Title: The Mist
Author: overlithe
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Summary: "No. It was always you. It has always been you." Yue in the Day of Black Sun.
Characters/Pairings: Yue, Sokka, OC; gen with some references to Sokka/Yue
Prompt: avatar_500 prompt 026. Glow; fanfic100 prompt 045. Moon
Word Count: 498
Rating: T
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and concepts created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and owned by Nickelodeon and various other corporations/people. I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement.
Author's Note: Along with my ficlet Spirit-Bound and the Yue segment in Cages, this story is my attempt at exploring Yue's transformation from a human into an immortal spirit utterly beyond our concepts of time and space (insofar as a human writer is able to explore that sort of thing ;)). You don't have to read the other fics to understand this one, but they probably work best together. Both ficlets are available here at my ffnet account.
The Mist
She is a child. The mist frightens her. The other children tell ghost stories in shivering giggles as the night draws in. She is a little apart, always, but she laughs and pretends to be scared; later the stories rattle around their heads, make them clutch their furs tighter in their sleep. She tells no one about the mist, not even her mother. She knows it is only fog and ice, and there are no monsters, no glistening beaks the size of hulls, no tentacles ringed with fangs.
She is ageless. The mist cloaks her. Space bathes her, empty, soundless, and her light trickles to places where the seas are deep purple, the skies an alien orange. In the mist there are monsters, spirits with glistening beaks the size of hulls, tentacles ringed with fangs. She is unafraid.
Sokka clasps her hand by a pool murky with black blood. She can feel his heartbeat against her skin, can almost smell his sweat. He says, voice hoarse with failure, that her father told him to protect her. His fingers slip away into a world the colour of ashes.
Then so does everything else.
Sokka rushes across a city built on cold lava. She blocks the sun until there is only a rim of light and red roofs sink into shadow. Starlight at noon.
She is not aiding him. Rocks drift through space, unknowing, uncaring. A comet streaks through the sky. Below it, temples burn, the light nearly as bright as the sun. A comet streaks through the sky. Below it, the Avatar engulfs the Fire Lord in a light brighter than the sun.
In the mist, the Sun Spirit glides past her. Golden tendrils turn the black grass a radiant green, make the fruits hanging from claw-tipped trees beat like little hearts. We're dancing again, the other spirit says. Glowing red drips to the ground. The grass browns. The fruits shrivel to grey with a hiss like burning oil.
It wasn't me. It was the other Moon Spirit.
No. It was always you. It has always been you, the Sun Spirit says, and she knows it's right before the words end, has always known it's right. She drifts above an ocean dotted with the mossy backs of Lion-Turtles. She watches as a volcano disgorges an ocean of radiant lava. Sunlight at midnight.
In the city built inside it, the Avatar and his friends are fleeing, too late, already too late even before she sinks the world into darkness. Too late when she slips her hand out of Sokka's grip, too late when her parents hold her newborn body in a pool where, a thousand fathoms deep, spirits whisper.
In the mist, the Sun Spirit glides away from her, leaving an alien orange glow in its wake.
She drifts through space, knowing, unfeeling. She is telling Sokka she will always be with him. She is seeing a thousand of his lifetimes pass.
The air fills with moon dust.
++The End++
Notes/Disclaimer: The title of the story comes from the Stephen King novella/Frank Darabont movie of the same name. I'd say the whole deal with the Eldritch Abominations lurking in the mist in the Spirit World also comes from the same place if that bit weren't actually AtLA canon. ;) The line "it was always you" comes from the film Candyman, which is in turn an adaptation of Clive Barker's short story The Forbidden.
And yeah, the more I think about it, the more Yue becoming the Moon Spirit turns into an And I Must Scream scenario. She obviously retains the memories from her human life, only they're stuck in an immortal, eternal spirit, who is by definition apart from humanity, and who is drifting through space forever… and ever… and ever.
Well, I suppose she at least gets to hang out with the other spirits in the Spirit World, and observe all kinds of interesting astronomical phenomena. Upside! ;)