Cause Some Trouble, Chapter 8
LOL man I keep forgetting to update this fic on here. Is anyone here even still reading this one? Because I'm starting to think that the only people who give a crap about CST anymore are myself, my betas, one person on DeviantART, and one person on FF.net. I'll keep posting it anyway though, whatever. Anyway this fic has been such a problem child lately. I had writer's block from mid-November up until a couple weeks ago, when the inspiration juices just randomly started flowing again. So now I'll post the two most recent chapters, and hopefully Chapter 10 will be ready to rock and roll soon.
CAUSE SOME TROUBLE
At the edge of the Si Wong, the sand dunes leveled out; the soft, shifting sand gave way to dry, hard-packed soil. Thin blades of grass jutted up through cracks in the dirt, dotting the landscape with green.
The Fire Nation prisoners milled about uneasily as the convoy crew unloaded them from the gliders. With the last one finally on the ground, the crew leader gave them all a contemptuous glare.
“Go on, get outta here!” he barked. Four of the crew sent crests of sand at the prisoners and they scattered, darting off into the grasslands beyond the desert’s edge.
Kuei and Bosco stood and looked out over the merchant’s road they’d be following. Kuei smiled to himself. As much as he’d miss the Aqila Tribe, he was excited to be on the move again-he had a mission to carry out now, and he was looking forward to all the new places it might take him.
Of course, it helped that he’d have good company along the way. His smile widened even more as he looked back towards Zafirah and Basam. The twins were saying their goodbyes to the convoy crew. After a last round of hugs and well-wishes, the twins stepped back and the crews took their posts. The gliders turned and sailed off into the open desert once more, and the twins shouldered their packs and walked over to Kuei and his bear. They pulled down their face coverings and took in the road ahead of them.
“So, this is it,” Basam commented, squinting into the distance. “Off to see the world and fight Firebenders.”
“Yes indeed,” Kuei agreed cheerily. His friends didn’t seem to share his enthusiasm, and he felt his heart sink. Were they regretting their decision already? “What’s the matter?” he asked. The two exchanged uncertain glances.
“Well, uh… it’s just that, we’ve never been outside the desert before,” Zafirah said, fiddling with the strap of her pack.
“It’s all we’ve ever known,” Basam added. He shrugged one shoulder and glanced up at the sky.
“Ah,” Kuei murmured. Now there was a feeling he knew quite well. “If it’s any consolation, I understand what it’s like,” he offered. “I’d spent my whole life in Ba Sing Se. Before the coup, I didn’t even know how to use spark rocks. I’d certainly never slept outdoors.” He shook his head sheepishly.
Zafirah shot an amused look at her brother. “Y’know, somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” she commented lightly. Then she hoisted her pack higher up on her shoulders and strode past Kuei, towards the road. “All right then, where’re we headed?”
“Er, sorry?” Kuei asked, blinking in surprise.
“You’re the guy with the plan and the map,” Basam pointed out.
“Right, of course,” Kuei muttered. He slung his pack to the ground and rummaged through it to find his map. “Well, ah, we could… hmm. Um…” He scanned the map quickly. I didn’t think this far ahead! He felt Zafirah’s stare fixed on him.
“You have no idea, do you?” she asked bemusedly. “He has no idea,” she added to her brother, who choked back a laugh. Flustered, Kuei folded the map up and stuffed it back into his bag.
“I say we forget the map for now!” he proclaimed. “Let’s see where the road takes us, shall we?”
“Ha, works for me! I like the way you think, Kuei,” Basam announced. He started off down the road, scratching behind Bosco’s ear as he passed by the bear.
Zafirah followed her brother, smirking at Kuei. “Keep up the quick thinking, and maybe we’ll actually have a plan by the day of the eclipse,” she quipped.
“One can only hope,” Kuei agreed dryly.
/////////////////////////////
After half a day’s walking, the weedy grasslands at the desert’s edge gave way to stunted bushes. The twisted, dry shrubs got taller and stronger as they went; by nightfall, their little group reached the forest.
