A/N: Alright so I'm just going to come out and say that I'm leaving for a nearly three-week summer vacation tomorrow and as such my updating schedule will get a little hinky. I will try and put up a chapter whenever I can but as it stands now the updating days of Monday and Thursday are postponed. Thanks to everyone that has and is reading this story so far, those that have alerted this story or put it on their favorite lists, and those that have reviewed! It means more than you know :)
The next day I will be able to post on time will be July 2nd, so I have a few days of a breather after getting back. I hope you all can understand and I'm really, really sorry for this inconvenience! Didn't think the story would go on this long, lol.
Anyway, here's the chapter for yesterday, Monday, and I'm posting up a bonus one for Thursday's chapter, as I won't be able to post it then. (Also, sorry for any typos or anything like that in these two chapters. I'm editing them in a hurry.)
Please enjoy :)
Disclaimer: I do not even feign to own any part of A:LA. Or dream about it. You know, that would be an weird dream, now that I think about it. Huh.
XxxxxxxxxxX
There trudges one to a merry-making
With sturdy swing,
On whom the rain comes down.
~'An Autumn Rain-Scene', stanza #1, Thomas Hardy
The days of the week began again… for everyone except Sokka. Because of his weekend class, he got to sleep in on the day that everyone else around him (everyone that worked, that is) bustled around anxiously and nervously, afraid to be late, forget something, and/or be unable to expel that one plaguing thought from their mind as they had to focus on whatever it was that their jobs or duties required.
Sokka loved it. Maybe it was still a part of being a teenager that was stuck inside of him, but he loved being able to sit back and relax and laugh at the people who were fretting. For as much as he's changed, that part of Sokka still stayed true.
At the moment, though, he actually was working - and quite hard, too. Or, at least, he was trying.
"Good," Celeigh said, smiling. "I forgot how long this tea took. These mangos probably should've sat another day. Can you start on the duck for me?"
"Uh… sure." Sokka said the last word in a long and drawn-out way that made his future Aunt-in-law look up doubtfully. But she didn't say anything and continued squeezing the mangos through a strainer and into a large jug for tea.
Sokka approached the duck in the sink warily. He was still so used to either eating nuts, some kind of jerky, fruit, or something they just bought off of a food-stand in the street in a hurry that he never put much consideration into the preparation of a meal. When they - he and Katara - lived in the South Pole, most of the food was either eaten on the bone or turned into some kind of bland soup. Every dish revolved around fish. Sokka did not think, now, that he could ever possibly go back to that.
However, Kyoshi Island did have some customs he was used to – like seaweed. It used to act as a sort of grain in his diet but Celeigh was going to wrap the Duck in it and steam the meat. Then she would sprinkle it with something he didn't remember, and leave it to dry for a few minutes while the duck cooled, so it would come out sweet and crispy.
All the different variations of cooking made him drool. Almost literally. Sokka stopped himself from doing it, though, because that would look bad. And, well, the duck in front of him almost made his saliva come out of his mouth in a different reaction.
It was skinned, trimmed, and drained. And it was very pale.
"Sokka." He looked up at Celeigh's voice. She wore an amused smile. "I need you to take out the giblets; that stupid butcher left them in again. Then I need you to rinse it out, pat it dry with that," she gestured with her head," and wrap it in seaweed. Actually just put it in the pot – I'll do the seaweed part. Okay? You good?"
"Yep. Perfect!"
If his friendship with Fen and his first prolonged meeting of Fen's parents did not rely on the meal being edible, Sokka would drop the duck on the ground and go screaming from the small kitchen. He grimaced at the contact as his hand plunged into the chest cavity. His fingers ran along the sides and he felt the ribs. His stomach almost turned over.
"Aunt!" Suki said suddenly, bursting through the door. "Why are you making him stick his hand down a duck's throat?" She shook her head and turned to her fiancé. "Sokka, take your arm out. There aren't any giblets in there. She's messing with you."
