first part of my @zutaraexchange piece for @sakizm! Requested prompts that I did my best to include were: S1 North Pole, Blutara, Canon/Divergent/What-Ifs.
It’s a little spooky, so I hope that’s all right.
I don’t have a solid posting schedule for this (due to some real life events going this week), but rest assured the remaining parts will be up within the time period.
hope you enjoy!
i. dreams
Suullalik khum, they called him.
The hushed words were utterly foreign to him, but they made him think of spaces in the canals, beneath the arching bridges of ice where the shadow of the depths was darkest. There were other words he heard that were threads of a weave he didn’t understand: khoryavdal and igipannak; aidannik patoruulek and ijugenkher. Zuko could steal food for himself, but he couldn’t steal meaning. All he knew was the strange ache in his chest he felt whenever he heard the hollow, echoing words. He slipped through the city of the Northern Water Tribe, hugging the shadows and shallow alleys, and got used to seeing the mist of his breath.
It was impossible not to be seen in a city of ice and snow, so he wore the blue spirit mask and learned how to move silently across rooftops made by waterbenders.
Saving the child was a spur of the moment decision, one he spared no real thought about. She was standing by the edge of a canal in the southeast of the city, looking down into the water. He paused on the rooftop and watched her for a moment, wondering what she was seeing in the canal, when he saw her waver on her feet. Some intuition snapped in him, and he was in motion before he had the conscious thought to move. Zuko jumped off the roof into the powdery snow gathered at the edge of the house, and rolled to his feet, already sprinting toward the walkway’s edge. Even if he hadn’t had the mask on, his vision would have been narrowed to that fur-swathed girl leaning too far over the dark icy water. He grabbed the back of her parka and tugged back on the fabric, harder than he intended.
The girl fell back several feet away from the water’s edge with a surprised cry, and stared up at him with wide eyes. Zuko hesitated, heart racing, mouth open to speak—then heard other voices raise in alarm, and he remembered himself, remembered where he was, why he was here. Leaving the girl still lying in the snow, Zuko swung down beneath the canal bridge in the shadow there, just as a people ran up to the fallen child.
“Tattili!” he heard someone exclaim. “Are you all right? What happened?”
The voices echoed strangely around his hiding spot, off the curve of ice above him and the dark lapping water beneath him.
Someone other than the girl answered. “She was about to fall in the canal, but someone pulled her back.”
“Who was it?”
A pause. Then, “All I saw was a dark figure.”
There was a soft murmur of voices. “Suullalik khum,” another person said, and soft noises of agreement followed.
Zuko waited until they left to take the little girl home, then continued across the canal, toward the southeastern edge of the city.
There were abandoned houses on the other side of the canal, and he briefly investigated them. They were clustered together in a section; one of them would make a good place to stay while he waited for the Avatar to arrive, while he figured out how to capture the monk. When a sudden squall of snow and freezing rain hit a few days later, they ended up saving his life as he stumbled into one of the empty rooms, shivering and two days out from his last meal. He found old grains and dried meat in the storeroom to cook, and practiced his breath of fire to regain his strength. Three days later and recuperated, he began to wonder why everyone avoided these places.
It didn’t matter, he told himself. It was something in his favor, for once, he shouldn’t question it.
When the supplies at the first house ran dry, he simply moved to the next. In-between prowling the rest of the city, listening for any word of the bald monk upon whom his honor hinged, Zuko roamed the houses at night. At first, it was pragmatism—he needed food and furs to survive the cold—but soon it became curiosity. So much was left behind in the houses, clothing, toys, scrolls… nearly everything, it seemed. The first three houses he stayed in were quiet, just empty shells discarded to sleep alone through the long nights. They sat in a row along the same short lane and gathered snow together. The fourth house was closer to the canal than the others, nearer to the single bridge that led to that section of the city.
As soon as Zuko stepped foot in the house, a chill ran up his spine. He’d thought all the houses in this part abandoned, but now he wasn’t sure. Treading carefully, he searched all the rooms, pausing and listening as he went. The only sound coming in through the open windows was the quiet whisper of the canal water. All the rooms were empty, but he still couldn’t shake the sensation of not being alone.
He built a fire that night in a room without windows, and slept with his back against a wall.
A voice called to him, soft and sweet and drifting, lazily, like the slow winding of water in a stream. Was it someone he knew? He couldn’t tell if the voice was familiar or not, but it sounded as if… it was calling for him? Who would be calling for him?
Above him, the darkness stretched on like it was the sky, but no stars flickered in its depths. A thin ribbon of light wavered across his vision, and he squinted at it. Another soon followed, shifting and moving as if it were lapping up against the sides of something. Was he dreaming?
“Come,” a voice whispered next to his ear, echoing strange and hollow. “Your troubles weigh too much on you here.”
Zuko felt a pressure sinking down onto his chest, his throat. The floor under his back was cold and hard, and a chill shivered up his spine.
“Come,” the voice breathed again, and he felt fingers drift against the back of his hand, but there was no warmth to them.
The presence behind the voice was strong, insisting. It tugged at some empty hollow in him like a fishing line, and pulled him to his feet. Fingers slotted between his, just a ghost of a touch, siphoning away the warmth in his hand.
