Author's Note: Let me just start by saying that it has been quite a long time since I've uploaded anything! Sorry for the years-long delay, but I've had quite a number of life-threatening intestinal health problems, became a Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT), and even adopted a Chihuahua puppy I named Hagi back on August 20th, 2014! All three of these things combined have really put a dent in my time to write!

I began Raiden oneshot number ten here in January 2012. Inspiration at the time came from a summer of 2011 (I think) cruise commercial where all these families were "talking to the sea" by listening to the ocean inside a shell as if it were a telephone. According to my head canon, this one takes place several months after oneshot number three (the one where Azula announces she's pregnant again), and Chan, Azula, Raiden, and the unborn baby are visiting the Royal Family's old beach house on Ember Island. Sweet, innocent fun ensues!

The very obvious downside to finishing an old oneshot is the very obvious fluctuation in my writing style. I couldn't make myself alter what already was when I began the process of finishing it after so many years. I've always really liked the premise of this oneshot –despite its age –so finally seeing it to publication truly satisfies me now.

The only two-year-olds I've ever spent any significant time with are my now nine-year-old nephew and now four-year-old niece. They're both very smart for their ages, so if Raiden seems a bit too intelligent, it is probably because my two little references are both considered "gifted children…"

Episode 305 in A:TLA is my second-favorite episode in the whole series (with 320 being my all-time favorite). It was nice to steal a beachy reference or two from it! Also, the science behind the critters in our conch shells… I hope I got that right! I did only light research on the subject because what I gathered confused me somewhat. I pray what is written here is scientifically accurate, but if it isn't I'll just say if was for sake of maintaining the hybrid animal theme this wonderful cartoon is famous for!

Please review!

Secret of the Sea

The most vivid memory Azula had of Ember Island was when she was seventeen –almost eighteen –just recently freed from her lifelong sentence in prison, and a fresh new mother. And within this memory of Ember Island, she had spoken to and proposed marriage to her husband sitting beside her now. Today, the two of them were parked atop two beach towels on Ember Island's famous coastline, watching guardedly and beaming proudly at their two-year-old boy, Raiden, who was at the very edge of the shoreline, focused intently on a very lopsided sandcastle he was assembling. The salty water out ahead was waving at him in gentle thrusts, each one soaking further the foundation of his castle. Frustrated, Raiden rose from the beach floor, took his bucket and swung it at his crooked structure, knocking it over in one simple motion.

He giggled at this, gazing in awe as the sodden sand spilled out like a leak from a dam. As soon as it rested still, he stridently ambled over to a sunny spot closer to his parents –with his red beach bucket tight in his grasp –and beckoned them over with a gesture of his sand-riddled hand. He sat himself back down and happily began the effort of assembling the sandcastle all over again.

"Coming, sweetie," Azula called to her son from under an umbrella. She turned to her husband, Chan, who was now on his back, basking in Agni's red glow, and said, "Come on, honey. Raiden wants us."

Chan squinted open his eyes, the sun hitting them with its scorched beam. His orbs were a dull but otherwise lovely hue of gray, and they glistened beautifully. He sat up and gazed in Raiden's direction, placing a hand as a visor over his eyes.

"He looks all right by himself down there," Chan yawned, blinking.

"But he called us," urged Azula, pressing a palm to Chan's muscular and heavily sunburned arm. "Come on, honey. He isn't too far off. It wouldn't hurt to go play with him."

The lazy Chan returned his wife's gesture, but instead set his bronzed palm atop her somewhat swollen abdomen. Azula was roughly five months pregnant with the couple's second baby, an accomplishment which meant a lot to the both of them. Chan, eager to see through his wife's pregnancy for the first time, was more passionate than he had ever been about anything in his whole life (besides his complexion, it seemed), praying to the spirits that a second son would come his way in the coming months. Azula, however, was a lot less concerned over what this child was, and was more focused on its health. Her first pregnancy, regrettably, was a far cry from wonderful, for she had kept it a secret from her keepers and had been deprived of necessary nourishment throughout its duration inside the Boiling Rock. As a result, baby Raiden was born two months premature and had physically grown slower than most children his age, but he had had a growth spurt recently and caught up, thank the spirits. This unborn baby's development, Azula had vowed, was going to be different, and more precautions were going to be taken to ensure that.

"Think of it this way," Chan then joked after a silence had ensued for a time. "Once our next baby is born, Raiden will have someone to play with and I'll have more time to work on my tan." He flopped back down against his crimson Fire Nation logoed beach towel and began feigning sleep, snoring audibly.