He whipped his hand out as fast as he could. "What?"
Celeigh grinned. "Relax, baby girl. I was just teaching him to get used to raw meat. You understand, right Sokka?"
Sokka wanted to barf but kept himself from doing that with a variety of exercises like pinching himself and thinking of appetizing and, more importantly, cooked food. It would look bad in front of both of the women if he did throw up on the floor. Suki shook her head at her Aunt and he turned to wash his sticky arm.
"But that duck does need wiped down and wrapped," Celeigh continued as she went back to the jug of tea, mixing it around. A dozen mangos laid in a pile, squeezed dry and cut in half, as dead as produce can get. "Suki, do you mind taking care of this? I promised I would take some of this to Ishi's mother. It's her favorite." She winked and picked up a second jug, stirring it quickly and jerkily tapping the wooden utensil on the side when done.
"Yeah, sure. Tell Ishi I say 'hi', if she's there."
"Will do." Celeigh kissed her niece's cheek and was out of the door.
Suki grimaced. "So she tricked you with the tea, huh?"
"What do you mean?"
Suki grabbed the seaweed and helped him wrap the duck while he held it still. "She did that to me when I was ten. She thought it was weird that I was so gross out by slimy chickens – 'cause she always marinates them in this broth from the previous cook." Suki shuddered and Sokka smiled understandingly. "So she pretended it just took forever to mash up the berries to mix with her new concoction of tea – like a juice, but my Dad doesn't drink juice, so she mixed it with tea as a compromise – and got me to rinse off the chicken, cut the legs off the breast and cut it up for the soup."
"Ew."
"Yep."
Sokka shrugged. "Hey, she taught you. That's good." Suki nodded and said something about appreciating it, but that it was still gross and unnecessary. A few minutes passed and she pinned the seaweed together underneath the heavy duck, dropped it on top of the cabbage in the pot, and move it to hang over the fire. "And just for the record," Sokka said as his fiancé went to dry her hands. "I do not have an aversion to raw meat. I'm just more used to fish."
She laughed. "Whatever you say, Sokka."
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So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
~'The Darkling Thrush', stanza #4, Thomas Hardy
Katara raised her arm and waved excitedly – and a bit wildly. She was happy to see the Southern Air Temples again and even more so to see that, this time, they were bustling with life. It wasn't anywhere near the way it had been, a century ago, but it was a start. A very good start.
A few people stood at the small dock carved along the eastern side of the island. Katara didn't see how the Fire Nation ship could get any closer to it. This time she was traveling on one of the much smaller and narrower ships of the Fire Nation, one of the smallest in the fleet actually, but its dimensions were still awkward and, in a way, made it seem larger than it truly is.
A soldier – sailor, she saw, by his much looser and much more armor-less ensemble – came beside her and gestured to a corner of the deck. "There's a boat to take you ashore, over there."
She nodded and thanked him and climbed on board it. The small boat took her by surprise when he disconnected from the ship's side and it plopped down upon the waves. Katara stifled a yelp. In a few short minutes they were at the dock, the boat rocking from the seas still upheaved by the storms from a few days ago (which she was aboard the Fire Nation ship during the tail end of).
Katara thanked the sailor and didn't even try the leap to the small wooden dock. She water-bended a shelf under her feet. It lifted her, carried her, and deposited her on a cliff edge a good twenty feet up from the water. The unruly waves crashed against the rocky island wall.
"Katara!"
"Aang!" She grinned and quickly turned to receive his hug. "Ow, you'll crush me!"
"Sorry!" Aang smiled sheepishly and pulled back. "It's been forever. I don't know what to say."
She laughed. "Where's Toph?"
"Ugh, she's… around…." The Avatar scratched his neck.
Katara furrowed her brow in response, wondering what exactly he meant. But she was too happy at seeing her friend for the first time in…. "I can't believe it's been a month! So much has happened; you first."
"No," Aang chuckled, "you first. I've been here the whole time – I'll bore you to death."
