The two teens and the one preteen were no longer thinking about the light that had burst out the iceberg Aang had appeared from. But someone else, in a large steel ship sailing through the frigid polar waters, could think of nothing else. That someone was a girl with a long, sleek black high ponytail, pale skin, stormy amber eyes with dark circles beneath them that were so deep they appeared more like bruises than a product of little to no sleep, and she would have been considered pretty, beautiful evenin, if not for the angry red scar that covered almost the entire left side of her face. That, of course, as well as the permanent scowl etched onto her features. 

That girl was the banished Crown Princess Zuleika.

When the beam of light had shot into the sky, her eyes widened. "Uncle Iroh!" she cried. "That light! Do you know what that light means?"

Her uncle looked up from his table of Pai Sho tiles and sighed. "That I won't get to finish my game?"

"No!" Zuleika snapped. "It means my search has come to an end. That light had to have come from somewhere, right?" A thin ray of hope invaded her mind. Up until now she'd been close to giving up, maybe make whatever life she could out here. Yet here was finally proof the Avatar was indeed alive. They had to be.

"It's probably just the celestial lights, my dear," Iroh replied skeptically. "We've been down this road before, Princess Zuleika. I don't want you getting your hopes up. Why don't you come and sit down and have a nice, soothing cup of tea?"

"I DON'T NEED SOOTHING TEA!" she screamed, outraged. "What do I look like, some vapid little girl who just wants to play and have tea parties all day?! I am a grown woman on a mission! A mission to capture the Avatar! Helmsman, steer a course towards the light!"

Iroh simply flipped over a tile and sighed, once again, at his fifteen-year-old niece.

☕

"Did she just say...airbender?!" Sokka stared wide-eyed at the little girl, her jaw hitting the floor.

"But — but that's impossible!" Katasi muttered, still trying to wrap his head around the situation.

Sokka began to poke the unconscious Aang with her boomerang. "Hey! Wake up! You can't just drop a bomb on us like that and then konk out!"

"Cut it out!" Katasi scolded, batting the weapon away from her again. "You could hurt her with that, you know!"

"Relax— Katasi, it lives!" Sokka pointed over his shoulder at the previously unconscious girl as she stirred awake.

It was at that moment Aang finally opened her eyes and blinked sleepily. "Don't worry, I'm okay," she assured him. "Katasi, was it?"

"Yeah?"

"C–come closer."

Hesitant, Katasi obeyed and leaned down to hear what the supposed airbender had to say.

"There's something I want from you..." Aang continued.

"What is it?"

Blinking, she suddenly perked up and broke into a megawatt smile as she chirped at a much louder and higher level he'd expected from such a small girl, "Will you go penguin sledding with me?"

Taken back, Katasi needed a moment to consider her request. "Um...Sure!" With a grin, Aang glided upward, using her bending to set her feet on the ground, and Sokka yelped. Bad enough her brother insisted on helping this stranger who may or not be a Fire Nation spy, but she also may actually be an airbender, something no one had seen for a century and something they had no idea how to fight?!

"Yay! But...what's going on here?' Aang asked curiously, scratching the back of her head.

"That's what we want to know!" chimed in Sokka. "How'd you get in the ice, and why aren't you an Aangsicle?"

"I...don't know," confessed Aang. Just then, a low growl sounded from the other side of the iceberg, making Sokka jump. Aang, on the other hand, immediately gasped and ran towards the sound. "Appa!" she called merrily. "There you are, buddy! Wake up!"

As the siblings timidly rounded the corner, they spotted a large, strange creature with white fur and blue arrow markings like Aang's.

Sokka couldn't hold back her scream. Aang merely laughed, petting the creature fondly. "Wake up, buddy!" she grinned while the creature rose. "Attaboy! Who's the cutest flying bison? You are! Yes you are!"

"Wait..." Sokka blinked twice. "Did you say, 'Flying bison?'"

"Yep," Aang responded perkily.

"Right..." Sokka snorted skeptically. "Just like how Katasi's my flying brother." Just as Aang exchanged a raised eyebrow look with Katasi who shrugged helplessly in reply, the bison took that moment to sneeze, flinging snot all over the older girl.

"Ewww!" she whined, freaking out like any normal person would at being coated in mucus. She frantically tried to clean herself to no avail, the snot only stretching and connecting to her hands where she tried to wipe it off. Both she and Katasi were disgusted by the sight, Sokka more so considering it had happened to her.

"Uh...I'm sure it will wash out," Aang told her, rubbing her pet's head, her words not helping in the slightest.

"Do you have any idea how long it took to sew these?!" ranted Sokka once her initial freak out had passed. "I had to do this myself, you know! And now they're ruined! And don't even get me started on how long it'll take to get this stuff out of my hair!"

