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They wandered hand-in-hand amongst the crafts stalls of the festival’s market. Her frosty fingers fit so flawlessly in his hand’s embrace. He couldn’t stop the impulse to squeeze those fingers, to press a kiss to the back of that palm, to relish the feeling of holding, so delicately in his grasp, such remarkable hands. The precision of a healer, the power of a master: a balance so beautifully, so presently, her and here in his grip that it burned him, just a little bit, to hold on to it.
He’d held a flame in the palm of his hand once—gingerly, gently: something as powerful and as precious as what he held now. “It’s like a little heartbeat,” he’d mused. “You must maintain a constant heat,” they’d warned. “The flame will go out if you make it too small. Make it too big, and you might lose control.” Presently, he held on a little tighter to the hand in his. Her heartbeat beating at the crest of her wrist where his pointer finger stroked absentminded circles.
His love for her, he’d once thought, was so massive and all consuming that he feared he’d lose control of it like an unfettered forest fire. It had blazed in his mind and burned on his cheeks for months at the thought of her. Now, he knew, love was not a forest fire, it was a tended flame. It was warmth and life and the flicker of laughter in her eyes. It was cupped delicately in the palm of his hand, gripped strongly in her confident grasp. His love for her was a constant heat that chilled their fingertips on unseasonably cool days—days like today.
*
The market was closing soon, the main event, the real reason they’d taken the three day’s journey all the way from Republic City, was about to begin.
In the years since they’d fought and ended a war together, the world had started to heal. It was a slow process, a painful process, one that forced them, again and again, to grow up quicker than their years (the unfrozen ones, at least) should have required. There had been squabbles and meetings and diplomats and dinners. There had been threats and uprisings and a near miss or two at another war. It had been hard. Even still, there had always been hope. More babies had been born in that second year after the war than in any other year in the past one-hundred. Families had been reunited, had grown, had moved, had explored the world that was newly, truly theirs. Festivals, oh so many festivals, had been thrown. Every minute milestone seemed to be cause for celebration and it was their honour, time and again, to be in attendance.
Today, though, was different. They’d travelled here, to the Northernmost city in the Earth Kingdom continent, donning disguises and concealing Appa far outside the city in order to remain anonymous. They were on vacation. Alone, together. Travelling for the sole purpose of leisure for the first time in the five years since the war’s end. Here, they were Kuzon and Kya and they were going to watch the lights dance in the sky and eat fried dough and buy trinkets and be together, and be alone, and not be the Avatar and his waterbending master, at least for an evening.
Again, his mouth found the back of her hand, never leaving his grasp even as she gesticulated with the other, enraptured in some story she was telling an interested shopkeeper. He pressed his lips to her knuckles, and smelled the scent of saltwater that always clung to her skin, as if the ocean flowed as freely through her veins as it did in the bay just beyond this city.
Her voice faded into a chuckle and a salutation and then her eyes were on him, her lips were tipped up in a smirk, her hand was squeezing his back. “Were you smelling me again, sweety?”
His ears burned bright but his smirk matched her own in a challenge. “What? No! I would never. I was simply trying to warm your hand up… see?” He demonstrated by cupping her hands in his own and blowing a warming breath over her fingers.
She raised an eyebrow at him, not convinced, but her blush shone through brightly as she pulled him through the market, handing him another gift laden bag to carry in the hand not being pulled in hers.
At the edge of the town square, a garden grew, although at this time of year, most of the blooms were long withered. Candle lights had been strung among the trees and a crowd was starting to form as couples walked hand in hand and families with little children milled about around them. The soft sound of stringed instruments filled the ambient air and a few people started to sway in place, eyes fixed on one another.
They found a spot just on the outskirts of the crowd to settle in and wait for the spectacle to begin. He placed the shopping bags at their feet and wrapped both arms around Katara’s midsection, thanking the spirits, not for the first time, that his teenage growth spurt had meant he was the exact right height to rest his chin on her head when they stood like this. He could feel her humming quietly along to the music and the rumble of it flooded him with warmth.
He had heard stories about love at first sight. Tales like that of Oma and Shu, whose love for one another overpowered every other prejudice. Who saw each other and knew, from then on, that they could not be apart.
For a while, he had fancied his love for Katara as akin to that of the great legendary lovers. A steadfast love, a fated love, a blind and devoted love. A love that would move mountains and shuck society simply for the joy of being together. He had been wrong, he now knew.
Surely, at first sight, he had trusted her, he had longed to know her, to make her laugh, to be her friend. (And surely, at first sight, he had known she was beautiful.) But he hadn’t loved her then.
He had learned to love her in the way she scolded her brother and in the way her hands busied themselves with work, even when she was relaxing. He had learned to love her in the crinkle that formed between her brow when she concentrated and in the hunch of her shoulders where she carried her concerns. He loved her when she said “we’re your family now,” and “I’m proud of you,” and when she was afraid and when she was brave and when she was laughing, he learned to love her so much when she was laughing. His love for her was not fated. It was formed on a foundation of friendship.
Toph had once asked him if he thought friendships could last more than one lifetime. Because of Katara, it had been an easy affirmative. The love of a nation carried out in the love of his best friend. The love of his family was reborn in this new, chosen love and, someday, reborn again in the family they would make together.
She sighed against him and snuggled deeper into his arms, seeking the warmth that his closeness provided as the final bits of dusk faded from the sky and the small fires lit around the square were snuffed out. He placed a kiss on the top of her head and squeezed her tighter as the first bits of color began to streak through the sky.
*
When he was a boy, he travelled to this town with a cohort of his brothers. Every culture, it seemed, had their own festivals for observing the winter solstice, but the party here, the girls at the Western Air Temple had told them, was the best one in the world. Gyatso had volunteered to take the boys (after they’d beat him down with a barrage of “please’s”) after they’d each mastered the spinning gates.
He remembered the spicy-sweet fried dough and the green shells he’d never seen anywhere else and the chill of the dry air, a different sensation from the humid cold he was used to during Southern winters. He had chased Champo through the sky here on their brand new gliders, he had almost crash landed into one of the vendor stalls along the square.
This is where he had first met Bumi, who was rolling on the floor in laughter, having watched his fall from the clouds and the frightened look on the shopkeeper’s face from the ground.
It had been over a century, but the air smelled just as sweet and felt just as foreign against the skin of his hands. The colorful lights dancing in the sky now were the same ones he had seen a lifetime ago. The veil between the spirit world and their own, some said, was thinner in places. Here, on the winter solstice, it was at its thinnest and everyone, Avatar or not, could catch a glimpse of the pulsing power that was interwoven with their world. He watched with his mouth agape, his arms wrapped tightly around Katara and felt humble and human and here with her.
*
The lights continued to dance all night and gently, so too did the gathered crowd. Musicians started up their strumming and his eyes shifted back down from the sky and fixed, instead, on the stars in Katara’s eyes. “Dance with me?” one of them whispered. And they did. Their breath mingled in a fog as the cold air turned it to vapor.
Some day, Aang imagined, the colors of air nomad cloaks would again join the colorful lights in the sky as children laughed and fell and made friends at this festival. For now, though, all he could hope to do was keep time with the beat of the drum and keep Katara’s powerful, precious hands warm in his own.