markofthebrave | [ Action, Voice ] .025

[Today - hadn't been so bad. Twenty of them, maybe? It sure seemed like there were a lot less out here than they'd been led to expect, and that was only a good thing because she was tired. The weight of doing this every day was getting to her. Blood had dried in clumps in her hair, and she'd been too tired to bend it out. Now as she stood in the shower, the water collecting at her feet was pink.

It isn't supposed to be pink.

Her stomach heaves and Katara shuts her eyes and stands under the water until even the Malnosso's hotel runs out of hot water, and long after it turns cold.

The thought of going to sleep leaves her restless, and after staring at herself in the mirror too long, she goes to knock on some doors. She doesn't plan on staying long, but just - seeing - that Toph and Sokka are still all right will do her good. She hesitates, and then heads towards Caesar's door as well. When she returns, she's still awake, and so instead of a quick line that she won't respond to anyway, she makes a voice post tonight.]

Hey everyone! How are things going there?

[Hesitation.]
Nami, is... the house still standing?

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[That wins a startled laugh which fades into a small smile.] I'm sure she did.

[She turns to him.] So why are you watching this?

I'm not. [He lifts a pair of headphones he had been using before she knocked.] I'm just recording it on the journal... [He points to a table off beside the bed where he has the journal propped up near the television.] You know, just in case. It might be fun to make fun of later.

I thought we couldn't bring anything back with us?

We can't. But anything our journals can store... pictures, voices, or whatever - it stays in the journal. Sort of a handy way of sneaking stuff back, you know?

...huh. [She peers at the TV with interest now.] And you can get images from home?

[She absently touches the bracelet on her arm.]

Uh... yeah. [Well... this is really not the time for those pictures. He really, really hope she doesn't work it out on her own.]

Pretty much. You could use it for places or something. Like Ba Sing Se... the North Pole, maybe that town of stupid people.

Edited 2010-08-01 02:10 (UTC)

Huh. [She doesn't look over at him, her attention still caught by the frozen images on the screen and the possibility of actually being able to show people what their world was like. How could the Malnosso do this? Was it pulled from Sokka's head somehow, or was it actually coming from their world?]

Which town of stupid people?

[Sokka himself wasn't sure, as he knew there certainly was no video recording devices following them around.]

You know. Aunt Wu's village, where the most gullible people in the world assemble to be duped.

[That pulls her attention away from the screen.] Sokka. They weren't gullible - Aunt Wu had a lot of very good points.

There was a man who believed that he would meet his true love by wearing a certain pair of shoes... every single day! She made people's fortunes come true by making predictions that would inevitably come true because the people believed in them. Sure, she was smart, but only smart enough to trick an entire village into thinking she could see the future.

Then how do you explain the man we met on the way there - with the umbrella? He gave it to us because Aunt Wu told him to - out of a perfectly clear sky - and then once he gave it to us it started to rain!

Easy. A lot of people are able to predict the weather scientifically. Even Gran Gran would tell us when a storm was coming in based on how her joints felt. She simply told that man to take an umbrella knowing that it was likely he would come across travelers on that road, which would be the perfect way to advertise to potential customers. The timing itself was just coincidence. Kind of like when I say "things can't get worse" and they immediately do.

Are you telling me that predicting something by the way that joints feel is scientific? And you'll believe that over someone who claims to be able to see things that you and I can't?

It's not scientific! It's more... instinctive. Once you live long enough... like Gran Gran or Aunt Wu [Or Nami] you notice patterns you don't pick up on when you're young and inexperienced like us. That in itself is amazing, but it's not looking into the future.

[Katara rolls her eyes.] You're just upset because she told you you'd make yourself miserable for the rest of your life.

[She moves to flop down on to Sokka's bed and steal one of his sausages.]

I'm not upset. Besides, she managed to neglect telling either of us about Luceti. [But her final point not being any kind of point at all means, to Sokka, that he definitely won that argument. So he too partakes of a sausage to celebrate his victory.]

Why would she tell us about something that we'll forget all about when we go home?

[...more to the point - why is your bed so much more comfortable than hers? Getting tired now...]

Why tell us anything about the future? At least that would've been useful.

[Because his has sausages on it. And it's not her bed. He moves over to the other side.]

I don't know. [She smiles a little.] I think mine was pretty useful. You just didn't ask the right questions.

Yeah, of course. [He shakes his head. Sisters. They just don't get it.] Next time we see her, I'll do that.

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