He wanted to ask where they were going, but his thoughts felt sluggish, and his tongue thick.
“Away,” the voice answered his unasked question. “Where your pain can float away from you.”
Numbly, Zuko merely nodded and allowed himself to be drawn out of the room with halting steps, away from the dying embers of his fire. The last of the heat in the coals snuffed into a slender wisp as soon as he shuffled out of the room.
Though there was no wind outside, the cold surrounded him and pressed against his skin as if it would stick. The moon was barely a crescent low in the sky, and the houses around him cast deep shadows down the streets. There was no sound, and even his footsteps were muffled by snow and ice. A coldness settled in his chest as he breathed in the frozen night air, as if part of the dark crept in with his breath and filled his lungs. It tamped down on his inner fire, but he couldn’t seem to summon the will to make it blaze again. Feeding his inner fire took so much energy, so much anger and pain, and he was tired. The cold felt easy, felt almost like a balm. It felt nice to have someone leading him along for one, though his steps were leaden.
“Look,” the voice commanded, hovering just over his shoulder and sounding like sugary ice.
Zuko obeyed and let his chin and gaze fall to his feet. The faintest lines of light shimmied across the water’s surface, the rest of it dark and endless as the sky.
“Let everything just float away…”
Float away. It made sense. He was tired, tired of being angry and hurt, and like he would never get anywhere despite all his efforts. It would be so simple, so easy, to just take another step forward and let the cold already nestled in his chest fill up the rest of him.
Zuko exhaled and felt the weight of his shoulders tip down toward the canal water.
“Hey, stop!”
A sharp voice cut through his sluggish thoughts. He sucked in a breath and felt a sharp ache of pain in his lungs, as if he’d spent too much time underwater. Someone stood on the other side of the canal, one hand raised and reaching forward. His eyes widened and he felt his inner fire spark and flare back to life. He recognized that voice, her wide eyes. The sliver of moon was behind him, dimly illuminating the strong features of the waterbender that traveled with the Avatar.
“You looked like you were about to fall in, are you okay?”
She sounded so concerned, she couldn’t have recognized him in return. Zuko was sure if she had, she would have attacked first—or helped him into the dark waters just below his feet. His fingers were still cold as he clenched them into a fist and took a jagged step back from the edge of the canal. He’d been a breath away from stepping into the water, just like that little girl.
“Hey—hey wait!”
Zuko ignored her calls, turned on his heel, and bolted back the way he’d come, heart pounding.
writing prompt: fake dating, iv - zutara :) (i have feeling they will be awkward dorks)
Oooo! Nice one! Prompt: iv) I won tickets to a couples retreat but I’m not a couple, so…?
“Please, Zuko!” Katara stuck out her bottom lip, giving her best puppy dog face.
It didn’t make a dent in Zuko’s irritated expression. He sighed, faking exasperation, “Why don’t you just ask Sokka? Or Aang? Or I don’t know, anyone else?”
“Sokka has a date with Suki and Aang has a basketball tournament that weekend. Toph has a family reunion. Please, you’re one of my best friends and I really really want to go!” Katara pleaded with him again, bottom lip sticking out impossibly further.
“It’s just the beach. You can go anytime,” Zuko replied turning back to the homework he had out before him.
“But this is free. And a three day two night stay. Room included and everything!” She looked intently at him as if this was that was supposed to make him bend. He held firm though and continued to stare at the text before him.
It took another second before her face fell, and she resettled herself in the seat, hands on the table. “Look. Zuko. I never win anything. So please just go with me?” Her hopeful tone finally drew his eyes up to hers.
He sighed. I’m not winning this one am I?
“I still don’t see why you can’t just go alone,” Zuko tried again. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go. It wasn’t. He just didn’t know how to spend a weekend with Katara and not… tell her how he felt about her.
“It’s a couples retreat, Zuko,” she said flatly, looking unamused. “I told you that already.”
He also was all too aware of that fact.
“So we’d be expected to be… couple-y then, wouldn’t we?” he pressed, trying to get her to drop it.
“We can do that!” Katara exclaimed.
Zuko’s stomach dropped with his mouth.
“Come on. How hard could it be to hold hands and lean against each other?” Katara smiled across the table from him.
Hard? More like torture.
“You really want to go so badly you want us to fake date to make it happen?” he asked in disbelief.
She just looked at him expectantly.
Zuko closed his eyes. I cannot believe I’m about to say this. “Ok, fine. I’ll go.”
He almost jumped out of his skin when Katara gave a delighted squeal and lunged across the work table to give him a hug. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” She released him, bouncing in her seat.
“Ok, so it’s next weekend, as you know. Pack for nice weather, and don’t forget your swimsuit or sunscreen!” She said the last part pointedly. “I will not have you burning like you did over spring break last year.” And with that she left just how she came, like a hurricane.
Zuko stared at his textbook then scrubbed at his face. I cannot believe I just agreed to this.
“Hello! Welcome to Beach Side Hideaway!” an energetic blonde greeted as they approached the reception desk.
