More Zuko in this chapter. Soon to be ALL Zuko.

Lucky you

"Elsie?"

Elsie was in a canoe. The water was pushing against it, making it tip back and forth gently.

"Elsie?"

A voice was calling her name. Elsie looked up but the sky was clear – no clouds, no sun, no disembodied voice. Where was the light coming from?

"Elsie?"

Elsie opened her eyes.

Oh yeah. She was on land. In a camp with three other people and one of them was an avatar and the others were water tribespeople. The sun was the light, just peeking over the trees and filling her eyelids.

Katara kneeled next to the girl. Her shaking had been the boat movement.

"Elsie?" Katara peered at the small girl. She was really thin under her clothes. "Are you okay? Did you have a good sleep?"

Elsie nodded. She sat up in her bed roll and rubbed her eyes. Both Sokka and Aang (what a funny name) were cleaning up the camp.

Seeing this, Elsie jumped up and immediately began rolling up her bedclothes.

"What do you need me to do?" she asked Katara. Finally – if they would just give her instructions, she could handle all this. Having a purpose gave her a sort of confidence. Not knowing what to do threw her off more than she could say.

Katara looked around. "Well… umm, nothing, I guess. There's not anything we really need you to do. We're going to eat up in the air – is that all right with you?"

Elsie felt all the fullness that had inflated her chest when Katara had almost given her a job leave like the air from her mouth. She felt little again.

"In the air?" she wanted to ask.

Elsie nodded.

Katara walked away, to go roll up her own things.

"Come on, guys!" she called when she was finished. She walked over to the giant bison on the edge of the camp and smiled at Elsie. "And girl."

Elsie walked over, waiting patiently for Katara to call her up into the saddle.

Katara climbed up and placed her bag at the back of the saddle and sat down. Aang pushed air off the ground and used it to leap into his usual spot behind Appa's neck while Sokka struggled to climb up the bison's side without hurting Appa.

Aang called out, "Everybody ready?" Without waiting for an answer, he began to flap the reins.

"Wait!" Katara called out, touching Aang's shoulder.

Aang looked back.

Sokka raised a brow and looked over the edge where Elsie stood with her bags still in her hands. "Are you coming?" he asked.

Elsie just stared up at him.

"Well?"

Katara rolled her eyes at her brother's rudeness. "Ignore him," she told Elsie. "Hop up; we've got things to do and places to see."

"And crazy, twelve-year-old Avatars to train," muttered Sokka sarcastically.

Elsie climbed up onto the back of Appa. Sokka was sitting nearest the left side where Elsie had been standing, and Katara on the left, but Elsie, for some reason unknown by Sokka and unnoticed by Katara, crawled until she was sitting on the right side of Katara, away from Sokka.

Sokka raised an eyebrow at her, but Elsie didn't seem to notice. She was too busy staring down in her lap while she fiddled with the strap of her bag.

"You can put that down, you know," Katara told her.

Elsie looked up at her like she'd been burned.

"You don't have to hold onto it," Katara continued, gently. "Appa's never dropped any of our stuff off his back."

The girl just looked at Katara like she was going to breathe fire at any moment and attack her.

That's it! Sokka thought to himself. She's scared of her – of us! She's afraid. But of what? It's not like we've done anything bad to her.

Well, we did lose her canoe for her.

Yeah, but we saved her life.

But still. She woke up in a crowd of strangers – that has to be pretty frightening.

So?

Sokka…

Have you ever noticed how much you sound like my sister?

Yes.

Well, okay. Just so you know.

All right then.

All right.

Sokka shook his head. If that wasn't just the stupidest conversation he'd had with anyone (including himself, obviously) there wasn't anything for it.

But this girl… why was she so frightened? Could it really be that people were mean to her when she was in her tribe? That didn't seem likely, given what he knew about the Water Tribes (given he was from the Water Tribes). The Water people took care of their own. They were communities and families and friends. No one he knew would abandon anyone they knew like that.

There was something she wasn't telling them. Something Sokka was determined to find out.

Prince Zuko stood aboard his uncle's ship as he stared across the ocean, his hands clasping the each other's wrist behind his back, his legs straight and his shoulders held back.

There was an Avatar out there, just waiting to be found. His path of flight may have started out erratic (and to some extent it still was) but now it was beginning to straighten out.

And the obvious path was north.

The only reason that Prince Zuko could imagine the Avatar going north for was the Waterbending Tribes up there. The Avatar would have to learn waterbending from somewhere as it had been painfully obvious he only knew airbending. Aside from that, the only other bending skills he would have would come from that girl he traveled with and it was also obvious that her skills were certainly lacking in the discipline and degree that, say, his own skills were at.

Prince Zuko tightened his hands.

The Avatar… was just a boy. A stupid, silly, useless boy! He still remembered his first reaction: You're nothing but a child!

You're nothing but a teenager, he'd replied.

Prince Zuko clenched his teeth. Even so, a teenager with firebending skills, a ship, and the command of many soldiers still should have been able to capture a twelve-year-old boy with only airbending skills.

Something caught Prince Zuko's eye.

In the distance, there was a dark shape. As the larger boat came up to it, Prince Zuko saw that it was a canoe.

A waterbender's canoe, he thought. What was a waterbender doing so far south in a canoe?

The Avatar? he wondered, his mind jumping to the thing that was constantly so close to his conscious' surface. Does the Avatar have a waterbender's canoe? Maybe one of his friends left it here. Maybe… a waterbender came searching for the Avatar. If they did, and they're not in their canoe, then they must have found the Avatar and left it behind. Then they must be nearby.

Prince Zuko smiled smugly to the ocean as his ship ran into the small canoe and ripped it apart with its awesome force.

He turned and left, going to command a change of direction towards the nearest island. It was always in his experience that the Avatar preferred islands at night.

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