Zafirah wasn’t sure how she felt about the forest. The shadowy trees loomed out of the dark with those grabby-looking branches. They reached out to snag her clothes and up to block out the stars. Leaves crunched and crackled under her feet, so different from the soft sand she knew. It just seemed so cramped next to the wide-open desert.
She didn’t get much sleep that night. The Spirits-be-damned trees were full of odd noises, and the ground was much too hard under her thin sleeping blanket. Then the morning came, and all that changed as soon as she opened her eyes.
She stood up slowly, half wondering if she was still asleep. Careful not to wake her sleeping companions, she picked her way over to the edge of the clearing they’d set up camp in the night before. Zafirah sat down, still moving slow, and plucked one of the bright purple blossoms around her feet. She sometimes saw them in the Oasis, sprouting up in weak little clusters wherever they could find shade.
But this many? All growing in one place? Nope. She lifted it to her nose and took a long sniff.
“Flowers,” she murmured, grinning widely.
////////////////////////////
Two days out from the desert’s edge…
“We’re lost.”
“We are not lost, Zafirah.”
“Okay, then where are we?”
“Ah, um…”
“See? Lost.”
“Well, if you would just give me a chance to consult the map-“
“Oh, will you two quit it?” Basam groaned. “I still have a stomachache from those berries last night. I don’t need a headache to go with it!”
“I did tell you not to eat those,” Kuei pointed out.
“Yeah, after I already ate a bunch,” Basam grumbled. Zafirah rolled her eyes and looked around, taking stock of their situation. A surge of glee edged through her annoyance and she bit back a smile. Trees! Lovely trees! The thrill of seeing them still hadn’t worn off.
They’d gone off the road that morning to find food-between the three of them and Bosco, the little food they’d brought from the Aqila Tribe had vanished fast. When they’d turned back to find the road again… well, all those trees looked exactly the same to Zafirah and Basam. And Kuei the city boy hadn’t been much help, either.
They pressed on through the forest with Kuei and his map in the lead. She wouldn’t have admitted it, but Zafirah didn’t mind being lost in the forest all that much. Everything was so green here! She tilted her head back, feeling the sunlight on her face as it trailed down through the leaves.
“Hey, listen to that,” Basam said suddenly. Kuei paused and tilted his head to the side.
“Yes, I hear it,” he said.
“Hear what?” asked Zafirah, still busy with her trees. Then she heard it, too-a soft, steady, rushing noise.
“It sounds like flowing water,” Kuei commented. He veered to the left and cut through a clump of bushes. Zafirah glanced at her brother, and they shrugged at each other. They were already lost, so why not? Bosco followed behind the three of them, growling in protest as he trundled through the thick shrubs.
It didn’t take long to find the source of the sound. They broke through a line of trees and into another clearing, bigger than the one they’d slept in. A wide stream wound its way into the clearing from their left. In the middle of the clearing, it swirled into a wide, glassy pond. Its calm surface gleamed in the sunlight, rippling just slightly.
Basam let out a low whistle. “Wow,” he commented. “Now there’s something you don’t get back home!” Kuei smiled and made a sound of agreement.
“I think this would be a nice place to stop and rest for a while,” he said. He looked sideways at Zafirah, his forehead creasing into a small frown when she didn’t answer. All she could do was grin at him. “What is it?” he asked.
“I am so glad we decided to come with you,” she announced. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting in that water.”
///////////////////////////
“Hey, Kuei,” Zafirah called lazily.
“Yes?” he called back. The Sandbender trailed her fingers through the gently rippling water by the edge of the pond.
“How’d you know about this Day of Black Sun thing, anyway?” she asked. She lifted her hand from the water and watched the little droplets falling from her fingertips.
“Yeah,” Basam chimed in. “We didn’t even know there was gonna be an eclipse this summer-and we definitely didn’t know an eclipse could take Firebending away.”
Kuei looked back and forth between his traveling companions: they were both sitting in the sunlight, drying out their wet clothes from wading in the pond. Zafirah sat reclining against a rock by the bank of the pond; Basam lay stretched out on the ground with his lower legs in the water and his fingers laced behind his head. The sun gleamed faintly off of Zafirah’s wet hair, hanging in thick tendrils around her face.