“Hi!” Katara smiled brightly with excitement. “We’re just checking in.”
“What’s your reservation under?”
“Katara Mizushima,” she replied happily.
“Oh!” the blonde exclaimed. “You’re the sweepstakes winners! We have your room already, here’s the key and there’s a list of restaurant that you can dine at in the hotel for free. If you need anything else just let us know!” She shuffled some papers and got them their room key.
Zuko followed as Katara basically leaped down the hall way, her sun dress flowing from how quickly she was walking. The small bubble of feeling started to make his chest expand again and he pushed it back down. You’re friends. Nothing more.
They finally made it to the room. The first thing Zuko noticed as he walked in was that there was only one bed. Katara seemed to notice too because she mumbled out, “Well I guess it’s only to be expected. It is a couples retreat.”
“It’s fine,” Zuko replied. “I can sleep on the couch.” He motioned over to the small love seat by the window.
Katara looked flatly at him, “You’d barely fit on that. No, we can share the bed. It’s fine.”
She walked over and put her bag down and started to dig through it. Zuko couldn’t even begin to list all the apprehensions he had before the trip, and now being on it that list was starting to grow.
Katara turned back to him. “Well hurry up, we have a beach to go to! I heard they had surfing lessons!” She smiled as she walked to the bathroom to change.
Zuko sighed, relenting and went to set his own bag down and get his suit.
He really shouldn’t have come. It wasn’t that Zuko wasn’t having fun, he was. And it wasn’t that the beach wasn’t nice. It was that Katara was taking the couple persona they were supposed to have very seriously and Zuko was… enjoying it a little too much.
His heart would flutter when she grabbed onto his arm, it skipped when she’d look over at him, and swell when she laughed. And not only that, he found himself wanting to take her hand when they walked, and when she talked he couldn’t stop looking at her mouth, and… he was slowly realizing that he was in so much deeper than he’d thought.
“Zuko?” He looked up from his dinner. “Are you ok? You seem a little out of it.” Her hand had crept across the table and was now touching his.
“Yeah,” he said, trying his best to sound normal. “Just a little tired. It was a long day, after all,” he smiled.
Katara smiled back and squeezed his hand lightly, pushing his heart rate through the roof. She just had to kill him, didn’t she?
“Well i still want desert, then we can go back to the room, ok?” She smiled before turning down to look over the menu again.
“Sounds good,” he breathed out, Wondering how he was going to last two more days.
It kept getting harder. Today he now wanted to kiss her and was having an incredibly hard time not just grabbing her hand in his own. In fact, he’d already slipped up once this morning on the way to the beach. And the worst part was, she held his hand. She didn’t draw away from his touch. She intertwined their fingers like it was normal.
Zuko’s heart felt like it was bursting and sinking all at once, because he knew she probably just thought it was for the sake of looking like a couple and not because Zuko just really wanted to hold her hand and it was killing him a little inside.
He looked out to the waves. Katara had signed up for the surfing lessons and attempted to drag him along too. He was glad he convinced her to let him stay on the beach because she looked incredible out there. She had said she had a little experience already, but she looked so natural, like the water was bending to her will.
She caught his eye then and smiled. She came back in soon after, her hour with the instructor up. All Zuko could think about as she walked up to him was how much he wanted to kiss her.
“Hey,” she grabbed his hand. “Wanna go get lunch?”
He pulled his hand away for fear he would do something stupid. “Yeah, I’ll wait while you get dried off. Where did you want to go?”
He noticed her brow crease slightly before she replied. “How about the beach shack over there?” She motioned down the way to the beach side restaurant.
“Sounds perfect,” he replied.
She started toweling off and put on her flowy beach cover-up. They then started strolling down to the restaurant. Katara was just a bit further away than usual. Had Zuko done something?
As they ate lunch and went back out for the afternoon, Zuko couldn’t help but feel like he’d missed something. Katara didn’t grab his arm, or walk close enough for their arms to bump. It was like their was a new wall and she seemed so… stiff now. It continued all through the afternoon and dinner.
On their way back to the room Zuko finally couldn’t take it anymore. When they went in he took a deep breath.
“Katara? Did I… do something? You’ve been feeling kind of distant.
She turned to him, her face falling slightly, and her arms crossing over her chest, she looked down at her toes. “No, you didn’t do anything.” She finally whispered out. “I was just… I was getting my hopes up again,” she smiled at him a little sadly.
Zuko didn’t know what to say. He was confused. “Getting your hopes up about what?”
Katara sighed. “Look, Zuko, I… I haven’t been completely honest with you. I wanted you to come on this trip with me more than anyone else because, well,” She looked down at her hands and then back up. “I like you. Like romantically like you.” She fidgeted a bit.
Zuko’s head felt like it was spinning. Katara… liked him. He didn’t have unrequited feelings? He had been trying to bury them for nothing?
He stepped up to her, sighing, a soft smile making it’s way onto his face. “I like you too.” He took her hand. “A lot.”
A flash of surprise swept over her features. “But, you pulled away, I thought.”
“I was worried you’d notice how I felt,” Zuko interrupted. “I didn’t think you could like me in that way and I thought everything you were doing was to make it look like we were a couple.” Zuko swallowed nervously.
