Somewhere Between the Sun and the Moon
Prologue: What is There to Fear?
My mother would tell us a story; my brother and me.
The story was about how the world came to be the way that it was.
She never told us the ending…because she did not know how it would all end.
Air, Water, Earth, Fire…
Long ago the four nations lived in harmony.
Then everything changed when the Fire Lord broke the taboo…
In Fire Lord Sozin’s insatiable quest for power, he slew the last of the dragons, the original benders of flame…
And the Sun itself turned its back on its chosen people.
Bound to never again walk in the light of day, the people born to the islands of fire were cursed with the need to devour the life force of the living.
The Nomads of the air temples meditated, and departed these lands…
The kingdom of earth built up its borders to towering heights that only the foolish would attempt to scale…
The people of the north, prayed to the moon and the spirit pulled up the ocean itself; covering the winter lands with a frozen shield.
Leaving their sister tribe…
Abandoned…
There once was a girl who was born in the frigid cold of an unforgiving world, in the dead of night, during the darkest days of her people.
Born in the days that they couldn’t rest, the days that they were constantly running, the days that they prayed for the sun to come back…
And drive away the Cursed Ones.
“Are any following?” She could hear her mother’s muffled whisper through her furs.
“I can’t see through the snow.” Her father replied with a disgruntled groan as he pushed the falling petals of white out of his face.
Looking up and behind, the girl could see her mother tilting her head back to the direction they had traversed. Her hand’s gripping the handle of their family’s sleigh tight through mittened hands.
The girl shifted a bit in her seat to try to peer at what her mother could be looking for, and found that it was just as her father said; the snow danced about them in a fury of flurries. Nothing more than the usual winter storm for the pole. The girl’s blue eyes blinked in confusion at her parent’s apparent worry, and she found herself settling back into the piles of furs that lined the sleigh. Turning forward and away from the artic wind, she pulled the hood of her parka tighter about her russet, snow-kissed face and nestled deeper into the warmth of the pelts.
“They should be having a harder time…right?” Her brother whispered next to her as he began to fidget in their Gran Gran’s arms, that wrapped about them both tightly.
“The snow won’t stop them. They can warm themselves with their flames.” Came their grandmother’s honest though blunt reply. Her weathered face staring forward at something that the girl could not see.
And her brother sank deeper into the furs about them and stifled a small cry. The girl, seeing his worried look leaned over to give his arm a small squeeze. She had never remembered seeing him so fearful before, and she felt her heart sink at the sight of his face hung in worry and his eyes flitting about as though struggling to solve a problem that he could not find an answer to.
“Why are they here? We made the pact; we’ve kept our word!” The girl could hear her mother protest from behind her as their sleigh made small waves through the sea of frost about them.
“You know it doesn’t work like that.” The girl’s father shook his head, the familiar sound of beads jingling together told her as much.
“They keep making their way further inland with each winter…” Her mother quietly objected before letting out a sigh.
Her father urged the family’s team of leopard-rams forward as he bade his wife, “Don’t think about that now, we need to keep moving.”
The hybrid animals kept a steady, yet slow pace; their wide paws that would normally allow them to almost glide over the snow, hampered by the storm. With the winds gusting about them, the team of leopard-rams tussled their horned heads in protest at having to navigate such harsh terrain through the cold and ice with barely a moment to rest.
One more grumble and the girl’s mother reached down, pulling the furs up around the three sitting in the sleigh as she spoke, her voice like a balm to the young girl’s ears, “Are you all warm enough? Once we get past the worst of it, we should be able to stop for a meal.”
And the girl smiled as she felt her mother’s warm, mittened hand placed softly to her cheek, and breathed in the crisp air of the tundra.
She looked once more about those with her, their worried faces, and then to the storm that slowed their progress, and still found nothing but snow.
The young girl let out a small sigh, not truly understanding why the others seemed so afraid. For with her family there next to her, what was there really to fear? Shouldn’t they feel the same? They were a pack after all, that was what her mother would often say, and that was the truth of the matter.
“I still don’t know where the rest of the group is.” Her father leaned forward, his braided hair, secured with indigo beads, peaking out of his parka’s hood as he did.
Turning to her brother, the father asked, “Son, how’s our heading?”
“We still going north, Dad.” The girl’s brother affirmed as he studied the compass that lay on his lap; nodding as he double checked the direction they were going.
“That ‘a boy, keep hold of that and your sister, and we’ll be fine.” The father reached down to place a hand on top of the boy’s head while giving a comforting smile to his daughter.
The girl smiled back, as she felt her brother’s hand tighten about her own.
Leaning forward she squinted through the storm about them, half expecting to see the tail end of the rest of the sleighs that had departed from Wolf Cove along with them.
“We can’t keep up, because we are too heavy.” The girl’s Gran Gran suddenly reasoned, her wrinkled forehead creasing as she let out a low grumble, “Let me off, I’m weighing the rest of you down.”
“Not happening!”
“No! This pack sticks together!”
The two steering the sleighed hissed in a hurried whisper, both glaring down at the matriarch in horror.
“We are not having this discussion again, Mom.” The girl flinched as her father’s voice grew stern as he addressed his mother.
The girl’s Gran Gran only scoffed at her son, “You need to think about your children. You and Kya are still young and strong. I’m a liability.”
And the girl’s breath caught in her throat at her grandmother’s words, and she found herself turning and grasping about the matriarch’s waist as best she could through the layers of fur and wool, while her brother did the same. In that moment, a pang of fear lodged itself in the girl’s stomach.
What would cause her Gran Gran to say such a thing? What were they running from? She had heard the adults whisper hurriedly as the village packed for the trek to the inner mountains, but she did not understand why the whole of Wolf Cove would run from their settlement.
The girl’s father continued to protest and even rested a hand on his mother’s shoulder in an attempt to keep her from leaving the sleigh on her own accord.
“Hakoda.” The one called Kya, spoke to her husband in a hushed tone.
And the mother and son stopped their quarrelling in an instant.
Kya had looked behind them again, though the girl could tell that her mother had raised a hand to her mouth and bade them, “Shh…”
The girl jumped from her seat and climbed up the back of the sleigh, reaching out a hand towards the bule furs of her mother’s parka.
It was then that she saw a flash of light, brief and faint, but there all the same. A light not born from the snow fall of the storm. She felt her mother tense through her furs, as another flash lit up the path behind them, followed by another, and then another…
“Red…” The girl whispered, eyes wide at the appearance of the foreign color.
“Katara! Down now!” Her father plucked her from the sleigh’s back and handed her off to her grandmother’s outstretched arms before whipping the reins in a quick fluid motion, commanding the leopard-rams forward with a shout, “Keep going! Move now!”
The hybrid animals huffed and growled, but otherwise did not protest, as though they too realized that there was greater danger behind than ahead. And they found the strength to quicken their pace; claws digging into the layer of ice under the fresh powder with a crunch.
The family took off into the worst of the sea of snow; deeper into the blue and as far away from the red as they could.
This was the world that Katara had been born to.
For six months out of the year when the sun disappeared from the South Pole’s tundra, the world would turn hungry for those of the Southern Water Tribe. While the Cursed Ones, would turn the girl’s home into their hunting ground...