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The Wisps Sing

Chapter 2: Spark

Summary:

Aang turned to where Sokka was supposed to be, about to ask him if he had any breakfast, when he saw that his bed was still made. Not a wrinkle in sight.

“Sokka?” he asked the empty space, alarm rising into his throat.

The echo of the strange vision he had last night came in blackened wisps that nudged across his mind. He tried to make sense of it, but it only brought him into a deeper sense of dread.

-

Or, Aang, Katara, and Toph search for Sokka and run into problems they didn't know were possible.

Notes:

It only took me 5 months to update this and I am truly so sorry. I've basically been updating everything but this story for some reason, even though I've been writing it on and off for a while. I can tell you that it will take me less than 5 months to finish this though, so I hope you stick around for the conclusion!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Aang was a young child of six years when he got lost in a forest at the base of the Eastern Air Temple’s mountain range. He was small for his age, but nevertheless still curious with a grand sense of adventure. Perhaps grander than it had ought to be.

He was there with his guardian Gyatso, and some of his peers for the Chrysanthemum Festival. It happened every autumn, and the Air Nomads celebrated together, often visiting other temples and each other.

Aang thought it was nice enough. He liked the loose white chrysanthemum petals that the airbending masters would send into the wind on gusts that surrounded the temple’s spires. There were chimes and gongs that would ring their melodies. There was chanting that had beautiful prose that lilted upon the breeze. He and the other children watched from the balconies in awe, seeing how they honored their ancestors that were long gone represented by the petals.

It was on this particular day that Aang observed Gyatso seemed a little down. He had noticed it the year previously, but he could not be so sure. Now, he realized that it might have been a pattern. He was young, but he could read people well. At least, that was what Gyatso told him. He was able to tell when Jinju hurt himself after playing airball and he tried to hide it from Monk Tashi. He gave himself some credit for that.

It was just after midday when the petals were settling into the winds that Aang made the spontaneous decision to look for a white dragon bush for his guardian if only to make him happy again. It was, after all, this plant that produced the best tea in the world and Gyatso quite liked his teas. He never forgot to remind Aang. (“Tea is the essence of the soul, young one. Having a cup of tea with a stranger is an open invitation to get to know them.”)

He heard from his guardian that the white dragon bush was native around the eastern Earth Kingdom. Though they were on Air Nomad land, he had supposed that that was close enough. It was going to be tricky because it was rare. He had to be careful too. A white dragon bush looked similar to a white jade bush, and if he was not vigilant, he could be plucking a poisonous plant.

Luckily, Gyatso had taught him the difference. His guardian said that it was imperative that he knew what was good enough to forage and what was not. Air Nomads lived off the land, he told Aang. It was part of who they were, and therefore they needed to learn to work with it.

Aang had thought hard about how a white dragon bush’s flower petals were reddish-pink with white streaks, while white jade petals were white with dark orange streaks. He repeated the mantra in his head. He had to be sure.

Pink and white, not white and orange, he thought. It was like a song, a steady rhythm. Pink and white, not white and orange.

The words were helpful for a time. He picked through the forest with an ease that only a light-footed airbender could possess. He was small, but he knew his way around a wind current. He avoided jutting rocks and branches without so much as a blink or hesitation. It was as if some invisible force was taking him on a ride, pushing him forward. It all came so naturally.

He did not think about the fact that this flower was rare. Childlike wonder was like a burst of confidence that could never be replicated after it disappeared.

Aang did not notice that he had wandered too far, too astray, in a forest that he was not familiar enough with. What he did realize was that the trees were taller than he remembered, seemingly shadowed giants that loomed over him. The sky had started to darken into a navy blue, stretching above him with the ominous fingers of night.

Still, Aang persisted. Even in the fading light he searched, picking through the leaves and brush with careful fingers and keen eyes. He reached for a bloom that glinted in the sunset, the edge of it the right kind of pinkish hue he was looking out for.

Then, there was a sudden howling wind too strong for him to handle that came. It blew a branch into his face. He was tumbling down the knoll in seconds, yelling for someone to catch him. His hands were reaching for purchase to no avail.

