Steam Will Rise

1. Gifts

"Close the blanket up Katara you're letting all the warm air out."

Katara rolled her eyes at her brother as she pulled the elk-deer skinned blanket closer around the both of them. It would do little in making them feel warmer but if Sokka thought it would she supposed it was worth the effort. It took her a few tries to pull the blanket completely closed because her fingers were numb and stiff with cold. Even huddled before the small fire in the hearth and buried beneath several layers of blankets Katara still shivered and her teeth chatted. The frigid cold of the outside invaded their home like a distant relative who came to visit and didn't know when to leave. A frigidness that she'd been living with for so long that she'd forgotten what it was like not to have a constant chill in her bones.

She was never warm enough because there wasn't enough wood in the hearth to warm the house. There wasn't enough wood to supply fuel to any house in Wolf Cove, the only town in the South Pole. A once thriving port town was at a standstill; nothing coming into port and nothing going out made townsfolk feel as if they were living without taking a breath. Stuck in a town frozen both literary and figuratively, where everyone was always waiting, waiting, waiting for change that never came.

Katara watched as her Gran gran scraped the bottom of the kettle making sure that there wasn't an ounce of stewed sea prunes wasted. Katara had checked the barrel of sea prunes earlier that day and it had been dangerously low, so low in fact, that she was sure that the last of the sea prunes is what her Gran gran was now trying to even out into four bowls for their dinner.

"These lean days are lasting far longer then I ever thought they would." Her Gran gran said to her father.

"I didn't think it would last this long either, but our army doesn't have the power to contend with the North's blockade and we don't have an ally to help us fight them. I tried to get help from the Earth Kingdom, but it's their policy not to involve themselves in other people's wars. There's the Fire Nation, but they're a long shot and a last hope."

"Why would they ever help us?" Gran gran asked.

"They could use the money and their reputation a reboot." Her father confessed.

"A last hope is better than no hope at all. If we can't get any supplies brought in soon I'm afraid the entire town will-." She stopped talking when she saw that Katara and her brother were watching her from the other side of the room.

"What will happen to Wolf Cove?" Sokka asked.

"Nothing darling. It will be O.K. we'll be just fine."

That was a lie and Katara knew it. All over the town people were weak, hungry, and sick. They neither had the food or the medicines to make them well. She was only starting her training as a healer and did what she could to keep every townie healthy, but she couldn't help everyone and people died. Sometimes they died in her arms. She shivered beneath the myriad of blankets as the phantom pain of a townie dying as she held them passed through her like a ghost.

After the last of the stew had been doled out her Gran gran crossed the room and set the bowls down on the small kitchen table they brought into the living room. They had taken to eating in the living room close to the hearth since there wasn't enough wood for the wood burning stove in the kitchen.

"Make sure you eat it all."

"Give my portion to Sokka and Katara." Her father said. "I'm not hungry."

Another lie. Katara knew her father was hungry but once again was going without to ensure that she and Sokka had enough to eat.

"If you're sure."