Attaboy!" Zoris snapped her fingers, and Korik's veins pulsed black as the strength flowed back into him. "Now that that's settled, we'd best get going. There's a busy day ahead of us!"
I wrote a thing for the ATLA homebrew campaign run by @justanartsysideblog and played with @selenelavellan @lycheemilkart and @theladypirate!
This is Haruk, a waterbender. :)
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Whenever someone asks, “What happened to the leg?”, he rattles off the typical explanation of losing it in a storm aboard his parents’ ship. It’s true, he lost it in a storm and he was on his parents’ ship, the Midnight Moon, but it is not the whole truth.
As with most things, the truth is more complicated and often not what people want to hear. When people ask what happened to his leg, they want some long drawn out horror story of how the loss changed him, the incredible insurmountable odds he conquered. Haruk has no issue in not providing that, and he has no issue keeping the entire personal story exactly that - personal.
It’s not that he is a particularly secretive or private person, but there are things that he keeps to himself. Privacy is a wonderful, novel thing for someone who grew up on a ship surrounded by people at all times.
So how did he lose the leg? That’s the question, isn’t it? Or perhaps the question is how he keeps his beautiful hair so luscious and flowy. That’s an easy answer - sacrifices to the incomparable Moon Spirit, of course.
He never has missed the leg. Even with all the phantom limb pain in the months and years following the loss, he hasn’t missed it. Whenever he feels he is coming close to missing the limb, he reaches into his pocket and runs a thumb over the seal-shaped whistle instead.
It started like many stories, he supposes, with a family on a ship, looking up at the sky.
“A storm is coming,” Mom said, tone serious and eyes narrowed at the horizon.
“I don’t see anything,” Haruk said back, squinting in the same direction. There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky!
Yuna arched a brow at him and smiled before ruffling his hair.
“Mom!” He shrieked, reaching up to smooth his hair back into the carefully crafted wolf-tail he had put in earlier.
“It is not always about seeing, but about feeling. What does the water tell you? What do the clouds say?”
Haruk looked at his mom as he did whenever she got all guru-y with him. It wasn’t enough that she was his mother, but his waterbending teacher as well. Sure, there had been other waterbenders on the Midnight Moon over the years, but she had been his constant teacher. Sometimes it was hard to differentiate between mother and teacher moments, many of those times, she had combined the roles into a super person with lots and lots of authority. She wasn’t mean about it, save anyone who accused Yuna of ever being mean, but a bit overbearing...yes.
He did as she instructed, though. Closed his eyes and reached out like she had taught him to do, feeling the water with that connection deep inside his soul. He had no clue how to feel the clouds that weren’t even there, but he felt the currents in the sea, felt the stillness and then a strength underneath that.
“I feel a current?”
She nodded, “Yes, and when you’re old like me, you’ll be able to feel where that current goes. It goes to a strong storm forming, the like we rarely see. We should try to make port.” With that, she left the bow, tucking her spyglass into her coat.
“Make port? Mom, where are we going to do that? We left a week ago!” Haruk worried, chasing after her as she strode to the wheel where Dad stood.
“We need to make port, we’ve got a nasty storm coming,” she said, completely ignoring Haruk’s question. Thankfully, Korik’s brow furrowed and he shook his head.
“We are at least three days from any port. We are out here and staying here whether we want to or not. Have the crew make preparations.”
“Korik, this storm -
“Will be weathered like all the others. I can try to get the ship to port, but I am telling you now, we won’t make it.”
Mom put her hands on her hips as if she was going to argue before shaking her head and cursing, “Fine, I will tell them to make preparations. Get us to port.”
“Aye-aye, captain,” Dad said, saluting her as she walked off. She stopped short and turned, bowing her head.
“Captain,” she replied, then went about getting the crew ready for the storm. It of course involved Haruk’s help. As the youngest and spryest member of the Midnight Moon, he was taken full advantage of - climbing and swinging and dangling in places to get everything set.
It was the last time he climbed the mast, last time he ran across the deck without a care in the world. A storm was coming, they had gone through storms before and this wouldn’t be so different.
How wrong he was, how confident he was.
Storms on the sea start with the wind. It picked up, gusting towards the Midnight Moon with an increasing amount of force. Haruk stood with the crew, holding down the main sail to continue to blow them in the correct direction. The wind battered the ship and it was largely fine until the currents joined the wind in swaying the ship. The wind and currents acted like a hand swiping out from the center of the storm to pull them into its deadly embrace. The crew of the Midnight Moon resisted for as long as they could until it was too much.
The wind picked up, thunder and lightning began to roll across a rapidly darkening sky. A day that started without a cloud in the sky was now blackened with them. Next came the rain. It wasn’t the light sort of rain but the hard, pelting kind of rain that felt like mini-slaps all across the body.
