Happy 2007! This bounced into my head while I was on the beach with my cousins in California. I really did see something exactly like what I'm about to describe. Then I went home, but now I'm writing this.

Why do I keep writing about Fire Nation people? You know what? I'm changing it. This isn't a Fire Nation guy at all anymore. Now it's... uhmm... gonna take me a while, but I'll decide who the character is. Preferably before I start writing.

Ha! I've figured it out. Now, the war is over in this chapter, but the world is taking a bit of... well... it's having a hard time pulling itself together. This is the rebuilding of a world from the point of view of a small child who only has legends to explain why things are so bad.

Hope perched on a rock and watched as Ghashuin threw another stone in the river. She and her family had met up with a tribe of 'sandbenders' from a desert who were also looking for a home, and the two groups were traveling together to the port city of Yane.

Things would be better when they got to the ocean. They could learn to fish, and gather pretty shells to make jewelry out of. Not that jewelry was in high demand. People were more likely to spend their money on food than trinkets, but you never knew. It was better than what they were selling now, which was exactly the same thing they had in such abundance.

Nothing.

"Let's go, kids," Hope's mother called. Ghashuin glared at being called a 'kid,' and Hope hopped to her feet.

"I'm coming, Mommy," she replied, running towards her parents. Her father laughed and lifted her up onto his shoulders as he started walking.

"Daddy?" asked Hope from her father's shoulders.

"Yes, Hope?" he replied.

"How do we know we're going to get to the ocean from here?" she questioned.

"We're following the river, Hope," he explained. "The river flows into the see. Look," he pointed at the small ripples in the water. "That's called the 'current'. You can see which direction the current's flowing in from the way the water moves. We'll follow the current all the way to where the river ends."

"The ocean?"

"The ocean."

They reached the ocean by the end of the day, to Hope's delight. As usual, Ghashuin was asked to watch her while the adults wondered about which direction Yane was. She tugged on his hands, leading the disgusted teen towards the ocean.

The wind knocked her hair into her face, and the ocean was terribly loud. The tips of the waves were white, roaring towards her like a monster until she screamed and hid behind Ghashuin. Now she understood how the Waterbender in the stories her parents told her about the Avatar was always so feared. There was more power in the ocean than she had ever seen before.

"Where does it end?" she asked Ghashuin.

"What?"

"The ocean. I don't see the ending. Where is it?"

Ghashuin squinted. "It's probably like the desert," he decided. "The ending's so far away, you can't see it."

"But it does end, doesn't it?" asked Hope. She had a sudden image of the entire world beyond where they were standing covered in water.

"Eventually," he replied. They paused for a moment, both staring at the ocean. Neither had ever seen anything quite like it.

"Look, Ghashuin, there's a bird!" she shouted, pointing at the tiny creature. It was perched next to the ocean, taking no notice of the danger it was in.

"Yes, a bird," he agreed wearily.

"Oh, no!" screamed Hope as the waves started to crash down near the bird. They looked like they would rise up the tiny slope and engulf the oblivious animal. Ghashuin grabbed the child to keep her from running into the ocean after it.

The waves washed up around the bird, not quite reaching it. Hope laughed in delight. Ghashuin blinked, wondering how the bird knew it was in no danger. The bird didn't even twitch.

A little further on, another bird pecked at the ground partway into the water, ignoring the wetness around it. Something very big was moving deep in the ocean, and the sky was filled with more birds.

Hope screeched again as another wave came crashing down, stopping barely an inch before the bird's tail. It didn't even twitch.

"I'm going to name it Bravey," she told Ghashuin, grinning with relief. "Because it isn't afraid of the water."

"Neither are those birds," Ghashuin pointed out, gesturing at the birds that were eating in the water.

"Yes, but they're bigger," Hope replied. "Bravey's little, just like me. And he doesn't even have to look!" she started to run down towards the ocean, probably trying to see if she could tell when the waves were coming, just like 'Bravey'.

Ghashuin didn't wait to see if she could, grabbing her wrist and dragging her back. Hope didn't seem deterred by this at all.

"Come here, Bravey," she cooed. "Come over here!" The bird didn't even twitch.

Ghashuin rolled his eyes and tried to distract his young charge with building walls out of the wet sand. He'd never seen sand this wet before, and never managed to build anything out of it. Now, though, they had half of a model of Ba Sing Se done before their parents figured out where they would go next.

As the two ran off, a wave crashed down on their construction, completely obliterating their city from life.

The bird didn't even twitch.

Well, that turned out differently than I expected, a lot more lighthearted, but I liked it. What do you think? Oh, in case you forgot, Hope is the baby born outside of Ba Sing Se, and Ghashuin is the boy who steals Appa. This is set about five years after the war ends.