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teaandcrowns · 6 years ago

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the cold we carry

@zutaraexchange piece part ii for @sakizm

part i

ii. ghosts

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.

#zutara #zutara exchange #atla #avatar: the last airbender #avatar the last airbender #// fic tag #my fic #sakizm #zutaraexchange #the cold we carry

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