He crashed with a resolute thud into the trunk of a great pine. Its needles shuddered above him and a few fell onto his face. Aang groaned. He blinked open his eyes, spots dancing in front of him, and squeezed his eyelids shut. He could not bring himself to move. All thoughts he had of the white dragon bush were shaded in a throbbing ache at the back of his head.

Aang decided to lay there, unmoving. He must have been there for hours among the decaying leaves of the forest floor. It could have been minutes. He really could not tell. He was so dizzy. 

He tried to distract himself with a lullaby he remembered hearing throughout the dormitories that helped the younger children fall asleep.

“In water live the spirits of the sea, in earth the crystals glow, the embers of fire are our forefathers, and in the air a butterfly flows,” he sang in a half-hearted tune. “In water live the spirits of the sea…”

Aang could feel himself sinking into the leaves, slumping into himself. He could hardly feel the bruise anymore.

He almost let the darkness take him before he felt hands on his chest, his arms, patting him awake. “Aang!” shouted a familiar voice into his face. “Aang! Don’t sleep!”

When he opened his eyes, he saw the wrinkled visage of Gyatso. His deep-set gray eyes were lined with concern, and a frown curled his lip downward. He helped Aang to sit up. A metal lantern with a flickering flame was on the ground beside him. The wick was starting to shrivel. The light lined Gyatso’s figure in the dim light. Already, there were specks of stars peeking out through the swathe of clouds.

“If I didn’t hear you singing, I wouldn’t have found you,” said Gyatso. He brushed the dirt off Aang’s acolyte robes. “Where have you been, young one? I have been so worried.”

Aang leaned into Gyatso’s touch and sniffled. “I was looking for the white dragon flower for you,” he mumbled. His words slurred. He was so tired. “It’s ‘mportant. You like tea.”

There was a brief pause, and then Gyatso spoke. “It is not the flower nor the tea that is important to me,” whispered Gyatso into his ear, “It is you, young one. My Aang.”

“But…you seem so sad…’specially today.”

Gyatso looked surprised, and then he softened. His arms tightened around Aang. He pulled away for a moment to look him in the eye. He did not speak for a while, perhaps thinking hard on what to say next. Aang could see it in the way his mouth tugged downwards. “I’m not sad,” he said slowly. Carefully. “There is just someone I miss.”

He had the same wistful expression he had every time he talked of his old friends from his younger years, and the friend he mentioned on occasion from the Fire Nation.

When Aang peered at him in confusion, Gyatso chuckled. He continued. “When you are as old as me, there are a few people you lose along the way. But you know, they are not truly gone from us, and we celebrate them every year during the Chrysanthemum Festival.”

“But…” Aang started, unsure what to say.

Gyatso looked pensive as he glanced into the forest, then he looked back at Aang. “That song you were singing…some say it originated when the Avatar began. It is sung by our people because it helps us to remember that we as travelers, as nomads, should always understand others. And, though we are all so different, we are all connected.

“There is one thing that connects us all, even if we fail to see it. That is that someday we will all become spirits ourselves. The Water Tribes believe that we all return to the sea, the Earth Kingdom believes that the spirits of their ancestors sometimes reside in the crystals hidden in the earth to guide them, the Fire Nation believes that one day they will join the flames that light our paths in the stars.”

Aang felt himself being carried in Gyatso’s arms. They were leaving the forest now. The steady rhythm of Gyatso’s steps started to lull him into calm.

“What do we believe?” Aang asked, closing his eyes.

There was a pause before Gyatso started again. Softly, like a leaf gliding onto the surface of a pond. “They say that the souls of those we lost return to us in times of need. Flying to us as a simple, lovely creature, following us when we call them with our hearts. One day, young one, if you are lost, look for a butterfly,” he whispered.

Aang drifted off as they walked up the winding path back to the temple. He awoke the next day with a bandaged head and a relieved Gyatso fretting over him.


There was a certain panic that came with rising in the morning. There was the moment when the world materialized after a long, dreamless night, or if luck was not a friend, it came in stark contrast to the vivid nightmare that just occurred. It was in this space of time that Aang realized that something was wrong.

