Dinner together was one of Katara's favorite aspects of their time training in the spirits' valley. After a day of meditating, sparring, climbing, swimming, listening, or learning, the time she was able to spend beside her friends was held as something close to sacred. Time had only strengthened her thoughts on the matter, even if every now and then the sight of Toph's green eyes sparkling with the fervor of a good spar or the warmth of Zuko's arms holding her close as she drifted to sleep occasionally battled for their own special places in her heart. Dinner was where they could decompress about the day with their masters, exchanging ideas and banter without the stress of the day's lesson pressing in on them. It was during one of those dinners that Katara found herself lamenting to her master how wasteful her own movements still seemed to be, even after nearly two years of grueling practice. She had expected Uisce to smile patiently and assure her that she would only continue to progress as she continued to practice her forms. She hadn't expected Uisce's smile to shatter, a gasp ripping free from her as one of her hands moved to press against her chest, just above her heart.

Katara's heart fell, but she left it behind in her chair as she leapt into her feet. She snatched water from her companions' cups, her hands already glowing and her senses already searching through Uisce's body to track down the source of the trouble. Her mind was a tool against itself in that moment, because she had seen these very symptoms before a hundred times over. She saw this same malady whenever Awyr was struck with the pain of her frayed connections to the physical world.

The realization set in as Katara's hands coaxed Uisce's chi to flow more smoothly, persuaded her pain to fade away. The meaning behind the realization didn't connect until after, when Uisce was finally able to catch her breathe enough to offer her student a word of thanks.

"The North Pole," Katara murmured. It wasn't an even exchange for what Uisce had said, but the master nodded nonetheless, a dark light clouding her eyes.

"The balance is shifting again," Zuko breathed, eyes shifting with some horror towards his master. Rhyu was frozen solid, his breathing shallow as his eyes squeezed shut. Zuko, ever conscious of the bonds keeping the world immediately around him together, could almost taste ozone as the world began to shake against his senses. It was a small eternity until Rhyu finally opened his eyes, glinting and smoldering and wretched as they turned towards Uisce, still breathing heavily against Katara's support.

"It is. The North Pole is under siege. I can feel—" His voice cut out abruptly as he closed his eyes again. "Awyr is there. But she can't stop what is happening. I can sense it. The heat of it, the rage of it all. The North Pole will fall today."

"Brother, if that's true…" Cruinne didn't give voice to the rest of his thought, but he might as well have screamed it. Katara, Zuko, and Toph had all known almost immediately what a sudden shift of power—what the sudden progression of the war—would mean for their masters. If they weakened too greatly, it would be impossible for them to return to the past. The three teens had grown so much stronger, but that would be meaningless in the world as it presently existed. There was too much momentum against them. They needed to go back, all that they'd dreamed was lost. All that they'd worked for was broken.

Cruinne leapt to his feet and, without a single word or warning to anyone else at the table, made two sharp jabs with his hand that encased them, dinner and all, in a cube of solid stone. At an unspoken command, the cube began to plummet down deeper into the earth so quickly that it made all but Toph look green around the gills. As they sped deeper and deeper into the ground, the ground began to resonate with new information—a new picture was being painted deep beneath Toph's feet—and the young earthbender gasped moments before the stone cube cracked and broke apart around them, leaving all of its occupants in free fall hundreds of feet above a misty swamp. Uisce at once leapt to work alongside Katara, pulling water straight up from the swamp to create an icy slide that caught them all and carried them safely to the ground as Cruinne coughed and gasped, hands clawing at his chest.

"I don't understand. The Fire Nation shouldn't have the power to launch two simultaneous attacks against—" Rhyu's eyes were shut as his mind weighed all of the options as he searched for answers. "The Fire Navy has adapted again. Weaponry like I've never seen before. Bombs that douse the lands in combustible jelly, ready to burn or explode with little more than a match."

There was undisguisable horror in Rhyu's voice as he spoke, but Zuko grit his teeth.

"We need to go. Now. What can we do?" he asked tersely. Rhyu's eyes snapped to his student, anger flickering in them, before his face became a steel mask. Uisce, still half supporting Cruinne's weight, nodded with urgency.

"Hurry, follow me," he ordered before tearing off into the swamp. The three teens scrambled after him, Uisce and Cruinne slightly behind him, and their chase continued until they reached the mouth of a cave. Rhyu gave no hesitation as he threw himself at the ground, falling into a kneel before the entrance. When Uisce and Cruinne caught up, they too eased themselves onto the ground.

