You've seen an uncommon number of updates in the last few days, it's true. And it will be slowing down in the near future as school has started. Only two quarters left until I have my BA!

But the truth is I had a lot of this written before I started posting on and I've written more since posting in addition to rewriting and prepping stuff, so I was thinking, hey if I've got the chapters mostly done and laying around, why NOT post them? The whole artificial waiting period to build suspence thing never really worked for me.

Act 2

The Fisherman

Scene 9

A monotony of routine developed on Cerlo's tiny ship now that both passengers were awake and on their way toward being healthy again. For the most part Cerlo--as they were both now in the habit of calling him--ignored his guests entirely, going on about his business as if they weren't even there. Every day his craft carried them further toward his uknown goal and farther from the feeling of security. The longer the twoyoungbenders went without knowing their destination, the greater their curiosity and anxiety grew, although both tried to hide it.

Always hovering in the background was the possibility of forcing Cerlo to give them information. However, the chances of keeping a man like him incapacitated on his own boat with anything short of serious injury or murder were low, and neither Zuko or Katara had the stomach to brutally attack a person who'd pulled them from the brink of death. So they slipped into a pattern of waiting, each sure in the knowledge that wherever they did end up, they were capable of defending themselves if necessary. Beyond that, they could,and would,do nothing.

Katara passed her days in a pool of books and waterbending. She read anything she could for the simple novelty of having them readily available, and when she wasn't reading she was practicing her bending. She was limited by the small size of the boat, but it allowed her to focus on strengthening her basics and improving her concentration.

Prince Zuko also spent his time training and reading. It took two days of boredom before his resolve cracked and he picked up a book, but once he did so he found reading to be much like he remembered: engrossing, but ultimately pointless. It might remind him of his upringing, but it wouldn't catch him the Avatar and it wouldn't get him off Cerlo's boat.

Training, he found, was a better way to pass his hours. His typical firebending exercises were impossible if he wanted them to stay afloat very long, so he instead practiced his hand-to-hand. Zuko put himself through every kata he could remember for knife-fighting, sword-fighting, weaponless combat. He even practiced firebending techniques without igniting flames. After the first week of exercise and heavy meditating he could feel the positive effects: all the weakness from hunger and illness began to drain away, and he was sure that before long he'd be back to his normal strength.

It was an afternoon halfway into the second week after Zuko woke that Katara approached him about bending.