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It doesn't take long for word to spread. The North has been far removed from the war, and the arrival of the Avatar has sent whispers and concerns across the city.
But the Avatar didn't arrive alone, and in some circles, that's caused even more of a stir.
The arrival of people from their sister tribe is surprising. It's not an easy or fast journey, even without a war. Many people who left the North left with the intent of never returning. Communication between the tribes is all but nonexistent.
It's hard to tell how much of that is the war and how much of it is deliberate. After all, many of the people who left didn't leave on good terms.
Or simply never said anything at all.
Yagoda has never forgotten Kanna, the steel-backed stubbornness, the quiet disapproval of the North's traditions. She still remembers the shock of discovering that Kanna had left, leaving her betrothed behind, her tribe behind.
A part of Yagoda never understood it. Kanna wasn't a water bender, had never had the option of being healer or warrior in that way but—
Yagoda had children, and her children have had children, and should the Spirits will it, those children will have children. And the traditions, the North's way of life, hasn't changed. It's the same as it was then, and while Yagoda takes comfort in it, she can see now, with the wisdom of age, that Kanna would've never been able to raise children here.
Kanna had looked ahead, and seen that it wouldn't change. That any daughter she had would be bound by the same traditions, as well as any children after that.
Where Yagoda had found comfort Kanna had seen chains. It had stifled her, choked her as surely as the betrothal necklace.
It's even clearer now, having met Katara. There's nothing in Kanna's granddaughter that would have stood the limitations. She's a glacier on a path, a snow storm in the making, and no amount of water benders will divert her.
Katara is a good healer, has the ability to be a great one. Yagoda has taught enough over the years to know who has the potential, who has the skill, and the dedication for it. Katara will be great. She's a smart girl, and she won't shy away from learning healing, even if it's not what she came her for.
She supposes she shouldn't be surprised that Katara didn't know her heritage. It hurts, deep inside where Yagoda's still a young girl giggling with her best friend. But those days are gone. Gone, but not forgotten.
Yagoda is a highly regarded healer. She may not be called upon to perform for the Avatar, or talk in important meetings, but that doesn't mean she's out of the loop. Pakku has demanded an apology from Katara, in return for teaching the Avatar.
She doubts Pakku will get that apology.
There's also one thing she didn't mention to Katara, and something the girl hadn't thought to ask. Yagoda smiles and hurries out of the healing hut. Tomorrow is going to be extremely interesting.
Toka cocks a single gray eyebrow. "Kanna's granddaughter?" she asks, something buried under her bland tone.
Nadie isn't bothering to seem unaffected, however, and is not so subtly giggling into her parka sleeves. Ramoda has set the kettle down and gone digging for something in her pile of scrap fabric, and Yagoda knows it's not going to be her mending project.
Isi leans forward, hair falling from her braids after a long day of watching young children. "I know that look, Yagoda, what aren't you telling us?"
"Yes, Kanna's granddaughter," Yagoda confirms for Toka, accepting a newly doctored drink from Ramoda. She takes a sip before regarding Isi. "She was rather…put out, to discover women are not trained in combat here."
Nadie snorts, shoulders shaking, and if she breaks anything laughing that hard, Yagoda's not going to be the one to heal her. Toka's just as amused, but then Toka's always had a better Pai Sho face.
Ramoda sighs, and takes a much bigger sip of her drink than is really warranted. "That still isn't all of it."
Yagoda pouts. "You have no faith in me,"
Nadie rolls her eyes, having managed to calm her laughter. "Because we know you Yagoda. You're looking smug."
Isi exchanges a look with Toka. "You said you recognized the betrothal necklace?"
Yagoda sips at her drink. "I did,"
"But Katara isn't betrothed, it's an heirloom." Toka continues, blowing on her cup.
"It is," Yagoda confirms, and Ramoda pinches the bridge of her nose with a groan. Nadie sighs and sends a pleading look to Toka.
"Yagoda, we're not getting any younger," Toka says, aggrieved. "Get to the point, please."
"Katara didn't know her grandmother was from the Northern tribes, nor that she had left a suitor here," Yagoda says, breathing in the spiced tea. "She also didn't ask who her grandmother had been betrothed to."
Isi freezes. "She came in with the Avatar—"
"And Pakku is teaching the Avatar." Nadie finishes.
"They're going to meet," Toka says, and oh, there's the gleeful tone she hid so well before.
"They already have," Yagoda and there's Nadie, giggling hard enough to crack a rib again. Honestly, some decorum.
"And you're just now telling us this!" Ramoda scolds, setting her cup down with some force. "Yagoda, Toka's right, none of us are getting any younger, and you're still not telling us everything."