Spirits, they still don’t know who I am! he realized. He knew about the eclipse because he was the Earth King, and the Avatar had come to request military support for an invasion of the Fire Nation capitol. His mind raced as he tried to figure out what to say.
“The Avatar told me. In Ba Sing Se,” he blurted. “I know you think I invented the story to fool Ghashiun at the oasis, Zafirah, but I really did meet him while he was in the city,” he added quickly.
The corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk that made Kuei’s palms sweat a little. “What, and he just told you all about it over tea and hotcakes?” she teased.
“He… he wanted people to know. So they could prepare for it,” Kuei said.
“So how did the Avatar find out about it?” Basam asked. “Some kinda Spirit World thing?”
Kuei laughed sheepishly, remembering the siblings’ tales about Professor Zei. “Well, actually… he and his friends found the information in Wan Shi Tong’s library in the desert.” The twins gaped at him.
“No way! Seriously? You mean Zei was actually right about that place?” Basam exclaimed.
“Apparently so,” Kuei agreed. He glanced up at the sky, eager to steer the conversation away from his past. “We ought to move on, I think.”
“Aww,” Zafirah sighed, sweeping her hand through the water again. “It’s so nice here, though!”
“There will be other ponds,” Kuei assured her with a smile. She rose with another dramatic sigh and sauntered past him, taking care to flick droplets of water from her hair onto his head.
“All right then, let’s get going,” she said.
//////////////////////////
I should tell them the truth. Zafirah and Basam were his friends now, his traveling companions. Surely it was wrong to keep his identity from them? He glanced over at them, walking alongside him on the road (which they had finally found again).
He’d had his reasons for withholding his identity at the beginning, on that first night in the Misty Palms Oasis: he was supposed to be traveling incognito. He’d set out to see the world through the eyes of a humble man, after all. Telling them that he was the Earth King would have defeated the purpose of being there.
Then the Fire Nation attacked the Oasis and the three of them had set out on their task of warning the other tribes. And like the eclipse, the matter of his identity had slipped his mind. It hadn’t even occurred to him to tell Qamar and the rest of the Aqila Tribe his true identity.
Still, upon reflection, he supposed that telling Qamar really wouldn’t have done any good. He was in exile, a king stripped of his power. And a powerless king was just a man with a fancy title. Titles couldn’t provide troops or supplies, things that might make a difference on the battlefield. He’d come to the Aqila Tribe with nothing but the shirt on his back, and even that had been borrowed.
But now here he was, out on the road with Zafirah and Basam. They were out of danger for the moment, and the eclipse was still a month away. And when the Day of Black Sun came, Avatar Aang might-
Aang! Kuei winced at the memory of the boy’s limp body in Katara’s arms, his round face ashen grey. The Avatar had still been unconscious when Kuei had left the group. He recalled that Sokka had plans for a small-scale invasion of the Fire Nation capitol; but what if Aang didn’t recover in time?
Kuei wasn’t sure what a lightning strike would do to the human body, but he had to assume that the damage would be extensive. He’d seen the look on Katara’s face after one of her healing sessons-the anguish on her face had been heartbreaking. What if Aang was still too weak to fight when the eclipse came?
What if he never woke up?
It was an awful thought, but he had to consider the possibility. And if that happened… the Fire Nation would win the war. Which meant Ba Sing Se would stay firmly under the Fire Lord’s rule… and Kuei’s exile would become permanent.
But even if Aang does recover in time for the eclipse, and even if he defeats the Fire Lord, I’m still in exile right now. I’m still just a man with a fancy, useless title, Kuei told himself.
A sharp jab in his right upper arm shook him from his musings. He looked over to see Zafirah frowning at him, her brow furrowed and her head tilted ever so slightly.
“Hey, you still with us?” she asked.