"Mommy!" laughed Raiden from afar, dumping the contents of his bucket and forming the next level of his sandcastle. "Daddy!"

Azula gazed lovingly at her firstborn, and nodded, her silent way of repeating what she had said to him before. After the two-year-old dropped his head and commenced his playing once again, she turned around and gave a sly roll to her amber eyes at the ignorance of her sundried mate. She was about ready to pull his towel out from under him, but instead chided, "Come on, honey. Having a child means you have to play with him sometimes."

"I know," Chan whined, his snoring finally silenced, "but I really want to –"

"And think of it this way," came Azula's astounding argument. "Raiden is the crown prince and is of higher rank in this country than the both of us. If he wants us to come over there, then we should."

Chan could not argue with that logic, and he gave no effort into doing so. He simply conceded to the pregnant princess' wishes and got himself off his towel. He let out his hand and assisted Azula in her ascent off the ground. Once on her feet, Azula caressed her stomach, feeling a gentle flutter in her womb as her eager little unborn child kicked around inside her.

With eyes still planted firmly on the princess, Chan took note of the gesture. He questioned it to her, putting words to his concern.

"It's nothing, dear," she reassured the amateurish man she loved. She took Chan to her lips, kissing him longingly. As she broke from him, a light smack of their lips resonated with the sound of the waving sea out ahead of them. Azula breathed out, and freed Chan from his worry. "I just felt the baby move, that's all," she said, rubbing her abdomen. "Now, pick up the towels and my umbrella so we can go see what Raiden wants."

"Okay, okay," Chan surrendered with a chuckle. He bent over and seized their beach towels, shaking any excess sand off of them. Placing them beneath his right armpit, he closed Azula's umbrella, and the two of them meandered over to Raiden, who had since added several more stacks to his sandy fortress.

The amused toddler lit up at the sight of his parents coming down to play with him. "Look, Mommy!" he shouted to Azula as his father replaced the towels on the ground again. "I makin' Uncle Zuzu's palace!"

"It's wonderful, sweetie." Azula took her seat back on her towel and stroked her hand through Raiden's somewhat wet hair, complimenting him for a second time. "It looks just like Zuzu's palace," she praised. "Would you like Mommy to help you with it?"

Raiden gazed up at Chan as he poked Azula's umbrella back into the sand. "Daddy too?" he asked curiously, pointing at his dad. The trademark smile he got from his mother broadened innocently across his cheeks.

Azula nodded. "Of course he'll help," she answered as she stifled a laugh and tore a hand into the sand. She shaped the loose material into little individual lumps; each one, according to Raiden, appeared to look like trees in Uncle Zuzu's garden. Azula set about making several sand trees around the back border of the sand palace as Raiden spilled his final level onto it.

"Zuzu's castle big!" the giddy child laughed. He sent a few small piles of sand into the air, letting them fall around both him and his mother. Chan, however, had since settled back on the ground –this time lying prone atop his torso –letting the sun bake the peach skin to a sweltering red. Raiden, noting his dad's sluggishness, effectively tossed some sand onto his back.

"Daddy too!"

"No, buddy," Chan sighed slowly, wiping the sand off. "Daddy works on his tan."

"No," Azula growled teasingly, playing along with Raiden's game. "Daddy helps make Raiden's castle like I told him to."

Chan only managed to lift one finger in disapproval before having his whole hand smashed into the sand by his wife.

"There." Azula worked his hand into the cool sand, and let go only after Chan rose himself because he hated having his arm pulled at such an odd angle. "Now, what should Daddy do, Raiden?"

The little boy's sand-sprinkled eyes sparkled with creativity, and he ordered with mirth, "Daddy makes durdle-ducks pond! I show Daddy!"

With that, Raiden stepped past his pregnant mother and grabbed the sandy palm that Azula had wrestled with just moments before. He pulled forth his father's index finger, and sloppily traced the contour of where the pond would be, just in front of some of the tree lumps Azula had created. Chan said nothing, and let his finger be used to create Raiden's beach masterpiece.

He let go, scrutinizing his work before him. Azula brightened at him, a thought brewing into her head.

"What do we need to add, Raiden?" she prodded him, and rubbed a tender, no less sandy hand of her own along his back. "What do we need to add to our turtleduck pond?"

Raiden's cheerful face blossomed with enlightenment. "Durdle-ducks!" he said, but all of a sudden stopping himself, perplexed.

