Hanging out with Appa on his head, I stretched out lazily underneath the sun and napped happily as we slugged our way through some horribly putrid river that looked and smelled like it had been regurgitated by some monster's stomach. I still couldn't believe Aang and Momo were playing in it, they might catch plague or something. Finally through with his game of hide and seek, I heard Aang whirl himself back up onto the saddle. "Hey guys, I think this river's polluted." Listening to the sound of a sudden splatter, I cracked an eye open before shrugging with disinterest.
"Well, that explains why I can't catch a fish around here. Because normally my fishing skills are...off the hook! Get it? Like a fishing hook?" Everyone else just remained silent but I keeled over laughing, sitting up and climbing up to the saddle as I laughed at Sokka's pun. What? I laugh easily. I can't help it. "At least somebody thinks I'm funny." Sokka grumbled unhappily.
"Too bad your skills aren't on the hook." Toph got a better reception of laughter all around, making Sokka even grumpier.
"It looks like we'll need to go somewhere else to get food." Katara sighed but then Sokka opened up his excessively long scroll which showed the complete time schedule from now until the invasion, including sleep times, potty breaks and how long we get to eat our meals. "Assuming that'll fit into Sokka's master schedule." Katara finished sarcastically, but her sarcasm was totally lost on her otherwise intently focused brother.
"Hm...it's doable, but that means only two potty breaks today!"
"Can I vote we stop calling them 'potty breaks' like we're all three year olds? Can't we just call it a rest stop?" I complained and Toph agreed with me. Aang pointed out something so I turned over on Appa's back then slid down to his neck to see a village built up over the river.
"Hey, maybe we can get food there."
"That looks good, but we better find somewhere to hide Appa." I said, rubbing his head. "Sorry buddy, but you stand out too much." He growled in agreement then led me steer him towards the uplands, out of sight of the village so that we could hide him. It didn't take long to make a blanket of turf that Aang and Toph tore up from the ground using their earth bending before tossing it over him, another made for Momo so that he was hidden too.
"Now you look just like a little hill with horns. Bye buddy!"
"We'll try find you something tasty to eat, you big fluffy beauty." I promised, hugging his face before leaving with the others, heading towards the cliffs.
"I don't feel anything. Where is this village?" Toph questioned in confusion, unable to feel the village with her feet.
"It's in the middle of the river!"
"Sure is!" Looking down quickly we saw a guy with a boat docked at the shore so we all quickly ran on down to say hi. "My name's Dock. Mind if I ask who you are?"
"We're, um, from the Earth Kingdom colonies." Katara quickly said, making it up as she went along.
"Wow, colonials! Hop on, I'll give you a ride into town." Thanking him for the ride, Dock started to steer us out onto the river and towards the village.
"Why do you guys live on the river?"
"Because we're a fishing town. At least that's how it was before the factory moved in." He gestured so we all looked towards a gap in the cliffs which showed a rather ugly looking factory spouting out clouds of smoke from the funnels. "Army makes their metal there. Moved in a few years ago and started gunking up our river. Now our little village is struggling to survive."
"That sounds terrible, can't you complain to someone about it?" I asked but Dock told us that there was nothing they could do.
"Small folk like us don't matter to big people. We just manage how we can." Saddened to see this kind of state of living in my own country, I clenched my fist in anger. Dumb war, stupid Fire Lord, I can't wait to give him a piece of my mind. We got to shore and climbed out of the boat in order to explore, though there wasn't really much to see. Nobody looked happy, in fact this place reminded me a great deal of some of the Earth Kingdom villages Iroh and I passed through when we were tracking Zuko after he left.
"Look at this place. It's so sad. We have to do something to help." Katara said as she looked around, just as affected as I was.
"No, we can't waste our time here! We have a bigger mission that we need to stay focused on. These people are on their own!" Sokka informed us all strongly, leading the way in search of food.
"These people are starving, but you turn your back on them?! How can you be so cold and heartless?"
"I'm not turning my back, I'm just being realistic! We can't go around helping every rinky-dink town we wander into. We'll be helping them all by taking out the Fire Lord!" Toph smartly slapped her hand over Sokka's mouth to shut him up before he could give us all away like an idiot.
"Hey, loudmouth! Maybe we should be a little quieter when we talk about taking out the
Fire Lord." Recovering, Sokka lowered his voice as he turned to his sister, trying to reason with her.
"Come on, Katara, be reasonable about this. You know our mission has to come first." Katara wasn't happy but she agreed, so I placed a hand on her back as she hugged her waist to comfort her. "Don't you want to help them, Kayo?"
"Of course I do, these are my people. My Nation. I never even realised some places were affected like this, it makes me feel like a totally ignorant jerk to think I can't do anything to help." I said to her as I looked around at all the hungry, sickly faces. "But not doing something now doesn't mean I'm not going to help at all. Sometimes, to solve a problem you need to deal with the root cause before things can start to get better. Once everything is over, we can always come back and help more. Okay?" Nodding in understanding, Katara leaned against me for a little bit for a hug so I held her as we walked around, approaching a counter which seemed to sell food.