Katara beamed at him. “So, we could make it official and actually be a couple instead of a pretend one.”
“I think I’d like that,” he smiled in return, taking her hands in his. They were warm.
She looked down at their hands and back up at him. “So can I kiss you now? I’ve been wanting to like all day.” She bit her lip nervously.
Zuko could feel his cheeks flushing, but nodded and leaned in slightly. Katara did as well, meeting him half way. When her lips brushed his he couldn’t help but think how happy he was he had agreed to come.
sakizm replied to your post: i haven’t been using lip balm lately and i’ve...
Omg I feel ya. My lips get chapped when I don’t use lip balm and then I chew my lips. I have the sugar rose balm too! Love using it for some color when my lips are too chapped for lipstick lol
it’s such a good lip balm omg
i honestly mostly wear it at home though because i’m not too crazy about the color on me lol
The waterbender had almost seen him, that he was sure of.
Without anywhere else to retreat after his close call at the canal, Zuko had been forced back to the abandoned houses. He avoided the house he’d had whatever strange nightmare that was, but he couldn’t sleep outdoors. That was a death sentence waiting to happen, and he wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
Even still, he hadn’t slept much.
It wasn’t until nearly that last moment that he saw her coming down the lane, and even then, it’d taken a moment for that fact to register in his sluggish brain. He’d only just been able to shimmy his way up onto the roof of one of the houses barely a breath before she turned the corner after him. From the rooftop, he watched her look around, then go back the way she had come. A breath he didn’t realize he was holding rushed out of his lungs into a cloud of mist.
Why was he hiding from her? He should be following her; she was surely here with the Avatar. He should seize that opportunity while he had the chance, the element of surprise. Yet, all he could think of was her calling out to him, stopping him from stepping into the water.
An involuntary shiver ran through him at the memory, of how close he was to the canal’s edge, how enticing that voice had sounded in his head.
Zuko sat back on his heels and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Exhaling a small, hot breath, Zuko lowered his hands. He sat there for a while, staring out in front of himself at nothing in particular. He still wasn’t sure if he had imagined the voice drawing him out. Maybe he’d been hungry or cold enough that he hallucinated it. Was that even possible? He didn’t know.
A shadow of movement passed through his unfocused vision inside the house opposite him. His body leapt back to life, all too happy to respond with action. He shifted to crouch down far enough that he was looking just over the snow-dusted ledge of the rooftop, down through the windows that were facing him. After that initial movement, everything seemed still inside. Was he imagining things again?
At that thought, he realized the house he’d been staring at, that he thought he saw movement in, was the house he’d slept in the night before last—the house that he’d walked from in whatever hallucination-induced trance that had overcome him. His heart beat a little more quickly in his chest; out of a kind of compulsion, he tugged the blue spirit mask that was perched atop his head down over his face. Some animalistic part of his brain tried to desperately convince him that the fearsomely carved face would give him some modicum of protection against whatever was lurking in that abandoned home.
Eyes darting between the few windows that were in his view, Zuko willed his breath to be steady, imagining the slow rise and fall of a candle flame in time with his breathing. After several moments of stillness within the house, he let out a longer breath, muscles relaxing.
Then someone walked in front of the second-floor window.
His stomach lurched unpleasantly, and he gripped the ledge of the rooftop so tightly that he left melted indentations from his fingers in the ice. Breath hot and quick and loud beneath the wooden mask, Zuko could do nothing more than start at the window, frozen in place.
The figure in the window stopped, then knelt. His eyes went wide.
It was the waterbender.
Spirits, he hadn’t realized she’d gone into one of the houses—he thought she would have gone back to wherever she and the Avatar and that other peasant boy were staying. She must have been trying to find him, he realized, and bit his tongue on a silent curse. But—what was she doing now? He leaned closer, narrowing his eyes through the holes of the mask to try and see better. She held something in her hand, then set it back down, and seemed to linger on another set of items a little while longer. They looked like ivory sticks of some sort, but at this distance, he couldn’t begin to guess at their use.
It grew so gradually, that Zuko completely missed it at first. The shadow that she cast behind her lengthened, then widened. He didn’t notice it happening, but the darkness of it caught his eye, and it was far larger than a shadow he would have expected from her. Odd. Dread dropped like a stone down through his chest and into his belly. It was just past noon. There shouldn’t be any shadows in the house cast like that.
Just as he had that thought, he watched the shadow behind her somehow grow a depth to it, and he got the distinct impression that if she just leaned back, it would swallow her up.
His grip tightened on the icy ledge, unconsciously deepening the grooves of his fingers from the heat coming from them. Should he go into the house? And do what? Save her? From a shadow? Still, his heart thudded against his ribcage and insisted he do something. The shadow behind her wasn’t normal, and every fiber of his being was vibrating in alarm, in the need to act right now.
Before he could spare any actual thought into doing anything, she collapsed onto the floor in a heap. He scrabbled to his feet and tensed for a jump to the house she was in without thinking, but pulled up short as she pushed herself up off the floor. Was she all right? He paused, watching her, one foot still up on the ledge he’d been prepared to leap off of.
