Thanks for reading this chapter! I hope you'll like this one just as much as the last!
……
I was sitting in a little room on a little chair with a little table and a little bowl of soup steaming on a little hot pad, speaking with the new Avatar in the back of a school made of ice.
"So… I'm the new Avat-" She was cut off abruptly as I shouted, barely moving my mouth but carrying the sound across multiple rooms.
"Get me more soup! What is this?!? Munchkin land?!" My temper was balancing on the edge of the knife, because my soup was utterly insufficient and Sleyl was continuously asking the same question. "So… I'm the Avatar?"
A little man (apparently this school was mostly for young kids, because everything was little, itty-bitty, tiny and tinier) came in with a little pot and poured little noodles into my bowl.
"Humph. From me to you, mister, next time use this." I pulled up my hand and out of the ground came a blob of metal. I fashioned it into a big cast-iron pot and tossed it in the little man's general direction.
"Harumph!" Little Man sank slightly and grunted as he caught it.
"Well… Pack up miss, and be ready tomorrow at noon." Zhea had a tired look on her face as she sat across the little table from me and spoke to Sleyl.
"I'll… I'll be ready. Thank you." Sleyl stood, and dismissed herself with a formal gesture of farewell. She placed her two slightly shaky palms together and backed out of the room.
Fwiiippp… Pluuu…
I sucked down the remainder of my noodles and said loudly,
"Let's go get some more food!" Zhea and Anseyto both tried to convince me that I had eaten enough and that we should go back to 'Hotel Ice' where we were staying. They both knew that it was useless, because I could eat a pig-cow and still be hungry.
"I can feel a great restaurant down the street! 'The Sheep Lamb Chop'! I'll only be a minute!" They obliged and followed me quietly to the restaurant.
Once we got there, I put on my 'I'm blind, help me! Serve me quick!' thing and was served quickly.
"See! Not so bad, now was it?" There was no reply. I panicked slightly, but regained my sense and stamped my foot hard, sorting through vibrations and weights all through the high ring (rich people ring). I found their weights in two different rooms in the Hotel Ice a couple blocks away. They must have snuck off while I was sitting criss-cross in the restaurant.
"Blegh! This'll serve you right…" I stuck little clay-spikes in their backs, twitching fingers and toes to make them give Zhea and Anseyto 'massages' until they awoke and I dropped the spikes. It was a little tiring to bend earth that far off, but worth it was worth when I felt their weights leap startlingly.
"Tee hee!" I sighed, wondering what I should do next. I felt the steady rhythm of waves as I walked towards the docks. I had an idea, so I used the sand around me to make a board that wrapped around my feet. I jumped into the powerful waves, twisting to keep my balance. I couldn't feel as well on the water, but I had been working on my water-feeling skills, and had been able to work on picking up under water vibrations. I caught a big wave and rode it until it made a cocoon of water around me, with about a foot between me and it. I sucked in the salty, cold air before diving down and twisting around until my lungs screamed and I rose up with a few hard kicks. I broke the surface of the numbingly cold water and swam to shore. I was wading through the last few inches of water and was out to my ankles, shivering, when someone called
"It's not safe! Get out of there! It comes after the people who step in there!" It was a man with a fishing boat docked almost two far for me to feel him.
"What are you talk-" I crashed backwards into the wet, hard-packed sand. The breath was knocked out of me, and before I had taken a full breath I was dragged into the water and submerged fully. I thrashed and wriggled, but what seemed like tentacles were sucking onto my legs, wrapping around me and pulling me down into the blackness that encircled me instantly. Then nothing. My eyes were open, but there was nothing around me. I was numb and feeling-less and I barely heard the shriek of whatever was holding me and saw the water turn red. I barely felt the suction cups release me and the wooden hand-cuffs drift down to my, the ropes they were attached to tugging upwards sharply. Nothing. I felt nothing. Saw nothing. Heard nothing.
……
"She should be back by now! We need to go find her!" It was sundown and Zhea hadn't seen Tang since she had left her at the restaurant to take naps, which she saw now to be rather cruel, and she new that Tang might have panicked.
"She's probably out there having fun and showing off to the towns-people! She's a master bender, just like you or I, and she can take care of herself! Relax, and if you're not going to eat you're fried chicken-pig, then I will." Anseyto ranted on for a while about Tang being fine, and when he finished, she gave a dignified sniff and walked upstairs to her hotel room, untouched fried chicken-pig in hand. She opened her door and locked it behind her, looking out her suite's window to see the emptiness of night envelop the northern world.
……
I twitched and pulled with every bit of strength I had, but I was suspended to far up. I couldn't reach any earth. I would normally be able to, but my struggle with the underwater whatever-it-was had weakened me immensely. My throat was dry and my stomach was empty. My captors new who they were dealing with, so I was hundreds of feet in the air in a wooden box on a wooden pole on a wooden boat. I was not a water-bender, and I was on an ocean. I was not a wood-bender, and I was on a wooden boat. And as far as I knew, there were no wood benders anywhere on this planet. I looked through the little hole in the wood box, feeling like a caged animal. I barely felt the ice-made city standing tall in the distance. My 'sight' of the city faltered each time the tide rushed in to the shore, and with each wave, my 'sight' weakened. I felt my friends fade distantly away. I shed a single tear from one of my sightless eyes.