The boy turns up hacking and coughing and a feast for fleas. Hakoda takes one look at him, orders hot soup made, and hauls him off to the sweat-lodge for a good scrubbing. He gets stripped *first*, because the last time the little fuckers got into the lodge they had to build it over again to get rid of them.

When you spend ninety-five percent of your time bundled up in heavy furs and leathers, fleas are serious business.

The boy has the remnants of horrible bruising from collarbone to belly, purpley-yellow and green in places. There's a roughly-healed scar where someone might've let blood out, and he still hacks and shivers even in the darkest heat of the lodge. He'll keep his fingers and toes, but Hakoda has seen men die like this, just healed enough to move but not enough to fight off the cold and sickness.

"Whatever possessed you to come out here on your own?" he asks, kinder now that the kid looks less like a broken-down pirate and more like a kid.

"There's a g-girl I'm looking for," he finally says. "About a head shorter than you, real pretty- hair in dangles, waterbender, has a blue stone necklace."

"That describes almost every girl of marriageable age in the tribe. Why are you looking for her?" Hakoda says, neutral.

"To get her to finish the job she started," he grins, and Hakoda suddenly wants very much to know just what his daughter has been up to whilst saving the world.