“Of course,” he assured her. She nodded, grinned briefly, then trotted on ahead. This is my task now, Kuei thought as he watched her go. I have to put these worries out of my head for the time being. All I can do is prepare for the eclipse. For now, I’m just another Earth Kingdom man doing his best to fight the Fire Nation. If the Avatar succeeds and Ba Sing Se is liberated… well, I’ll deal with that matter when I come to it. But for now, I’m just Kuei.
///////////////////////////
CAUSE SOME TROUBLE
At the edge of the Si Wong, the sand dunes leveled out; the soft, shifting sand gave way to dry, hard-packed soil. Thin blades of grass jutted up through cracks in the dirt, dotting the landscape with green.
The Fire Nation prisoners milled about uneasily as the convoy crew unloaded them from the gliders. With the last one finally on the ground, the crew leader gave them all a contemptuous glare.
“Go on, get outta here!” he barked. Four of the crew sent crests of sand at the prisoners and they scattered, darting off into the grasslands beyond the desert’s edge.
Kuei and Bosco stood and looked out over the merchant’s road they’d be following. Kuei smiled to himself. As much as he’d miss the Aqila Tribe, he was excited to be on the move again-he had a mission to carry out now, and he was looking forward to all the new places it might take him.
Of course, it helped that he’d have good company along the way. His smile widened even more as he looked back towards Zafirah and Basam. The twins were saying their goodbyes to the convoy crew. After a last round of hugs and well-wishes, the twins stepped back and the crews took their posts. The gliders turned and sailed off into the open desert once more, and the twins shouldered their packs and walked over to Kuei and his bear. They pulled down their face coverings and took in the road ahead of them.
“So, this is it,” Basam commented, squinting into the distance. “Off to see the world and fight Firebenders.”
“Yes indeed,” Kuei agreed cheerily. His friends didn’t seem to share his enthusiasm, and he felt his heart sink. Were they regretting their decision already? “What’s the matter?” he asked. The two exchanged uncertain glances.
“Well, uh… it’s just that, we’ve never been outside the desert before,” Zafirah said, fiddling with the strap of her pack.
“It’s all we’ve ever known,” Basam added. He shrugged one shoulder and glanced up at the sky.
“Ah,” Kuei murmured. Now there was a feeling he knew quite well. “If it’s any consolation, I understand what it’s like,” he offered. “I’d spent my whole life in Ba Sing Se. Before the coup, I didn’t even know how to use spark rocks. I’d certainly never slept outdoors.” He shook his head sheepishly.
Zafirah shot an amused look at her brother. “Y’know, somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” she commented lightly. Then she hoisted her pack higher up on her shoulders and strode past Kuei, towards the road. “All right then, where’re we headed?”
“Er, sorry?” Kuei asked, blinking in surprise.
“You’re the guy with the plan and the map,” Basam pointed out.
“Right, of course,” Kuei muttered. He slung his pack to the ground and rummaged through it to find his map. “Well, ah, we could… hmm. Um…” He scanned the map quickly. I didn’t think this far ahead! He felt Zafirah’s stare fixed on him.
“You have no idea, do you?” she asked bemusedly. “He has no idea,” she added to her brother, who choked back a laugh. Flustered, Kuei folded the map up and stuffed it back into his bag.
“I say we forget the map for now!” he proclaimed. “Let’s see where the road takes us, shall we?”
“Ha, works for me! I like the way you think, Kuei,” Basam announced. He started off down the road, scratching behind Bosco’s ear as he passed by the bear.
Zafirah followed her brother, smirking at Kuei. “Keep up the quick thinking, and maybe we’ll actually have a plan by the day of the eclipse,” she quipped.
“One can only hope,” Kuei agreed dryly.
/////////////////////////////
After half a day’s walking, the weedy grasslands at the desert’s edge gave way to stunted bushes. The twisted, dry shrubs got taller and stronger as they went; by nightfall, their little group reached the forest.
Zafirah wasn’t sure how she felt about the forest. The shadowy trees loomed out of the dark with those grabby-looking branches. They reached out to snag her clothes and up to block out the stars. Leaves crunched and crackled under her feet, so different from the soft sand she knew. It just seemed so cramped next to the wide-open desert.
