Katara of the Southern Water Tribe was a loving daughter, a doting sister, and a pirate without equal. She was the youngest Master of White Waters that anyone had ever seen, and she was the only captain from her Tribe to gain naval renown since the Raids.
She had captained The Last Airbender ever since she found it frozen and abandoned in ice when she was a girl. Hers was the fastest ship on the ocean. It was engineered, through repairs, in part by her brother—her first mate and her favored back to have to hers in a firefight. Some sailors claimed The Last Airbender sometimes flew over the water since the wind was forever partial to its sails, orange and always pulled taut like a glider by insistent breezes.
Katara and her crew made their living reacquiring airbender artifacts that the Fire Nation looted from the ruined holy sites—now mass graves—that were once the Temples that housed her Tribe’s closest companions and allies.
No one knew why the Fire Nation wanted the Air Nomad’s relics, especially after they had collected a hundred years of dust.
It didn’t matter, though.
If the Fire Nation wanted it, Katara wouldn’t let them have it.
Besides, tonight was promising. The moon was full, their hearts were heavy with song, and, if the security on board the black navy ship was anything to go by, this night’s haul looked like a good one. The older men of her crew hadn’t seen an entourage like that since they were boys apprenticing under their fathers (before the Fire Nation rebranded her people’s trade and branded them all pirates...But her people were nothing if not honest, so they became exactly what the Fire Nation feared.)
There was a firefight and a storm from hell, and Katara couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed by the wind. It usually warned her of such things by feeding her the smells of lightning and pregnant storm clouds.
She labeled the wind a traitor when she was knocked overboard.
She cursed it a thousand times over when a cyclone turned her world black.
Katara woke up surrounded by dead plants, debris, and dead relics—loaded in splintered crates—of a dead nation. The wind greeted her like an awkward friend and welcomed her to an island from nowhere.
’The Boy in the Box’—as Katara had come to call him—had eyes like pirate’s silver and was as much a living relic as Katara had ever seen.
“Will you go sealturtle surfing with me?”
Well, at least Katara had friendly company to help her search for The Last Airbender.
.
.
Guess who has a new WIP...