Find Me | Zuko x reader | Avatar the Last Airbender | Book 1

Chapter 47: Still

          "That's the worst horror story I have ever heard, did you make that up on the spot?" F/N asked, poking a stick at the fire to make the flames higher. Sokka slumped over, nodding, the group obviously not spooked in the slightest by his haunted sword story.

          They had set up a very small and simple camp. Sokka was tired of working hard on them, only for them to be blown up by "Sparky Sparky Boom Man". No one was exactly tired, and no one felt like setting up the tents, so they stayed up, attempting to scare eachother with the best ghost stories they knew.

          "Cactus juice for a brief moment, Y/N, you remember Nini, right?" Katara asked, and Y/N nodded, leaning in towards the fire, the flames dancing in her eyes. 

          "Oh, of course." She said darkly, trying to get everyone back in the mood after Sokka had absolutely shattered it. 

          "What? Who was Nini?" Toph asked. Y/N stopped tending to the fire, letting it get a little darker. 

          "Katara is better at telling the story, but I guess it's my turn anyways." She leaned on her knees, taking a deep breath. "Nini was only 9 or 10 when she died. Or when we assumed she died, rather. She was a friend of our mother's, and was traveling with a group when a terrible blizzard hit."

          "Hold on, assumed she died?" Aang asked out of nowhere.

         "Shush, let her finish, and that question was so delayed. Also, why have I never heard this one?" Sokka asked, leaning in with the others.

          "She had been holding our mother's hand in the storm," Y/N continued, ignoring the boys. "But she was there one moment, the next, her hand was gone. Our mother called, searched, but there was no response. Nini was gone. In seconds."

          The fire was dying quickly, and Y/N knew she had to start it back up soon, but she decided to finish giving the quick version of the story.

          "They searched for days, but never found her, or the body. Nini had lived with her mother, the two alone in a house together, but only a couple days after the disappearance, her mother vanished too, the only strange thing left behind being something in the fireplace. There was a sculpture there, a perfect ice mold of what a fire in the hearth would look like, almost like the fire itself had been frozen solid."

          "Okay? So a mother and child disappear?" Toph asked.

          "I mean, other than the ice in the fireplace, that's it." Y/N added more wood, stoking up the fire again. The flames illuminated everyone's faces. "We just thought it was weird how smoke kept coming out of the chimney." Everyone but Katara exploded at how casually she had thrown the detail out.

          "Wait— they lived alone, wasn't the house empty?"

          "Who was starting the fires?"

          "Did the mother ever come back?"

          "Couldn't tell you, but wood isn't just wasted like that when you live on a frozen wasteland." Y/N smiled as everyone shivered, huddling closer to the growing fire.

          "I don't know, F/N's a really good storyteller." Katara complimented, laughing at the terrified looks on everyone's faces, mostly Sokka and Aang.

          "I can hear people screaming under the mountain." Toph said suddenly, and everyone went quiet for a moment.

          "Toph, didn't you already go?" F/N asked after a moment, smiling slyly. "You can't fool me." Toph looked at her, making dead, milky gazed eye contact.