The shadow seemed to have vanished, or at least receded to something less discernible through the window. Then, the waterbender looked up. Right at him.
Zuko’s footing slipped and he stumbled back to keep from falling off the roof. Behind the mask, his eyes were wide and a thin line of tears gathered along them. His pulse pounded through him as he stared up at the bright sky, rushing into his ears and drowning out all other sounds save for the raggedness of his breath. She couldn’t have looked at him. How could she have even known he was there?
Yet, he couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that she absolutely had lifted her head and stared directly at him, with no waver or searching to her gaze. An intense dread filled him again, the echoes of the deep cold that had filled him not long ago reaching up through his memory with coiling tendrils. Suddenly very anxious, he righted himself and went to the ledge again, looking down through the window with no small amount of trepidation knotted at the base of his skull.
She was gone.
Like a tide, unease rose in him and spurred him into action. Zuko leapt from the rooftop onto that of the other house, then slipped in through a round, open window on the third floor. Once inside, he paused and listened, but was rewarded with no sound. He took that as an unpleasant sign and hurried down through the house to the second floor. Having only seen from the outside the room she was in, he ended up having to poke his head into several rooms until he found the one with the ivory sticks she’d been looking at. The room was cold—much colder than the rest of the house, or even outside. His breath misted heavily in front of him, and he shivered. The inner spark within him felt like it sputtered for a moment, and he involuntarily took a step back out of the room. Chest constricting, Zuko spun on his heel and jogged through the rest of the house, slamming open doors trying to find her.
He couldn’t really articulate in his own head why he felt he needed to find her so frantically. She was his enemy, an obstacle in the way of him achieving his goal: capturing the Avatar.
But, she’d saved him.
Zuko at least owed her that.
Several minutes’ chaotic search of the house yielded no waterbender. With nowhere else to look inside, he ran out the front door, left ajar, and scanned the line of white buildings for her. A dwindling spot of blue moved steadily northwest through the street, nearly past the last house on the lane. Nearly at the canal, he realized.
Cursing and not bothering to bite his tongue that time, Zuko burst into a sprint. Snow kicked up in powdery clouds behind him as he strained to reach her in time. Pockets of terror slide through him like bubbles of icy water; he knows the cold that’s seeping inside her now, that’s dragging her down toward the dark water of the canal like iron weights in her chest. His own felt heavier just thinking about it, but he willed the fire in him to flare up, trying to push back against it.
Whether or not the presence that had pulled him down to the canal two nights ago was once again trying to influence him, the surge of qi flowed through his limbs like steam, and gave him the final push of energy he needed to cross the last bit of distance between them.
Not bothering to hesitate to think about the best way to stop her, Zuko launched himself in the air, reaching for her.
He collided solidly into her back, knocking her down and sending them rolling over one another a few times, before he slammed his heel down to stop them. The residual flush of heat coursed through his heel and created a melted wedge right at the very lip of the canal. Zuko’s heart hammered between his lungs, against the smaller body of the waterbender he now held tightly.
She was cold, almost frigid, and struggled against him. He grunted as she elbowed him in the stomach, but didn’t let go—he tightened his grip, somehow knowing that if he let her go, she would fling herself away and into the dark water. She snarled incoherently and whipped her head around to glare at him, and he sucked in his breath at the sight.
Her dark skin was ashen, even in the light, leeched of as much of its color as he imagined might be possible while she was still alive, and her pupils were blown out and dark. Her fingers clawed into the front of his black tunic, whether trying to hurt him or simply push away, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t let go.
“Hey! Stop!”
The same words she’d shouted at him in alarm, he snapped at her in desperation and frustration. She froze.
Her too-wide, too-dark eyes stared unblinkingly at him for several panting breaths more, and then they rolled back in her head and she went limp in his arms. Her face remained ashen, but not as terrifyingly so as only a moment before.
Unwilling to waste any time this close to whatever cursed canal this was, Zuko scooted frantically back away from it until he found his feet again. He clutched the waterbender in his arms, chest heaving with so much exertion, then quickly carried her back to the house he’d stayed in last night—one that hadn’t sent him toward an icy death sentence.
Katara smoothed down the front of her fur-lined parka, and looked at her reflection in the ice mirror again.
“You look fine,” her brother said from somewhere behind her. “Come on, we’re going to be late for dinner with Chief Arnook and everyone.”
Katara’s reflection blinked and she shook herself out of her thoughts. She hadn’t really been looking at herself; her mind was back near the southeastern edge of the city the previous night. Who had that dark figure been? They’d moved so quickly and vanished into the night. She tried following after, but after the first few feet, the tracks disappeared, too. It was if the night had simply swallowed the figure up.
Over her shoulder in the mirror, she could see Sokka gearing up for another reminder, but she waved away his comments before he could voice them, then followed him out of the house.