They had slept in, worn out from the ball the evening previously. Still, there had been an unspoken agreement that they were intent on helping the Earth King with finding the disappearing people the next day. No matter how late it was, Aang knew they had to prepare.

Aang turned to where Sokka was supposed to be, about to ask him if he had any breakfast, when he saw that his bed was still made. Not a wrinkle in sight.

“Sokka?” he asked the empty space, alarm rising into his throat.

The echo of the strange vision he had last night came in blackened wisps that nudged across his mind. He tried to make sense of it, but it only brought him into a deeper sense of dread.  

His stomach dropped when he found the window locked shut. Desperate, he hoped to find Sokka hiding in their wardrobe as a joke. When he opened it, he only saw his own formal robes hanging.

Aang burst through the door of their shared quarters and looked all over the guest house. He felt for his vibrations with his earthbending. Yet, there was no sign of him.

He pounded on Katara and Toph’s door next.

It was Katara who answered for them. Toph was crankily rubbing at her eyes on her mattress, frowning with the intensity of a badgermole whose home had been disturbed. Her hair was a bird’s nest, and her mood was apparent with the scowl she was sending him. He almost feared giving her more to be upset about.

Aang did not wait for either of them to say anything. “Sokka is missing,” he said quickly, eyebrows crinkling together with worry. “I can’t find him anywhere. I don’t think he came home last night.”

Katara’s breath hitched. “What?” she asked, eyes widening. She did not bother to smooth out her nightclothes, nor to brush her hair into a presentable style. She went on her own panic-driven search around the grounds after that.

She returned to the sitting room only when she had searched everywhere possible. Aang shook his head when he saw her distraught face. Neither he nor Toph had found anything while she was away for those minutes. Toph most of all was adamant that Sokka was nowhere near the vicinity. She claimed that she could not feel anything with her feet.

“We need to scour the city,” Katara said, a slight tremble at the end of her words. “This isn’t good.”

Toph stormed off into the girls’ bedroom, muttering about getting changed. Aang knew it was her own way of showing she was concerned.

When she was gone, Aang turned to face Katara fully. The light outside was dimmed and the sky overcast. It made silhouettes appear on the furniture in their sitting room as it filtered through the window panes, and on the planes of her features. There were shadows under her eyes.

Aang could see the way Katara wrung her hands together, how she tensed with nearly every movement. He knew that Sokka going missing would cause anxiety within all of them, but he knew most of all that Katara would take the brunt of it. He placed a hand on the side of her face and smoothed his thumb over her cheekbone.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered, peering into her eyes, and coaxing her to look at him. He did not look away. “We’ll find him. I promise. We’ll do whatever it takes.”

She leaned into his touch and sighed. “Okay,” Katara replied.

Of course, the day started out dismal with the news. Even for late winter, it was cold. Aang could admit that, and he could regulate the temperature of the air around himself. Ba Sing Se was supposed to have mild winters, and yet the wind was sharp, and the light powdered snow crunched under his feet as the three of them finally stepped outside of their apartments.

Toph was utterly miserable in the freezing temperatures. She refused to wear proper shoes and instead opted for thick wooly socks that she had packed but never intended to use. A terrible option, and she was told so. Katara insisted that she wear something more appropriate, even shoving a pair of boots onto her feet—but Toph remained as stubborn as always.

“Listen here, Sugar Queen, I’m gonna have the earth as close to my feet as possible and you can’t tell me what to do about it!” Toph screeched at Katara just as they were leaving. “If I can’t feel where we’re going, this is going to be a whole lot more difficult than it needs to be.”

Aang wanted to intervene as soon as he saw Katara fuming on the steps of the entrance of the guesthouse. “Toph, I think you need to be a little more—”

He was too late. Katara launched at Toph with an icicle, and Aang had to hold her back with an arm around her waist as soon as Toph slammed the door to go inside to remove the boots she had tried to wear at Katara’s behest. It was not a helpful situation, especially with the glaring issue they were facing. Though, Aang supposed that maybe Toph was feeling cranky too. He could not blame her.

Still, after walking on the streets for a while, Toph complained about not being able to see properly and how she could not feel the tips of her toes (or anything for that matter). He kept his mouth shut after that.