"Jikan, the balance has shifted. The time has come," Uisce whispered into the darkness beyond the cave. There was a desperation in her voice that Katara had never witnessed before, and Katara felt a new rush of fear for her master. What would happen if they went back in time? Would Uisce remember her? Would Katara ever be able to see her, or the other masters, again?

Tears threatened to fall but Katara refused them. Instead of clenching her fists, she grabbed Zuko by the wrist and unceremoniously dragged him forward so that she could take Toph's hand in hers. Toph was nearly fifteen now, the same age Katara had been when this all started. Katara spared a moment of thought to remember how naïve they had all been once. Zuko's hand tightened in hers as if he had read her thoughts and was replying to them with a curt how naïve some of us had been. Any reminiscing would have to be put off, assuming they ever had the opportunity to revisit it, when a shadow within the cave shifted, sliding closer.

"Do not be afraid. All is well," a deep voice thundered from within, shaking the air around Katara with such force she was knocked to her knees, dragging the other two with her. Or perhaps they had fallen, pulling her down? Katara realized that she couldn't tell. She turned to face Zuko, to gauge his reaction, but her body wouldn't cooperate as she expected it to. Her neck began to crane, her eyes beginning the journey towards her partner's face, but everything was slowed. It was as if she was swimming in honey, her every move delayed. The masters lifted their faces to the cave just as an elderly man stepped out from the shadows. As his feet touched the earth, his wrinkles smoothed and his back straightened. Katara stared in wonder at the young man that now stood before her, remembering to bow her head just as he looked at her. His eyes reminded Katara of the golden sands of the Si Wong desert as their seemed to pierce into her very soul.

"Katara of the Water," he said as greeting before his eyes shifted to her left and right. "Toph of the Earth. Zuko of the Fire… Such fleeting lives you lead. Despite that, destiny beckons us all forward… Masters, the time has come."

The three spirits slowly rose to their feet before the other spirit as his age continued to shift and change before their eyes. Accepting his invitation as the opportunity it was, each of the bending masters turned to their students, painfully aware how limited their time was.

"Zuko," Rhyu murmured urgently. There was so much he wanted to tell the boy still, so much he needed Zuko to understand. But there wasn't time for that. All he could do was impart his final gift to his student. "Trust in each other. Trust in the bonds that tie you, because we are all connected. Do not let them fall, or you shall follow."

"Kid," Cruinne began, hand moving to tousle Toph's hair. When she didn't move to dodge, all his words seemed to turn to sand in his mouth. He swallowed, starting anew. "Kid. I could say a whole load of inspirational bullshit, but it really boils down to this: go and kick some ass for the Earth Kingdom."

"Young one…" Katara's eyes were wide as Uisce reached for her, clasping their hands together tightly. "I have taught you all I know, a gift I don't entrust to many students. The last thing that I have to offer you is my mark. Wear it proudly, so that all will know who you, Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, are." The spirit leaned forward to place a gentle kiss against Katara's forehead. When she leaned away, a dully glowing crescent of yellow gold began to bloom against Katara's dark skin.

"Mark me, I allow this transgression but once," Jikan intoned, signifying the end of the farewells. He shut his eyes slowly before commanding, "Close your eyes, and awake to a new day."

Wary but obedient, each of the three—now truly masters of their elements—closed their eyes immediately. A chill crept over the three, seeping deep into their bones as wind tossed their hair haphazardly. As the cold grew sharper, a voice drifted through their minds.

We shall meet again, a chorus of voices promised. The students gasped awake, their masters' voices still ringing in their ears.

Toph's breath was caught in her throat, gasping and tearing up as she tried to regain her bearings. Her seismic sense told her immediately that she was in her old bedroom. She could sense her parents and their smattering of servants and guards elsewhere on the estate, but there was something different, something wrong.

She blinked her eyes, trying to make sure that they were truly open, before her memory caught up with her. Of course she couldn't see. After over a year learning new colors and figuring out new, fun ways to make her friends blush, the reminder was a brutal loss.

Her friends. Katara and Zuko were out in the world somewhere. For now, they were alone like she was, in one way or another. Her thoughts still filled with the last she'd seen of them, she couldn't help but wonder how quickly they'd be able to meet her in Omashu.

