Chapter Ten
Ocean watched Yue leave with a mixture of relief and regret. It had stirred feelings and memories in him to have her there in his house. The feel of her touch still burned his fingertips.
How long had he held back from going to her? How long had he patiently waited for her to come to him? How many times had he watched her from a distance, letting her grow, answering her questions, allowing her room to find her place?
And now she had finally come to him and he'd been too afraid to do anything about it. It had been fear, pure and simple, he decided as he stood there in the huge empty hall. He was afraid to care about her.
He was afraid to let her care about him as well. She'd reached out to touch him twice now. And both times he'd held her away from him, keeping her at a distance when all he wanted was to have her close.
At least she'd ended this bender's strange powers, he thought to himself, relieved to have sensed that the non-melting ice construction that had grated against his spirit so was gone at last, returned to its natural state. However, it still gnawed at him that she'd granted so much of herself to this human in the first place.
Yue was not Tui, he knew that. But he was still afraid of what might happen if he let himself think about her, if he let himself care about her.
He did not want to be just one of many ever again. He would rather be alone than wonder who his lover was really thinking about as she lay beside him. It was far better to be alone than to be in that agony of uncertainty. He tried to convince himself that the best path was politeness and a cool friendship. She could go her way and he could go his.
It was far better to be alone.
But the feel of her still tingled in his fingertips and the room was so very dark without her.
Yue fled the red coral palace, but instead of going to her tower of ivory, she ran to the moon. It was a place of serenity, peace, and beauty. There far above the earth's surface, she saw everything and nothing, too far away to see the details. From there, all was beautiful, from the dusty reds of the desert to the rich green of the jungles to the rich brown of the mountains to . . . the deep blue of the sea.
As she watched the ocean, she could see the rough waves of the southern seas, rolling with the same fury she'd seen so many times from the ramparts of the Northern Water Tribe city in her youth. She shivered a little at the memory of the awesome power and the fear those waves had engendered in her as a little girl when the fury of a winter storm threatened the walls of the city itself with gigantic waves of icy grey.
And in the tropics, she could see a monstrous circular storm that surged off the coast of the Fire Nation and out into the great stretches of the western waters of the planet. It was nearly half the size of the Earth Kingdom itself and she could only imagine the devastation if such a storm were to come ashore. But it had turned away from the populated coasts and now headed out into the unbroken vastness of the western ocean.
Balance, he had said. Somehow, Ocean had to find balance for these things. How had she not ever noticed how much activity took place in the seas of the planet? Was the Moon that removed from everything?
To her the Moon was endlessly fascinating, but to someone as knowledgeable as Ocean, the Moon had to be pretty boring, she decided. Add to that the fact that she wasn't really a spirit—not like the others. She was just a Water Tribe girl in the wrong place. She didn't belong there. She didn't have the knowledge or the ability to truly be a spirit and in charge of balancing anything.
She remembered the exhaustion in his face. Ocean was such a mystery to her. His world—the spirit world—was still such a mystery as well. And when she'd reached out to him, he'd held her away.
She knew then that Ocean was not interested in her. After all she had so little to offer to him. He'd held her at a distance from him, unwilling to meet her touch. But the warmth of his hand still clung to her fingers.
How had he gotten the white that streaked through his dark hair? Had Tui marked him for her own in the same way she'd marked Sokka? Surely Ocean still grieved for her loss. He might even hate Yue for taking her place. He might even despise her for not being a fit replacement.
Yue watched the waters roll beneath her and felt the tides pulling on the great expanses of ocean. But knowing she could move the ocean's waters on the earthly plane only made her feel worse. Ocean was not interested in her.
The huge storm continued to spiral off the coast of the Earth Kingdom, its cloud structure pulling in moisture from nearly half a planet away. It was monstrous. And somehow it was Ocean's job to keep that kind of incredible power in balance with the rest of the world's weather.
Once more, she felt completely useless on the quiet, unmoving, dead moon. Sudden loneliness struck her and she for an instant considered going back to the beautiful palace of red coral that Ocean called home. But then she considered the fact that Ocean probably did not want her there.
