(Zutara) Hold it Gently; My Heart Burns For You

The Boy in the Iceberg

The first thing Katara learned to be proud of, is she is her mother's daughter. And when the Fire Nation came for her, she did as she was asked. She ran. She ran when the snow fell black. She ran when the soldiers in red stormed the black shale beaches. She ran when her mother told her to find her brother. She ran to her family's tent and tripped on the body. Father held her. Her older brother Sokka was supposed to be the stoic one, but he cried when she was supposed to as Gran Gran led Kya's rise to Tui and La. Katara watched, and thought it a shame she died inside, away from the snow.

In the South Pole there is no place to bury their dead. Giving Kya over to flames was out of the question, so they had to drag the body far away, so it did not rot in the home. The Fire Nation left the loved ones to do it.

~ ~ ~

Katara's furs more than keep the cold at bay as morning gathers its breath across brittle, fresh fallen snow. They have to get up early if they want to dig the snow walls. Wait too long in the day and even the fragile South Pole sun makes the snow too soft to carve safely. But carving in the heavy furs is stiff work. No condensation gets into the oiled fur. No heat gets out. Worst part is she can't lower her hood. Makes breathing the frigid air hard work. Pull it down and risk getting snow-shift down the neck when the snow-girls stomp around like Whale-seals.

She sweats as she tunnels away from the gossip of the snow girls. It's not safe for the elderly, and the women of her tribe don't like going below the ice. Tui and La dip from the sky into the water, not the ground. They scrape away the shavings before they can melt and refreeze, build the walls up. It's heavy work that leaves them all exhausted, but Katara's the only one who comes away half-frozen while the suns up. She's the Ice Carver, the only girl no one cares to remember ever doing it.

The Tiger-Seal bone is hard to grip in her gloved hands as she swings into the solid wall of ice. To be an ice carver, they say your strikes must be hard and heavy to break. Hers are precise and fast so they slice.

Despite the voices above her, she is alone in the deep ice. Her existence is vibration, the echo of her own breath, and air so crisp and thick with her breath it feels like she's swaddled in a quilt of Hawk-Bear blubber.

A new river of sweat runs down her neck, chaffing the necklace against her throat. She used to try and scratch the itch away, only for her mittens to paw futilely, irritating the area further. She still wants to. Even after four years, the sting of the chafe is a raw misery. She started at thirteen. Old enough to screw, old enough to crew. At least that's what the men say to each other. There isn't a mantra for Katara yet, and the works too hard for her to think of one.

"Hold. Hold. Hold!" It's a few more swings before she realises Ulma is yelling at her. "Katara, hold, girl!" She's above with the others, though she must be at the mouth of the tunnel if Katara can hear her yelling.

"Why the freeze?" Katara asks, annoyed. She doesn't like being interrupted.

"Why the freeze, the little Ice Carver asks," old Dakoda chuckles, and she can picture his white whiskers shaking.

"Shifts in the snow above you," Ulma snaps. She's the elder for the band of diggers. Third generation but still got the lung capacity to boss the girls of the Southern Water Tribe around in place of their missing warriors. "Hold. We're scraping the snow before you collapse this whole sheet."

"I'm swinging a damn club into the ice," Katara calls up. "Course the snows shifting. I've got less than a sheet to go. It'll hold."

"A year scraping ice and she thinks she knows her head from her hole. Poor little wrench," old Dakoda drawls. "Remember the words of our illustrious tribe. Patience and clarity. Be still like the water. Listen to your elders."