Air. Water. Earth ...

Peace didn't last long. Only eight years after the death of Avatar Rinzen, Wei state and it's capital Taku has split from the earth kingdom.

The next Avatar was to be an waterbender, but, for whatever reason, Avatar Rohan, an earthbender, took his place in the succession without a chance for a Water tribe avatar.

The world is never easy on the avatar and it wasn't this time. Though his efforts were true, his early death caused the splitting of the Water tribe.

Now, Wei state rages war against the Firenation and it's bordering colony. Fighting has been going on for months, but the front, dubbed "the wall", hasn't moved since and naval warfare's only successful attacks seem to be on Water tribe's refugee ships looking to settle.

Without an Avatar in sight for at least fourteen years, the world easily pushes itself into greater and greater chaos.


Katar took a deep breath and that was his first mistake. With sound dissipating and eyes closed, he couldn't help but take control of it. Pushing air in and out; playing with it, trying to catch its inner rhythm; a thing, he was thought, everything has. But even if he did find it, he knew he couldn't consciously let go. Something from within made him clasp on it, lock it in control.

He refocused his attention, pressed the tips of his thumbs into the palm side of the index fingers, then released the pressure. He felt his hands resting on his lap, though he was thought not to. A breeze moved into the room and he heard it, felt it, smelled its chilling freshness. Wasn't supposed to, though. But how? he thought, these things are impossible to ignore! But he wasn't supposed to think now either, so he sneered at himself.

"Don't beat yourself over it," came Hai-Fu's voice from the left, "That's a thought."

Katar snickered.

"That's a thought, too." He let Katar calm himself. Focus. "Whenever you're ready," he calmly said.

He sat there for a while, just breathing and focusing on nothing else but that. He watched it, guided it as it slowly settled. The thought arose that he's been sitting here too long, but he shut the door to that thought and finally opened his eyes.

Before him sat a glass bath filled with water. Water, clearer even then the glass that contained it, was moving. It rippled. Rapidly, clusters of it would form, rise above the rest, shimmer in his eye and collapse, disappear as quickly as they rose. Revealing parts of a painting bellow that they had covered.

The effect was hypnotic. The way it moved, the way it bent and distorted a picture of two Koi fish, one white with a black spot and one black with a white spot, chasing each other's tail. The image was still, common sense told him that much, but beneath the water, beneath its ripples, he saw otherwise. A fin would disappear and swim back out from under its belly; a whisker would bend as if affected by a current. And the more he looked at it the more of that he saw. A tail would swivel, a mouth would move open and close back until, the fishes themselves broke from the static picture and swam! They actually began to chase each other, moving in circles, ovals, patterns of eight and so on. There seemed to be no end to those, to that dynamic and it held him mesmerized.

He stood, following them when they began to drift away. His walk turned brisk, then even quicker and soon he was sprinting, chasing them to the line, where he stopped and let them away.

Before him the sea laid separated and restless. Split in two conflicting sides: a side of light, where waters that splashed were clear, with sure transparency almost to the bottom, and a side that has gone significantly darker over time, where you could not see more than a few feet down anymore.

He was not in those waters. But even on the beach he was wary of crossing the line where the seas collided. Nothing good ever came from that, he thought as a platform began lifting him up, gave him a better overview of the seas. As far as he could see, the split was definite. It pierced the eye, how distinct these sides were, how they did not mix but raged against each other. And looking from high above he felt unease rise, stomach twirl, fingers shake. In his palm heat began to rise, sting, like it did then that scar was fresh.

"Jump," a voice from behind soothed.

Katar turned to meet the voice and saw that figure from before, standing still. The eyes beaming hate at him. His body froze again; as if blood has clotted in his veins. The figure raised its hand and Katar whole rose with it. Feet loosely dangled above the ground, not controlled by that entity, its tight control concentrated above - his stomach, chest, arms; his contorted back.

He could still move his head though, so he could notice that his hand, that the back of Katar's hand was glimmering. Shinning a dozen different colors a second, shifting from one hue to the next rapidly. Oh, he realized, so that's what this is. But the realization brought him no control; his mouth was shut tightly and he could not utter the words that would break him free. With quick ease, the figure pushed and Katar was sent over the edge and into the waters below.

"Look who's up..." Koarsa said.

Katar found himself kneeling in a middle of cart with a thread of a bandage in his grip. The cloth was damp from sweat.

"You okay?" she asked, but he felt disdain in her voice. Like she was obliged to ask.

He sat down, took a moment to gather. The cart was cautiously pulling through the street, passing surprisingly large number of pedestrians on it, who all seemed to enjoy the coming of a calm evening. He thrashed his head and let hair loose from behind his ears, hid his face away from peering pedestrians. Then, he looked at his arm, at the loose cloth covering the palm and at the darkened skin hiding between the folds. "I am aware," he mumbled and fell at ease a second later.

