Balance | Old Version

Chapter 15 (Imprisoned)

Elua's POV.

Katara, Aang, and I all sit on a couple of rocks in the middle of a forest. I look up as I hear footsteps and see Sokka walking over to us, he had gone looking for food but all he was carrying was a small bag.
"Great, you're back! What's for dinner?" Aang asks as he stands up.
"We've got a few options. First, round nuts and some kind of oval-shaped nuts," Sokka says as he takes out several different kinds of nuts from the bag. "And some rock shaped nuts that...might just be rocks. Dig in!" He tells us smiling, we look at him with a 'really?' look.

"Seriously, what else ya got?" Katara asks him.
"That's it," He tells her shrugging.
"For some reason, I thought you'd be better at this," I mumble, he frowns.
"Hey!" Sokka shouts, taking offense to my words. Suddenly, a startling noise obstructs the calm forest. "What was that!?" He shouts as we all stand up. We hear the sound again.
"It's coming from over there!" Aang says pointing to the left. Katara, Aang and I rush toward the noise, leaving Sokka waving his arms.

"Shouldn't we run away from huge booms, not toward them?" I hear Sokka shout to us, we ignore him and follow the noise until we get to a small dried river bed. We hide behind a fallen tree and watch a young earthbender practice his bending.
"An earthbender!" Katara whispers with a smile.
"Let's go meet him!" Aang says grinning.
"He looks dangerous, so we better approach cautiously," Sokka tells them, but Katara stands up and walks over to the earthbender, ignoring Sokka's warning.

"Hello there, I'm Katara! What's your name?" Katara asks kindly. The young earthbender looks over at Katara in shock, he drops the rock and runs back down the river bed. As he runs, he earthbends a load of rock preventing our pursuit of him.
"Nice to meet you!" Aang shouts to him.
"We just wanted to say 'hi'," Katara says as her shoulders fall.
"Hey, that guy's gotta be running somewhere, maybe we're near a village and I bet that village has a market," Aang states with a smile, Katara grins.

"Which means no nuts for dinner!" Katara says as she and Aang begin to run in the direction the boy went.
"Hey! I worked hard to get those nuts!" Sokka shouts to them. Momo chatters as he flies after Aang and Katara. "Yeah, I hate'em too," Sokka says, talking about the nuts.
"Come on, we don't want them getting into trouble," I tell him as I grab his arm and we run after them.

In The Village.

We all walk around the market, Aang stops and looks at a hat.
"Great hat. I'll trade you some nuts for it." Aang says to the merchant. He smiles as he takes the bag of food from Aang and hands him the hat. Aang turns to Sokka with the hat on and laughs. I turn to Katara as she walks over to a door behind us.
"Where's Katara going?" I ask them. They shrug, we follow her into the small shop.

"Hey, you're that kid!" Katara says as she points to the boy from before. "Why did you run away before?" She asks him, he looks at her shocked and somewhat afraid.
"Uh, you must have me confused with some other kid." The boy says nervously.
"No, she doesn't, we saw you earthbending," Aang states. An older woman by the window looks shocked at Aang's words, she turns to the boy with wide eyes.
"They saw you doing what!?" The woman whisper-shouts to the boy.

"They're crazy, mom, I mean, look at how they're dressed!" He says as he motions to our clothes, we all look down at our clothes. I suppose Aang and I looked a little strange, seeing as our clothes are over 100 years old and they had probably never met Air nomads.
"You know how dangerous that is! You know what would happen if they caught you earthbending!" The boy's mother tells him. Suddenly, we hear a heavy knock on the door. Sokka quickly parts the window blinds to identify the intruders.
"Open up!" We hear a man shout harshly.

"Fire Nation! Act natural!" Sokka whispers. The boy's mother opens the door and a Fire Nation soldier enters. I look over to Katara, Sokka and Aang to see they're in very unconvincing 'normal' poses. The top of the barrel that Aang is leaning against shifts and his hand goes into the water all up to his shoulder, I shake my head as I look over to the front door.
"What do you want? I've already paid you this week." The woman tells the soldiers in front of her.