"But I think it's better not to grieve for a fiction of how things used to be,

'cause I got a feeling it won't ever come around." Come To Pass, Mutual Benefit

Xx

Their disappointment with the happenings in Omashu spur them on to their next destination. Bumi had told Aang that he needed an earthbending teacher that "listens and waits," but that does absolutely nothing to actually point them in the right direction. They decide that Ba Sing Se is their best bet to find someone who is willing to help them; the city is huge, with a ginormous wall surrounding it to keep it safe, so at least they know that the Fire Nation hasn't made its way there yet. They soar through a bright blue sky on Appa's back, currently passing above a large forest. Katara is lying on her back with her hands under her head, staring up at the clouds and trying not to overthink, when she feels Appa tilt downwards.

"Aang, where are we going?" When Aang doesn't respond to Sokka's question, Katara sits up, concern painted on her face. "Aang? Aang!"

"Huh? What?" Aang visibly shakes himself. "Sorry guys, I just kind of... spaced out, I guess."

"That's fine and all, but why are you taking us down?"

Aang looks out over Appa, seemingly noticing for the first time that they are indeed heading downwards. "Oh, I didn't really notice." He says this, but doesn't move to correct their course.

"Okay, well, you're noticing now, right?" Sokka continues to question Aang, the boy's strange responses prompting Katara to become increasingly worried for her friend.

"Aang? Are you okay?"

"You guys are gonna think I'm crazy for saying this..." he looks back at them, a serious look on his face. "But I think the swamp is calling to me."

"The swamp." The disbelief in Sokka's voice matches the disbelief Katara feels. "Is calling you,. It's not a question.

"I think it wants us to land down there." The three of them peer over the side of Appa, not seeing anywhere to land in the thick growth beneath them. "Bumi said that I needed to wait and listen to learn earthbending, and now I'm literally hearing the earth. Do you think I should just ignore it?"

"Yes."

"Well—" Katara shoots her brother a look over her shoulder. "I don't know Aang. That place is giving me really weird vibes."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Aang pulls up on Appa's reigns, heading in the right direction once again. "Sorry, swamp. Maybe next time. Yip yip, Appa!" As soon as Appa is steady and continuing the right way, Katara hears a loud noise, and looks behind her.

"Oh, shit!" A massive tornado is spinning ferociously, moving straight towards them. "Aang, we gotta go, like, yesterday!"

Aang does his best to help steer Appa out of the tornado's course, but it almost seems to be following them, and ultimately they get swept up into the vortex. Aang tries to hold an air bubble around them, but he can't hold it for long, and they are thrown from Appa's saddle and heaved into the forest.

Katara lands with a bone shaking "thud," and the wind is knocked out of her due to the impact. She catches her breath, sitting up to find that the forest is actually more of a swamp. Lush vegetation surrounds them, housing a multitude of animal sounds and whirring bugs, the sticky mud Katara landed in encompassing all of the ground that she can currently see. Sokka groans as he sits up a few feet away from her, and Aang is already on his feet.

"Where are Appa and Momo?" He looks around frantically. "Appa! Momo!" He bounds up higher into the trees to get a better vantage point.

"Sokka, you've got an elbow leech on you." Sokka makes a strange noise as he hops up, spinning around himself a few times.

"Damn it, where!?"

Katara raises an eyebrow. "I'll give you three guesses." Her brother gives her an unappreciative look as he pulls the leech off of his arm and tosses it somewhere into the trees. Aang proceeds to leap down from the trees looking crestfallen. "Did you see them?"

"No." His voice is low with disappointment. "And the tornado totally disappeared. It's like it was never even there."

"My sore back is enough evidence to prove its existence." Sokka bends over, an audible crack coming from his spine. "I'm too old for this shit."

"Sokka, you're only twenty." Katara is on her feet attempting to get the swamp gunk out of her hair, and not having much luck.

"Yeah, like I said: too old." He looks around, surveying the area they've landed in. "Alright, we better start looking for Appa." He takes out his machete and starts unceremoniously hacking away at the vines and brush in front of them, having picked a direction seemingly at random.

"Um..." Aang puts his finger up in the air. "Maybe you should be a little nicer to the swamp."

"Aang, it's just a bunch of mud and trees." He continues slashing, grunting as he has to put more force into breaking a particularly thick branch.

"Sokka, maybe you should listen to Aang and be a little less violent." A curious feeling is rippling through Katara, and it's most definitely not a good one. "This place is making me feel really weird, almost like it's alive."