Aang was already outside waiting for them, swirling snow into nearly a dozen figures lined up in formation. He grinned at them, and then they were on their way to the communal hall. Katara tried to focus on the conversation once they were settled and the food laid out before them, but found herself distracted more often than not. She couldn’t stop thinking about the other night. Why had that person been there? It looked as if they were about to fall into the canal, but they moved so stiffly, almost as if they were in some kind of trance. From across the canal with the moon behind them, their face had been cast in shadow and Katara hadn’t been able to make out any features at all, except the sallowness of their skin. Which, for all she knew, was really just a trick of the light, a leeching of color beneath the pale moon.
She absently ate some of the pickled herring in her bowl, and rested her cheek on her hand. Conversation flitted around her like butterfly moths, fleeting and unable to hold her attention for long.
“Hey,” Aang said suddenly, appearing by her side seemingly out of nowhere. Perhaps he’d been there for a while, and she just hadn’t noticed. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head at herself a little, and smiled at him. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking, Aang.”
Brightening, his concern widened into a grin. “Good! Because they’re about to start a waterbending demonstration!”
Eagerly in the present now, Katara turned her full attention to the elder tribesman and two young men who stepped up into a wide, open area between where they sat and the rest of the tribe. This was the first time Katara had seen real waterbending, and she was immediately entranced. It all moved so fast, so fluidly, and her heart ached for all the things she hadn’t learned because there were no other waterbenders in the South Pole. All at once, even while she managed to catch a few quasi-familiar moves here and there, Katara felt like an interloper, like some sort of ghost lingering in a place where she shouldn’t be.
The waterbending masters before them finished the display of their skill in dazzling form, the suspended water droplets around them all like shimmering prisms in the firelight, before each exploded into silky powder that melted before ever touching a single guest. Applause erupted, and Katara was swept into the swell of appreciation despite the hollow in her chest.
“I can’t wait to start learning,” she breathed.
“Me too!” Aang exclaimed. “I think we’re going to be able to talk to one of the masters tomorrow…”
Katara laughed. “We’ve only just arrived. Let’s take another day to catch our breath and then see about waterbending lessons, okay?” It wasn’t entirely a lie, but she also wanted an excuse to have the chance to explore the city a little before focusing on learning. She was excited to finally have the chance to learn the forms and flow of her heritage, but the person at the canal still hovered in her mind. Maybe she could find out more, given a little time to investigate.
“Okay,” Aang agreed, though somewhat deflated at the notion of having to wait.
Now that the demonstration was over, as well as the formal courses of the meal, people got up out of their seats and mingled freely with one another; dozens of conversations spread through the hall like a warmth. The sense of displacement Katara felt earlier melted beneath the cadences of her sister tribe, and she felt that warmth wrap around her like fur. For once, she was up on her feet before Aang, heading off to introduce herself and get to know the kin they would be spending the next few weeks with as Aang—and she—trained.
Though the Earth Kingdom dialect was the most widespread throughout the entire world, each nation still retained vestiges of the languages they once spoke individually. There were some words and phrases that just didn’t have good equivalents, and so the Tribe words stuck around. Katara heard a few as she drifted through the hall, listening to the tribespeople converse around her, and they sounded sweet to her ears, like golden raisins tucked in an otherwise bland cake.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she saw three people shuffle off to the side, away from others. This wouldn’t have normally raised any concern in her, but the worried looks on their faces, wouldn’t let her pass it by. As she neared them, she heard snippets of hushed conversation. Amid the genial din of the hall, the threadbare undertones of a heavy topic stood out more than Katara could have guessed. She paused close enough to hear their words clearly, lingering nearby and pretending to look over a table of assorted food and drinks.
“What is it? What happened to her?” An older woman stood next to a man who looked to be her contemporary, and spoke with a younger man who appeared haggard.
“I don’t know,” the younger man said, spreading his palms a little. One of his hands came up to quickly brush at his eyes. “She was so happy she’d finally quickened, I—I thought, anyway. But then… then she…”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, staring intensely down at the floor, and then closed his eyes. The man’s voice dropped to a whisper, and Katara had to strain to hear what he said next. “She just... igipannak khoryavdal.”
Katara watched the older man shake his head. “I’m so sorry.”
She frowned down at the table of food she was still hanging around. A wet, freezing death in narrow water, was what the Tribe phrase literally meant, but she felt like it held more meaning that just that; she was simply unfamiliar with the greater context.
“Taonuu makes five just this last month,” said someone right beside her. Katara nearly jumped out of her skin as she saw the older man and woman come walking up to the table she was at, their heads canted toward one another as they spoke.
Katara wasn’t sure if she should feel any kind of comfort in the fact that she wasn’t the only one who brought the weight of ghosts with her this evening.
The festivities lasted well into the night, so most people were only fully stirring around noon, including Katara. While she ate with Sokka and Aang, she thought back not only to the conversation she overheard, but to the strange figure by the canal.
“That’s it!” she exclaimed, drawing confused looks from her brother and their companion.
Sokka looked from her to the rest of the meal on the table. “No, there’s still a lot more left. I didn’t eat everything, you know.”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I just—I think I pieced something together.”
“Like what?” Aang asked, eyes bright. “Maybe we can help!”
She hesitated a moment, worrying her lip. “Well, I overheard some people talking last night about a woman who died.” Immediately, Aang’s face dimmed. “It’s just…” Her gaze shifted over to Sokka. “Igipannak khoryaval.”