They were all soaked in no-time, fighting a storm that had developed a mind of its own.
Dad was shouting from the helm while mom was at the bow, her arms moving as she tried to control the waves around them. It was a losing battle, all of it.
Haruk stood in the middle of the deck, just below the mast, and felt it. A deep, deep strong current rippling through him and the water. The strength built and he felt it billow up in the water, propelling it just as the wind pushed toward them.
“Mom! Watch out!” He called, running forward to help her. She turned to face him just as the wave reached high above the ship.
“Help me!” She shouted and assumed a stance he recognized immediately. How would they manage this? They had attempted it during a full moon and had barely succeeded. There was no full moon and this was much more difficult -
There was no time for doubt. He copied her stance and together they reached out to guide the crest of the wave. Miraculously, the wave...followed them. He felt the strain in his back and arms and he yelled with the effort, but the wave followed their wish and reached over the ship to fall back into the sea on the other side.
He dropped to his knees as the water receded, marveling at the feat.
“We did it!” Mom cried happily before running to the side of the ship. He felt it again, that strong current, but this one was faster.
“Mom!” He ran for her, pushed her out of the way just as the ship was slammed by this smaller, but deadlier wave. It crests into the deck and into Haruk. There is no stance or bending technique that can stop it as he careens into the other side of the boat - leg first.
A sickening SNAP vibrates through his leg and then the rest of his body. Agonizing pain that barely registers with Haruk as he is flung overboard.
Into the churning sea.
Yuna always said that waterbenders are natural swimmers. They thrive in the water and swimming to them is more natural than walking. Walking, according to his mother, is how everyone else moves (except for the airbenders, who fly). Swimming is the truest movement for waterbenders.
He could not swim with a leg snapped in two, blood gushing from the wound, agony filling him to the brim. The current was strong and sucking, pulling him down, and no amount of bending or fight in him could resist it.
It sucked him down into inky depths, the currents swirling around him in a tight inescapable cyclone. The blood rushed from his leg and he felt himself grow faint, which was why when he saw the faint light, he didn’t question it. The light grew and grew until it was before him. It was about the size of a koi fish, but black and lit with glowing splotches, a third eye opening on its eye to peer at him.
A spirit. Was this the ocean spirit? Come to him? To bless him? Or to take him beyond to live with his ancestors? Was this what death was for those in the Water Tribe?
A thousand questions, and none were answered.
Instead, the spirit swam to his leg and a great relief filled Haruk even as loss also claimed him. He knew that his leg was gone, taken by the depths. Perhaps taken as tribute.
The spirit swam up to him and looked at him with its three wide glowing eyes. The currents abated and he was no longer sinking but rather floating with this spirit. He had the vaguest sense of moving upward. He dared not look away from the spirit, though, not while it considered him so heavily.
He reached for the spirit, drawn to its beauty. This was a koi fish spirit of some sort, living in the sea, he was curious. He was only fourteen and wanted so much, so badly to know exactly what had saved him. The vague sense of moving upward was more evident now that he felt the chaos of the surface and less pressure surrounding him.
It blinked at him then turned towards his outstretched hand. Was it as curious about him as he was it? Spirits were said to be curious creatures, fascinated by those bound by flesh bodies. It moved to his hand and pressed its head carefully to it. When it removed its head, he felt a small something linger, his hand closing around it instinctively.
The koi spirit glowed brilliantly for a moment and then Haruk was sent shooting through the water, breaking with the surface with great sputtering gulps of air.
The sky had lightened to a grey, clouds swirled outward in a way that signified they had reached the eye of the storm. Some calm in the midst of the chaos on the outer arms and bands.
“Haruk!” His mother shouted over the gale winds. He turned and saw his ship, his beautiful home of a ship. He saw leap over the side and into the waves and he felt her current pull him to her. Her arms secured around him before launching them out of the water and onto the deck.
They slammed into the deck, but he doesn’t even feel it because his mother is running her hands and bending over him, healing him as best she can as she notices pains and aches.
Then she saw that his leg....everything below his left knee is gone.
“Your...your leg!” She cried, concentrating her gift for spirit healing over the stub that was now where his leg ended.
While she fussed and fretted over the loss of his leg, Haruk opened his hand to stare at what the spirit had left. A small, seal-shaped whistle rested in his palm. It vibrated for a moment before settling and he knew that he was meant to have this, he could not part with it.
In the weeks that followed the storm, the crew fretted over Haruk’s leg. Mom worried it would become infected and she rarely left his side. She healed it as frequently as she could to ward off infection, though sometimes he wondered if she was trying to make him grow the limb back.