Chan wondered, "What's wrong, buddy?"

"How do I make durdle-ducks?"

The three contemplated this in silence. Azula winced slightly –the baby issuing challenge to the silence –and quietly heated a palm to her belly, rubbing the bump in circles. The baby fluttered again, but then seemed to rest still. None of this, however, broke her concentration.

"Do you want me to make little lumps," she offered to her son, "like the trees?"

He shook his head. "No, durdle-ducks don' look like twees." Another wordless moment flew past the trio before Raiden stirred again, thrilled with his brilliance. "I know!"

The little boy poked his own index finger into the sand within the glorified contour of the palace pond, indenting several circles that would stand as a family of turtleducks. After making five teeny holes, Raiden looked to his mother, and aimed his sandy finger her way.

"Mommy," he declared, "you make mommy durdle-duck! And Daddy make daddy durdle-duck!"

Azula and Chan shared a glance between them, to which they each smiled. Giggling, they did as told, not bothering to argue with their ingenious son's logic. Azula and Chan's turtle-ducks came out significantly bigger than Raiden's little ones, and Azula realized his intent. He had simply wanted his parents to employ their bigger fingers into the image, and make obvious the parents of their makeshift pond.

The princess was often floored by Raiden's intelligence, the things he seemed to just know and have an idea for out of thin air. There were times when he would just blurt out something, something Azula would often swear neither she nor Chan had taught him. Raiden just seemed to observe his world through his own eyes, and soak it all in like a sponge. Then, he would release it, weaving these wonderful tales of how and why things worked. Azula marveled how limitless his imagination appeared, how vivid and descriptive he was. She knew she herself had been the same way at his age, but seeing her beaming son in that maternal, adult perspective made it seem all the more unique. What an amazing, gifted, and inquisitive boy she had given birth to two years ago…

"The durdle-ducks need heads, Mommy."

This statement broke Azula from her ensnarement. "Hmm?"

"Heads, Mommy!" Raiden giggled. "They missin' heads!"

"Well, how about this?" Azula slid her pinkie against the circles in the sand, and gave each duck a discernible head. After that, she traced thin contours of beaks with her fingernail. "How's that?"

"Good!" Raiden shouted in elation. A goofy grim managed to etch its way into the sandy toddler's expression as he then turned to his father, awaiting his approval. "Daddy, you like the durdle-duck heads?"

Chan rammed a hand down onto the wet mat of his son's hair, an act which caused the excited little two-year-old to let out a playful squeal of laughter. "Yes, I do, buddy," he replied. "And I think a few others in our family might want to see them too."

Azula perked up. "Yeah, Raiden," she told him, planting a kiss to his cheek and watching him recoil at it with the most sheepish of giggles. "Why don't we go show Uncle Zuzu his new palace?"

At this, Raiden pounced onto his feet, shaking the excess sand off his limbs. Azula, who had allowed Chan to help her rise off the sand, handed her son his own beach towel, which he had left near the water's edge when he had disassembled his previous attempt at a sandcastle roughly fifteen minutes prior.

She helped him pat dry his skin, and said to him, "Let's get you dried off first before you go trouncing through the beach house, okay, sweetie?"

Raiden nodded, and Azula pinched a corner of the towel to the bridge of his nose in a playful gesture. The little boy squeaked, "'Kay, Mommy!"

In a matter of minutes, she dried him from head to toe, though not without tickling him and making him laugh throughout the simple process. Just as his newborn cries and gurgles and coos had melted her heart in his babyhood, his splendid, often random bursts of laughter in his toddler years did too. Azula loved exploiting an opportunity just to hear him giggle. It stood as a sound to happiness, a sound of joy she would have denied herself had she released him to Zuko and Mai on the day of his birth inside the Boiling Rock. Raiden was her reason for life; his laughter made her realize that she was alive, and not the dead mass of madness her former self had once came close to becoming.

"Mommy," came a sudden question from the inquisitive little boy as the princess teased the endearing cowlick in his hair with the towel before wrapping it around his lithe frame. "What's that?"

His finger pointed out to where the sea met the shore, where an impressive conch shell sat, dripping with ocean water and sparkling in the sun's oppressive light.

"That," Chan replied for his pregnant wife, walking away from his growing family to retrieve the shell in question, "is a conch shell."

"Coach shell, Daddy?" Raiden tried repeating. He stood on his tippy toes to garner a better look at the thing his father was bringing to him.

