The Fire Prodigy {ATLA}

{34}: And the Monster

"I'd steer clear of the sea prunes," Aang whispered to Toph and I.

"I thought they were ocean kumquats," Toph replied.

"Close enough," Aang said.

"Who wants five flavor soup?" Hama asked, as the five of us raised our hand. She then surprised us using waterbending to serve the soup to each of our bowls from her seat.

Her doing this officially confirmed to me that she was the ghost lady from the story. There were way too many coincidences to ignore.

"You're a waterbender?!" I said, very evidently scared.

"You're a waterbender!" Katara repeated, but in a much more excited tone. "I've never met another waterbender from our tribe!"

"That's because the Fire Nation wiped them all out. I was the last one..." Hama said, staring off into her food sadly.

"So how did you end up out here?" Sokka asked her.

"I was stolen from my home," Hama began, making me tense. "It was over sixty years ago when the raids started. They came again and again, each time rounding up more of our waterbenders and taking them captive. We did our best to hold them off, but our numbers dwindled as the raids continued. Finally, I too was captured. I was led away in chains. The last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. They put us in terrible prisons here in the Fire Nation. I was the only one who managed to escape."

"Uh... Can we ask how?" I said, earning a scolding look from Katara, but I didn't care. Her story sounded way too familiar.

"I'm sorry. It's too painful to talk about anymore."

"We completely understand. We lost our mother in a raid," Katara said, standing up to comfort the old woman.

"Oh, you poor things."

"I can't tell you what it means to meet you. It's an honor. You're a hero," Katara told Hama with a kind smile.

"I never thought I'd meet another Southern waterbender. I'd like to teach you what I know so you can carry on the Southern tradition when I'm gone," Hama offered.

"Yes! Yes, of course! To learn about my heritage, it would mean everything to me."

I tried to warn Katara about my suspicions, but she wouldn't have it. She insisted that there was no such thing as ghosts, let alone vengeful waterbender ghosts with terrifying powers. I knew that there was no way of convincing her once she had made up her mind about her, so we did stay for another day so that she could learn waterbending from Hama.

"This has got to be the nicest natural setting in the Fire Nation. I don't see anything that would make a spirit mad around here," Aang said, while the rest of us had gone on a hike to the nearby woods in an attempt to find the source of the disappearances reported by the villagers.

"Maybe the Moon Spirit just turned mean," Toph joked, making Aang and I exchange sad looks, as we both thought of the girl from the North Pole who became the Moon Spirit last winter.

Sokka, however, sounded very offended. "The Moon Spirit is a gentle, loving lady. She rules the sky with compassion and... lunar goodness!"

I walked up to him and put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him. "I'm sure she does. And I'm pretty sure that these disappearances aren't her doing, too."

"But that still leaves the question of what is?" Aang said, before briefly going to a villager who was passing us by. "Excuse me, sir. Can you tell us anything about the spirit that's been stealing people?"

"Only one man ever saw it and lived and that's Old Man Ding."

"Where does Old Man Ding live?" Toph asked him.