They started with Captain Liang first, asking if he had seen anything. However, the captain merely added Sokka to the ever-growing missing persons list, and the Dai Li began their own mission to find him.

“Unfortunately, Master Sokka isn’t the only one to go missing last night,” Liang stated with a somber tone. “Two others have disappeared as well. We’ll do everything we can.”

Disheartened, Aang, Katara, and Toph split off and searched through the parts of Ba Sing Se that were the oldest, largely in the areas around the palace and Upper Ring. Anything for a clue. It was all they had to go on, and all Joo Dee had offered the night previously as useful information. It was nearing sunset when a lead from a Dai Li agent brought them to a poetry club called the Five-Seven-Five Society. Which, to Aang’s admittance, was deeply confusing. 

As soon as he stepped in to ask after Sokka, a middle-aged woman with her hair done in an elaborate knot said with a smug expression, “We are artists here. Not wandering, clueless, men. We do not keep oafs.”

Aang could do nothing but gape at her audacity, but a rather intimidating and bulky bouncer grunted as he stood in their way.

“What’s your response?” growled the man. “Better have the right number of syllables.”

Aang groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Let’s just go,” he sighed as he gestured to Katara and Toph. “Sokka isn’t here.”

“No way!” Toph bellowed. “Let me at ‘em!”

“Let’s go Toph!” commanded Katara with a scowl as she latched onto her arm and began to drag her away. “We don’t have time for this.”

They left annoyed and disappointed. The aggravation grew when Katara noticed that the woman had the gall to answer their query in haiku. She left a trail of icy surfaces in her wake, and the crunchy snow on the ground did nothing to save them.

Aang did not know what this was. There were no proper clues left behind, no lingering footsteps, not even a minute crack in the earth that Toph could detect. They combed through every nook and cranny, even scaling buildings when the opportunity arose. When there were no results, they turned to flying on Appa and drifting from one landmark to another. Momo was unhelpful, but the lemur did manage to give Aang an idea when he came back with a broken teacup as a “present”.

Aang gasped, steering Appa back toward the Upper Ring from the Middle Ring. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Iroh!”

They made it to the Jasmine Dragon when the stars had just begun to peek out in the darkening purplish blue sky. Appa took up the entire courtyard at the front, landing just shy of the frozen decorative fountain in the center and just at the top of the stairway. Aang stood underneath an awning near the front, holding a map of the city that the Dai Li had provided them. He barely registered Katara and Toph sliding off his bison with confused expressions on their faces.

“Wait, what are you talking about? What about Iroh?” questioned Toph. She walked toward him and stopped a few feet away. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of her coat, and her red nose only made her appear more stubborn. Momo had stretched his wings and landed on her shoulder, chirping his agreement.

Aang unfurled the map enough by the time Katara was next to him. She looked over his shoulder, frowning.

Aang sighed, scrunching the map together in his hands. “I’ve been…seeing these balls of flame,” he started, haltingly and a little hesitant. “They reappear from time to time, and it always feels strange. The last time I saw one was next to Iroh at the Unification Ball. He…reacted to it when no one else did.”

He could feel Katara’s stare boring into him, and Toph’s silent judgement. He did not have to look at them to know.

“You’ve been seeing these things?” Katara asked, mouth agape. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He could hear the disappointment in her voice when he finally decided to glance back up at her. “I didn’t think much of it before but…what if there’s more to this?”

But Katara saw right through his deflection. “Why didn’t you tell me, Aang?” she emphasized, hands on her hips and her lips in a thin line. Hurt in her eyes.

His shoulders sagged. “I saw one at the temple and then I saw Gyatso,” he admitted softly. “It felt like a dream. I thought it was.”

There was a pregnant silence. He and Katara shared a look, and he was suddenly aware of how much a part of him still dwelled on the past.

He gulped, turning his attention to the setting sun, the stripe of its remaining light just a blur on the skyline of buildings and rolling hills that made up the city. “Joo Dee mentioned a lantern and how she was compelled to follow it…what if it was really one of these things? What if they’re connected?” he spoke into the air. His thoughts swirled with what he had seen, and what he was missing.

Toph crossed her arms. She gave him the most judgmental stare she could without being able to see him. “You think Sokka followed some fireball and ran off with it?” she scoffed. “That sounds farfetched to me.”