"Such impatience," Yagoda scolds lightly, but she can't fight the smirk. "Katara has already offended Pakku, I don't know how, but he refuses to teach the Avatar again until she apologies. She's supposed to do so tomorrow."
A moment of silence.
Toka lets out a single sharp laugh, grinning. "Oh, ladies, I believe we have a bet that might finally be settled tomorrow."
"It's her granddaughter," Isi immediately protests.
Ramoda waves Isi's protest away with a ha. "She's of Kanna's lineage, and didn't we agree that direct family could settle bets, Isi? Or should I ask for my money back from the bet you won about Tornin—"
Isi hisses out a breath. "No! Fine, Katara can settle it, but do any of us actually remember the terms? Or what we bet on."
Nadie reaches into her voluminous bag while Isi and Ramoda continue to snipe at each other. Toka watches, her eyebrow slowly creeping up again. Yagoda has a feeling she knows what Nadie's looking for.
"Ah ha!" Nadie declares, lifting a truly ancient looking book from her bag. It's hide covering has seen better days, and the binding looks just a little loose. It's otherwise nondescript. There's no markings on the cover, no decorations on the corners, nothing to differentiate from any other book one might find.
They all recognize it instantly.
"How do you even still have that?" Isi demands, her voice hitting an octave that Yagoda hasn't heard in several years.
"I know the value of being prepared," Nadie declares haughtily. Ramoda scoffs.
"Hoarding isn't being prepared—"
"I am not a hoarder—"
"Says the ho—"
"Ladies," Yagoda sighs.
"Fight later," Toka declares. "Now open the betting book so I can see exactly how I phrased Kanna kicking Pakku's ass."
It's not hard to linger outside, waiting to see what will happen. Yagoda has the ability to be in the meeting, and it goes about as well as one could imagine. She's not surprised that Katara refuses to apologize, nor is she surprised when Pakku doesn't take her seriously.
She thinks it might be the end of it when Pakku dismisses her on the steps, when he wakes away and refuses to fight her. To Pakku, Katara is no one. She's a girl with inflated dreams, wanting something she should know better than to ask for.
Yagoda has always found comfort in tradition. She's never trained a man in the healing arts. She's welcomed every girl who ever wanted it and encouraged those who weren't sure. She's upheld the very traditions that Kanna left for.
Katara refuses to be defined by them. Kanna had left, had abandoned her betrothed rather than trap herself, her kids, to what she couldn't stand. Katara fights them, rails herself against them, demands that the world change. She doesn't accept, and she will not silently leave it be. She doesn't accept, and she will be heard.
The whip to the back of Pakku's head sounds like history snapping. It's a moment sixty years in the making. It's a weapon Kanna could never wield, a demand she could never make.
She left, and made it clear she didn't stand with tradition.
Her granddaughter slaps Pakku's water away and fights with a fury that no woman has ever been allowed to show here. Yagoda is no fighter, but she can see where Katara is. The movements are rougher, cobbled together, pieces of a whole she's never had a chance to perfect. The differences between how Pakku moves and how Katara does are stark, a master versus a raw recruit.
"Stubborn," Toka mutters as Katara lands in one of the water pools. She comes back up, as she has every time Pakku has slapped her down.
"What else would you expect?" Isi says, and gasps along with the rest of them as Katara throws out ice discs at speed. Yagoda catches the moment Pakku realizes she's not messing around. He just barely dodges one of the ice discs, and his look of shock makes Yagoda wish that just for a moment, Kanna were here.
The children cheer when Katara stands yet again and topples the stacked ice pots. Yagoda has never moved that much water before, has never thought about it. She's a healer, and always has been but—
"Well, I'm impressed," Pakku says, the layer of arrogance that's always followed him still present. "you are an excellent water bender."
"But you still won't teach me, will you?" Katara shoots back, breathing heavier than Pakku, her hair starting to fall from her up-do.
"No," Pakku says, voice flat.
Things move quickly after that, and it's clear Pakku's done with this, done playing, done allowing Katara to fight. She falls, her hair a wild tangle, and she's panting, but Yagoda can see she's ready to get up, ready to keep going.
She doesn't get the chance. Pakku traps her in ice spears, and starts to walk away.
Yagoda has always upheld tradition. She's never given thought to teaching boys or men healing. She knows now, that Kanna couldn't have stayed. She knows, intellectually, why.
She's never thought of breaking tradition, of stepping out of bounds. She's not a fighter, she knows it in her bones but—
How many boys were healers? How many of her girls were fighters?
How much are they losing to tradition?