He supposed he should have been more upset about the whole ordeal. But the leg was the least of his concerns. Why did the spirit pick him? Why was he given this little whistle? The “why” of it all plagued him more than the loss of the leg. Yes, it hurt, it was agonizing to not be able to be the Haruk he was before. Though that was more than just the loss of the leg, it was everything.
Dad made him a set of crutches that he used to get around, though with the tilt of the ship, it was hard to find purchase. He fell, a lot. He woke up in the middle of the night sobbing at the phantom limb pain. It was there but it also wasn’t. He stared at the nub of a leg he used to have and it helped only a little. Finally, he gave in and just started...hitting the space where his shin would have been, his foot. He hit and stabbed it and focused on the pain that wasn’t there.
Four months after the storm and he heard whispers from his parents’ room, the captains’ quarters. He grabbed a crutch and stumbled toward the door, but didn’t make it far. He only heard one word before he was forced to return to his bed.
“Comet.”
The next day, Korik reset their course for the South Pole. A week passed and then they were at Korik’s home village of Hatta, a medium sized coastal village comprised of mostly fishermen and traders. His cousins and grandparents ran out to great them all with hugs and astonished, pitying looks at his leg.
“I will learn how to walk in no time!” Haruk assured them, even as he hobbled along on his crutches, “all this means is I have a budding career as a pirate!”
They didn’t like that joke.
They made trips to the South and North poles fairly frequently. They were major parts of their trade routes and both of his parents wanted Haruk to know where he came from, even if he didn’t consider either place home. The Midnight Moon would always be his home. Even so, he knew his grandparents on both sides and all of his cousins - and Haruk had many, many cousins.
His father had been one of six, his mother one of three. Haruk had a total of fifteen cousins, and a few of those cousins even had children of their own. While Yuna was older than both of her brothers, Korik was the youngest of his family. He had three older brothers and two older sisters who embraced the good family life.
He loved his large family, even if he didn’t see them year round. He was halfway between North and South and neither society quite fit him, but he liked visiting. He didn’t think anything of this visit until his parents came into the small room he was sharing with his closest aged cousin, Toaka. They asked Toaka to leave, and while they arched a brow at them, they left.
“Haruk…” Mom began in a soft voice that always meant bad news. But this news was...it wasn’t bad, it was horrible.
“You’re leaving me here?” He asked, betrayal filling up his still growing body in bitter waves. “How?! The Midnight Moon is just as much my home as it is yours! This isn’t fair!”
“Haruk, little one, please listen -
“To what?” He asked, eyes wide. This couldn’t be right, it couldn’t! They couldn’t just...abandon him because of the leg could they?
“It is safer for you here, son,” Korik said and Haruk shook his head, scowling.
“It’s wrong. You can’t give up on me, I didn’t choose this,” he said softly, still unbelieving. Who did this? Who abandoned their kid because they lost a leg? Or any other body part for that matter.
“Something is coming, and it is safer for you here -
“I can learn how to live with it! I am learning! I-I fall a lot less now and I can get a fake leg, I will learn to walk and run and I can help out on the ship again, I swear!”
“It’s not about the leg,” Mom said and he shook his head.
“Then what it is?!”
Silence. Just...silence. But it spoke far louder than any stupid lie they could manufacture for his benefit.
He turned from them. When they decided on a course of action, that’s what they did. They were people who had to stick their course, even if it was a hard one.
“Just get out and go,” he gruffed, not bothering to turn around when he heard them shift and stand.
“We love you, little one,” Mom said but he didn’t turn around, didn’t show her the tears falling down his face. She didn’t get those anymore, not now and not ever.
“Haruk,” Dad said but he didn’t say anything else before he left with Mom. They walked out and closed the door. In his upset, Haruk turned and threw a crystallized ice globe at the door, shattering it. They had gotten it for him for his last birthday from a tradesman at the Northern Water Tribe and he had loved it. But it was worthless now, shattered and broken.
How could they do this to him? Just...leave him like this? His leg was gone and apparently so was their love for him. He couldn’t pull his weight around on the ship anymore, so he wasn’t worth the trouble.
They left that day and he refused to see the ship off. There were no goodbyes, not hugs, nothing. They didn’t deserve it from him. He hated them so much it hurt. He tried to use the hate to extinguish the love that still sat in him, unwilling to budge. Every time he thought he could just hate them, he would remember standing on the ship with them, laughing at something or eating together. He’d remember how careful Mom was to teach him how to waterbend.
He couldn’t just hate them and that infuriated him more than anything. They didn’t deserve his love. They abandoned him because he lost his leg! He is the one who went through the trauma and they thought it fitting to just drop him off when he wasn’t the same old Haruk anymore. Like he could ever be the same person he was before that storm.