Aang looked completely baffled by the phrase, which she expected, but Sokka’s expression shifted into one of concentration.
“Frozen suicide in… thin water?”
She nodded. “Narrow. I think that means the canals.” His eyebrows shot up, eyes widening. “Yeah—that’s what confused me at first, too. Sokka, I think people have been dying in the canals.”
Aang cut in. “I heard something kind of strange last night, too.” Katara glanced back at him as if she’d forgotten momentarily that it wasn’t just her and her brother here. “Something about a little girl being saved from falling into a canal.”
Katara heard the old man’s words from last night again—five just this month. Her throat tightened. “That’s really good. I’m glad someone saved her.”
The younger boy shook his head. “Yeah, but it was strange. There was this weird phrase they used about the person who saved her. Soolik khom or something?”
She exchanged a look with her brother. He spoke first. “Suullalik khum?”
“That was it. What does it mean?”
Sokka pressed his lips together before answering. “They’re just a ghost story. They’re not real.”
“That’s what the people last night said, too!”
“According to legend, they’re spirits that aren’t fully part of one world or another. You can only see shadows of them, but they still move among us as if they’re living with us,” Katara explained. The figure she saw at the canal rose up in her memory again. “It couldn’t be,” she murmured. Her mind raced. What if it was one of the shadow people? She thought the same as Sokka—that they were just an old story, but she’d seen that strange person who looked more shadow than person… If one of the suullalik khum had really saved a girl, maybe they were involved somehow with the other deaths? Why else would she have seen one by a canal?
“What?”
The word snapped Katara back to the present, and she blinked several times to reorient herself.
“Nothing,” she lied breathlessly. “I—I have to go. See you guys later!”
As she hurried out the door, Aang followed her, clinging to the edges of the bone frame and leaning out. “Wait, where are you going?”
Heat bloomed across her cheeks even as the cold from outside hit her face. “I just want to explore a bit, that’s all! I’ll be back later. For dinner.” With a wayward wave tossed over her shoulder at him, she set off through the city. She even managed to wait until she was sure their guest house was out of sight before she broke into a jog.
She didn’t have to wander too much to find where she’d been two nights before. The first time, she’d found herself there out of pure happenstance—she’d been restless, and slipped out of the guest house to take a walk for a bit. Being surrounded by so many tribespeople—even if they were just a sister tribe—both made her heart swell and break simultaneously, and she had needed some air. All she’d expected was to have a few moments to herself, not stumble across something that should have only been a legend.
Potentially, she reminded herself as she made her way through the snowy streets. She might have just seen another person. Katara frowned. But, whoever it was, they’d vanished almost seamlessly into the night, as if they really were suullalik khum.
Her heart raced as she reached the canal in the southeastern section of the city. It was quieter here, the hustle and bustle of the markets and people as they went about their day behind her. In fact, as she slowed to a stop before the arch of the bridge, there seemed to be virtually no sounds here.
Her breath misted before her as she looked out over the small cluster of houses on the other side of the canal. All the windows were dark. Odd.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said quietly.
As if her voice broke some sort of seal in the air, a breeze sifted through silvery handfuls of snow on the rooftops of the houses, sprinkling the flakes down on the street below. A shiver snaked up her spine, and the hairs at the back of her neck prickled. Just the cold, she told herself silently, though the air was no cooler than it was a moment ago. Katara went up to the bridge, noting there was only one pair of footprints across it. Her mouth pressed into a line, and she paused at the top of the arch to look down at the canal water. It was dark, fading into a deep blackness more quickly than the other canals she’d crossed on her way here. It was probably something to do with the angle of light here in the southeast, though even as she had that thought, it didn’t sound quite right to her. The back of her neck prickled again, and she looked back over her shoulder, expecting to see someone standing behind her. There was no one. No one was on either side of the bridge, either; she was alone in this section of the city.
Eyebrows drawn together in thick, concerned lines, Katara drew in a steadying breath and took one last look at the water. It was still.
There was something very off about this place.
All at once, she felt a cold settle in her—not the biting cold of the polar wind, but the creeping cold of icy water. It made her want to curl her toes in her boots. Not wanting to be on the bridge over the strange, dark canal another moment, she continued over it to the cluster of houses.
It didn’t take long for her to discover they were all empty.
She couldn’t think of why they would all be uninhabited. Surely there were people in the city who wouldn’t mind having a larger place to live, if there was this much surplus housing. Water Tribespeople were heavily family oriented, this was true, but if there were available houses, Katara couldn’t imagine some newlyweds not wanting a place of their own to start their own families.
She walked down the lane of empty houses, trailing a hand along the outside of one as she passed it. A portion of the corner of the building crumbled almost instantly under her touch, causing her to startle and pull her hand back. They weren’t just empty—they’d been empty for a while, with this little maintenance done to them. It made her think about her village; after so many Fire Nation attacks, they had a lot of empty buildings. But, no Fire Nation ship had ever even found the city here, so they couldn’t be the abandoned shells of former families who were killed.