She didn’t get much sleep that night. The Spirits-be-damned trees were full of odd noises, and the ground was much too hard under her thin sleeping blanket. Then the morning came, and all that changed as soon as she opened her eyes.
She stood up slowly, half wondering if she was still asleep. Careful not to wake her sleeping companions, she picked her way over to the edge of the clearing they’d set up camp in the night before. Zafirah sat down, still moving slow, and plucked one of the bright purple blossoms around her feet. She sometimes saw them in the Oasis, sprouting up in weak little clusters wherever they could find shade.
But this many? All growing in one place? Nope. She lifted it to her nose and took a long sniff.
“Flowers,” she murmured, grinning widely.
////////////////////////////
Two days out from the desert’s edge…
“We’re lost.”
“We are not lost, Zafirah.”
“Okay, then where are we?”
“Ah, um…”
“See? Lost.”
“Well, if you would just give me a chance to consult the map-“
“Oh, will you two quit it?” Basam groaned. “I still have a stomachache from those berries last night. I don’t need a headache to go with it!”
“I did tell you not to eat those,” Kuei pointed out.
“Yeah, after I already ate a bunch,” Basam grumbled. Zafirah rolled her eyes and looked around, taking stock of their situation. A surge of glee edged through her annoyance and she bit back a smile. Trees! Lovely trees! The thrill of seeing them still hadn’t worn off.
They’d gone off the road that morning to find food-between the three of them and Bosco, the little food they’d brought from the Aqila Tribe had vanished fast. When they’d turned back to find the road again… well, all those trees looked exactly the same to Zafirah and Basam. And Kuei the city boy hadn’t been much help, either.
They pressed on through the forest with Kuei and his map in the lead. She wouldn’t have admitted it, but Zafirah didn’t mind being lost in the forest all that much. Everything was so green here! She tilted her head back, feeling the sunlight on her face as it trailed down through the leaves.
“Hey, listen to that,” Basam said suddenly. Kuei paused and tilted his head to the side.
“Yes, I hear it,” he said.
“Hear what?” asked Zafirah, still busy with her trees. Then she heard it, too-a soft, steady, rushing noise.
“It sounds like flowing water,” Kuei commented. He veered to the left and cut through a clump of bushes. Zafirah glanced at her brother, and they shrugged at each other. They were already lost, so why not? Bosco followed behind the three of them, growling in protest as he trundled through the thick shrubs.
It didn’t take long to find the source of the sound. They broke through a line of trees and into another clearing, bigger than the one they’d slept in. A wide stream wound its way into the clearing from their left. In the middle of the clearing, it swirled into a wide, glassy pond. Its calm surface gleamed in the sunlight, rippling just slightly.
Basam let out a low whistle. “Wow,” he commented. “Now there’s something you don’t get back home!” Kuei smiled and made a sound of agreement.
“I think this would be a nice place to stop and rest for a while,” he said. He looked sideways at Zafirah, his forehead creasing into a small frown when she didn’t answer. All she could do was grin at him. “What is it?” he asked.
“I am so glad we decided to come with you,” she announced. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting in that water.”
///////////////////////////
“Hey, Kuei,” Zafirah called lazily.
“Yes?” he called back. The Sandbender trailed her fingers through the gently rippling water by the edge of the pond.
“How’d you know about this Day of Black Sun thing, anyway?” she asked. She lifted her hand from the water and watched the little droplets falling from her fingertips.
“Yeah,” Basam chimed in. “We didn’t even know there was gonna be an eclipse this summer-and we definitely didn’t know an eclipse could take Firebending away.”
Kuei looked back and forth between his traveling companions: they were both sitting in the sunlight, drying out their wet clothes from wading in the pond. Zafirah sat reclining against a rock by the bank of the pond; Basam lay stretched out on the ground with his lower legs in the water and his fingers laced behind his head. The sun gleamed faintly off of Zafirah’s wet hair, hanging in thick tendrils around her face.
Spirits, they still don’t know who I am! he realized. He knew about the eclipse because he was the Earth King, and the Avatar had come to request military support for an invasion of the Fire Nation capitol. His mind raced as he tried to figure out what to say.