His dreams were getting weirder day by day, he noticed that earlier, but this one he found scary. Skin crawlingly so. This one wasn't just some jumbled mess that dreams often were, this one darkened his memory. It took the truth and threatened to ruin it, change its meaning.

He remembered now, sitting there for hours, staring at that bowl of water and that painting of fish below and nothing happened! Yet, just now those fish broke from the painting and swam away. This. This threatened to be something else. A clash of memory and fantasy in his already conjoined mind. And this wasn't the first time something like this had happened, not the first time his mind found a way to fight itself.

Katar caught Koarsa staring at him, guess she really needed an answer. "Yeah," he said, "I'm fine," then pulled attention away from himself: "Where are we?"

"Near our first stop," she said. "We decided to set up a camp."

Kai was mumbling beside him. Head overboard, he was talking to someone on the street. Further up the cart, Han was sliding from side to side, having trouble relaxing his butt down on hard wood of his seat. All around the amount of people seemed to grow in strides and that had him curious, but wary. "What's up with all the commotion?" He looked at Koarsa, who was sitting in opposition to him. Falling sun blinked in and out between strands of her loose, curly hair.

She dashed her lip to the side, seemed pained to bother answering. "People talk of a festival coming to town."

"A festival?"

"For lady Vimala. It lasts-"

"Three days?!" Kai exploded beside him, head still overboard. "That's way too much!" Subject of both conversations seemed to be the same. "What do you even do for three days straight?" he asked before his excitement died down. Katar listened in to them for a while, but the girl Kai was talking to was reserved in her manner. He could barely make out much of anything except for a mention of some water custom.

"Why the wall?" Koarsa pulled his attention away.

"Huh?" he pretended. He drew his hand over the shoulder, clasped the charred sword handle and it neatly folded into his hand and into what was underneath those bandages. Safe. He let his hand fall loosely.

"Why do you need to go over the wall?" she asked again.

It seemed too late to ask the question, his answer couldn't be more than just trivial now. "You know i'm a criminal, right?" He asked her while trying to keep his voice down. She pulled her lip sideways again, annoyed. "You saw the poster. Why do even feel the need to ask?" he thought he finished, but she kept looking at him as if waiting for him to continue. "Look," he caved in,"with reputation like that, I can barely breathe within Wei state, nor could I in the rest of the earth nation. But in a fire nation, there is at least a chance for something calm and normal."

"Reputation..." She looked at him like she was about to spit in his face. "You have a way with words..." Instead of spitting she looked away, but only for a moment. "And you think you should be awarded such luxury? Reputation... Don't they put criminals away where you're from? Especially, if they cause a collapse of a whole nation."

"Then why did you choose to come with us?" He jumped a few lines, went to the point.

She sat silenced for a while, conjuring up an answer or maybe holding it back. He did not yet know. "I want to know," Koarsa said.

"Know what?"

"The type of person you are. The type that would kill the avatar."

He held onto that blow, decided to take it. Wouldn't do him any good to get into an argument that already felt tiresome. And he wasn't going to have it with some stranger. She made her position clear and that would have to do.

They stopped in a forest outside the town. The dimness of dusk was beginning to set in by then so they took the time to build a fire. A fire by a river, where waters were performing a tedious task of stripping away the earth from roots of trees. Exposing their long fingers, wave by wave and rush after rush for what what they were. Hooks to keep itself grounded, so the tree itself wasn't pulled away by that water or a strong rush of air anything else that threatened.

"Where's Han?" Kai asked and Katar looked away from the river.

"He probably ran into town to get his fill," Koarsa explained, not hiding her disdain.

"I'm going to look for him," Kai said, looking at Katar. More of a plea than a statement.

"You can go to town if you want," Katar said, seeing through his fake excitement to look for a grown up person. He didn't need another word and left but a dust cloud by the fire.

Koarsa looked at Katar stumped. "And you're just going to let him go?"

Calmly, he rolled up the right hand sleeve, began unwrapping its bandage. "I can not limit his choices and I can't just go out into a public venue like that." A cloth dropped from his hand, dark edges of a scar on his palm gathered light from a fire. It was healed as well as it could be, but a glance at that contorted palm and he could recall the pain as if it just happened. He redressed it with a washed bandage, adding a tight knot at the end. Looked up from it. Koarsa seemed just about done looking for words of protest. "That is why there will be a spirit looking out for him." He pulled out a mask, brushed its face with his clothed hand.

He found he could trust Kai's judgment on people. He seemed to have an instinct about them. It was the time to know how right he was this time. "You coming?" he asked Koarsa.