"I doubt it."
She followed her best friend up the path to the main temple as he talked, explaining this building and that building, its use and the unique story behind it. She was glad to see him so at ease. Not that she expected him to be high-strung or anything, but he was just in his… element. Much in the same way it helped him relax to sit on a spinning air ball, Aang wore a smile and spoke excitedly – but calmly – about everything at the Southern Air Temples.
He told her about a baby girl, a year old, named Raja, who he was babysitting. There was more to the story, he had said, but he and Toph would share it later.
"Where is Toph?" Katara asked again, as they walked around the fountain, halfway up to the main temple.
"Boo!" Toph yelled suddenly and the water-bender swiveled around to find a mud statue next to where a bush had been only seconds before. It was dripping with rich earth and Katara yelped this time as the outrageous and bizarre thing startled her. It was a messy (both because of the mud and most likely because of who had built it) replica of Toph. Said girl in question dashed from behind the scene to the side, shouting, "Run for cover!"
Katara didn't have time to react as the earth-bender spun around and took a stance. The imperfect statue exploded a foot from the older teen.
While Toph wasn't a water-bender, she did soak the soil in mud while making the statue. As the earth bits went flying, they carried and propelled the liquid forward. It was a mess.
Katara opened her mouth in a shocked gasp as a gob of mud hit her forehead, another her hair, another her wrist, another her ankle, but that was the absolute worst reaction, as shards of flying mud were flung into her mouth. She stayed perfectly still and soon the explosion stopped. Katara saw Aang peek out from being a rock and Toph from behind a bush.
The scene was calm, quiet; not a bird sung and not a person laughed. And then her taste-buds starting working and the water-bender bent over, spitting and hacking out the dirt from her mouth. Something moved in her mouth - a worm - and Katara almost screamed as she tried to spit out all of the grit. Toph burst into giggles behind her. A mere second passed before she heard Aang's own trademark laugh join in. "What was that for, Toph?"
"I'm sorry!" Toph said, it coming out all bouncing because of her vibrating chest, sounding more like someone sounding it out like 'I-I'm so-so-so-ar-ar-rey-rey'. In the same voice, she gasped for breath and said, "No wait! I'm not sorry! Hahah!"
Katara stomped her foot where she stood, most of the dirt out of her mouth, and swiveled to confront Aang. He was too beside himself with convulsions to be fearful of her. "You helped her, didn't you?"
"I might have," he said in the same shaky voice as Toph. When he finally got it out, with many starts and stops, Katara stomped her foot again.
"Ugh!" Her chest heaved, annoyance pulsing through her veins.
Then a gust of wind drifted by all of a sudden and brought with it a brief shower of ice-cold water. Katara stood, paralyzed with shock, while Toph managed to crawl over to Aang and bend them a small shelter. All the while, the young girl was laughing her head off.
The rain passed after a brief five minutes and Katara raised her hands, inspecting her now-clean hands, arms, and then clothing and hair, pulling it from her scalp to see as much as possible without crossing her eyes and blinding herself. She smiled. A high giggling escaped her mouth. Toph and Aang watched her and, when she burst out in a laugh that startled her body, making her lose her balance and fall over on her butt, they couldn't help that it fueled their fit of giggles more.
Katara laid on the ground, feeling happier than she had in the past few days as she laughed – at herself. "You two are crazy!"
"Says the one that fell over," Toph said back.
"Goo-," she interrupted herself with another laugh. "Good point."
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It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely -and why?
We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on
as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.
And became as lonely as a sheperd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.
~'Childhood', Rainer Maria Rilke
Fen munched on the rice making a large mound on his plate happily. He was sitting and eating dinner with his parents, and also Sokka, his great combat instructor. And then there was Sokka's fiancé, Suki, and then some of Suki's family too, her Aunt Celeigh and father Blais if he remember right and whom he hadn't seen stand up once so far and kind of rolled around in a weird chair that kept him upright instead of tumbling in a ball like Fen did with his friends sometimes. Fen thought it was cool.
