AN: Please enjoy, LOK season 2 has me writing again. Don't own nothing.
The tree became a rock. It was as simple as that. No spectacular transformation, no sign whatsoever that the tree that had been a tree would, in a moment, become a rock. But it did become a rock and… oh… now it's a bird. The rock that was a tree became a bird that chirped twice at Korra. It was a large bird as the rock had been more of a boulder and the tree a monument to time. Yet as the bird flew by Korra's head it was the size of any normal bird and landed on another tree like any other bird and… changed into a flower… like a normal bird?
Well to Korra it seemed as normal as anything else as she turned her head from the treerockbirdflower to stare at the misty landscape before her. She couldn't decide if she was very high up in the sky on top of a mountain or just kind of high up at the bottom of a mountain as both seemed to describe where she was at the same time. Something that also seemed perfectly normal to Korra. As she looked from beneath the top of the mountain she noticed that the landscape wasn't exactly misty, but that the landscape was the mist itself. In fact, everything seemed to be made of the mist, to come from the mist, to end in the mist. Perfectly normal, Korra thought to herself, perfectly normal for the Spirit World…
As she reflected on this Korra noticed that beyond the filtering, fading, whirling environment around her she could sense something beyond the mist, separate from it. Without thinking she started moving toward the sensation. She found herself not running, but gliding, in and out of the many lands within the Spirit World. From the mountains where she began through jungles and caverns, Korra moved faster and faster without thought, simply letting the sensation she felt draw her closer and closer.
As her speed increased and Korra felt herself come closer and closer to whatever was drawing her she felt the sensation within her grow hotter and hotter. It consumed her. She was on fire. Yet, right as she felt that the flames would leave only coals behind, she felt the cold begin. It was a cold like no other. Korra had grown up as a member of the Southern Water tribe and she had thought that she had known what it was to be cold, to be freezing. This was an entirely different creature.
This was the cold.
This was the last cold. The cold from within. The cold that came to define you.
She felt fear as she saw the tree.
Gnarled beyond recognition it dwarfed the tree of mists beyond comparison. While one was a monument to time, the other necessitated the keeping of time. It was forever.
Korra was shrieking by in a tunnel of mist, the only thing in sight the tree at the end. Suddenly, within moments of smashing into the tree itself Korra felt a powerful tug behind her. So strong was this sudden jolt that Korra lost connection with whatever was dragging her and she shot off into the mists surrounding her. As the mists engulfed her everything began to fade away. Everything except for a chill deep within.