As things were now, she'd give her parents the benefit of the doubt. While she'd become accustomed to roughing it since joining the group, being rich while you traveled definitely helped make the road more comfortable. Given their family's connections, it wouldn't be extremely unusual for the Bei Fongs to meet with King Bumi. Toph could reveal some of her talents, could get the eye of the king and he would be able to convince her parents to—

Toph began wandering aimlessly as her thoughts raced, often working out a new plan only to scrap it at once. Zuko and Katara only know one plan. She had to stick to it if she wanted to see them any time soon. Resigning herself to what will surely be an odious conversation, Toph turned and began walking towards her father's study. Her mother, despite her demure appearance, was the one truly who ran the household. Lao wasn't unintelligent, but he didn't have the drive that Poppy possessed. To maintain all appearances, the office and all of their business documents were labeled with the name of Toph's father, but she knew where the real fight would come from.

Unfotunately, Toph had barely taken two steps away from the gardens when a worried voice called out her name. She could plainly discern the figure—one of the estate guards—hastening towards her and she stopped to wait. Moving and ignoring him would only cause more worry, more questions that Toph didn't want to deal with.

"Miss Toph!" the man called again, only a few feet from here. "Your mother sent me to look for you. Were you in the gardens again?"

"I was actually on my way to see her. Would you escort me to her?" Toph asked in her most saccharine voice. It wasn't as perfectly melodic as it had once been, as she'd long since fallen out of practice with this routine, and Toph could just make out the frown on the man's face. Before she could worry about completely being made, he began to speak.

"Of course. May I?" he asked, offering an arm in her direction. A younger Toph would have smiled daintily, hands groping out blindly where his voice had come from to carry out her charade. Things were different now, though. She was different. So she turned on her heel and began walking in the direction of the study.

"You may," she called over her shoulder, not bothering to wait for him to catch up. It seemed she had an appointment with Lady Beifong.

Katara hadn't known what to expect when she closed her eyes. Perhaps she'd blink and the world would simply flicker and rearrange itself as it had looked all those years ago? The cold of Jikan's touch wouldn't completely fade, but it would transition into the icy bite of the ice and seas she'd spent her childhood roaming. A blink and she'd be at the South Pole once more.

She should have known that such a journey wouldn't have been so smooth. Time was only designed to flow in one direction, and her bending wouldn't help her at all as she was dragged upstream. The cold grew sharper, centering in her chest as if the air in her lungs had suddenly turned to jagged ice as her world was swallowed by the darkness. She tried to open her eyes, tried to kick and scratch and fight to the surface, but there was only pain.

Slowly, though, the pain began to fade as all things do. With the retreat of the pain came new sensation, new information. There were panicked voices over her, and she could feel hands pressing against her forehead. The earth swayed beneath—or was she being carried? Still she could not open her eyes.

With more time, the fog over her dulled senses began to clear, though sight still eluded her. She could feel soft furs beneath her fingertips, and a firm mattress beneath her. There was warmth all around her—such intense heat it almost reminded her of Zuko, but it was too stale and stagnant to be his bending. A normal flame, then. There were still voices—some distant, some close, and Katara's heart ached to recognize them.

"… known your brother for dramatics, but this is new. There best be an explanation for this when you wake, young lady…" Her voice was weary, heavy and taut with the weight of preserving an entire small world, but Katara knew Kanna's voice in a heartbeat. She pushed against the darkness over her eyes again, desperate to catch a glimpse of the woman who had been such a powerful impact on her life after her mother's death. While Kanna had always been strict, always pushing Katara to be caretaker of the tribe and most of all Sokka, her love for Katara and her people had always been clear. She'd seen and lost much by the time Kya was lost. By pushing so much responsibility, so much trust and faith, onto Katara, she'd been trying to ensure that their tribe wouldn't follow her once she herself passed.

All at once, a righteous anger surged through Katara. She was so close to the start of this new world. She wouldn't allow anything to stop or delay her. She was Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, student of Uisce, master to Aang, and the best waterbender the physical world would ever know. And she was going to open her eyes!

Light surged in, stabbing into her senses as Katara's eyes snapped open. The sensation, sick as it was, reminded Katara of how she'd felt when she'd broken Hama's hold on her. With the outside influences purged, Katara suddenly had full awareness and full control. Her eyes landed on Kanna, who had fallen away from the blankets and furs Katara was laid in, and Katara could help but release a shaky breath.

"Gran-Gran?" Her arms came up, hands reaching for the older woman. Kanna's eyes were wide as she stared at her granddaughter, locked on a position slightly above Katara's gaze, but she reached for the girl nonetheless.

"Lie back down, girl. Easy." Kanna's hand wrapped around Katara's forearm, and the simplicity of the gesture eased some of the pain in her heart. Each culture had their own way of greeting their peers. Fire Nation had their strange little bows, the Earth Kingdom would perform their salutes or bows or waves dependent on what region they hailed from, but the Water Tribe greeting of clasping each other's forearms—of physically reaching out towards a person and bringing them closer as friend, ally—was a comfort Katara had sorely missed in her travels. "Do you remember what happened?"

