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A MOTHER AND a daughter walk through a blizzard. The wind rips through their hair and their coats, unhooking buttons, ruffling tufts of fur lining, and staining their eyes. The snow is blinding. Heavy chunks fall and fall in a torrential downpour, soaking their clothes. They blink rapidly and hold hands in front of their faces, trying to sway the clumps of snowflakes stuck to their eyelashes.
But this is not now. This is a memory.
The mother squeezed her daughter's hand, even tighter than before. It had been an uphill battle for the both of them—frostbite was fast approaching, and she was getting terribly sick. She'd been sick for days, without the heart or resilience of a younger, stronger woman. Her little girl was coughing behind her. Five years old, and knee-deep in snow.
Despite the bitter cold and her hacking, the child trooped on. It was a miracle she hadn't frozen to death. She had bright, straw-blonde hair split into two pigtails, both tied back with thick white ribbon. Tanned skin and blue eyes were littered with snow. She was clumsily trotting along to keep up with her mother. Her boots kept sinking into the ground, leaving her scrawny, floundering arms to tug on her mother's hand to pull herself up. But instead of the sickly, ravaging fear plaguing her mother's face, there was a childlike wonder lighting up her eyes. The snow was so delicate, yet it fell so rampantly. It wasn't scared of melting or crumbling or withering to dust. It was fascinating.
She tilted her head up to the freezing sky, welcoming each snowflake on her face, feeling them cool and then sizzle on her skin before melting away. Each one was like a kiss from an angel, taking away the sweltering beneath her bones.
It was odd behaviour for a child lost in a snowstorm with an ill mother. So odd, in fact, that it was the kind of thing she had been told not to do. It is cold, Momma said. Be cold.
So she wrapped her long blue coat around her body and let the ice consume her.
Zh'uri was getting impatient with her daughter's relentless optimism. Her frayed, weary skin was losing colour by the minute. Her poor, sweet girl—Crystal, as she was, was so fiery and tenacious. Crystal's little hand was the only thing giving any sort of warmth in this sea of ice and darkness. Zh'uri gripped her hand like a lifeline, carrying her through the shards of sleet piercing her vision. She could only hope that Crystal would be enough here. That through careful precision, she could forget the parts of herself she had to. And if that wouldn't work, pretending would have to do.
Crystal's father was a firebender—a powerful one, at that. Zh'uri didn't know how things had happened, or why, or when, to be honest, but when Crystal was born and her lover grew distant, the pain was far too much to bear. The Fire Nation was no place for the child of a waterbender. It wasn't a place for any child. The flames of war had been stoked tremendously in the past year, and their secluded home in the world tipped further into danger. Zh'uri knew that if she hadn't gotten out of there it was only a matter of time before her own lover would turn on her, too. And although it killed her to return to her old tribe like a shameful dog, it was the only place she could think to go.
