Fire and Aether

Chapter 19: The Swamp

    Zuko and Iroh had made it to a city but were now stuck with no food or money. So they were forced to beg for money in the streets. A few kind souls offered them money but they didn't have much.
    "This is humiliating!" Zuko shouted in annoyance. "These people should be giving us whatever we want."
    "They will." Iroh promised. "If you ask nicely."
    Iroh flirted with a pretty young woman who offered him a coin. The next to offer money was not so kind, however. "How about some entertainment in exchange for a gold piece?" He held up a shiny gold coin.
   "We're not performers." Zuko muttered, the annoyance clear on his face.
   "Not professional, anyway." Iroh said with a wide grin.
   He stood and began to sing a song he had just made up. The look on the other man's face, however, was not amused. "Come on, we're talking about a gold piece here." The man pulled out a pair of broadswords. "Dance."
    He used the swords to swipe at Iroh's feet, making him dance as he sang. Zuko growled, his fists clenching in his lap.
   The man laughed. "Nothing like a fat man dancing for his dinner. Here you go." He tossed the coin and walked away, laughing. 
    "Such a nice man."
    Zuko's burning gaze told another story.
                        * * * * *
    Team Avatar flew above the clouds as they continued their journey. While everyone was (mostly) quiet, Rose thought of a few days ago when they went into town to grab supplies. She'd seen Zuko and Iroh begging for money on the streets and had dropped what coins she did have into their hands before they left again. 
    Despite seeing Zuko again, she couldn't bring herself to talk to him. As much as she loved him, she knew she could never change his mind. Perhaps when the war was over, she'd find him again and tell him how much he meant to her. Maybe then, when the dark presence of his family wasn't controlling him, he would listen.
     Rose's thoughts were so strong, she, unknowingly, was sending Crystal down towards the jungle. And Aang followed, worried about his honorary sister. "What's happening? Why are we going down?" 
     "I know this is gonna sound weird," Rose said as she came to, her red braid flying in the breeze, "but I think the swamp is calling to me."
     "Is it telling you where we can get something to eat?" Sokka asked.
     "No, I-I think it wants us to land there." Sokka and Aang argued over what to do, Rose finally ending the argument by explaining, "Bumi said that I would need to wait and listen. Well I am and the earth is speaking to me. Who am I to ignore it?" She sighed. "I'm going whether you come with me or not." 
     Rose urged Crystal to go down and the rest of Team Avatar followed when a tornado whipped up from the swamp, separating Team Avatar from Crystal, Momo, and Appa. Team Avatar was blown into the water. As Aang looked for Crystal, Momo, and Appa, Rose walked out the water and sat on the shore, undoing her braid so she could wring out the swamp water. 
     "You couldn't find them?" Katara asked as Aang returned. 
     "No."
     "The tornado just disappeared." Rose said. "I've never heard of magic that can conjure up storms before."
     The rest of the group joined Rose on the shore. "We better speed things up." Sokka said, cutting through vines.
     "Sokka, I don't think that's a good idea." Rose warned.
     "Maybe we should be a little nicer to the swamp." Aang added.
     "Guys, they're just plants. Do you think I should say please and thank you as I swing my machete back and forth?"
     Rose caught his arm. "Please, Sokka, the earth around us, the plants you see before you, are all alive. Everything has a spirit: humans, animals, plants, the very earth itself. It is best to be kind and not harm them."
    Sokka shrugged her off. "Rose, they're just vines. And we need to get out of here."
    "I think we should listen to Rose." Katara said. "Something about this place feels...alive somehow."
     "I'm sure there are lots of things that are alive here. And, if we don't wanna get eaten by them, we need to find Appa and Crystal as fast as we can."
     Rose sighed in defeat. She felt as if she was betraying the spirits by not protecting them but she knew how stubborn Sokka could be when he set his mind to something so she just left him be.  
     Finally, after hours of fruitless searching, Sokka said they had no choice but to make camp for the night. Despite Rose's protests, Sokka chopped up some wood for a fire.
     The group huddled in a cave for the night. "I feel like we're being watched." Rose said, feeling a bit uncomfortable at the thought.
     "I feel that too." Katara added.
     "Please!" Sokka said. "We're all alone out here."