“I don’t know, but it’s the only lead we have. Sokka vanished without a trace, just like the other citizens,” Aang replied. He narrowed his eyes. “It could be the spirits. If it is, then we could be dealing with anything.”

Someone cleared their throat behind them. Aang and Katara jumped when they turned around and Toph appeared unsurprised.

“I think you’re right,” said Iroh as he cracked open the door. In his hand was a key. He gestured at them. “Please, come inside. I was just locking up, but it seems that I should share with you my suspicions.”

Aang and the others did not hesitate to follow him. He led them to a small round table he had set up in the back of the teashop where Aang recalled particularly private guests such as himself were served if they ever visited during business hours. 

"Sit. Have some tea. I made too much," he said, and chuckled. "I guess the universe was trying to tell me I would have guests."

He took a moment to go to the back to gather three more teacups before sitting down in front of them. He poured them each a cup, the steam rising over the rims as he did so.

Iroh gestured for them to drink. “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s some of my favorite tea from the white dragon bush. A rarity around these parts…with a taste so delicious it’s heartbreaking.”

When Aang took a sip, the liquid gold touched his lips for only a second before he realized what it tasted like. A memory. It was sweet and earthy, a little reminiscent of a flower budding in the spring. He glanced up at Iroh, eyes wide with surprise.

Just for a moment, he thought that he could see the flicker of something behind the man’s shoulder. A gentle smile, a twinkling eye. But it disappeared as soon as the sun went down. They were left in the dim darkness, faces alight with only the flitting orange-tinted brightness of candle flames.

“Lu Ten…my son,” Iroh started in a soft voice, “He died during the war. Yet last night, I heard his voice for the first time in many years.”  

Toph continued to sip on her tea, not uttering a word. Katara inched forward in her seat. Aang could feel the stillness surround them, an anticipation that made the world seem quiet.

“He died just inside the city walls of Ba Sing Se,” Iroh continued. He placed down his cup, clinking it onto the tabletop’s surface. “I was too preoccupied with being a general to remember that my son was not invincible. I forgot what was important, and I blamed myself.” He sighed, not looking Aang in the eyes. “I spent months, years, searching for a way to get him back…even for a way to find him in the Spirit World. But, as you must know, Aang, the world does not quite work like that.”

Help them. I will guide you.

A voice echoed in his head, an ache in his chest. Another promise to keep.

There was a calm the washed over him when he looked at Iroh again. The gold that wavered in the older man’s eyes was molten, a silent plea for something distant. They shared a kind of look that felt meaningful, even if there were years and experiences that separated them.

With a sudden clarity, Aang knew what he was facing.

He stood up, his wooden chair scraping against the floor beneath him. “Iroh, stay here. If you’ve felt them already, that means you’ll be a target,” he commanded. He rushed to gather his staff. “Katara, Toph, we need to go to the crystal catacombs of Old Ba Sing Se.”

Aang turned, letting the door remain open behind him until they followed.

-

He knew he was acting purely on instinct, but something stronger than even the Avatar State before he had control over it compelled him to move. It was as if a compulsion tugged at his core, dragging him along on a string that refused to detach itself. A feeling, more than anything else, that begged for him.

There was no time for questions, and perhaps that was what frustrated Katara and Toph the most. He could not give answers when his voice was stuck in his chest, locked there until he had fulfilled the duty his spirit was telling him needed to be completed.

“What is going on with you, Twinkle Toes?” questioned Toph from behind him as she stomped her way toward where he knew the entrance tunnel to the catacombs was leftover from their first days in Ba Sing Se. “You know you’re acting really strange and it’s scaring me a little. I don’t get scared.”

He ignored her complaints and instead said, “Come over here, Toph. It looks like this tunnel isn’t used a lot. I need your help to make sure it’s safe to go through.”

Toph huffed, acquiescing to the cause. She spread her arms out, stamping on the ground. A ripple went through the earth. She stood straight and pointed through the dark hole. “Seems safe enough to me. It feels like the Dai Li cleaned it up after the Earth King ordered them to sniff out the bad eggs.”