I saw food, it looked, smelled and would probably taste horrible. Quite frankly, I'd rather eat my own arm than one of those fish. "Hey, Dock. You work here too?" Seeing the same guy from the boat, Sokka approached the stall in order to talk.
"I'm not Dock, I'm Xu. Dock's my brother." What?
"But we just saw you. You're even wearing the same clothes. The only difference is your hat." Aang pointed out as I scratched my head in confusion. Maybe the water was starting to turn these people a little crazy.
"Dock works on the docks, that's why they call him Dock, and I work in the shop, that's why they call me Xu."
"I don't get it." Aang frowned in confusion, but Dock…or Xu…? Either way, they weren't very helpful in explaining.
"Me neither." Moving on, Dock pulled up a tray laden with fish that looked like they'd died a horrible death and their bodies weren't yet done dying. "What can I getcha? Hey, I'll give you a special deal. If you buy three fish, I'll throw in a clam for free." We all felt revolted by the food, Toph able to smell just how bad they were but Sokka bought three anyway seeing as we needed to eat something.
"We'll just take the fish. Mind telling your brother we need a ride back to shore?" Ducking down below the counter, Dock then popped up with a different hat on, the same one he'd worn when we first met him at the shore.
"Hey, colonials. My brother says you need a lift." Picking up the fish, Katara turned around to follow the rest of us before a raggedy kid ran up to her, looking up pleadingly.
"Can you spare some food?" Unable to say no, Katara handed him one of the fish we'd just bought as I hung back for her.
"I wish I could spare more." The kid ran off not too far back to his home, where a woman was laying on her floor mat bed looking extremely ill. Sharing a look with one another, Katara sighed deeply before moving forward again. When we got back to the campsite I sat down and frowned at the two fish we had left, wondering how the heck I was going to cook these things without possibly killing us all. Even when Momo came over to have a sniff, he retched and stuck out his tongue before leaping away from them and scampering around my body up to my head, hissing.
"Even you won't eat them huh? That's just great. Oh well, here goes nothing." After Katara and Aang had water bended the pollution out of the river water so we had fresh water to cook with, I started with a separate, smaller pot to work my magic. Using the boiling water I soaked the fish so that I could use some healing water on them, pulling the pollutants out of their system bit by bit until finally we had two somewhat normal looking fish.
"Hey you did it! That looks great." Katara said to me before asking me how I did it.
"Just some cooking techniques thrown in with your water bending teaching. Sorry it took so long though, I'll cook these up soon." I promised everybody before starting to gut and debone the fish before cooking them through, boiling the rice we had left along with some vegetables, making a broth to add some flavour with the herbs and spices I'd bought and only adding the fish at the very end so that Aang could have his vegetarian portion whilst Sokka inspected his schedule.
"Our detour into town today has completely thrown off our schedule. It's gonna take some serious finagling to get us back on track." Sokka informed us which made everyone groan inwardly and Toph respond sardonically to finagle away. "Well, for starters, it looks like we'll need to wake up forty three minutes earlier every day."
"Forty three minutes?" This is starting to sound more like a slave drive than a journey.
"Look, we only have a few weeks to get to the Fire Lord in time for the invasion and the eclipse, which, by the way, only lasts for eight minutes, and we just lost a whole day. So if we want to make up the time and stay on schedule, we have to wake up early!"
"Well, I'm not waking up early."
"Yeah, count me out." I agreed from my cooking pot, waving my spoon in the air as I agreed with Toph.
"Or we could just cut out all of our eating breaks." To that one, I laughed as everybody else protested rather firmly.
"Come on Sokka, do you really think you can go for more than a few hours without food? Be real here. You love food and meat just as much as I do."
"I got it, how's this? From now on, we'll take food breaks and potty breaks at the same time." That idea got shot down immediately, because that was just not going to happen. "Hey, it might be gross, but it's efficient. Either way, we have to leave here first thing tomorrow morning." Wonderful, just what I wanted to hear. At least the food was done now.
"Food's ready, everybody come and get it."
"Food!" Quickly changing his tune, Sokka tossed aside his schedule and ran to me as I held out his bowl with a sigh of exasperation. Honestly, it's like looking after a bunch of kids. Ever since I arrived, I seem to have taken over all the cooking, cleaning and sewing. Quite frankly I felt like a mother. It's not that I hated it, I was happy to do it, especially since Katara always offered to help and she'd been doing it all alone since before I arrived.
"Alright, alright, I know we're all hungry but don't wolf your food like that Sokka or you'll start choking." I scolded him as he started inhaling his food like it was his last meal on earth. "Jeez, how did you stand growing up with him Katara? He's like an unmannered slob." She giggled lightly.
"He didn't come with a return policy." This caused a light round of laughter at Sokka's expense who protested at being made fun of for the way he ate, until he started choking and needed rescuing from Toph who slammed her palm against his back to dislodge the food with a powerful swing. "Serves you right." Coughing once his airways were clear, Sokka stuck out his tongue before continuing to eat, though more slowly this time and once we were all done, we cleaned up the camp then settled for the night, planning to leave in the morning. Forty three minutes earlier, in fact.