"Uhg, you too, Katara?" Sokka continues whacking the various flora in front of him. "Look, we need to find Appa before we get eaten by something that really is alive, so if you guys have any better ideas, you go ahead and let me know."

They traipse through the swamp for hours, getting sweaty and bitten by all different kinds of bugs. When the sun begins to set, the air gets no less hot and humid, to all of their dismay, and a thickening fog slides in all around them. Katara's voice is hoarse from calling to Appa and Momo all day, a weariness burrowing into her bones fueled by the encroaching darkness.

"Alright, this isn't working!" Sokka puts his machete away, his arms slightly shaking with the effort after exerting his muscles for most of the day. "We won't be able to find them in the dark. Let's camp for the night and start fresh again tomorrow." He proceeds to build a fire, and it soon becomes their only source of light. The sounds of animals and bugs around them appear to grow louder in the darkness. It's incredibly uncomfortable; Katara feels a shiver slither down her spine as her bad feeling from before returns with a vengeance.

"Does anyone else feel like we're being watched?" She is huddled close to Aang and Sokka, thankfully positioned in between them.

"Nope." Sokka swats at a fly buzzing around his head. "We're completely alone out here Katara, trust me." As he says this, the bug he is swiping at lights up, and a dozen sets of eyes glow from various points in the surrounding swamp. The trio huddle even closer together, Sokka and Aang surrounding Katara with their arms. "Yeah, totally alone. Except for all those unidentified creatures staring at us."

Despite the terrifying conditions, the three of them manage to fall asleep, staying closely huddled together more out of fear than anything else. They sleep for a measly few hours before they are rudely and suddenly awakened by vines tangled around all of their bodies, violently yanking them all away from each other in three different directions. The vines encircle Katara entirely, and they are not gentle when they drag her through the swamp. She is bumped and scratched every moment, desperately hoping that none of the greenery that she touches is poisonous. Finally she is able to free her arm, and slashes through the vines with a well placed water whip. The vines keep coming at her, and she cuts down a few more before sprinting deeper into the swamp as a thick mist crawls in to surround her on all sides.

She runs until her chest is heaving, the humid air making it difficult to breath as she pushes herself until she physically cannot continue. Her legs shake as she braces her hands on them, bent over and trying to catch her breath. She looks up and takes stock of her surroundings; it offers no comfort when she realizes that it all looks exactly the same as the rest of the swamp. She begins walking— she doesn't really have any other options, at this point. Listening intently to the swamp around her to try and anticipate another attack, she comes upon an area that is a little less dense, the ground covered in snaking tree roots that protrude from the ground in waves and whorls, so thick in some places that it almost looks like netting. As she walks, little white flowers poking up from between the roots grow more frequent, as do tiny little mushrooms hiding on the parts of the roots adjacent to the damp ground. Her steps slow to a stop; for what reason, she isn't sure. That strange, unidentifiable feeling in her chest that she had earlier has returned. She looks around slowly, scanning for movement or signs of another attack, when she sees a woman dressed in blue with her back turned towards her.

"Hello?" She speaks quietly, afraid that whatever was following her would sneak up on her again if she spoke too loud. "Can you help me find my way out of here?" The woman doesn't move and inch, so Katara starts moving very slowly towards her. A small amount of light from the moon is shining down through the clearing, and as Katara gets closer to the woman in blue, she recognizes her hair as a very familiar brown, the style and length reminding her…

"Mom?" Her voice breaks; there's no way in hell that this can be happening right now. "Mom, is that you?" As much as the logical part of her brain knows that this woman can't possibly be her mother, her heart is beating like a snow rat's, erratic and fast. I saw my mother die. There's no way that this is her. The woman still doesn't move. Katara's steps get faster and bring her even closer to the woman, who looks exactly like her mother, at least from the back. "Mom!" Katara is all out running now, tears already trailing down her cheeks. She approaches the woman, lays a hand on her shoulder to turn her around—

It's a log.