Something dark and very much out of place against the snow and ice and bone of the city caught the edge of her peripheral, and she halted, craning her head around to try and see better. It was definitely more than a shadow, because as soon as she stopped and looked, it moved.
Katara set off in a sprint after it—down the rest of the row of houses, turning sharply into a narrow alley between another two. She knew she saw it turn down this way—
There was nothing but a dead end.
Another chill ran up her spine as she stood between the silent houses, but no wind picked up to break the air this time.
She swallowed down a swift rise of nervousness in her throat. Katara was sure she saw something. As she turned to go back out onto the lane, she spotted an open window. Maybe whatever, or whomever, she saw had gone inside. Quickly, she rounded the corner agains and went in the house.
The door wasn’t locked at all. It scraped open against the icy floor when she pushed on it, sending the rough noise echoing through the empty rooms of the house. Small piles of ice shavings were clustered here and there, but there were no signs of life. Careful to keep her footsteps quiet, she walked further into the house, glancing around. She felt more exposed in here than she had outside; every door seemed to threaten some shadowy secret. Her heart raced. What if it really had been suullalik khum that she saw? Did she really want to be chasing one down? What would she do if she found one?
Breath misting in front of her, Katara slowly made her way through the bottom floor of the house, creeping up on every corner and doorway, ready to spring into some kind of action if she came face-to-face with anything. There was nothing in any of the rooms, not even any indication of when a family had lived here last.
Back in the main room, she eyed the stairs leading up to the second floor. She was already here, so she might as well be thorough about it. If nothing else, she could assuage her own rising fears with the fact that this house was, in fact, truly empty, and that she had just been imagining seeing shadows.
It still wouldn’t explain the figure she saw by the canal, or what Aang said about a little girl being saved by a supposed suullalik khum from falling into a canal, but she’d feel a little better about waving off the eerie sensation she now felt in the house as nerves.
By the time she reached the top of the stairs her breathing was shallow, and her heart was in her throat. The hallway before her had several doorways, some open and some closed. Whatever shadow she’d seen could be in any of them, and it was starting to frustrate her. The empty houses were strange enough in themselves; she didn’t need someone lurking about them on top of that. Jaw set, Katara drew up some of the snow and ice from the stair bannister to her hands, just in case. About halfway down the hallway, near one of the open doorways, she could have sworn she heard a noise behind her, a soft whispering. It could have been a voice, or just the quiet rustle of fabric. Either way, she whirled, hands raised, finding nothing but the hallway. One of the doors. It must have come from behind one of the closed doors.
She pulled a little more water to encircle her hands, then approached the door she thought might be hiding the source of the noise. It was only a moment that she hesitated, then pushed the door open with a sudden rush, and darted into the room, water trailing behind her.
What she saw, however, made her hands fall to her sides, her expression softening.
It was the room of a young woman, that much was obvious. A vanity made of bone sat against one wall with an old pillow before it, and an open box of coral and bone beads upon it. Katara’s shoulders softened as she went and knelt by it, reaching out to touch a carved ivory hair pin with the likeness of a turtleseal. A plainer one sat next to it, with deep blue beads hanging from the tip. It was the first sign of life she’d seen in this house, and it weighed into her heart.
These hair pins could have been heirlooms—if they weren’t before, they might have been in the future. Her hand left the pins to touch her mother’s necklace. They hadn’t had such delicate adornments in the South Pole for some years, but the sentiment of them resonated in Katara’s bones the same way.
A chill settled on her back, gently at first, but then with a strange, increasing pressure. The cold that had crept into her on the bridge filled her once again, though quickly this time, as if she were a clay pot being filled with ice water. Her lungs constricted and she gasped for air once before blackness overtook her vision.
for the end of year book ask! #1, 12, 20, and 25 :)
First, thank you for asking!
1. 30 and counting. I'm honestly shocked I met my goal earlier than expected but then started a book that is kind of a struggle to get through.
12. The Ten Thousand Doors of January was not as interesting as the back cover made it sound. I struggled through it and it put me in a reading slump for ages. [sidenote. looking through my list made me realize I had a lot of books this year that were just meh.]
20. My most anticipated releases were definitely Onyx Storm and Sunrise on the Reaping. I genuinely loved both of them but Sunrise on the Reaping was amazing. I cried reading both books.
25. The same as this year. My goal is usually 25-30 books but with the hope that I will read more. But I don't stress myself about it too much. I just enjoy reading and my goal is mostly to continue enjoying it and not to let a goal stress me out and take the fun out of it.
honestly it's been so long I don't even remember. it was either for aesthetics which didn't work out lol or it was for my hyperfixation at the time which seems much more likely
20. favourite things about the night?
the moon will always be my all time favorite thing and the stars the runner up. I always love trying to find constellations in the sky even if i'm not very good at it ;p
24. what’s one thing you’re proud of yourself for?
ooof hitting me with the tough questions this is going to sound really dumb but my fashion sense. growing up I wasn't really allowed to pick my own clothes so shopping for clothes for myself and learning what I liked to wear was kind of a hard journey for me when I got to adulthood. I like to think I've come a long way tho! Especially since I tend to get complimented on my outfits when I go out!
