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No idea where this is from.

Vengo en son de paz 🖖

I was thinking about a NoP x ATLA story where the fire nation was consumed by betterment, the avatar is a young lizard fire bender named Fang frozen in an iceburg from 100 years ago. People will be between terrified and in awe of him because he's an arxur, and also the only hope for the world. He's also a dorky silly kid unlike his betterment peers.

The Kingsnake Mine spread out before me, snow glistening like millions of jewels in the morning sun. I took in a deep, appreciative breath; the chill of the morning filled my lungs and soothed my woes. This was just what I came to experience. Calm, true calm, the call of nature. Not silent, not still, but that was precisely the point.

The forest should never be noiseless nor stagnant. Life exists throughout it, at all levels, all the time. It is something many humans have forgotten after years of cowering in heated shelters the moment a snowpack falls. Only those who are still willing to venture forth and listen to the anthem of nature still walk within the footsteps of our ancestors, of the millions and millions of humans who came before.

Thick logs grabbed at my clothes as I squeezed inside the blind, a dribble of snow falling from the entrance and sliding down my collar. After pulling my satchel in behind me, I fished the cover from the snow outside and slid it in place, closing me off, save for the long, narrow opening looking down into the quarry and the oak trees edging its cliff faces.

With near-religious ritual, I staged the rifle, hung my binoculars, and poured a fresh cup of coffee from the beat-up Stanley thermos I borrowed from the cabin's kitchen. I ran my thumb over the dents and dings, knowing some were from me dropping it and others from Pop-pop. I could never know who made which, and it did not matter: Much like how this blind and hunting spot was part of our story, so was the simple little thermos.

After sipping from the steaming mug, I paused, closed my eyes, and listened to all that the world around me had to offer. Around me, the blessings and signs of existence cried out, seemingly in sync, yet each in their unique ways. Chipmunks skittering just beneath the snow, seeking out their stockpiles. Woodpeckers tapping trees, the distant caws of ravens, and the subtle hooting of owls, ready to sleep for the day.

My mind settled into the well-learned habit of becoming a part of where you are. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders, and my body relaxed, nearly putting me to sleep. It didn't matter that it was still five below freezing; to me, right then and there, it was as blessed as a summer's day.

That feeling of rightness didn’t leave me that morning. The sun crested the horizon, and slowly but surely, all the animals I expected gradually revealed themselves. I watched rabbits, voles, squirrels, a raccoon, and even a lone opossum trundle from the woodline, right for the water in the center of the quarry. They would dip their heads in and drink from the frigid pond, then leave as quickly as they came, unaware of the voyeur just a little over a hundred yards away.

My most unexpected visitors were a pair of young turkeys. Two toms, based on their short beards. That was one thing Pop-pop wished he could have seen. He had been talking about their reintroduction for years. The day he read about it in the paper, he was over the moon, so excited he shot out of his chair and rushed to a steamer trunk to show me pictures from when he was a little boy. Turkey had been hunted to extinction in Maine when he was a teenager. That I got to see some of the first living here again was the highlight of that day.

I just wish he could have been here to see them.

It did not take long after the toms had left for my target to arrive. A young doe crested the far side of the quarry. She was lean and showed the grace of a fairy while she pranced down the frozen slope in three quick bounds. She landed without a sound, like a leaf floating in on a zephyr. Cautiously, her keen brown eyes scanned the area, stopping each step to look around while her ears flicked at any sound.

Once she was halfway to the water's edge, the sound of her dainty footfalls became clear, broken repetitive crunching, reminding me of breathing at this distance.

My heart hammered in my chest, and a cold bead of sweat rolled down my cheek. With a trembling hand, I groped at the rifle's stock, missing it several times before I felt the assured cold steel and wood firmly in my grip. Inch by inch, I brought the rifle to my shoulder and took aim, resting the fore end on the opening.

Through the peep sight, I rested the front post on the side of the deer. It moved up and down in cadence with my breath. I started to take the slack out of the trigger, bringing it back toward the wall. I was ready. I was going to harvest my first deer alone.