“The Avatar told me. In Ba Sing Se,” he blurted. “I know you think I invented the story to fool Ghashiun at the oasis, Zafirah, but I really did meet him while he was in the city,” he added quickly.
The corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk that made Kuei’s palms sweat a little. “What, and he just told you all about it over tea and hotcakes?” she teased.
“He… he wanted people to know. So they could prepare for it,” Kuei said.
“So how did the Avatar find out about it?” Basam asked. “Some kinda Spirit World thing?”
Kuei laughed sheepishly, remembering the siblings’ tales about Professor Zei. “Well, actually… he and his friends found the information in Wan Shi Tong’s library in the desert.” The twins gaped at him.
“No way! Seriously? You mean Zei was actually right about that place?” Basam exclaimed.
“Apparently so,” Kuei agreed. He glanced up at the sky, eager to steer the conversation away from his past. “We ought to move on, I think.”
“Aww,” Zafirah sighed, sweeping her hand through the water again. “It’s so nice here, though!”
“There will be other ponds,” Kuei assured her with a smile. She rose with another dramatic sigh and sauntered past him, taking care to flick droplets of water from her hair onto his head.
“All right then, let’s get going,” she said.
//////////////////////////
I should tell them the truth. Zafirah and Basam were his friends now, his traveling companions. Surely it was wrong to keep his identity from them? He glanced over at them, walking alongside him on the road (which they had finally found again).
He’d had his reasons for withholding his identity at the beginning, on that first night in the Misty Palms Oasis: he was supposed to be traveling incognito. He’d set out to see the world through the eyes of a humble man, after all. Telling them that he was the Earth King would have defeated the purpose of being there.
Then the Fire Nation attacked the Oasis and the three of them had set out on their task of warning the other tribes. And like the eclipse, the matter of his identity had slipped his mind. It hadn’t even occurred to him to tell Qamar and the rest of the Aqila Tribe his true identity.
Still, upon reflection, he supposed that telling Qamar really wouldn’t have done any good. He was in exile, a king stripped of his power. And a powerless king was just a man with a fancy title. Titles couldn’t provide troops or supplies, things that might make a difference on the battlefield. He’d come to the Aqila Tribe with nothing but the shirt on his back, and even that had been borrowed.
But now here he was, out on the road with Zafirah and Basam. They were out of danger for the moment, and the eclipse was still a month away. And when the Day of Black Sun came, Avatar Aang might-
Aang! Kuei winced at the memory of the boy’s limp body in Katara’s arms, his round face ashen grey. The Avatar had still been unconscious when Kuei had left the group. He recalled that Sokka had plans for a small-scale invasion of the Fire Nation capitol; but what if Aang didn’t recover in time?
Kuei wasn’t sure what a lightning strike would do to the human body, but he had to assume that the damage would be extensive. He’d seen the look on Katara’s face after one of her healing sessons-the anguish on her face had been heartbreaking. What if Aang was still too weak to fight when the eclipse came?
What if he never woke up?
It was an awful thought, but he had to consider the possibility. And if that happened… the Fire Nation would win the war. Which meant Ba Sing Se would stay firmly under the Fire Lord’s rule… and Kuei’s exile would become permanent.
But even if Aang does recover in time for the eclipse, and even if he defeats the Fire Lord, I’m still in exile right now. I’m still just a man with a fancy, useless title, Kuei told himself.
A sharp jab in his right upper arm shook him from his musings. He looked over to see Zafirah frowning at him, her brow furrowed and her head tilted ever so slightly.
“Hey, you still with us?” she asked.
“Of course,” he assured her. She nodded, grinned briefly, then trotted on ahead. This is my task now, Kuei thought as he watched her go. I have to put these worries out of my head for the time being. All I can do is prepare for the eclipse. For now, I’m just another Earth Kingdom man doing his best to fight the Fire Nation. If the Avatar succeeds and Ba Sing Se is liberated… well, I’ll deal with that matter when I come to it. But for now, I’m just Kuei.
///////////////////////////