But she did not want to be alone any more. She spent so much of her time alone, it seemed.
And though she'd told Ocean she had ended her interest in Sokka, she found herself looking for him and knew just how to find him.
As the moon floated overhead, she could bring her focus into him as she'd done many times before, looking in on him, she'd told herself. Just watching over him.
She watched him walk back from the beach with his wife and children and learned from their conversation that his lovely ice castle had been wrecked by the tide.
His wife was obviously relieved, but Yue was saddened. She wondered just how much of that had been deliberately done by an angry Ocean.
Then as she watched Sokka and his wife head home, play with the children, make dinner together, converse with friends, then finally go to bed together, she grew even sadder.
She was so alone. Ocean didn't want her. She didn't fit into the spirit world. Sokka had moved on with his life without her. Now his wife lay at his side, secure in his embrace while she could only watch—all alone.
But now that Sokka was sleeping, she didn't have to remain alone.
Sokka dreamed of fishing. The boat was finished and he and the Duke had headed out once more into their best grounds. In his dream, he stood on the deck in the darkness with only the Moon overhead to light his work.
Then she was there with him. Lovely as usual, glowing with moonlight. But instead of being simply transcendently beautiful, she was also transcendently sad. As she looked up into his eyes, he was disturbed to see a tear roll down her cheek, leaving a silver trail on her skin.
He wiped it away and she leaned her face into his hand.
"What's wrong, Yue?" he asked her tenderly.
As if the sound of his voice had opened a door in her heart, she found herself weeping against his chest. His arms went around her, his embrace strong and warm. She cried for a little while longer, then simply rested against him as he stroked her hair quietly.
"Are you okay?" he asked after a while.
She looked up at him and nodded. Then she reached up to run her fingers through that white streak she'd left him with. That streak of moonlight in his hair that marked him as hers.
Without thinking, she then stroked his cheek and ran her fingertips across his mouth. He caught her hand then, but instead of holding it away, he pressed a kiss into the palm.
A little shiver went through her and she stepped closer to him. When he didn't move, she reached up to pull him to her.
All the loneliness fell away from her with the touch of his lips on hers. All the years of watching the earth roll by as her own life stood still. All the longing and loss she'd felt at losing her old life with its promises of love and happiness. All the emotion she'd felt at saving Sokka's life when he needed her most. All these feelings came together into a cresting wave of need and passion as she kissed him.
For Sokka, her touch flowed into him and through him like water. Waterbending was about the pleasure of helping others, the lesson scroll said. But in Sokka's mind at that moment, waterbending pretty much just equated to pleasure. Just pure pleasure on every level.
He pulled away from her for a moment to try to catch his breath. He caught the scent of her hair again. "Can you smell in a dream?" he asked absently.
"Yes," she whispered, "you can." Then she pulled him to her again.
And as she kissed him, it felt like all the abilities he'd received from her were kicked into pleasure overdrive. The surge of power threatened to overwhelm him, both with its strength and with the instant response from deep inside him. He grew breathless again and clutched at her, not so much with passion of his own as with overload.
It was too much. He could not contain the overflow of her spirit into him and felt himself falling into a kind of sweet oblivion.
As he sank out of his dreams and into unconsciousness, Yue realized what she'd done. She'd lost control of herself and poured even more of her spirit into Sokka.
Ocean was already angry that she'd made Sokka a bender. How much more angry would he be now that she'd made him even more powerful?
Who knew what kind of bending powers Sokka would have when he awakened-if he awakened. She looked down at his still form in the natural world, to all appearances a man deeply asleep. Only she knew just how deep this 'sleep' ran.
Terrified, she ran to the one person who could help her find her way out the mess she was in.
"Lian Shen, you have to help me!" she cried as she entered Lian Shen's leafy green abode. Huge flowers of all colors hung everywhere, their perfume making the air sweet and heavy. Lian Shen lay on a soft hillock of grass and fragrant vines with a young man who appeared to be sleeping.
