I Am Not the Last Airbender {ON HOLD}

Chapter Ten

            I awoke to the sun kissing the horizon in a breath-taking way.  It was golden and shimmering on the water, its lips touching the crescent land, glowing with warmth and new life.  Wait…land!

            “Macco!” I cried, startling the poor kid.  He jumped from his fetal position, scattering a few of his maps.  He scrambled to keep them from flying away.  They looked mostly dry, now, but on some the ink had run, making it difficult, at times impossible, to read.  Great, now we had to opportunity to be killed and lost!

            “What the heck, Jay!  What possible reason could there be to wake me from my peaceful slumber?”

            “Oh, don’t be so dramatic.  Just look!” I pointed out beyond at the land mass growing nearer.  As the sun continued the rise, I could make out the statures of small buildings and a beach forming.  No one was on the sandy shore at this time of day, and the village of cottages still snored.  I turned back to the boy rubbing sleep from his eyes and staring drowsily at the landscape.  “Where are we?”

            “Gimme a min…” he mumbled, his words slightly slurred as he shuffled through various scrolls.  Finally he landed on the right one and carefully unrolled it, handling the fragile parchment with great care.  He traced his finger over the pictures until he stopped and looked up back at me.  “It’s kind of smeared but it looks like ‘Emler Island’, so we could only assume that it means Ember Island, the popular resort.”

            “Oo, sounds like fun,” I said with a grin.

            “What are we going to do there?”

            “I don’t know about you, but I plan on having a good time.”

---

            An hour later, we landed on a cliff overlooking Ember Island’s famous beaches.  Ember Island was not a military base of any sort; they barely had law enforcement at all, so we figured it’d be safe.  But just in case word had spread that an airbison and two rogue watertribe juveniles were on the loose, we hid Appa among the crevices.

            As Macco and I began our decent down the mountain, a sign soon came into view.  We stopped to read what it read: “Welcome to Ember Island: the Best Vacation Destination in the Fire Nation!”

            Macco laughed, “It rhymes!”

            I smiled as I said, “Yeah, doofus.  Now let’s keep going.”  As we continued on our way, Macco decided it was a good idea to kick every single rock on the path.  “Will you quit that?  It’s annoying.”

            “Sorry,” he mumbled, stopping.  “I was just thinking.”

            “Well, you’re kind of an obnoxious thinker,” I said, trying to get him to crack a smile.  He’d gone suddenly serious and I wasn’t quite sure why.  “What about?”

            “I don’t know, I’m just sort of confused about what’s going on?”

            “You mean, like why we’re here?”

            “No, I kinda get why we’re here.  I mean, it’s the first piece of land we’ve seen and it’s not terribly dangerous, and we probably deserve a break.  I’m just confused as to what exactly is, you know, like going on.”

            “I’m not really following you, Macco.”

            “Yeah, I don’t really get what I’m trying to say.  Just…nevermind.”

            “No, really.  Just tell me.”

            He turned away, looking out at the sea.  “You won’t get it.”

            I was surprised.  Macco had never acted like this with me.  We’d been best friends practically since birth.  “Come on,” I said softly, nudging his shoulder.  He looked back at me, his eyes sad.  Then, he looked ahead.

            “We’re just about there,” he whispered as he picked up his pace, pulling just ahead of me.  I let him stay those two paces ahead, my mind reeling.  Was it something I’d done?  I knew that I teased him, maybe a bit too much, but he’d never seemed to think of it as anything besides playful.  And we weren’t in any immediate danger…I couldn’t think of what could be bugging him.  But for now I was going to let him stay silent.  He’d come around eventually.  Macco always did.

            And then we were at the beach, the waves crashing softly on the shore.  The sun had risen now and sunlight flooded the land.  Not many people were up yet except a few early birds getting to the beach before the rush.  Even though the sun hadn’t had much time to warm up the sun, this was the Fire Nation, so the sand was already warm to the touch.  I slipped off my shoes and wriggled my toes in it, relishing its warmth.  I’d never actually felt sand before, coming from a place of ice and snow.

            The heat had seemed to melt some of the severity from Macco, as well.  I saw him begin to smile as the sunshine made his hair gleam.  The landscape was perfect.  The sky a cloudless wonder, streaked with yellows and oranges.  The ocean a calm blue, wiggling invitingly.  The sand glowing and warm, soft beneath me.

            Everything seemed just wonderful until out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man storming towards us, an angry look on his face.

            It seemed as though we attracted trouble everywhere we went.

            Even when we did nothing wrong.