[Katara's not sure where to start. Usually, if she tells this story at all it's to strangers, but... she can't quite bring herself to take up the story-teller cadence and treat Toph as if she was talking about strangers. So she starts in the middle.]

We'd only been in the North Pole for a few weeks before the Fire Nation found us. Aang and I had been practicing our waterbending night and day, [her, perhaps, more than Aang. much more.] and Sokka trained with their warriors and spent time with Yue. They were the ones who saw the signs first - black snow. The soot from their navy always reached our shores first before the raids back home, and it wasn't any different in the North Pole. Sokka and Yue had time to warn Chief Arnook, but even with the forewarning we weren't expecting so many ships... they stretched out as far as the eye could see... there were hundreds of them Toph. They'd brought a whole fleet. This wasn't just a raid. They planned on decimating the whole North Pole.

[And she pauses for a breath, and to collect her thoughts.]