Flying through a gray sky over a large forested area; it is covered somewhat by fog, and looks rather menacing.
While Aang was steering Appa. Sokka was sharpening a whetstone against his machete, while Katara is studying a scroll. I was just rubbing Momo's tummy as I fed him some nuts.
We were slowly flying downwards. Sokka whips his head towards Aang. "Hey, you taking us down for a reason?"
I turn my head to view Aang staring down at the forest. Almost as if he were in a trance. "Aang? Why are we going down?" Sokka aggressively asks, once again since Aang didn't reply to his previous question.
A dazed Aang shakes his head. "What? I didn't even notice."
We continue to glide towards the forest. "Are you noticing now?"
Katara moves to the front of the saddle. "Is something wrong?"
Aang still seems somewhat dazed by the large forest. "I know this is going to sound weird, but I think the swamp is....calling to me."
Sokka holds his stomach. "Is it telling you where we can get something to eat?"
"No, I... I think it wants us to land there."
"No offense to the swamp, but I don't see any land there to land on." Sokka shrugs.
"I don't know. Bumi said to learn earthbending I would have to wait and listen, and now I'm actually hearing the earth. Do you want me to ignore it?"
Sokka, Katara, Momo and I look over Appa's saddle down at the swamp.
"Yes." Sokka replies.
"I don't know." Katara shivers. "There's something ominous about that place."
It did seem and look kind of sketchy.
Momo hides inside Appa's saddle as Appa groans.
"See," Sokka says standing up to look over at Aang. "Even Appa and Momo don't like it here."
"Okay," Aang resignedly said. "Since everyone feels so strongly about this," he looks at the swamp once more. "Bye swamp." He shakes Appa's rope. "Yip, Yip!"
Appa groans and flies upward, away from the swamp. A tornado suddenly emerges from out of nowhere, heading right for Appa. Sokka, hearing something, turns around and finally sees it. He jabs his finger into my back muscle.
I spin towards him and notice the tornado flying our way. How the spirits?! It came outta no where.
Sokka panicked. "You better throw in an extra yip!We gotta move!"
Appa starts to fly faster, attempting to avoid the tornado, however he is not fast enough to get away.
As the tornado begins to move closer to Appa, the wind pulls Sokka right off from the saddle. I manage to grab his hand, holding him back from flying into the tornado.
Aang jumps up onto Appa's saddle and creates an air shield around Appa, stabilizing the air and allowing Sokka to fall back into the saddle, uninjured.
The wind sucks Appa, who is still protected by the air shield, into the tornado.
Aang struggles to maintain the air shield, however as it shrinks, one of Appa's legs slips from the protective air, thereby breaking it.
Aang, Katara, Sokka and I fall off Appa and into the swamp. Aang lands lightly in the muddy water as the siblings and I land quite roughly.
I sat up from the dirty water, choking on the disgusting swamp juice.
Sokka patted my back, helping me choke out the water that was lodged in my lungs. "You okay?"
I let out a few more coughs. "That was disgusting."
Aang curiously looks around the swamp and at us. "Where's Appa and Momo?" He jumps up to the top of the trees, looking for his animal friends as he uses the height to search for them. "Appa! Momo!"
While Aang was looking for his animals, the siblings and I were still in the swamp water.
"Sokka, you've got an elbow leech." Katara points, blandly.
He spins around, panicking, trying to find it. "Where? Where?"
I looked over at Sokka's elbow, noticing the long leech.
Katara crossed her arms and sarcastically said. "Where do you think?"
Ripping off the elbow leech and throwing it behind to Katara. Sokka cries out angrily. "Why do things keep attaching to me?!"
Aang swings over the muddied water on a vine, waiting for it to stop moving so he can land.
"You couldn't find them?" I ask the airbender.
Aang jumps down into the muddy water. "No, and the tornado... it just disappeared."
Sokka, Katara and I turn to face the darkness in the swamp.
Sokka immediately takes out his machete and starts cutting the vines with it. "We better speed things up."