The woman has turned into a log right before her eyes. Where her mother (she was so sure it had been her) once stood is now the dead husk of a tree, bugs crawling in and out of the rotten bark in a mockery of veins. More tears spring to Katara's eyes; she takes a few staggering steps backwards and collapses to her knees, unable to hold back her sobs any longer. Her mother died ten years ago, but the pain will never truly fade. What was once an open, festering wound of grief is now a dull, constant ache, like a bone that didn't heal quite right and twinges when the rain comes. It's a wound that will never fully heal; she learned that years ago. Death was a wound you just had to heal around, to learn to live with. But the hyperrealistic vision of her mother has dredged up all those feelings as if she had just seen her death moments ago. The only time she had seen her mother in ten years was in her dreams, and seeing her right in front of her, even if it was just a hallucination, felt like a punch in the gut. She sobbed until her eyes wouldn't produce anymore tears and her stomach aches from the force of her sobs. She stays on the ground for some time and gulps down harsh breaths in an attempt to regain her composure.

Finally, after what feels like hours— and may very well have been for all she knows— she is able to get to her feet. She looks around the clearing again, and a flash of red catches her eye. Cautiously she moves around the space, eyes and ears open. Concentrating on the spot where she had seen the streak of misplaced color, she moves as silently as she can towards it.

When she gets closer from a different angle, the red reappears, and reveals itself to be a piece of fine cloth. The fabric is wrapped around a beautiful woman in a regal looking dress. The woman has the top half of her sleek, shiny hair tied up in a prim topknot, while the rest spills over her shoulders. It is a deep brown, so dark that it almost looks black, an incredible contrast to her porcelain skin. She is clearly from the fire nation; red robes, pale skin, almost black hair, and Katara recognises it as another apparition. But this is someone she doesn't know, although she does seem familiar. Something about the structure of her face niggles at Katara's mind, but the woman soon turns towards her and starts walking slowly in her direction, breaking her concentration . Katara's mind screams at her to move, but something makes her stand her ground, her feet not shifting an inch as the woman comes closer. She looks straight at Katara, her eyes a warm amber, and reaches out her hand as if to touch her face.

"Promise me..." her voice is soft, her hand hovering only a hair's breadth away from Katara's left cheek. "Promise me that you'll never forget who you are."

"I promise." Katara doesn't know why she says it, but she feels deep down like she is saying it in tandem with someone else, even though it is only her voice that passes through her lips. The woman's eyes fill with tears, Katara's own spilling over onto her cheek, before she turns and walks away, fading away into nothingness just at the edge of the tree line.

Katara stands stock still, confused and scared, realizing that she is also feeling incredibly lonely and hopeless, wishing with everything inside of her that the woman in red would return. The feeling slowly fades, leaving her with a heavy confusion and residual pain from seeing her mother again. She racks her mind, trying to remember if she has ever seen the woman in red, but she comes up with nothing. When would she have ever even seen a noble looking woman from the Fire Nation? The number of Fire Nation people she has seen up close can be counted on one hand, and the woman was not included in that number. She sighs, figuring that her only real option to try to reunite with her brother and Aang is to keep walking.

"Damn swamp." Mud squelches beneath her feet as she trudges through the dark, having picked a direction at random, praying to any spirit that will hear her that it would lead her to her brother and friend.

Xx

Hours pass, the sun having risen at some point as Katara walks, until eventually she decides to stop for a moment at the top of a small hill. She tilts her head back, lifting her face to the light dappling through the treetops, and takes a long, deep breath. She has just managed to clear her mind when she is slammed into from the side, and tumbles down the small hill tangled with someone else's limbs. They stop only when they have hit something— or more accurately, someone. The "oof" that comes out of the person sounds like Sokka, and she realizes that the person who slammed into her in the first place is Aang. They lay in a heap on the muddy ground, breathing heavily.

"Where have you guys been?" Sokka gets to his feet first, sticking out his hands to help the other two up. "I've been looking everywhere for you!"

"I've been looking for you guys too!" Katara's voice is embarrassingly close to a sob, and Aang pulls them both in for a sweaty, dirty hug.

"I was actually chasing a girl." He at least has the sense to look sheepish when Katara and Sokka look at him with their brows raised.

"Really, Aang? A girl?" Sokka sounds unimpressed, as if he wouldn't ever be the one to chase after a girl, and Katara rolls her eyes. "What girl?"

"I don't know her." Aang scratches the back of his head. "I heard her laughing, and just… felt like I should follow her." He looks around, noticing the large tree next to them. "I think we're at the center of the swamp. I knew it was calling me here..." He lays his hand against the tree, but the moment he touches it, a large monster that looks to be made out of seaweed and vines emerges from the swamp floor and reaches forward to attack them. They all scream, running in separate directions, and the swamp monster attacks, shooting vines out of its arms towards them. As the trio try to fight it off, Aang manages to slice off an arm with his airbending, but it quickly grows back, looking good as new. It manages to grab Sokka, and seems to be trying to absorb him into its body before Aang and Katara can get him free. When they do manage to extricate him, Katara retaliates by using her waterbending to send paper thin discs towards the monster in rapid succession, slicing at it's body too quick for it to regenerate.