Toph jumped in first with a confident step. Aang went to follow her but realized that Katara had not moved since they landed Appa in the palace courtyard. The great beast moaned with worry while Momo chittered atop his horns.

Aang held out his hand to her. “C’mon,” he remarked. “Sokka’s waiting for us.”

Conflicting emotions flitted across her face. Fear, concern, apprehension. He wished that he could smooth out the lines of them himself.

Katara met his eyes. “Aang, I don’t know why you’re so bent on this. I don’t know if it’s your Avatar spirit calling out to you or not,” she started, biting her bottom lip, “but all I know is that whatever this is has you and Iroh hearing the dead…and I’m afraid of what I’ll hear. I’m afraid of what Sokka could’ve heard.”

He knew what she was saying. He was afraid too.

“Trust me,” Aang offered, spreading his fingers wider toward her.

She took his proffered hand and nodded. “I do,” she replied.

The two of them entered the void. Aang held a firebended flame in his hand, lighting their path. Toph must have made it further than they realized because she was nowhere to be seen. Remnants of her earthbending remained along the walls, however. Little nicks and tells that he was used to seeing, and in a way, an odd comfort.

The tunnel kept going before them, slowly opening from the darkness until he recognized the iridescent emerald glow at the end of it.

Opaque green crystals jutted out from rock surfaces, peeking through caves, breaking through the walls. The light of them encased them, covering them in an eerie, diaphanous radiance that painted Aang’s pale skin. Katara walked beside him, a free hand on the mouth of her water pouch. She glanced around; lips set into a hard line.

In the silence, they made it through cave after cave, wandering along some vague road that Aang followed more with his gut rather than his mind. The constant glow of the crystals awakened him, and with each step, they were deeper inside.

And the deeper they went, the lonelier it became.

Aang’s hand brushed up against a stone, and then the smooth surface of one of the crystals. A shudder went through his arm, his body. A whisper came, soft against the shell of his ear, beckoning.

He reached for Katara, and their hands clasped together. He could feel his breathing increase in tempo, an unexplainable panic rising within him.

There was music in his head. A daunting tune. A familiar one. He found it coursing through him like the blood in his veins. Gyatso’s face came to the forefront of his mind as he tried to concentrate on moving forward.

He could feel Katara’s fingers tighten around his.

They rounded another corner. He had no idea where they were now. They had already passed the cavern that held the ancient rivers that had been cut into the ground. The distant sounds of trickling water ebbed away behind them.

The crystals grew ever brighter if that was possible. They revealed artificial shelves in the rock walls. Little stone figurines rested atop them in clusters, and some by themselves. Small, faceless statues with the ambiguous outlines of a nose and mouth. Sitting in unusual positions, knees drawn to their chests. They looked like offerings, old alters created by someone so long ago.

The whispers increased. He heard a laugh, a giggle, and he brought Katara around to search for it with him. They ran in circles, looking for the source. But they only found nothing but another set of statues on more eroded shelves built into the pillars.

Dread pooled in the pit of his stomach. “Toph!” he called. Katara repeated their friend’s name with him.

“Toph, are you here?!” yelled Katara.

There was no answer.

The light was impossibly dim and bright at the same time. There were shadowy figures that appeared in the crags, the curves—all of them reaching out to them. Aang tried to airbend them away to no avail.

It was all they could do when they finally ran. Past dilapidated alters, into a room that held too many white skeletons hastily covered with reed mats that were falling apart. Strips of Earth Kingdom clothes showed beneath the mats in colors and hues that Aang was sure he would never forget again.

He glanced behind them, seeing more shapeless arms reach their branching limbs toward them, encroaching on the little space they had left.

Balls of silent flame phased through the crystals, the same yellow and white he recognized from the temple. They bobbed in and out of existence, lighting a route for them as they edged the walls of another underpass in the labyrinth.

He knew they had no choice. Katara sprinted near him, her breath heavy, her footfalls the only thing that echoed in the hallways as they lurched ahead.

A ball of flame inched closer to him for the briefest second, and suddenly he was somewhere else.

It was a memory, a vision. He saw it just beyond the ground he was running on. A sheen of something reminiscent to a swathe of silk wavered in front of him.