"My Gran-Gran was supposed to marry you?" Pakku holds the necklace he made sixty years ago, and Yagoda has to wonder what things would be like, if Kanna had stayed. If she had married a man she didn't love. If she had boxed herself up and broken herself down for a tribe that demanded she obey.
Her marriage was arranged. Pakku loved her, but she didn't love him. Maybe she could have, if things were different. Maybe she could have, if she'd been given a choice. Maybe she could have, if Pakku even back then hadn't been a skilled bender, hadn't dismissed healing as woman's work, had laughed at very idea of woman fighting. Even with war breaking the world apart, they hadn't bent.
And instead of bending, of breaking, of obeying, Kanna had left the safety of the North, had traveled in a war torn world and made it to the Southern tribe. She wasn't the first. She wasn't the only.
But Pakku even then had made a name for himself. He was a high valued suitor, and after Kanna had left, he'd never made another necklace. Had never looked for another bride.
Had never changed his views.
"It must have taken a lot of courage," Katara says. Princess Yue lets out a sob, and runs off, Katara's brother running after her.
How much are they hurting their children with traditions they refuse to let go of? They have made boxes, Yagoda realizes, and refused to let anyone break out of them.
Family is everything to the Water Tribe, but Kanna had left and never returned. Had children with someone else.
And now her granddaughter stands here, calling their honored traditions stupid. Yagoda almost wants to laugh.
"She didn't win," Ramoda mumbles.
Isi snorts. "That wasn't the bet."
"She was never going to win the fight," Yagoda says, watching at Pakku hands the necklace back, as he exchanges a look with Chief Arnook. "She knew that going in, I imagine. Pakku has been water bending for over sixty years, and she's wanting a teacher."
"Brave girl," Toka says, stepping closer. "She wasn't fighting to beat him,"
"No," Nadie says. "That wasn't what she wanted to win."
"I think…" Yagoda says slowly. "That we needed this. We needed to see this."
Pakku and Arnook step away from the Avatar and Katara, looking serious. The Avatar—Aang, Yagoda believes—helps Katara re-fasten her necklace. Neither seem to care that it's a move that would have most assuming the Avatar is Katara's betrothed. No man would dare tie a betrothal necklace onto a woman he wasn't intended to.
How many traditions and unspoken customs they break, simply by being themselves.
"I believe this means I win," Toka declares, and Yagoda has to sidestep Isi and Ramoda's violent protests.
"She didn't win," Nadie hisses.
"That's not the bet I made!" Toka snaps back.
"It's true, it's not," Yagoda says. "Toka and I both win."
Toka jerks. "What? What did you bet?"
"That somehow, some way, Kanna would smack some sense into Pakku," Yagoda says, smug as Chief Arnook and Pakku continue to talk, another elder stepping into the huddle, looking annoyed. "This isn't quite the sense I thought she'd smack into him, but well, it works."
Toka laughs. "I bet that she'd come back to haunt him, she'd be the one that got away, and something would make him realize it."
"Those are both so vague," Nadie complains.
"Well, we were very young when we made them." Yagoda says. "And we didn't have the rules about specificity in bets, yet."
Isi sighs. "And bets made before those rules were implemented are still valid if they were never updated."
Ramoda pouts. "We couldn't have predicted that Kanna's granddaughter would come to the North Pole and attempt to kick Pakku's ass."
"We should have," Isi says dryly. Nadie giggles.
"I think you're being summoned," Toka says, gesturing to the growing huddle around Pakku and Chief Arnook. Indeed, Pakku and Arnook seem to be looking at her. They haven't reached the point of yelling for her, but it's clear they're wanting her input.
Interesting.
"They're going to ask if you'll teach boys," Toka says, tone hidden, face blank. Her eldest daughter's daughter is expecting. The men in her family have never been the greatest warriors, with or without water bending.
Katara is a rogue wave, a snow storm waiting to break, a shifting glacier that buries what lies in its path. The North has stayed in place, locked itself behind its walls of ice and held onto tradition as the world wars far to the south. The war is heading for them, and they have half the fighting force they could have in the coming fight.
They also have half the healers they could have, to pick up what remains in the aftermath.
Yagoda has upheld the same traditions that drove Kanna from her home, that forced her to make a new one. The same ones that her granddaughter has spent days railing against.
Tradition is a comfort. Yagoda is not a fighter.
She doesn't have to be.
She starts moving towards the huddle. "I think the tides might be changing." She says as Toka moves to let her pass. The twitch of Toka's smile is a victory all its own.
All sorts of victories today. A bet sixty years in the making isn't a small prize.
But this one? This shifting of tides? It might be the biggest win yet.