"No, buddy," Chan said, presenting the curved off-white shell to his son. "It's a conch shell, and I've never seen one this big before, and I lived on this island for years before I married your mommy."

"Don't touch it yet, sweetie!" Azula suddenly blurted out. She had caught Raiden red-handed trying to take the shell out of Chan's grasp, but she had no honest clue if the thing was safe for him to touch.

"Why, Mommy?" Raiden questioned, his face betraying a flash of hurt for just being curious. Chan eyed her as well, but then he discovered the true meaning behind her worried outburst.

"Your mommy's right, Raiden, but it's okay," Chan reassured him. He flipped over the massive shell and revealed its clean opening. Raiden's eyes burst wide in amazement at how odd the shape of the shell was, and he certainly was not expecting it to have a massive hole in it!

"Coach shell boke, Daddy?" he asked. He just had to be sure.

Azula and Chan shared a glance at one another, bright smiles taking shape on their lips as the two of them considered the question.

Azula took the chance to answer. "No," she told him, "it's not broken, sweetie. Conch shells are supposed to look like that. But that big hole there is the reason why I told you not to touch it."

"Why?"

Chan took the lead on this one-worded and inevitably repeatable question. "Because there're creatures that sometimes live in shells like this. Hermit crabs and other sea creatures call these types of shells home, and if there's a hermit crab in there, it might pinch your little fingers, so Mommy and I want you to be extra careful."

"Ooh! They live in it like durdle-ducks live in our pond?"

Raiden's golden eyes sparkled with a fascination for the connection he had just made, finding it simply incredible that animals made homes just about anywhere in this world that they shared with humans like him.

"Sort of," Chan answered. "See, the shell acts as the hermit crab's skeleton. You know how our bones are on the inside? The hermit crab has its bones –well, bone, actually, since there's only one –on the outside, but it lives inside it. Kind of funny, right?"

The two-year-old mirthfully looked his mother's way, then back at his dad's. Plastered on his face was a comical grin (a grin only revealing his top row of teeth while the bottoms hid beneath his lower lip): an obvious indicator to the two parents that the boy had no comprehension about what he had just heard. Raiden had his fair share of moments of outstanding intelligence, but even he had his limits on what he could and could not fully absorb.

Azula, however, had her own look of wonder, which she directed at Chan.

"Where'd you learn that, Chan?"

Chan shrugged his well-muscled shoulders. "Hey, when you've lived in Sandy Land for a good portion of your life, you pick up a few things."

The three were silent as Chan took it upon himself to inspect the inside of the shell. Squinting, he tried his best to see through the slender crack of the deepest portion, where the bottom dwellers often hid themselves from their prey.

"Sometimes a hermit crab shell looks empty, but that isn't always the case," he educated his family. I can't tell you how many times I came home with a bucket of these things to show to Mom, only to find the whole pile of them covered in ants."

"Ants?" asked Raiden.

"Yeah, ants. When the hermit crabs are hidden away so far down the shell, they die when we take them out of the water. They suffocate and the ants feed off of them. Kind of gross, so we should be absolutely certain this shell is empty before we take it off the beach.

"Azula," he requested, "do you mind shining some fire over the hole? I might be able to see a little better."

The princess, offering nothing beyond a slight wince after feeling the fetus move around inside her womb, flicked a small cerulean flame above her palm. She channeled it toward the innards of the shell. She herself did not see anything, but if anyone had the right of mind to say the conch shell was vacant, it was Chan, so she left the final call to him.

Chan had a terse frown on his face as the inside became more vivid under his wife's firebending. He squinted, his head tilting every which way to cover every inch.

"Daddy, Daddy!" Raiden tugged at the leg of his father's swimsuit. "I wanna see!"

"Shh, Raiden. Let Daddy concentrate." Azula bent over somewhat and wrapped an arm around the curious two-year-old, pulling him close to her. Raiden rested his head against the protruding mound that his unborn brother or sister inhabited in his mother's belly, somewhat dejected that he was unable to take a look for himself.

"Well," Chan delightfully chimed after about two minutes of silent scrutiny, "I think it's empty."

Raiden raised his hands and jumped up and down like a little hogmonkey. "Yay! I hold it, Daddy!"

"What do you say, Raiden?" This came from Azula, the refined mother in her at least wanting her son to be mannerly, even if he was talking to his father, a man whose own etiquette was not as polished as his wife's.

"Please, Daddy? I please hold it?"

Chan bent down to Raiden's level. "I want to show you something else first, buddy."