Katara's brain stalled for a long moment as she searched for an answer that would make any sense. Of course I do, Gran-Gran! My two best friends in the world and I just finished a years-long training trip with the original masters of bending so that we could back in time and save the world.

"I don't know. Everything's sort of… cloudy. Distant," Katara said slowly. Distant was the best word for it. All of her memories of this time were so long ago that recalling any of them to any great detail was difficult. Still, as she searched her memory, she frowned. She hadn't been sick before, so why was she in bed with Kanna worrying over her? What had happened? What was different?

"You and Sokka had gone out to get fish," Kanna began to explain, seeming to sense Katara's growing distress. "He said you got upset with him and used your bending, summoning an iceberg out of the sea."

"I broke it open, didn't I?" If that had changed… Katara fought back a shudder at the mere thought.

"Yes. A blue light filled the sky—we could see it from here, it was so strong. Sokka said that it blinded him, but he heard… he heard you cry out. When he was able to look again, you had collapsed."

"And in the iceberg?" She needed to know. She needed to know that Aang was here. That Appa was here. Panic filled her for a moment. Sokka hadn't trusted Aang. If Aang's awakened happened as Kanna described, Sokka might have felt correct in his assumptions that Aang was dangerous. Katara didn't think that Sokka would have seriously hurt him, but even leaving Aang out in the ice was inexcusable. "There was a boy. We saw him in the ice. That's why I broke the ice. Is he okay? What happened to him?"

"He's here, in the village. Sokka is watching over him," Kanna assured her, trying to calm her granddaughter down. Katara was not to be dissuaded, though. Her body was weaker and smaller than she remembered, but she knew she was strong enough to move. Waving Kanna off, Katara pushed herself to her feet and staggered out of the hut and into the village proper.

The sun was near blinding as it glinted off of the snow and ice that comprised most of her village. Despite that, the Southern Water Tribe was truly insignificant compared to some of the sights Katara had seen, even though it held a place of honor in her heart as her homeland. With how small the village had grown after decades of raids, there was a short list of places that Sokka could be watching over an alleged prisoner. Given the massive furry form outside of one particular ice tower, the list grew even smaller.

Appa. A weight Katara had half-forgotten seemed to lift off of her chest as she caught sight of the beautiful sky bison. While the deaths of each member of her family had hit her hard, breaking her down into pieces, Appa's death had been the only one she'd personally witnessed. Appa's death had been the only one she had experienced the sharpest and she'd had many nights where she'd woken up with the smell of his burning fur acrid in her nose. Now, that beautiful animal was grumbling lowly as a group of the tribe's children cautiously approached him. Before they could get too close, Sokka marched out of the tower, brandishing a finger at his 'men' and ordering them brusquely to stay away from the-enemy-fluff-monster.

Katara's feet carried her towards the tower without a second of thought. Sokka was there. Appa was there. Aang was—

Sokka moved to go back into the tower, but a bright streak of yellow and orange slammed into his chest when the older boy turned around. Aang, knocked firmly from his air scooter, made a soft groaning noise as he fell back, bouncing off of Sokka's body hard enough that Aang slammed into the wall of the tower. There was a sharp cracking noise as fault lines appeared in the ice and Katara's breath caught. In slow motion, she watched as the tower began to collapse towards Aang. Before she could consciously think, she was already moving, her hands raising up in front of her. Water melted and froze at once beneath her feet, propelling her forward, and ice stabbed up from the ground towards the tower, forming columns and buttresses that kept the tower from falling down. Aang stared up at the new buttresses as Sokka—still nursing his bruised chest and ego—whirled around to look for the South Pole's only waterbender.

"Katara!" he cried out. "What are you doing up? Shouldn't you be, ya know, on bed rest?"

"I'm fine, Sokka. Good thing too, otherwise you'd be rebuilding that tower for the next two weeks." Sokka's expression tightened with indignation at the dig and Katara found herself laughing. She missed him so much!

"You're awake." Katara wasn't surprised to see Aang talk, tearing his eyes away from the tower as he recognized her. A bright grin overtook the boy at once, his grey eyes sparkling with mirth as he connected her to the newly formed ice. "I didn't know you were a waterbender!"

