parallel lines

chapter xxvii

"Well, back in my day." Sokka groaned at the way Natsuko worded her words, asking her to emphasize which part of her days, "There are a lot of spirits, born before this war and before the Spirit World was separated from our world."

"I didn't know that happened." Natsuko nodded and continued without interruption:

"There were spirits who helped humans out of pity, loathed them out of disgust, played with them out of boredom. One of the spirits residing in the Spirit World is a tall large man, as black as the darkest night sky, who smoked burnt nicotiana leaves rolled together, puffing it to make smoke, rubbing it to set fire to those who tried to take his tree down."

The fire they started began flickering, "A shapeshifter who comes from the Spirit World during the first days of the new year in hopes of finding a new victim to take their own body from, check if someone else would notice what was wrong. You know, just trick people. Not to mention, they're really fast."

A gush of wind ran passed quickly through the campsite, "A long creature of a malnourished human with skin develop to withstand the hunger until they find dead meat, pounding their feet to sound like drums headed your way when you feel like dying on your own, waiting for the light to leave your eyes before they take you to the ground. I heard they take the faces first."

The sound of a drum came ringing to their ears, "These kinds of spirits I've encountered many times, always wanting to stay in the human world before being banished back to our world. Spirits that would keep you awake until you lost all your sanity, they like human meat in distress and I quote—"Makes them juicier and delectable"."

Would you like me to go in more detail?"

Aang, Katara, and Sokka was clutching onto each other while Toph wasn't fazed by it, even when Katara had told her story about the real-life. Natsuko was just used to people who falls gullible at all she had said, most of them were true and added a bit more depth at the horror part to let them visualize well.

If it weren't for Sokka telling everybody "I-i think that's enough for now." she would've loved to continue talking of it, as if she was talking about something close to home. Sokka lets go of the grip between the three of them when Toph had heard the screams from the insides of the mountains, or what she had claimed, "Nice try."

"No, I'm serious, I hear something."

"You're probably just jumpy from the ghost stories."

"It just stopped."

"All right, now I'm getting scared."

Aang still had his arms around Katara while Momo was snuggling between the both of them, Sokka was still trying to look calm and all despite Toph feeling his heart beat faster than usual and a spike of fear and anxiety was too much coming from him. The three ran to Toph and Natsuko and clung onto them when a voice of an old woman called to them, offering them to stay in her inn for the night.

Now, that lady was from the Southern Water Tribe just like Sokka and Katara and a waterbender who was captured during the Fire Nation raid amidst the war that has been going on for a decade.

At first, everybody wasn't at all rest easy with the lady, having good intentions at first by letting them into the inn without even being asked for is already a bad sign, more so if they were someone who took a fondness to keeping some sort of puppeteering using strings in her inn hidden as if to hint at her manipulative behavior. Even when Katara was the only person who felt a connection with her, probably due to the small population of the Southern Water Tribe, Hama and Kana were acquainted or maybe yet, friends.

But it wouldn't be possible if a person of their own kin turn on them.

In a way, there is something that was fascinating to the universe wanting to prove everyone wrong, especially Sokka. So when the night of a full moon came, Hama taught Katara a Southern Water Tribe tradition that no one else was guaranteed to have done in a very long time or at least attempt to.