"There's someone in there!" Sokka yells, and Katara sees human legs inside of the monster when the seaweed breaks apart due to her waterbending. "He's bending the water in the vines!" Katara continues to attack, but the vines keep growing back to fill the holes she makes with her water discs.

"Stop!" Aang calls, still attacking the monster with his airbending. "Why did you call me here if you're just going to kill me?"

"Wait!" An unfamiliar voice comes from inside the swamp monster, and they all stop moving. The seaweed and vines slither away, leaving a short, portly man clad in only a loincloth standing before them. "I didn't call you here."

"Well, if you didn't," Aang addresses the man inside the monster, and they relax from their fighting stances. "Then who did?" They all look at the man skeptically. "We were flying over the swamp when I heard someone calling to me, telling me to land."

"He's the Avatar." Sokka joins the conversation, motioning to Aang with his machete. "Stuff like that happens sometimes."

"The Avatar, you say?" The man rubs his grungy looking beard. "Come with me." He begins to lead them up to the giant tree, bending vines out of the way as needed.

"So, who are you?" Katara's curiosity breaks the awkward silence.

"Oh, me? I'm Huu!" The man turns around and smiles. "I protect the swamp from those who want to hurt it. Like this fella with his big knife," he points at Sokka, who rolls his eyes.

"So, there's nothing mystical about this swamp after all?" Aang sounds almost disappointed as he says it, but Huu shakes his head.

"Oh, the swamp is definitely mystical. It's sacred; I reached enlightenment right here under the banyan-grove tree." He sits down at the base of the enormous tree they had seen earlier. "I heard it calling to me, just like you did." He smiles at Aang.

"Okay buddy..." Katara thinks that if Sokka keeps rolling his eyes, they're going to get stuck in the back of his head. "I'm sure the giant mystical tree is very talkative." Huu ignores Sokka's skepticism and continues talking.

"You see, this whole swamp is actually one big tree. This tree." He affectionately pats a large root of the banyan-grove tree that sits above the surface next to him. "Everything in this swamp is connected, just like the whole world."

"Wait," Aang holds his hand up, stopping Huu's explanation. "I get how the swamp is all one tree, but how is the world all connected?"

"You really think you're so different from me? Or your friends? Or even this big tree? If you listen, you can hear everything growing and living and breathing together. We're all a part of the same tree, even if most folks don't realize it." He looks out over the swamp, his eyes shimmering with love. "Even folks who are gone from this world are still connected to us. The swamp shows us visions of people we love, and those we've lost."

"I saw mom." The words spill from her mouth before she can stop them, heavy like molasses. She doesn't mention the Fire Nation woman.

"I thought I saw Yue." She turns to her brother, his voice dark and his face sullen.

"But I don't know the girl I saw." Aang's tone is full of confusion, and Huu sends another comforting smile his way.

"Time is an illusion; the past, the present, the future, they all blend together in the swamp."

"So..." Aang thinks for a moment. "It's someone I'll meet in the future?" Huu nods encouragingly, Aang's face breaking out into a smile.

"We still need to find Appa and Momo," Sokka interjects, and he makes a good point.

"I think I know how to find them." Aang stands up and touches his ear to the trunk of the banyan-grove tree. His eyes close, and Katara can see them moving behind his eyelids. "Come on!" He straightens suddenly, a look of alarm on his face. "We've gotta hurry!"

They found Appa and Momo in the hands of some people that they've affectionately started calling "swamp-benders." When Katara had realized that they were waterbenders (one had exclaimed "that makes us kin!" which had disgusted her), they had given up Appa and Momo and taken them back to their tribe for a meal, which ended up being giant bugs (Katara had stuck to vegetables). They traded stories, the swamp benders having never known that there were other waterbenders in the North and South Pole. Katara thinks about the Fire Nation woman; she had almost looked like Zuko, but she isn't sure if she's just thinking that because Zuko is the only young person she's ever seen from the fire nation. She thinks about when they parted at the North Pole, how injured he had been, and wonders where he and his uncle are now. She prays to Yue that they are safe.