"Sorry..." Aang gave a sheepish smile. "You probably need to go home and change now."

"You think?!"

"But we can take you," offered the airbender. "Do you guys live around here?"

As Katasi opened his mouth to speak, his sister shushed him. "Don't answer that, bro!" she warned, pointing the sharp edge of her boomerang at the young girl. With her brother's mindset, he just didn't know that in these times they couldn't take in and trust any outsiders right off the bat. The last time outsiders had been to their tribe...they'd lost their father and their mother had to take up the helm and leave. "Did you forget that huge beam of light? She could be a spy, signaling the Fire Navy! Some sort of honey trap!"

"Right..." Katasi snarked. "Because little girls are the top demographics most likely to be used by the Fire Nation. You can tell by that evil look in her eyes." His sarcasm wasn't lost on her, and she quickly grew even more irritated.

"Oh, like we're really supposed to believe she's an actual airbender, Katasi? No one's seen them for about a century!"

Preparing to defend herself, or at least ask what Sokka meant by that last part, Aang opened her mouth yet ended up sneezing instead. The siblings' jaws dropped as they watched her fly up into the air. Once she landed, she slid along the ice before sitting up.

"What was that?!" exclaimed Sokka. "You just flew, like, ten feet!"

"Really? It felt like more," replied Aang as she got up and dusted herself off.

"I think," smirked Katasi, "that should be proof enough she really is an airbender."

"Freaky lights," grumbled his sister, "flying bison, and now airbenders.... That's it! I must have midnight sun madness! I'm going back to where things make sense! I'm going...." When she turned, she realized from where she stood, the large sheet of ice sat in the middle of nowhere with nothing but water around them. No frozen stepping stones to storm off on. It really ruined the effect of her stomping off. "....Home."

"If you guys are stuck, Appa and I could give you a ride. Here, bud!" Using her bending, she jumped up into his saddle and grabbed the reigns.

With no argument from him, Katasi climbed onto Appa's back, while Sokka, on the other hand, planted her feet on the ground and crossed her arms. "No way am I getting on that thing," she declared. They were both insane for even thinking she'd do that! "No matter how cute and fluffy it is, it's still a giant snot monster!"

"Would you rather wait for some other monster to take you home, you know, before you freeze to death?" Katasi retorted. "Like the one in Gran-gran's stories that you pretend you're not afraid of, then ask me to check in your sleeping bag with my lantern?" he teased.

"I'm not scared!" protested Sokka, flushed with embarrassment. "I'm a big girl!"

"Then you're cool with us leaving you here, right?"

Five seconds later, a fuming Sokka sat next to her brother on the bison's back.

"First time flyers, hold on tight!" Aang announced. "Appa, yip-yip!" Appa rose into the air...and plopped right back down into the water with an anticlimactic splash.

"Truly amazing," Sokka remarked, clapping her hands in a slow, sarcastic gesture. Katasi flashed his sister a glare while Aang defended her sweet bison.

"Appa's just tired," she assured them with her usual easygoing smile, patting Appa gently. "A little rest and he'll be soaring through the sky, you'll see."

Even as Katasi appeared hopeful her words were true, Sokka wasn't any less doubtful.

🔥

Zuleika looked towards the front of the ship into the open waters as her uncle walked up behind her.

"I'm going to bed," Iroh told her. Hearing no answer, Iroh released a loud yawn. "A man needs his sleep. Just as all girls need their beauty rest. This means you, too, Princess Zuleika."

Finally, after a long moment of silence, she spoke. "I'm not really concerned with beauty, Uncle." How could I be when I look like this. She just wanted to capture the Avatar. If she captured the Avatar, her father would take her claim to the throne seriously. He would allow her to return home. He would...he would not dare lay his hands on her again. No one, not even her brother, could dispute her power if she returned with the master of all elements.

The older man slouched in defeat at his niece's reply. "Even if you're right, Princess Zuleika, and the Avatar is alive, you'll never find him. Your father tried," he recalled, "so did your grandfather, and your great-grandfather before him. None could do it."

"That's because their honor wasn't at stake," Zuleika replied coolly. "Mine does. This coward's hundred years of hiding are over." At last, her honor was within arm's reach, and with the Avatar, her father would welcome her back home with open arms.

(Author's Note: HONOOOR! (Sorry, had to!) Anyway, this is my last day before Christmas break, so I hope to update more often. Maybe not this weekend...(my dad literally waits until the last freaking minute to buy presents for our family. When the mall is packed. And you barely take two steps without nearly bumping into a person. And there's barely any parking space. And I grow this much closer to strangling someone.) But definitely updates will be coming up! Smooches! 💋💙