"Want some more?" Suki asked him from across the table, holding out the rice serving bowl. Fen nodded and grabbed it.
"Thank you," he said warmly and she smiled, waiting to take it from him again and pass it back around to where its place was on a warming towel. "And this is really good; thank you."
"That's nice, Fen, but you should thank my aunt. She did most of it."
"Hey, I wrapped the duck in seaweed." Sokka protested meekly.
"We wrapped the duck in seaweed," Suki nudged her fiancé. Fen giggled and Suki smiled at him in a conspiratorial manner.
Sokka looked around the table. "Can someone pass the tea?"
Fen leaned his elbows up on the table and leaned across and diagonally, over Blais's plate, and thanked Celeigh. When he sat back, Blais turned to him. "How old are you, boy?"
"Nine. Just turned. How old are you?"
The older man seemed a bit startled by the question back. But he was a kind man and responded, "More than six times your age."
"That's like…" the boy counted, "fifty-four!"
"More than that, son."
Fen stared at him, wide-eyed and curious. "Did you live an adventurous life?"
"Not as much as a boy like you would think. This injury here is from an attack from the Fire Nation," Blais said, gesturing to his legs and the chair. "That put an end to my world-traveling, I'm afraid."
"That's too bad." He leaned in to the man's ear and whispered, "But if it's between you and me, I think you should just say you use that chair for fun. It looks cool."
Blais gave a hearty chuckle at that.
A knock sounded at the door and Celeigh jumped to grab it. Fen focused back on his father and found him speaking with Sokka. "Do you really think he has that potential?" His father asked.
"Of course," Sokka said and put down his chopsticks after another leaf of cabbage slid out from their grasp. Fen had noticed that too and was trying to discreetly eat the cabbage with his fingers. His mother scolded him the first time or two but then gave up. "Everyone can get there it's just if they want it. I want to help him if he does make that choice."
Fen felt befuddled and his forehead scrunched, showing that confusion clearly. He leaned back and glanced to his mother. She caught his gaze and slightly smiled at him, nodding to the conversation his father was having. A smile could have a hundred different meanings, the boy knew, and this one meant the conversation was something he should be listening to but not say a word in. Fen focused back begrudgingly. They sounded boring and half the time it sounded like they were talking about him, except he couldn't tell very well if they were or weren't. Fen did not think he should speak.
"Fen." Sokka called to him. "What do you think?"
"About what?"
He sighed with patience. "About becoming my teacher's assistant."
Fen startled. Admittedly, he hand't tuned in for a few minutes. "But I'm one of the youngest of the class! That would be awesome," he grinned, swinging out his arms. "I could boss all the other kids around. Beat up bullies."
"Fen," his father said suddenly, taking his hands by the wrists and stilling them. "Don't be mean to anyone."
"But what if they deserve it?"
"As the teacher's assistant, you'd have to tell me if you saw anyone acting out. I will deal with it," Sokka said.
Fen thought about it for a long moment. It still sounded fun. Not beating up bullies, as much as he wanted to, was actually more of a relief as Fen was till not so great at combat. And if he ran into an older bully... "Okay," he shrugged, trying to be all cool and collected. But a joyful smile still broke his lips, even as said lips bled a little from being bitten in an effort to try and keep the smile at bay.
He listened to his parents a few more minutes but then they went off onto another tangent, talking about something Ba Sing Se, blah-blah, and Fen tuned out again. He finished off his mango tea. Suddenly the jug was in front of him and Fen said thanks but stopped mid-pour, not recognizing the young woman who had handed him the tea.
"Your eyes are… odd," he commented, handing back the jug.
"How so?"
"They're brown, but they're kind of green – like there!" He smiled. "When you shift your head like that, they get green. Like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly."
She blushed and the boy's strange but sweet analogy. "I don't think anyone's ever said I have eyes like a caterpillar."
