Daughter of the Moon - Book Three: Fire

Chapter 12.3: The One Who Dared

- Katara -

I wasn't too sure why the mood in the temple had changed so drastically, but the atmosphere had taken a sharp turn after Elara had tried to teach Aang firebending the day prior. After she had stormed off, Aang had flown off to avoid his responsibilities again (I suppose this whole firebending thing was pretty stressful for him), and I got into a heated argument with Sokka and Toph about what our next course of action was going to be.

Sokka had put most of his efforts into chastising us for allowing Elara to push herself too far when she was so weak, and Toph kept bringing up the fact that Zuko had shown up right when we needed him (for the first time ever) and that we should accept his offer to teach Aang firebending because we weren't going to be able to find anyone else. Weirdly enough, Sokka had agreed with her—not about having Zuko as Aang's firebending teacher, per se—but he was completely on board with getting anyone else so that Elara wouldn't feel the pressure of training Aang.

But I completely disagreed. If there was one thing I knew about Elara, it was that she was tougher than nails. I knew that she was struggling and that being Aang's firebending teacher probably wasn't going to help with that, but I also knew that allowing Zuko to join our team would only make things worse. He was the reason she had been hurt, after all, and I wasn't too confident that he had completely abandoned his drive to capture Aang either.

I hovered over a large pot of rice as these thoughts twisted through my mind, scooping up several servings and passing them around to the others as they sat down for breakfast. I passed a bowl of rice to Elara and she accepted it silently as if she were only the shell of a person, but I was grateful that she was here with us and not holed up in her room. That had to count for something, right?

However, one thing still wasn't sitting right with me as I grabbed a serving for The Duke, and it didn't take long to realize that a large presence was missing. "Has anyone seen Toph?" I asked as The Duke excitedly stole the bowl from my hands.

Sokka shrugged as he went to sit next to Elara, my brother not even expressing the tiniest bit of concern for the earthbender. "I haven't seen her since she stormed off yesterday," he said casually.

"Maybe she's just exploring the air temple," Haru added as he scooped a bowl of rice for himself. "There are some pretty fun spots to practice earthbending."

"I think we should go look for her," I continued as I felt an uneasy feeling gnawing at my insides.

"Oh, let her have fun with her rocks," Sokka said as he pulled a strand of hair away from Elara's face, almost immediately turning to his own meal once he was satisfied. "I'm in no rush to have her yelling at us again."

"We can go check for her!" The Duke cheered through a mouthful of rice.

"Yeah!" Teo said as he wheeled his way over to the group. "I want to ride that tunnel down to the hall of statues again. It'll work a lot better now that I fixed my brakes."

Teo tugged excitedly at his new break before rolling off, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him as The Duke and Haru trailed after him. And just as we watched them disappear into one of the numberless passageways in the temple, our breakfast was interrupted by a low rumbling sound coming from somewhere within the walls of the ravine.

We looked up just as the ground began to shake, and with a loud crash, a huge hole erupted in the wall of the temple, and out of it crawled a tired and dirty Toph (not that she wasn't normally dirty and tired, but it seemed a little more exaggerated than normal). However, as she pulled herself out of the hole, I was surprised to see that she didn't just jump to her feet like she normally would. In fact, it seemed like she was taking extra care to not touch her feet.