Moon's Tragedy

The camp is awash in starless midnight, cool and clear and subtle. Frozen in rest, bodies nary twitch to dream's delicious beat. Breath moves slow from sleep-parted lips. A possible sigh, spoken from the day creates bedded in their hollows, and then silence.

A burlap flap unfastens, string by gently tugged string, releasing just enough to slip a body through.

Sokka is awake.

He slips, on quick feet, towards the brush-line and into the thicket. He moves amidst the drooping boughs, sliding through damp, sweetly scented floor-rot, over muddy stones. Soon, the garble of a thin brook begins, cackling gently where its mother river's water stalls and moves at a much slower tempo.

It is there he can see the moon.

"Yue." To his knees he drops. Chilly muck seeps into his britches; Sokka's bottled tears fall free. "Oh, Yue, my love. Oh, Yue."

A wind turns up. Leaves scuttle. Sokka weeps, shuddering through guttural sobs.

"Yue. Yue. My beautiful Yue," he doubles up. His long hair dribbles in the rivulet. It sweeps as far down as its length would allow. "Why not me instead—"

Stunned, he stops: the stream is stagnant, its waters still as stretched silk. His dark tresses lay pin-straight; all movement has ceased.

And then her hands emerge, gentle as they were when she was real. Their lapping touch soothes the wetness on Sokka's cheeks. She pets him, coddles him, feels along the hard-lined jaw in tender reverence. Stirring in the water her pretty face smiles.

"Yue!" But when he reaches down to touch her, the flow begins again, washing her away in renewed swiftness. "Yue!"

Without a cloud, the inky sky sheds snow.