Balance

𝗖𝗵. 𝟮𝟭

Easy enough— she thought to herself as she dropped her shaky arms down to her sides and went to airbend herself up and onto the thin branches of the tress... but when she tried, nothing happened, not even a puff.

Elua frowned, looking down at her hands in confusion, but then tried again... still, nothing happened, and her eyes went wide with shock and panic, "What the h–"

Suddenly, an unfamiliar giggle cut off Elua before she could finish her sentence, causing the young Airbender to gasp out of shock and take a step backward... only to tumble over an uncovered tree root and slip back onto the rugged and uneven ground below with a semi-painful sounding 'thud' noise. Another laugh was not something she expected to hear after that. Elua swiftly lifted her hand and pushed her dark hair—that had fallen out of its earlier braid—out of her cedar eyes and look back up to where the giggle had come from, quickly spotting a familiar-looking light flickering around in front of her, its soft laughter still echoing off of the leafy green tree trunks.

"I've seen you before– who are you?" Elua all but whispered as she stared at it in some sort of awe, "-or... what are you?" she frowned again out of confusion, but before she got a response to her inquiry, it took off deeper into the forest's labyrinth of bamboo trees, shoots, and tall grasses, "Hey– no, wait!"

Elua didn't waste another second before she scrambled back up to her feet and immediately sped off after the little flickering light without a second thought to stop her from it—seeing this small creature as the one and only thing that could possibly tell her just where she was now. She flew through the bamboo forest, twisting and turning with every move that the small thing in front of her made, swatting a few leafy branches out of her way as she ran, and narrowly running into quite a few of the trees as she kept up a swift speed even without her bending. How far did this forest grow? She couldn't help but wonder to herself while she kept running for what seemed like miles upon miles of woodland...

The creature of flickering light soon slowed down when it inched closer to a small clearing encircled by the forest's tall trees, and as soon as Elua noticed its shift, she too came to a slow pace of strolling opposed to a swift pursuit of tracking. It didn't run from her this time. This time, it stayed still, in one place—center to the clearing while it made a soft humming tone that resembled that of a human lullaby. It was quite... tranquil now.

As Elua caught her breath, she inched closer to the light, and as she moved, it felt as if the breeze around her blew harder with each and every step she took—like a soft rode of silk wrapping around her body, brushing over her dark locks as if it were a mother's hand, and bringing all of the leaves off of the branches around the area as all of them began to encircle her and this soft white light that hovered ever so gracefully in front of her eyes. She breathed calmly and gently as she reached her hand out towards it. It felt warm, like a campfire almost, but not quite the same, warmer in the sense of... a hand—and when the light met her soft hand, it shined, it shined so brightly that she almost had to cover her eyes... but she didn't, and when the brilliance faded, the light was gone and someone else had taken its place.

"...Lohna?"

How was this possible? The woman that now stood in front of her had been dead for almost one hundred years. She had perished during one of the Fire Nation attacks along with the rest of the Air Nomads—or, at least, that was what Elua had assumed to have ensued unto her as it had been what had happened to Monk Gyatso back at the Southern Temple. It was more than likely that the same exact thing had occurred with both the Western and Eastern temples as well... but then, if that were true, how was she here? Was she still alive? No, of course not, that was impossible; even if she had survived the Fire Nation attacks, she would have been well over a hundred and thirty by now... it was simply impossible.