     Unbeknownst to the group, someone was watching them. In the middle of the night, as the friends slept beside each other, a vine weaved its way into the cave towards the group. The vines surrounded each person individually, then pulled them in different directions. 
     Each member of Team Avatar fought off the vines, Sokka with his machete, Katara cutting them with waterbending, Aang airbending an air bubble around him to fight them off, and Rose aetherbending herself through a portal to get out. They then all took off, running form the vines, trying to find one another.
                      * * * * *
     A pair of swamp dwellers, both decked out in leaves for clothes looked down at Appa's tracks. "What you reckon make tracks like that, Tho?" the skinny one asked.
     "Don't know, Doo." answered the fatter one known as Tho. "Something with six legs, pretty big 'uns, too."
     "Leaves a nice, wide trail to follow." Doo said.
     "You know what's at the end of that trail?" Tho asked. Doo shook his head. "Dinner."
                      * * * * *
    "Hello? Guys? Rose?" Katara called. No one answered. She walked deeper into the jungle when she heard a voice.
    "Hello? Can you help me?" A figure stood in the distance, one she recognized. "Mom?"
     She ran toward the figure of her mother, tearing up as she did so. She grabbed her mom's shoulder. "I can't believe--" She cut herself off when she realized she had grabbed the trunk of a dead tree.
     She backed up then bend down and cried as painful memories resurfaced. Her mom was dead. It was just an illusion.
                        * * * * * 
    "Rose!" Sokka yelled as he cut through the vines around him. "Stupid swamp. Stupid girl for saying I should care more. Aang! Stupid, ugly vines! Katara!"
    "You think you're so tough, huh?" He faceplanted into the water. When he looked up, he was surprised to see Yue. "Hello?"
     "Yue?" He asked, looking at her. "No. This is just a trick of the light...swamp gas. I hit my head running away last night. I'm going crazy."
     "You didn't protect me." a voice called out.
     Sokka looked around but Yue had vanished. He pulled out his machete and continued making his way through the swamp.
                         * * * * *
     "Katara!" Aang shouted. "Rose? Sokka?" 
     He made his way through the swamp when he heard laughter. He followed it, calling out, "Who's there? Can you help me? I'm lost and my friends--"
     Aang gasped as he realized who it was. "Monk Gyatso? But that's impossible! You're dead!" 
    "Aang." Monk Gyatso said. "You have failed me. You and Rose left us to die."
    "I'm sorry!" Aang said, tears in his eyes. "We didn't mean--"
    He looked up to see that Monk Gyatso had disappeared. Aang wiped his tears and airbended out of the spot he was at as fast as he could.
                                  * * * * *
    "Aang? Little brother?" Rose called. "Katara? Sokka?" 
    No answer. She continued forward, looking for her friends, when she noticed a figure up ahead, standing on a rock overlooking everything. The figure wasn't familiar, a girl, probably younger than Aang, blind, wearing clothing befitting someone of a high station. 
    Rose shook off the words inside her head, a whisper of Zuko telling her he didn't love her and that she was worthless, the same words she heard as she had slept before the vine attack. "Who are you?" 
    The girl ahead of her simply laughed and ran off. "Hey, wait! Come back!" 
    She chased after the unfamiliar girl until she disappeared. In her place stood Zuko, a frown on his handsome face. "Leave, Avatar! You are nothing to me!"
    Then he too, ran, and Rose ran to catch him, to stop him and force him to talk to her, when she ran into Aang. She knocked him over and he slid a ways, running into Katara who fell and ran into Sokka. Soon, the group were all on the ground, reunited once more.
     As all of them asked each other where they'd been and that they'd all been looking for each other, Rose quietly spoke. "I was chasing some girl."
     "What girl?" Katara asked in surprise, looking up at Rose from her spot on the ground. Rose had never struck her as the type but if that was what she was into...
     "I don't know." Rose said. "I heard laughing and I saw a girl in clothing for someone of one of the noble families."
     "Well, there must be a tea party here and we just didn't get our invitations." Sokka said.
     "I thought I saw mom." Katara confessed.
     Sokka looked down, thinking about his encounter with Yue. "Look, we're all just hungry and tired and our minds are playing tricks on us. That's why we all saw things out here."
     "You saw something too?" Katara asked.
     "I thought I saw Yue."
     "I thought I saw Monk Gyatso." Aang said, sadly.