Aang was in the body of someone else, but at the same time he was not. He stood on the outside looking in.

A young man with a disheveled topknot materialized, weary and graying far too early. He had a lame leg and leaned on a cane as he hobbled over to a shorter figure. “You're my little brother, Chit Sang,” he said. The rising sun was at his back. “I'm just looking out for you. I hope you've thought this through. We're not from a noble family and that means the army will be less kind to us. Joining the 41st Division won't be easy."

The shorter teenaged boy with darker hair that the man talked to slumped before him. Chit Sang turned, stubbornly refusing to look at his sibling’s face. The older brother sighed, placing a hand on his Chit Sang’s shoulder. "When you go to war there are two things you hope for,” he continued, “to come back alive, and if that isn’t possible, to die quickly. I'll pray to our parents' ghosts that you are of the former.”

Aang gasped as the scene faded, and he could see that he and Katara were closer to the surface than he recalled them being.

They shouted in a desperate cry together as they made it to the top. The path was still lit with fire, but just as Aang thought they were out of the woods, a blinding light overtook them and pushed them both further until they faced the still and half-frozen surface of Lake Laogai.

Like miniature stars hovering above the water, more balls of flame indicated where they had to go next.

“Aang,” Katara murmured beside him, “that’s…”

He breathed, trying to steady himself. He could no longer deny the pull that he was sure she could feel too. “There’s no turning back now,” he said.

Without letting go of each other, they plunged into the water.

A rush of emotion and flickers of disjointed memories hit him all at once. Then, like he was waking up from a long dream, eyes bleary from sleep, he was forced to focus on one.

A hazy house emerged like a specter before him, and he could see the backs of two people.

"Do you remember the sunrise over the Great Divide?” asked the blurry person sitting on a crumbling rooftop. It sounded like the gravely voice of a middle-aged man. Another smaller person sat next to him, legs dangling off the tiles and looking like they were listening intently.

The man continued, “The clouds part just over the canyon, high in the sky, letting in tiny drops of light. And then, just for a moment, there are patches of land that brighten up. Then another moment passes, and the clouds cover it up again. That's what life's like, Lee. Even your brother, Sensu, who's out there knows it. That's why he went out to fight in the war...to make sure those little patches of light stay a little longer for our people."

The scene disappeared when they crashed through the lake’s surface, the pieces of ice floating about them. Aang gripped onto Katara’s hand as they started to turn and flip within the water.

The twilight in the memory was like a long sunrise, and they rose through it hand-in-hand, until they broke through and breathed.

He should have felt cold when he and Katara stepped out of the water, but when he saw their blue and transparent forms, he knew why he did not.

Someone laughed, a bristling disembodied voice that whistled through the leafless trees that surrounded the lake.

“Who’s here?” called Aang, cupping his hand to the side of his mouth. Something pounded in the air, something old that he could not name.

Without warning, an androgynous being filtered through the trees, as if from the center of them and through the bark.  They wore all white robes that cascaded down their body in waves, dripping like melting snow. Their hair was a river of black that went well past their waist, and their eyes were a brilliant green that burned into Aang as he dared to look. It was as if he was looking into nature itself, beautiful yet full of raw power.

Their skin was porcelain and without any imperfections, unnervingly so. They even lacked the dip that would be just above their lip. Still, the person grinned at them.

“I am the spirit of this land,” they intoned. Their voice was like expensive silk upon skin. It raised the hairs on the back of Aang’s neck. “You will heed my warning, Avatar. The war has ravaged my domain. You will come to me, and you will respect it.” 

Notes:

There's a lot of FIlipino folklore references in this chapter, but since I don't want to spoil everything, I will only reveal some here. I'll reveal the rest in the notes of the final chapter.

-The small figurines are based off of anito, or ancestral spirits. Anito are carvings made of wood or stone that sit on alters and honor ancestors.
-The skeletons under reed mats are a slight nod to the pasatsat, a lesser known folktale ghost. During World War II, Filipinos did not have time or money to properly bury their dead, so they were often hastily buried with reed mats. They say that the tale of the pasatsat ghost came about because of this, and the ghosts of those people would appear in front of travelers.