~Fire in Ice~
Whatever sort of Fate exists in this world, it hates me.
The last time I saw the stars, it was near summer. The last time I saw the sun, I was near the equator. I don't know how much distance and time has past since -- it's all starting to blur together.
I know exactly when everything went wrong, for once. Maybe it all started earlier -- maybe if I hadn't been so stupid, or the Avatar had found a Firebending teacher earlier, or a thousand other things had happened. But it definitely started with the comet -- my great-grandfather's comet -- and the death of the Avatar fighting the Firelord.
At first, everything seemed just as everyone had expected. Then things started getting colder -- they called the first year the 'Year Without Summer'. After that, they stopped naming them. I wish I could have found Uncle, to ask him what this all meant. Maybe this was just some last effort to balance the world. If it is, it failed -- there's nothing left in this wasteland to balance.
I met a small group from the Northern Water Tribe... it must have been a year ago. At that point, they didn't care I was from the Fire Nation -- if I would help, they were willing to show me how to eke out a living. Even the waterbenders are struggling to survive the ice. They can't reach down to the water to fish. Even farther north, the ocean is frozen to the bottom.
We parted ways when food got scarce. I don't know if they made it.
I may be the last person in the world alive. There's something ironic about that.
~Ice in Fire~
"The Avatar approaches!"
I stood, a lot slower than I used to. I was long starting to feel the effects of age, even though I kept up my practice. There was no use for a Firelord that couldn't firebend. One of these days I should abdicate, and retire to some nice, tropical island in the middle of the ocean. But not today.
I watched the four Waterbenders walk up to me, flecks of blue in a crimson court, having shed their thick skin clothing for something that wouldn't overheat them in the summer weather. I recognized the oldest -- one of the first students Katara had trained, one of the first to bring Waterbending back to the south after the war. The youngest was who I was interested in, however.
"Avatar Nauja, I understand you are here to study Firebending."
Most of us had expected Aang to outlive us all before passing on his mantle to the Water Tribes. Maybe it was his old injuries, or maybe the hundred years of being frozen affected him more than anyone thought. Whatever the reason, he had been the first of the younger generation to die. At least he had lived to see peace return -- long enough to see wounds mended and envoys from the Fire Nation again welcome in Omashu and Ba-Sing-Sei and the poles.
"That's correct, Firelord Zuko. Fire, then air. That's how the cycle goes." I searched her young face -- dark-skinned and blue-eyed, like many of the Water Tribes, her long hair bound back in a braid. No trace of my once-enemy, then good friend. Then, for a moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of her past life in her eyes.
Author's Note: Allusions to 'Fire and Ice' by Robert Frost were made. I've yet to see a professor that won't quote that during a cosmology lecture. So here we go -- a cycle of death and birth (closed universe) or slowly stopping and cooling as entropy takes over (open universe). Couldn't figured out how to worth the Big Rip into this, but I got the Big Freeze and the Big Crunch.
You posted a cosmology theme where an astronomer could find it.