"Not like," Fen shook his head, "but with the color of a bright, spring season caterpillar and then when they go brown again, it's similar to a butterfly. I'm Fen," he nodded his head once in greeting.
"Ishi." She leaned across the table in front of him, almost conspiratorially.
He was glad to have found someone at the table who was so simple to talk to. And who wasn't talking to anyone else, too. Fen didn't want to interrupt the others; he was very courteous like that. He had made fast friends with Suki but he had also known her or seen her about most of his childhood. She was a kind but strong leader.
Fen vaguely recognized this Ishi in front of him as having been one of those around Suki. Ishi was obviously a Kyoshi warrior, too, as she still had her makeup on. "So, Fen, I hear you're the best in Sokka's class. Is that true?"
"I don't think so," he said modestly but honestly. "There are at least a dozen better than me. And there are almost twenty kids in the class; so no."
Ishi waved her hand, dismissing his words. "But you practice all day and always strive to get it right. That's admirable. The best in the class is always the one that works the hardest and longest. Sometimes a kid just has it, sometimes they don't, but what I was always taught when training to be a Kyoshi warrior is that the one that succeeds is the one that doesn't give up. Does that make sense, Fen?"
"I think so."
"Good. Maybe I can help you with your practice some times? An extra set of eyes can sometimes see the mistake another's can't."
"Yeah. Okay." Fen nodded. He smiled. "I'd like that. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"By the way, you are really pretty without your makeup, too." Fen said it and then immediately dove into his duck. As a boy, he was still wholly unaware of how nice it was for a woman to hear a compliment.
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Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another.
~Eustace Budgell
Toph waited outside of the large wooden doors for Katara to come downstairs from changing. After the three of them recovered from laughing their heads off, Katara realized her clothes wouldn't dry anytime soon, as the sky stayed hauntingly overcast. Not a ray of sun shined through – or so Toph had been told. So the water-bender took her small sack of clothing from the boat and went to change as Aang watched the Fire Nation ship off.
It was strange now that any of them could use Fire Nation transportation – specifically the army's transportation – if they asked Zuko for it. (It was on the contingency that they would eventually pay it off, but it was not like a loan with interest or a specific time to do so. For now it was just like a bar tab – always open. And all of them were friends with the bartender, too, so there was no deadline for that tab. Unlike was most outsiders would think, they didn't abuse it or use that 'service' nearly as often as they could.)
Shaepa came up beside her and plopped down on the step. "I'm so tired," she whined.
"Why?" Toph asked, indulging her friend. She didn't have anything else to do at the moment besides wait.
"I haven't been getting much sleep. Don't tell anyone… but I'm kind of afraid of thunder," she whispered.
Toph smirked. "Afraid of thunder?"
"Yeah. So?"
"Nothing," she said quickly. "Just… never heard of that before. Why are you afraid of thunder?"
"I don't know!"
"Jeesh, okay."
"Sorry," Shaepa said. There was a soft noise beside the earth-bender, a ruffling of hair, as the girl dropped her head between her legs and scratched her neck.
"Momo!" Toph smiled as she felt the flying lemur land on her arm. Miya was much heavier than Momo - so much so that the difference was obvious. Plus, she didn't even have the same kind of fur. Toph scratched down Momo's spine. He loved it.
"Oh, here," Shaepa said and fished something out of her pocket. With one whiff the earth-bender knew it was a Moon peach. "He loves those."
"Don't I know it."
A bleep of silence fell with only Momo's squishy chewing filling the air. Toph was bored and Shaepa was cranky, so the two silently agreed not to make conversation. They all did that from time to time. It was easier to simply be near another person and not go through the troubles of conversation.
Shaepa gasped. "What the…."
"What?" Toph asked, confused.
"It cannot be worse than the soaked rag I wore earlier," Katara joked. Toph thought she heard a note of nervousness in Katara's voice.
