#kyursa

Continued from: [Link], [Link], and [Link].

1. Ursa has traveled for more than a year to make it to the North Pole to study waterbending. A man died so that she and his daughter might live to do so. She killed a Firelord and bore the children who will someday take his place. And for all this, she is used to being told no, to being told to shut up, and to having her choices taken away from her. Even so, when the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe tells her that they do not teach women to bend in the North, that she will be relegated to learning to heal, Avatar or no. she has only one thing to say:

“Excuse me?”

2. “Excuse me,” she says. Don’t you know there’s a war? Her own daughter is, as they speak, training as a princess and a prodigy to someday help conquer this place. The Fire Nation won’t spare them from facing their women in battle, why would the North refuse to train the Avatar of all people because she’s a woman? Chief Arnook tells her they are safe in the North, and they have the time and peace to reflect on what is important to them, and what they must sustain in the face of Fire Nation saber rattling, their traditions, and who they are. After all, the South let their women fight, and what did it get them? They’re happy the Avatar has been found again, but really dear, your job is to commune with the spirits and leave the fighting to others. Perhaps to her next male incarnation.

3. Well she can’t say Kanna didn’t warn her. She fumes as she marches back to the suite of rooms they have been given. Kya tells her they will figure something out, that her mother-in-law always told her the first waterbenders learned from the moon, that perhaps Ursa and Katara can find a way to learn out on the ice away from prying eyes.

4. Kanna meanwhile… The North Pole was where she was born and raised. She walks along the canals remembering, preparing herself to swallow her pride. She finds Pakku, the man she crossed an ocean to avoid, the man whose betrothal to her, whether she wanted it or not, was what finally made her realize she couldn’t live this life, and asks for a favor, for old times’ sake. Pakku has no interest in going against the chief and training women and girls, he tells her, and not for the woman who humiliated him. Kanna raises her eyebrow. Not even for the chance to say he trained the Avatar? Not even to be able to know Kanna owed him?

Continued from here: [Link] and [Link].

1. The children look around at the Northern Water Tribe Fortress, overawed by its grandure. Even Kya finds herself unwillingly succumbing to the feeling. But Kanna and Ursa are not so overcome. This was of course Kanna's home. She is familiar with its nearly unchanged beauty. And Ursa spent more than a decade in the Fire Nation palace. Opulence no longer impresses her. So they are there to keep a level head and explain to the children just what this wealth means, that they have used none of it to aid their sister tribe, that they have not been fighting the Fire Nation, that this stability has come from that neglect.

2. Their arrival is unheralded at first. The guards who intercept them laugh when Ursa asks to be taken to their chief. Refugees from their Southern sister tribe might be rare and interesting, but not enough so for the chief, and Ursa herself, a stray Fire Nation citizen is more likely to find herself in prison than meeting with royalty. Okay, she says, what if I tell you I'm Firelord Ozai's wife, and also the Avatar? Okay, the guards figure, the've got a madwoman on their hands.

3. Ursa is used to being called mad. Ozai insinuated it constantly, whenever she disputed his verson of events, though she doubted he really believed she was. Maybe he did. His memory could be self serving enough. The people in her village thought she was mad when they found her laughing helplessly by her parents' graves, the markers broken to pieces around her. It never feels any less like a convenient way to ignore anything she says, to silence her without having to make her stop talking. But this time she can put a stop to it. She bends fire, and then uses one of the few tricks little Katara had been able to develop on her own, and raises a bubble of water from the sea around them. Well, the guards decide. They better tell the chief about this.

4. Things start happening fast after that, too fast. The guards turn into honor guards to escort them to the chief, while a wide-eyed and worried Katara curls up in her mother's lap, suddenly younger than her nine years. Sokka stands at the front of their little boat, eyeing the guards furtively, torn between wanting to stay between them and his family, and wanting to see Northern warriors in action. Kanna chooses to put him out of his indecision by telling him to sit down and stop fussing, so he can happily glower at his grandmother instead.