The Blind Waterbender

Nightmare

Panic At The Disco- House of Memories. Definitely one of my top ten favorites for music. As usual not my song or video, just another song I was listening to while writing this chapter-all that jazz. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter. I had a lot of fun writing it. Enjoy!
-Rose

---------

Lyra's POV

We traveled for a few days. With each day our supplies dwindled down until we had virtually nothing.

Appa had slowed with shedding but Asura took his place instead her remaining baby feathers were falling off everywhere.

My head fractured to pieces, and my mental health dropped to an all time low.

My worsening insomnia kept me awake for several days on end at a time.

I had begun to hear voices, my bending grew disconnected with my body, and I sensed things that weren't there. Then when La let me borrow his vision it was more blurry than usual not to mention I saw dad, and mom.

When I did sleep it was brief, the fear of nightmares kept me up.

I grew paranoid, the voices and dreams combined into vivid realities in my mind.

I had slept for two hours last night when the nightmares strick me.

It began with me standing in a vortex of water. I stood on the stony ocean floor several hundred feet below the the surface. The water vortex constricted like a glassy serpent around me and the vortex closed closer around me.

I wasn't blind but I wish I was. For the sights I saw in the dark, glassy water was terrifying, and fear inducing.

Vomit stemmed up from my stomach like sour butter.

In the water floated multiple figures, I could hear and recognize their screams. I didn't even understand how it was possible but that wasn't what my thoughts dwelled on.

Icy bullets pelted down from the sky making me wince each time the sharp numbness hit.

In the navy water were several people, including but not limited to;

Zuko, Iroh, Katara, Aang, Sokka, dad, and... and mom.

A few floated limply in the water with a pained look of dead sorrow, mom! Her hair was singed unevenly on one side and her lips and extremities were blue. On her neck sat a slash like burn that met the singed hair, it continued to bleed as if it was fresh. But looking at her, her body looked decomposed, and old.

Dad coughed, and breathed in the water and I screamed out to him. In response he simply went limp and his face relaxed.

Katara on the other hand was flailing wildly in the watery abyss around the her. She flexed her fingers, trying desperately to bend the water so she could get some air, but her struggle was useless.

Sokka tried to swim towards me with a look of  pure fear. He reached out to me and I stretched out to him as I far as I could.

My fingertips briefly touched his in own. But it wasn't enough, he was swept away in the glass serpent's current and he was pulled far, far away into the black abyss beyond the glass.

I screamed for him to come back, commanding the water to do as I ordered.

It did the opposite and I turned to see Iroh with a sad smile as his eyes drifted close, and he nodded with one last reassuring look as his eyes closed like broken blinds.

Aang floated by me with his eyes, and tattoos glowing. It didn't matter though, despite his commands the serpentine creature hissed and  slapped him hard with its tail, sending him in the same inky abyss Sokka fell into previously.

Even as I screamed after him.

I noticed the water had turned the color scarlet and bits of fur and feathers fell around me.

I screamed in agony and collapsed on my knees.

"Lyra!" Zuko screamed for me.

His scarred face, not much unlike my own carried a masked fear, and agony. The look he disguised was what broke me.

I reached for him begging my soul, and the spirits to spare him. Please, anyone! I don't care if it meant my life. Just take it! Spare them!

No amount of begging could save him though. I had managed to grab him and he gasped for air. I thought I'd done it. I saved at least someone.

He kissed me with such care, and love. I didn't want it to end. However before his arms could wrap gently around me, he was ripped away.

Something in me snapped and I gave an animalistic cry of rage, and agony. I collapsed on my knees and the serpent found its torture complete. The constricting spinning, hurricane-like walls collapsed in on itself.

I fought violently against the uncontrollable water. But I had nothing to lose, nothing to fight for, why did it matter if I lived or died? My lungs burned and my hands closed around my throat as if I was being violently choked. I flailed violent. Kicking my feet which way, and that. My struggle ended fruitlessly and blackness took me in it's cold, suffocating grasp. I finally breathed and the suffocating darkness seemed to relax it's grasp on me instead shaking me gently, as if to cradle me.

"Lyra.."

"Lyra.."

"Lyra!"

"Lyra!"

"LYRA!"

"LYRA WAKE UP, IT'S JUST A DREAM!" The voice morphed into Sokka's.

Was this it? Was I going to join them? I closed my eyes welcoming the cold until the gentle swaying turned to full on shaking.

Dream? No, this couldn't be a dream.

I was joining everyone. Or maybe I was going somewhere else because I couldn't save them in time..

"I'm sorry" I said in a choked voice "if only I had saved you guys."

"Saved who?" The voice taunted me softly, as if it were a piece of sandpaper, it held darkness, but it didn't seem inherently bad. Like the gray area between good and evil. It was helping me to stop something from happening to itself.

"Everyone." I responded as if it was obvious.

"But you can't even save yourself" the voice argued back, "why should you bare the weight of others troubles when you can barely shoulder your own?"

The voice made a good point, but I had to save them first.

"You didn't realize it, but you had to put yourself first. Something you have much difficulty doing. If you had done that you could've saved them.. if you continue to neglect yourself in such ways there will be no hope for the people of the water tribes." The voice explained sourly "and I would much prefer to continue broadening my collection of faces. It is extremely hard to do so if all the mortals carrying faces are dead." It ended it's sentence coldly, and bitterly.

The voice left and the watery darkness turned blinding white and my eyes snapped open.

---

Soooo I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Stay safe and healthy my Bookworms and have a fantastic day! I'll see y'all in the next one! Until next time my Bookworms, love y'all!
-Rose