Toph extracted Momo from her lap before he spilt peach juice all of over. When she did so, she finally sensed the water-bender a few feet behind her. She turned to see what the startling was about. Shaepa shook her head and stood. "No, it's not that. I've just not seen a Fire Nation, uh, garb that wasn't… armor."
Katara shuffled awkwardly. "Right. I'm sorry, I didn't think it's just the only one I have at the moments that's not in need of a wash."
"No, don't worry about it."
A call sounded then – a woman's voice – and Shaepa groaned. Toph recognized the voice as the other girl's mother's.
"I have gotta go help with something or whatever. See you guys later. Nice to meet you, before, Katara."
"Same," She responded and sighed when Toph stood from the step and Shaepa left.
"Fire Nation clothes, huh?" The earth-bender asked skeptically. She knew all of them had worn Fire Nation clothes while they were hiding out in plain sight in said nation but after their identities were known and Zuko was crowned, everyone more or less went back to wearing their own stuff. Toph wondered.
"Yeah."
Toph smiled like a predator cat. "Grab those by accident while you packed?"
"I didn't have enough of my South Pole clothes and, if you must know, I actually kind of like these. Big deal." She then grabbed the young earth-bender's arm in a sudden action and pulled her down the steps alongside herself. "Now come! You have to introduce me to everyone or show me someplace special. The temples are so different now! It's like a whole new world."
Toph let her musings go for another day. She smirked at the 'whole new world' comment. "Wait until you hear Aang's plans for the Eastern Air Temples."
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This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
~'The Waking', stanza #4, Theodore Roethke
Suki hugged Ishi, the last one out the door that evening, and gave her friend a bag. "Aunt's leftovers for you and your Mom."
"Sweet! I love Celeigh's cooking," Ishi grinned and hugged her friend one last time, briefly, with one arm. "See you tomorrow."
"Bye." Suki closed the door. She leaned against it for a moment, feeling sore feet. She had only been home half the day - more than she had thought - and still somehow managed to always be on her feet. A good fourteen hours straight had been spent standing, walking, or, in one case, running to catch up with a courier before he left to Ba Sing Se. The fellow Kyoshi warrior who handed him the wrong envelope would need a stricter punishment job. Suki would have to think that up, later. Maybe putting the girl on a night patrol would be enough. The punishment wasn't actually a punishment, it was rather more of a given opportunity for the fellow warrior to think over being more cautious (as that was usually the end result of why something happened - that they weren't cautious enough).
For now, though, all she could think of was sleep. Celeigh came out of the kitchen then and bid her goodnight with a kiss on the cheek. "Sokka's on dish duty so don't wait up for him, okay sweetie? You look like you're going to faint!"
"I'll be fine, Aunt. Go to bed," she smiled.
"My own niece acting like the boss of me," Celeigh shook her head in obvious amusement. "I told Blais that leadership position would go to your head."
"Hah-hah. Night."
"Night, sweetie."
Suki crossed the front hall, through the living room, and to the opposite wall. Sinking tiredly onto the heavily cushioned couch, she stared out the large windows to the ocean on the other side. It was dark, nearly black, but its foam as it crashed onto the sand was still white as ever. With the sliver of a crescent moon visible through the clouds, it was a beautiful sight.
The cushions sunk down to her right and Suki looked over to see her fiance. "He, what are you doing? I thought you were on dishes duty."
Sokka rolled his eyes. "Your Aunt made it sound way harder than it is."
"Oh no. You'll probably have something wrong in the morning. She'll have a fit it you put something back in the wrong place."
He shrugged. "Too bad." He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "Tired?"
"Extremely."
"Want help up the stairs?"
Suki smiled. "In a minute. The view is just too pretty." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "Fen's a nice kid. His parents are nice. I'm glad you took my advice, Sokka. You'll be a great mentor."
Sokka squeezed her closer and joked, "I'll teach him to kick butt better than everyone else. Not that he'll be favored, I mean."
She just giggled.
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