Chapter Text
“How much ice can one place have?” Aang moaned.
“I don’t know, Aang,” Yue replied. Deep blue water dotted with white icebergs stretched as far as the eye could see. She was looking out for the watchtowers and igloos characteristic of her village, but were they even the right things to look out for? The two tribes were a whole world apart after all. The Southern Water Tribe could be completely different from the North.
It had been a day since they left the Southern Air Temple and had been flying almost non-stop. There wasn't much land between the temple and the South Pole. They had been lucky to find a small atoll to stop on the night before (and lucky that it didn't reach high tide during the night), but they could not count on that all the time. The sooner they found the South Pole, the better.
“By the way,” Aang spoke up. “Happy birthday. I hope I counted the days right.”
“You did, Aang, thank you.”
Aang beamed at her. Yue felt a weight lift off her chest. If the Avatar was supposed to inspire hope and save the world, at least Aang got the first part nailed down. One smile from him made everything seem better, if even for a moment. Yue could pretend she hadn’t spent the last two months being chased by firebenders while trying to find a waterbending master, that she was just a normal teenage girl spending time with a friend on her birthday.
Above their heads, Momo chittered excitedly. He swooped downwards and whipped past Appa's head, eliciting a noise from the sky bison.
“What is it?” Aang asked. Appa made another sound and floated upwards towards the chittering lemur. Yue had the feeling the animals were saying look.
As they gained altitude, Yue finally saw what Momo had spotted. They were approaching an ice field. In the distance, they could see a speck in the midst. Aang pulled the reins, guiding them closer, and Yue eventually made out the cutter sailing ship with blue sails.
"That's a water tribe ship!" she exclaimed.
The ship was darting between the icebergs, through the treacherous ice field. At the far edge of the ice field, a large group of people were gathered on an ice sheet, waving and gesturing.
“Maybe they’re in trouble!” Aang cried, tugging at Appa’s reins.
“Wait, I don’t think so.”
It was hard to hear over the wind, but Yue could just pick out a voice yelling - no, barking orders confidently. As Appa got closer to the water surface again, Yue made out words like mainsail and port. Someone on that ship knew what they were doing.
They watched as the boat veered left and right, somehow dodging the ice floes. Every time it looked like it would crash, the voice would yell out another order and the ship would shift, avoiding a deadly collision.
Finally, the ship made it through the narrowest part of the field and sailed into relatively safer waters.
"Wow, those guys are good," Aang remarked.
"Yeah, and we're flying right into their path!" Yue exclaimed.
As great as Aang was at steering Appa, sometimes he could get distracted. He must've unknowingly steered them towards the cutter, wanting to get closer to the action.
The sailors had spotted them too - Yue made out three figures on the boat. The waves and the boat’s momentum were pushing the vessel towards Appa. Yue braced for the impending impact.
Then the voice cut through the air again, loud and commanding.
“-- as much of that wind into the jib! Katara! Bend as much water as you can between us and that--thing!”
Yue and Aang could only scream as the wave crashed over them, dousing them in ice cold water.
Yue pushed her wet hair out of her eyes. She heard a faint applause and noticed the spectators on the ice sheet clapping. On the other side, the sailboat was floating out on the open water, unharmed. They had sailed right over Appa thanks to the boy's unorthodox sailing technique and some really impressive waterbending.
“Hold on!” Aang’s voice was her only warning before a blast of wind hit her.
“Thanks, Aang.” Yue said flatly. She didn’t mean to be ungrateful - Aang’s airbending had dried her off, but the wind made her cold.
Appa groaned, as if complaining about how he was still wet. He had stopped flying and was just hovering in place now. Aang laughed and leapt off the animal's back, landing lightly on a flat piece of ice.
"I got you, buddy," he said jovially before unleashing a larger gust of wind. Yue turned her cheek as a few stray droplets of water flung in her direction.
Aang somersaulted over her head to blow dry Appa from the other side, then sprung back onto the animal's back. Momo landed on his shoulder.
"Everyone okay?" the young Avatar asked. The bright smile on his face was as if getting doused in ice cold water was the most exciting thing to happen to him.
“You're an airbender.”
It was a female voice that had spoke, one of awe and not accusation. Peering over the saddle, Yue and Aang saw that a girl and an older man had made their way over to Appa. A path of ice had appeared across the ice field, stretching back to the sailboat, the work of waterbending.
Aang recovered first. “Uh, hi there!” he greeted, waving awkwardly. “You wouldn’t happen to know the way to the Southern Water Tribe, would you?”
“Aang, I think they are from the Southern Water Tribe."