[Action, Voice, and Windblown Journals] .015

[markofthebrave]

[Voice]
Hey, Hugo - if you have a chance, I'd like to talk to you about something.

[And then she shuts the book and moves to her evening practice session behind her house. Today is not about how much water she can move, but it is about control. When the wind blows her journal opened, anyone watching can see thin streams of water moving quick enough to cut intertwining with her arms and legs as she works through a form. The pattern of when she splits a stream, and when she adds more water seems random... until you glance above her head. Any time her concentration is broken by a flash of an image, she adds another and another until all the thought bubble reflects are the forms

If you want to interrupt her, give her a minute - messing up and slicing herself with one of those water streams would be painful. While she normally hates to have her practicing interrupted, tonight it's not quite keeping her mind off of things.]

Comments

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

[she's not much of one for hello]

How do you move the water?

[markofthebrave]

[Katara shrugs and smiles a little.]

I'm a waterbender. Just like Toph is an earthbender.

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

You lived with water spirits?

[markofthebrave]

Something like that. [She pauses, and then decides to tell her.] Long ago, waterbenders learned how to bend from the spirit of the moon, watching how she pushed and pulled the ocean. The spirits didn't really show themselves to my tribe, not for a long time. But we would still honor them.

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

[San comes out of her hiding place. She's moving stiffly, different from her usual silent but deadly stalking. She's picturing her version of a spirit of night - the Nightwalker]

[markofthebrave]

[And at that picture, an image begins to form in Katara's own thought bubble La, the spirit of the ocean, when he merged with Aang.]

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

What is that?

[markofthebrave]

What is - oh. [Katara looks up at her thought bubble.] That's La, the spirit of the ocean, when he joined with Aang.

((He had been terrifying.))

Aang is the Avatar, the bridge between the spirit world and our world. When Fire Nation soldiers sought to... ((The images that flash here would be too quick to follow: The moon, turning red, going dark - two circling koi fish, one white, one black - a beautiful young girl, hair white as the moon and eyes blue as the ocean - a giant glowing koi fish, destroying an entire Fire Nation Fleet - the look of pain on Sokka's face - and then the moon, again glorious - two koi fish swimming in a pond.))

...they wanted to destroy the moon. And so the spirit of the ocean rose up in vengeance.

Who is that in yours?

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

[as it should have done. Good for you, ocean spirit]

That sounds like humans. [snort] Thinking they can destroy the moon.

...That is the Deer God, at night.

[markofthebrave]

Well. They did. One of the most evil men I've ever seen found the moon spirit, Tui, circling in the sacred water as part of her eternal dance with La. He killed her. ((And her thoughts reflect that terrible scene - first when he had captured the physical form of the moon spirit, and the moon had been shaded red. Then when he restored her - for a moment - before there is a burst of fire and the moon -- just goes out.))

But there was a brave young girl, Yue, who had been touched by the spirit of the moon when she was a baby. And some of the moon's spirit still lived in her. So she gave up her life that the moon's spirit would be able to return to the world.

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

[...okay, people who have connections to the world of the spirits do get respect from San. After all, she's not exactly all wolf, either. ...But the thought of the moon going out, and the look of Katara's thoughts... And she growls, and flinches, and crouches down]

[markofthebrave]

[...Katara can see those thoughts, and she does not move to make any sort of defense - she just continues her story and concentrates hard.]

((And so Yue died. And she became the moon. La drove off the Firebenders. And Balance was restored.))

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

[It's good to see that the spirits were able to triumph in the end. ...It doesn't make her any less angry, though, about either situation. Though she may be deciding that Katara's not all that bad, for a human. ...Maybe. Sokka too, if he can manage to keep his mouth shut.

And San's not going to attack. She's hurt.]

[markofthebrave]

[Katara hasn't noticed until now how stiffly San was moving, but now that she sees that she's hurt she's immediately concerned.]

In my world, the spirit of the moon also gave certain waterbenders the gift of healing. I'm one of them. [Pause. How to say this...] It would be dishonoring to the spirit who gave me this gift not to help someone who was in pain.

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

[that's all very nice. San has no idea Katara is referring to her, though, and her thoughts should reflect bland confusion]

The spirits should be more careful about what they give to humans.

[markofthebrave]

[This girl... it's an actual effort to let the insult pass. Although admittedly, Katara now cares a bit less than she did before about whether or not San will let her help.]

Are you in pain? You're moving differently.

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

[San knows she will be thinking of it anyway, so as the fight she lost with Tattoi plays out in her mind, she tries to give as little information as possible. But this is what she's really in a bad mood about, Katara]

A demon came into the forest.

[markofthebrave]

...What, here? What happened?

[forestpride.livejournal.com]

We fought.

[she's not inclined to say any more, but Katara can watch San get beaten, if she wants. It's been days since then, of course, and Moro managed to get the healing spirit to help her, but still]