Two-year-old Raiden cocked his head, his hair fluttering with a gust of much-needed cool wind.

"What, Daddy?"

Chan grinned. "This."

He gently clasped his fingers around some of Raiden's hair, coiling it behind his right ear. Pressing the opening of the shell to his son's ear, he asked him, "What do you hear?"

For about thirty seconds, Raiden absorbed the sound he could very clearly hear. The soft, gentle waves echoing off the chambers of the shell, as if the entire body of water on this earth could be compacted into one small space.

"That," he stated, ejecting a finger out in the direction of the ocean. "I hearin' that."

Azula modified the answer for the two-year-old, "The ocean. You hear the ocean."

"Yeah, the oh-sin."

Both mother and father exchanged glances and a beam of affection between them, the absolute innocence of their children –born and unborn –captivating them both. Standing behind Raiden, they watched him try to understand just why the sounds outside were the same as those contained within the conch shell. He seemed so enthusiastic at the chance to learn something new, so willing to say and do new things with each passing day. In the words he pronounced wrong, both parents saw a window of improvement, but at the same time an even narrower window representing the passage of time between his years of unblemished transparency and his future as a knowing adult. With each lesson life presented to him, they knew their boy would only yearn to move closer to knowledge.

This fact was something that Azula grappled with daily: Raiden's purity was not permanent. He would need less of her; he was requiring less of her in a few regards already. For one, he no longer nursed from her breast, instead finding sustenance in the selfsame places she and Chan did. She breastfed Raiden for just above fifteen months before weaning him fully, not just because of his premature birth but because of the bond the duty manifested between them. It had been the one aspect of his existence that only she had the capacity to provide. Just about anyone could change baby Raiden's diapers, clothe him, cuddle and talk to him when he was lonely or needy, but only she was capable of sating his hunger. Only her milk nourished his growing body; no matter the circumstances, she never once allowed a wet nurse to take over the responsibility.

In a few more months, however, she would assume the obligation again, this time with a new baby, a new life to bond with. Would the established link feel the same with this child? Would it be just as magical as her experience with Raiden? Would she feel that same tingle of adoration each time she placed this new baby to her breast?

The budding child in question wriggled in an unspoken declaration of willingness, palliating the princess' qualms. Both of her children would be different, she realized, but the connection she would share with each one would be equal in measure. They would both be special, miraculous, and she would love them unconditionally.

"Hello, oh-sin!"

Snapped back into the present, Azula peered curiously upon the scene before her. Chan was on his knees, explaining the mechanics behind the reverberating conch shell to Raiden, who was busy striking up a conversation with the pleasant sounds in his ear.

"Who you wanna talk to, oh-sin?" he asked the off-white object. "Mommy? No? Daddy? No? The…

"Mommy!" Raiden blurted, tugging urgently at her hand. "The oh-sin wanna talk to baby!"

The momentarily distracted princess felt her cheeks flush scarlet at her son's seemingly imaginary request. It was not as if her son had never interacted with her ever-swelling abdomen –conversing to the little brother or sister moving around within, or pressing his own hands to it with the intent to "take Mommy's boo-boo away" by feeling the kicking pains in his palm –but something about his demand traversed a certain intimacy that faltered her slightly.

What would he hear? Assume? Imagine? Even when Raiden himself was developing in her womb, he was exclusively hers to talk to, even if the words she did say to him were egocentric, evil, never worth repeating. Even when Chan talked to this tiny growing life, she secretly harbored doubts that the child had no capacity to hear them. Perhaps a bit selfishly, she figured only words spoken from her mouth had the weight to carry into her womb.

Like skin shedding, like poison exiting the body, Azula felt those presentiments shrivel away at the contact of her son's keen cheek to her belly. She enveloped her boy in her arms, beaming lovingly. Who in this world knew the capacity words had to transcend the womb? How could she challenge anyone who believed their conversations held merit to the life inside? Yes, she had said utterly horrendous things to Raiden before he was born, but he had no memory of them. Talking to the unborn was simply a way for everyone to grow a bond, a bond not exclusive solely to the mother.

With the conch shell safely in his grasp, the toddler listened carefully. Concentrating hard, he nodded twice, grunted confirmations, and finally concluded his conversation.

"Well," Chan asked with a goofy smile on his face that was on the verge of cracking into a laugh, "what did the baby say?"

"Baby said a secret." As if it were fact and nothing more.

"And what secret would that be?"

Raiden giggled, unable to contain his happiness.

"Baby's a sister!"