"Shhhh," Lian Shen directed her. "You'll wake him."
"Who is this?" Yue asked. "What is he doing here?"
Lian Shen ran a slim green finger down the young man's bare torso. "Just a wanderer in the swamps, I believe," she said in a languid voice. "But isn't he a delight?"
"So you kidnapped a strange man and brought him here? Why?" Yue was shocked.
"Oh, Yue," she sighed. "You would not believe how boring the swamp can get. A girl needs a little diversion." The young man stirred and opened his eyes a bit sleepily.
Lian Shen stroked his face with her fingertips and whispered to him, "You better head back, darling. Don't want you to be here too long. It's not good for you. But give us a kiss before you go."
Then she planted a long, leisurely kiss on the young man's lips, complete with a good bit of physical contact, before the young man faded away back into the natural world, a look of mystification on his face.
"Lian Shen, that isn't right," Yue declared firmly. "That young man never asked to be here. And what about Mountain?"
"What Mountain doesn't know doesn't hurt him," Lian Shen declared firmly. "Now what brings you here in such a twist?"
Quickly Yue confided in her friend just what she'd done to Sokka.
But instead of being horrified, Lian Shen just laughed. "Good for Ocean," she cried out as she clapped her hands in delight. "Just what he needs, a real rival at last!"
"What do you mean?" Yue asked in confusion.
"Ocean whined about Tui's lovers for centuries but they were never more than momentary diversions to her," Lian Shen replied, her eyes gleaming. "However, you, my dear, have really made your lover an actual threat to him! Tui had plenty of fun in her time, but she never once created anything like the mess you've made, Yue!"
As Lian Shen continued to laugh in some kind of malicious delight, Yue's spirits sank even further. So Tui had been like Lian Shen. Pulling lovers into her domain on a whim and casting them back into the natural world as it pleased her—as mystified as the young man she'd just seen lying half naked on Lian Shen's bed of flowers, but unharmed and unchanged.
Had she done the same thing? Sokka wasn't her lover.
Was he? Did he truly want to be with her? Or was he just caught in a dream? Her dream?
Yue considered what she'd done and put her face in her hands in misery.
"Oh, pull yourself together," Lian Shen instructed. "It's not the end of the world. Ocean will be angry, certainly, but he'll get over it. He's too besotted with you to be angry for long."
Yue looked up at that.
"Just bat those innocent blue eyes at him and insist that you didn't know your own power," Lian Shen continued. Then she gave Yue a long look and stated decisively, "Which is the truth. You had no idea what you were doing, did you?"
Yue shook her head. "But what about Sokka? I need to fix this."
"There's likely not a lot of fixing you can do," Lian Shen replied. "Your young man will either learn to deal with his abilities or he won't."
"Meantime, you just concentrate on keeping Ocean happy. Go make him happy if you have to. It's like with me and Mountain," Lian Shen continued. "The swamp and the mountain have to be in balance with one another. So I throw the old fellow a bone upon occasion and it keeps him happy. You go do the same with Ocean and all will be well."
As Yue listened, she grew cold inside. Lian Shen's idea of balance struck her as very wrong. "But Ocean isn't interested in me," she began.
"Nonsense. Ocean is a fool for you. Look at how he's changed," Lian Shen answered dismissively, picking a flower from the bank of blossoms beside her and carefully placing it in her hair. "He's followed every move you've made for years now, just waiting for you to be ready to take your place at his side."
Then she turned back to Yue with another self-satisfied smile. "And I cannot tell you how it does my heart good to see him made into a fool. Once again a love-struck fool. First for Tui and now for you," she laughed out loud.
A fool. Yue had made Ocean a fool in Lian Shen's eyes. The thought mortified her. How could she have done such a thing?
Hastily she made her goodbyes and went back to Kyoshi Island where Sokka lay still and quiet in his bed. Outside a soft rain had begun to fall, but oddly enough, none of it fell on the little house where he lay in an unconscious state closer to death than sleep.