She wandered along the beach, her toes sinking a little bit in the sand every time she made a step. Her thoughts still circled around the young girl and her companions. The girl's skin was almost as dark as hers, darker than the usual Earth Kingdom citizen. Where did she come from? And where is she now?
She wondered about herself, why did she care for a human girl that she only saw a short time? The girl was meant to mean nothing to her, according to what happened to her mother, maybe even less, but she could not deny that she wanted to take care of her. She looked so alone, so in need of someone who did care about her, where were her parents when she needed them?
Suddenly she stopped, her mind noticing it a second after her body reacted. There was a movement in the water, soft, not noticeable to most beings. A ship was arriving, two ships. Quickly she hid behind a rock next to the beginning of the woods and spied around it.
She knew what Fire Nation ships looked like, but these were different. They were made of some unknown material to her. It kind of looked like wood, but then again not. And it had big pieces of cloth hanging from what looked like a tree in the middle of the ship. Blue, she thought, blue cloth. This color was so rare in the Earth Kingdom. How refreshing… but where did they come from?
When the ships landed men emerged. Toreth had to force herself to stay quiet, they all looked kind of like the girl she saved, especially one. He stuck out, because the others asked him things much more often than they asked the others. He seemed to be some kind of chief.
She watched them set up a camp site, silent and save behind the rock.
One of the man, the chief came suddenly in her direction. Silent panic overcame her. He can't see me, he can't, she repeated in her head ever and ever again. Her hands reached out to the rock and slowly transformed in roots and branches, as if she was a tree that grew here on this rock for all eternity.
He came until she could feel his breath tickling the foliage that grew from her wood-like form. She expected him half to kill her right away, just because he was a human and she was not. But in the next moment he took out some kind of paper, a map. He threw it over the rock to have a better look at it. A second man came up to him and they discussed a few things. As far as Toreth could tell they wanted to advance to some kind of bay to defend it from Fire Nation ships. Foes of the Fire Nation, good… Not that they would not kill her in the Earth Kingdom too, if they caught her that is, but a foe to the Fire Nation more meant at least the war was not so easy to win for them, and what was good for the world was good for all beings on it.
The other man, she silently called him Co-Chief, made a few suggestions about how the should exactly sail and then went away. Chief folded the map again, while doing so he touched her transformed fingers and she shivered. Somehow he must have felt that, because he stared at her intently for what seemed like an eternity to her. She somehow could not control herself anymore and opened her eyes that bore into his.