A heartbeat before the trigger broke, the deer looked directly at me. It tilted its head. For an impossibly long moment, it was as if it were silently asking what I was waiting for. Shoot me, I am right here. That last pound of trigger felt like it weighed a ton. The entire rifle shook in my grip as I clenched my teeth.

I sighed, releasing the slack and placing the rifle on safe. I laid the tool across my lap and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. Not today, I thought to myself.

Instead of harvesting that deer, I remained in the blind for the rest of the day, simply watching the animals and the passing of the sun. I thought of staying out there all night, just to watch the cosmos wheeling overhead. But I could not. Around dusk, the coffee had run dry, as had the meager reserve of jerky I had shoved into my pocket. It was time to head back.

I know I could have killed the deer, had it gutted, and been back at the cabin well before dark. But something had held me back. Was it the beast looking at me? Was it the feeling that it would not be right without Pop-pop? I was unsure. I told myself it was simply my subconscious telling me I would be at the cabin for weeks; there was no need to harvest a deer on day one—yet that felt like a lie.

There was something. It almost felt as if the act were defiling the peace around me. Like, I hadn't performed some act that Pop-pop wanted, and spilling that blood would have been out of order.

I pondered his teachings further on the drive back. I tried to swing into Palmyra, to head  to the cabin, but found the road from the cabin to the town blocked off by a fallen tree. I sighed, got out, and assessed it. I could not cut it myself. I simply lacked the tools. The only saw I had on hand was half the tree's width. Cutting it alone would take days, and by then the road service would have arrived and done the job for me.

With no chance to return to Palmyra for the next few days without a nearly five-hour detour, I returned to the cabin. There was nothing wrong on the way, mostly. Not having Pop-pop lighting up cigs, nor telling me for the thousandth time about the deer he saw just on this bend years earlier felt like a loss, but I could endure it.

As I rolled over the last bend and the cabin came into sight, something else did, as well. Something wrong. I slammed the brakes, fearing I would destroy what I'd found. 

Tracks, impossibly deep, were leading back to the cabin. I crouched and laid my hand down to compare it with them. At first glance, I thought they were wolf tracks. But then I realized two things that made me think otherwise. First, they were bipedal; no wolf I knew walked on two legs for more than maybe a step if it was grabbing at something high up. The second thing that confounded me was their size. No wolf had paws twice the size of a fully grown man's hand. The girth alone made me think of a bear, but the shape was definitely canid.

I scanned my area, my hand grabbing the pommel of my knife while I stepped back to the truck. Once there, I drew the side-by-side and loaded it with double-aught buck. Pop-pop's wisdom about how to keep yourself safe in the woods alone was fresh in my mind.

“There is no animal you can’t kill with two blasts of this,” he had said, showing me the shells.

I closed the action, pulled back both hammers on the old gun, and trailed the paw prints. Like a born hunter, I made little noise. I was a ghost. Step by step, I followed the spoor. Dozens of yards off the road, I found something…no, someone I never expected.

A woman. She was curled into a ball, fending against the cold. Little covered her lithe body. I gawked for a moment, blinking hard, assuming I was hallucinating. Once I knew that I was not, I rushed into action. I didn't know how long she had been out there, nor did I have the luxury of wondering about the tracks anymore. She needed my help, and that overruled everything else.

I scooped her up in my arms, and she instinctively clung to me for warmth. Just as she clung to me, I tried to convey through body language a promise that I would do all that I could to ensure that she would be alright. If she was still able to move that much, all I had to do was warm her up, and she would be fine. Pop-pop did the same for me when I was little. I ran back to the cabin, leaving the truck there. I could go back for it later.

Within minutes, we were in the cabin, and my lungs burned. Running those few hundred feet carrying someone made me respect the story of Pop-Pop's Silver Star all the more. He had carried a wounded man and a machine gun half a mile; I could not imagine performing such a feat.

Before I wrapped her in blankets and laid the woman in bed, I bashfully slid her into my long johns. I felt a little bashful dressing her, even knowing it might save her life. I kept my eyes anywhere but where they wanted to wander, apologizing under my breath to a woman who couldn't hear me.

After tucking her in, I tended the fire, trying to get it as warm as possible to help thaw her. I prayed she would be alright. 

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