     "But that doesn't prove anything. Look, I think about her all the time. And you saw mom." He gestured to Katara. "You saw your surrogate father." He gestured to Aang. "Someone each of you miss a lot."
     Rose thought about it. That explained why she saw Zuko, but what about that girl? She'd never met her before. "What about me?" she asked Sokka. "I didn't know the girl I saw."
    Sokka looked at her with a gentle expression and shrugged.
   "All our visions led us here." Aang said. "That has to mean something."
   "Ok so where's here?" Katara asked. "The middle of the swamp?"
   Rose turned and looked at a giant tree growing in the center of the swamp. It felt familiar, like something she had seen before... "It's the center." she answered. "The heart of the swamp."
    It was like back home. Beyond the city, far in the woods, there was a giant tree, much like this one, a tree that her people would go to to pray to the spirits. It was where the connection was strongest.
    She explained this to her friends. "It's what called us here."
    "What are you talking about?" Sokka asked. "They're just trees! They can't call anyone. For the last time, there's nothing after us and there's nothing magical happening here."
    At that moment, something large and made of plants appeared from the water and attacked them! They each ran in separate directions, fighting the thing from each side. Yet, any damage they did to it was quickly fixed.
    Eventually, they realized that someone was inside the plant creation, bending the vines from inside. Together, they blew the vines away, revealing a chubby man with a horrible haircut standing with only a leaf covering him.
    "Why did you summon us here if you're only going to kill us?" Rose asked.
    "Wait." the man said. "I didn't call you here."
    After talking, the man sat down with Team Avatar so they could each explain what was going on. "We were flying over and I heard something calling to me, telling me to land."
    "She's the Avatar. Stuff like that happens to us a lot."
    "The Avatar?" the man asked. "Come with me."
                         * * * * *
    Team Avatar followed the man as he led them through the swamp. "So who are you?" Katara finally asked.
    "I protect the swamp from folks that would want to hurt it, like this fellow with this big knife." He gestured to Sokka.
    "See?" Sokka said. "Not a monster, just a regular guy defending his home. Nothing mystical about it."
    "Oh the swamp is a mystical place, all right. It's sacred. I reached enlightenment right here under the banyan grove tree. I heard it calling me, just like you did." He explained how the swamp all stemmed from one tree, making it one big living thing.
    "I get it." Rose said. "It's just like the spiritual tree back at my home in the Aether Realm. It connects everything, even the village and the castle, all over the realm."
    "That's exactly right."
    "What about our visions?"
    "In the swamp, we see people we lost, people we loved, folks we think are gone but the swamp tells us they're not. We're still connected to 'em. Time is an illusion and so is death."
    "But what about my vision?" Rose asked. "It was someone I've never met."
    "You're the Avatar. You tell me." 
    "If time is an illusion, then it's someone I will meet. And those we've lost, we'll see again."
    "Right again, pretty 'un." 
    "So if everything is connected, can I find Crystal, Appa, and Momo?"
    The man nodded. Rose concentrated, using her spiritual power to connect to the tree and found them.
    Rose stood and told the others it was time to go, prompting them all to follow her.
                        * * * * *
    The swamp dwellers had caught Crystal, Appa, and Momo and were sailing their boats with waterbending, singing a tune when Team Avatar appeared from nowhere and attacked. Katara waterbended against Doo and he grinned at the revelation.
    "You're a waterbender?" Katara asked.
    "You too? That means we're kin." Katara didn't look too pleased at that revelation. Doo quit attacking. "Hey, Huu." he said, addressing the man whom Team Avatar had just been talking to. "How you been?"
     "You know, scared some folks, swung some vines, the usual." 
                        * * * * *
    A few minutes later, Team Avatar and the swamp dwellers sat around a warm fire, finally getting to eat. Katara and the swamp dwellers talked about waterbending while Sokka asked why they'd want to eat Appa, finding out that the creatures with them were just as much family to them as Crystal, Appa, and Momo were to Team Avatar.
    "See? There's nothing mysterious about the swamp."
                      * * * * *
    That same night, elsewhere, the man who had forced Iroh to dance was walking home when he heard a noise. He pulled out his broadswords, prepared to fight when the Blue Spirit grabbed his arms and threw him into a cart. The Blue Spirit grabbed the man's broadswords, took what he wanted, then disappeared into the night.