The Warrior's Gambit (Zutara)

XXIV

The night was foggy, as though the moon was pushing up dust from the ground and freezing it in time, sending silvery beams to illuminate it.

The previous nights had been calm. Tonight felt charged with an energy Katara could not quite place but felt in her bones. The air outside reflected how she was inside; anxious, and walking like an invisible voice spoke to her.

It was eerie.

It felt unreal, as though she were trapped between the edge of reality and fiction. Almost dream-like, she considered, in the way that as she walked. She could not hear the crunch of her feet nor hear the crickets chirping far away.

There was no noise, she came to realize.

There was nothing except the deep fog that rolled around her, obscuring her vision on all sides.

She did not know where she was going. She did not know if she was walking on land or water or air at this point, but some invisible string tugged her around, bringing her deeper into this state.

She exhaled and saw her breath, as though the temperature dropped from almost comfortable to the chilling numbers she'd expect from the Southern Water Tribe.

Yet, despite this acknowledgment of the coldness, and that she could realize that yes it was colder than usual she herself was not cold. She wasn't warm either.

She just felt...felt as though she were existing at this moment. An interloper where she shouldn't be. Someone teasing the seam between real and unreal, somehow crossing and existing in both while also not existing in either.

The answer came to her with startling clarity; she was in the Spirit World.

Or, perhaps the Spirit World was in her world. She could not be sure, but the lines between the area had been blurred to the point where Katara was unsure if she was alive.

As she touched her heart beneath her costume, she could feel it fluttering.

That had to be a good sign, didn't it?

She took a step and heard a splash. She looked down to see she'd reached the water.

She took another step, and another until she was up to her waist. The moon's reflection rippled in front of her but distorted enough that Katara reached out to touch it.

She felt a chill immediately, but nothing like the cold from the wind. It was sort of that unearthly, cosmic feeling, something she did not think she had words to properly explain.

She blinked and there was nothing in front of her one moment, and then the next, there was a woman standing there.

She was dark in features and in clothes. Her eyes were a warm amber color, one that despite her chilly appearance, made Katara feel safe like she was a mothering figure. She was eternally dripping with water, and it ran rivers down her face and hair, coming from nowhere to vanish back into the sea without a trace, no ripples emanating from her figure.

It took Katara a second but she realized that this spirit almost looked like...like Azula, at least in the face. They had the same pointed chin, the same calculating gaze, the same hair...though this spirit's hair was as black as night, almost with a purple hue shimmering beneath it. She was ethereal and beautiful and terrifying all at once, all the things Katara thought a spirit would truly be.

"The town thanks you, Katara of the Water."

Katara found her voice, as though it had been shut off before. She would partially regret what she did next, but she would argue that her brain was fried from meeting a spirit, so she wasn't thinking right.