"The only one left in the South Pole," Katara confirmed with a sad smile before forcing her eyes to scan Aang's clothes. It was with practiced ease that she ignored the boy's confused frown at her comment, and she carried on before he could ask her what she meant. "You were the boy in the ice, weren't you?"

"Yep! My name's Aang, and this is Appa," the airbender introduced politely, gesturing proudly to his animal guide. Appa shook his shoulders and gave a gentle growl of greeting and Katara beamed at the bison. "Thanks for helping us!"

"Wow. He's amazing," Katara said, hoping that Appa could hear the rush of fondness she felt for him in her voice. She approached him slowly with measured steps, raising a hand towards him. "May I scratch your chin?"

Appa peered at her for less than a second before gently lifting his head towards her in invitation. She enthusiastically took him up on the offer, using both of her hands to car through Appa's thick fur and scratch below his cheek. When another, more contented growl began to rumble from the bison, Katara beamed.

"Wow! Appa's always been friendly, but he doesn't usually take to other people that fast. Have you met a sky bison before?" he asked curiously, swiftly walking up to Katara and not stopping until he was very nearly chest to chest with her. The waterbender could only chuckle nervously, pulling her hands from Appa's coat with some reluctance.

"He's a sky bison? That's incredible!" Katara spent a closer watch on Appa now, and her heart melted as she realized he was practically preening from the attention. She swore to make sure Appa knew every day how valuable and special he was. She swore that he wouldn't get stolen away again, to experience spirits know what before they finally found them again. For the moment, though, Aang's easy identification of Appa made her next transition easier. "If he's a sky bison… and you're wearing clothes like that… are you an airbender?"

"Of course!" At that exact moment, Sokka seemed to finally regain the wits he lost at seeing his baby sister cheerfully put herself inches away from Appa's massive mouth. He leapt in between the two, his body facing Aang but his eyes locked on Katara, craning his neck to peer at her.

"Alright, enough of that! I get that you might be happy that he's got magic air or whatever, but we know nothing about this kid! For all we know, he could be a Fire Nation spy!" Sokka accused, snapping his head briefly towards Aang to shoot him a glare before whipping back to look at Katara. Katara only looked at him with a wry amusement.

"If you do that any faster, you're going to break your neck," she chided. "And look at him! Like you said, he's a kid. An airbender with a sky bison. I don't think the Fire Nation could get anyone like that to join. He's just really far from home. And you know what Dad always said about being away from home." It was a low blow and Katara knew it but bringing up Hakoda was the only sure-fire way to manipulate Sokka into behaving. As predicted, Sokka's body language immediately relaxed. He lowered his arms from where they hung in the air towards Aang, and he took up a more sedate stance.

"Yeah, yeah, the miles count twice," he grumbled. His face twisted with a frown and he hung his head slightly lower. After a moment, he stepped closer to Katara, seizing her in a quick hug before he swiftly retreated. "I'm glad you're okay."

"I'm sorry I worried you. I'm not really sure what happened."

"It was weird," Sokka admitted slowly. When Katara shot him an incredulous look, given that his definition of weird was going to have to expand very rapidly over the next few months, Sokka sputtered indignantly. "Weirder than normal! There was this blue light that came out of the ice. Most of it went straight into the sky, but it looked like some it shot out in different directions. Sort of like the aurora, but it moved differently. Like a spear cutting through the sky. And I swear, some of it hit you. I could feel it strike down next to me. It was so cold, like I'd been pulled under the ice. And then you screamed and I—"

Katara caught Sokka in a fierce hug, interrupting him when his voice began to tremor. The hug was admittedly mercenary—she desperately wanted to comfort Sokka after whatever he'd seen, but she also wanted to bury her face where neither her brother nor Aang could see it because she needed to think about what Sokka described.

A bright light. Katara knew what the central beam was: the releasing of Aang's avatar state wen the seal on the iceberg was broken. The other lights—assuming one did hit her—likely represented Toph and Zuko. She hadn't expected to collapse, nor had she expected the sort of pain that had come with returning back to the past, but it made sense that if it had happened to her, it would happen to her friends. She knew that her situation had assured that she had been brought to a safe space to recover from the transitory episode, but she worried about the others. If Toph was at home, a coma-like fit would certainly prove to her parents that Toph was in no condition leave home. Toph would be forced to run away again, and Katara knew how badly that had affected the earthbender before. With Zuko, it was possibly even worse. Zuko was on a ship in the middle of the southern seas. While Katara knew he was strong and should recover just as she did, she worried what his crew would think—what his uncle would suspect—if he was struck down by a bolt of light from the sky.

Published 15:27, 8.7.20