As night fell, Longshot woke up, a little confused and wincing in pain again, but alert and well. He looked at her.

"Just a few hours," she said, answering the question in his eyes. Her voice was extra raspy and she could still feel the sting of the smoke at the back of her throat. "I haven't heard anything from the village." Longshot nodded and sat up, running one hand over his bandages. He leaned in for a quick kiss, thanking her. Then he stood.

We should check it out.

Smellerbee nodded and stood, too. She needed to know as badly as he did what had become of the villagers. So they set off through the trees, moving through pale moonlight that made Longshot's pallor glow beneath his hat and glinted off the dagger in Smellerbee's belt.

It didn't take them long to catch the smell left behind by the explosions, a mixture of firewood and the strangely acrid blasting jelly. What caught their attention most was not the smell, however, but the noise. Not wailing, not soldiers shouting, not cries of anguish, but music.

Longshot and Smellerbee looked at each other in confusion, drumbeats and flutes floating to them across the surrounding stillness. Above the music came a chorus of human voices laughing and singing. It was such an alien sound.

They approached cautiously, darting from tree to tree, inching closer to the village. Longshot tugged on Smellerbee's sleeve and pointed. She looked up and saw exactly what he meant. Not the presence of anything, but the absence. The soldiers' tents were gone. And not only that, the trees and the ground were burned black and there were was little left but rubble to mark the place the soldiers' camp once stood.

A smile, the first she'd had in a long while, crept across her face and she could see her joy reflected in Longshot's eyes. They emerged from the woods and pressed themselves against the brick wall. Now that they were closer, they could catch snatches of conversation.

"We're free! We're free!"

"Come dance with me!"

"There is no curfew anymore, stay!"

The music swelled. Smellerbee peeked around the edge of the wall and saw there was a great bonfire. People sat around it, laughing and talking and sharing food they toasted on long sticks. Off to the side, a band played music and people danced in the firelight.

Smellerbee slid down the wall, plopping down on the grass with a great sigh. "We did it," she said. "They survived… and they got them out, somehow."

Longshot sat beside her and for a few minutes, they simply sat and listened. Then she heard cups banging on benches and cheers as the band finished, and one voice called above the rest.

"My people!" the voice of an older woman echoed through the night, and the crowd quieted. "My people, today we were given a gift. While the soldiers celebrated their victory over us –" there were good-natured boos and hisses throughout the crowd. "– we were able to finally strike back against our oppressors. We turned their own tools against them and blew them away!" Cheers greeted the statement, and Smellerbee let out a laugh of relief, resting her head on Longshot's shoulder.

"We did it," she whispered. "They're okay."

Longshot kissed the top of her head and took his hand in hers.

Smellerbee looked at Longshot, "Should we go in?"

He cocked his head to the side. Go in?

"Yeah," she said. She was thinking of what it might be like to stand in front of an adoring crowd. Not hiding in the forest or lost among a sea of refugees in a crowded city. No longer lonely outcasts, but beloved members of a community. Saviors, even.

But Longshot looked nervous and shook his head. He glanced over her shoulder to the party happening in the distance and squeezed her hand.

"Okay," she said, and she stood, helping pull Longshot to his feet. She felt a slight sting of disappointment, but Longshot mattered more than praise. "Let's go home." And they vanished into the trees, leaving the village to their celebration.

Over the next few weeks, Longshot and Smellerbee watched from a distance as the village rebuilt itself. Items were salvaged from the old camp and from the burnt-out buildings. Scraps of wood were used to start rebuilding the broken walls. Local children had taken to grabbing the leftover charcoal and marking any surface they could find with drawings and writings. There was a freedom and a joy in it, watching the children run around with soot-blackened hands, laughing and chasing each other and leaving their marks anywhere there was space. The dam was becoming something of a community art project, with murals being painted at night by some of the adolescents. It made Smellerbee smile to see how they took back their village.

Of course, there was always the fear that the soldiers would return. After all, they couldn't let this village stand as a beacon of hope, could they? But it seemed the Fire Nation decided this village that had been flooded once and nearly burnt to the ground a second time was too much trouble to be worth recapturing.

All the same, Longshot seemed to think it best that they stay away from the village. When they needed supplies now, they ventured farther out, even into Fire Nation-occupied territory. They heard surrounding villages whispering about the brave village that had driven out their occupiers. Some said the village had struck back, bravely risking their own lives. Others said the spirits of the nearby forest had swooped in to help. Others still whispered of the long-dormant gang of wildling children in the woods that seemed to be back again.

Such whispers always ceased when soldiers drew near.