I observe the older boy swinging his machete around. "Maybe you should be a little nicer to the swamp."
Sokka continues to cut the vines. "V, these are just plants. Do you want me to say please and thank you as I swing my machete back and forth?"
I roll my eyes at him.
"M-Maybe you should listen to Venus." Katara hesitatingly says. "Something about this place feels... alive."
Sokka stops swinging for a second. "I'm sure there are lots of things that are alive here and if we don't wanna wind up getting eaten by them, we need to find Appa as fast as we can."
Sokka continues to slice through the vines. We simply let him cut through them because we had no other plan.
The day was slowly getting darker, we were now walking through a foggier area of the swamp.
"Appa! Momo!" Katara had been yelling for the past five hours.
"There's no way they can hear us and no way we can see them. We'll have to make camp for the night."
Several flies surround Sokka. He swings his machete at them, trying to shoo them away.
At that moment, I watched as a huge bubble of swamp gas rise from the muddy water below us. The gas grows closer to Aang, Katara, Sokka and I.
"What was that?" Katara lightly panicked.
"It was nothing," I say observing the swamp below. "It's just swamp gas."
Sokka extends his hand out looking over the swamp. "Look, there's nothing supernatural going on here."
The four of us groan as the smell reaches us, with Sokka waving his hand in front of his nose as Katara clamps hers shut.
Suddenly, the quiet is shattered by a terrifying scream, causing us all to scream and huddle together, looking around wide-eyed for the source.
"Sokka, I'm scared."
"I think I just peed myself," he whispers.
We all finally spot a small, grumpy-looking white bird. It opens its beak extremely wide, emitting the terrifying scream, and flutters off.
Sweating, Sokka's voice cracks. "I think we should build a fire."
Sokka runs off to a nearby tree and cuts pieces of wood from its roots. Aang, Katara and I walk up to him.
"Sokka," Aang warns, "the longer we're here, the more I think you shouldn't be doing do that."
"No, I asked the swamp. It said this was fine." He grabs a nearby root. "Right, swamp?" He shakes the root and fakes a reply. "No problem, Sokka!"
Sokka continues to chop up the roots, while Aang and I look somewhat annoyed.
Later on after making camp, the four of us are huddled around a fire.
Katara glances around at the swamp. "Does anyone else get the feeling that we're being watched?"
My eyes widen in shock. "I've been feeling like that since we got here,"
Katara snickers as she points over to her brother. I turn to him to notice him staring me down. "Maybe, it's just Sokka,"
Aang snickers along with Katara, but Sokka didn't find the amusement.
My gaze was still fixed on Sokka as I watch a fly buzzing around him. He doesn't seem scared anymore. "Please, we're all alone out here."
Sokka uses his machete to try and scare the fly off. The fly turns into a big, shining ball of light. It flies away from us, illuminating over a dozen pairs of eyes staring at them. We turn around and see them.
"Except for them." Aang tried to bring us all together to huddle, but Sokka pushed him into his sister as he hugged me individually.
Sokka's calm demeanor vanishes. "Right, except for them."
Even though, I was frightened shitlessly. I couldn't help but notice that Sokka's hands had dug tightly into my hip.
I tried not to make a strange sound by biting my bottom lip to prevent anything from coming out my mouth. I swear it's not what you think. Sokka's nails and fingers were just digging into my skin and it hurt, that's all....
After a while, everyone seemed to calm down.
As his grip on my waist loosened, Sokka had eventually fallen asleep onto me. Before looking over my shoulder to see the sleeping boy, I rub the side of my hips.
He seemed so adorable and innocent. His eyes shut, showing off his gorgeous lashes. Seriously, I was envious of them. He has such silky skin. His chest was heaving up and down, and I could hear the light snore coming from him.
As I turned away from his face, I pursed my lips. Okay, this was kind of strange, I was just watching him while he slept, so I decided to rest my eyes and drift into sleep myself.
✼ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ✼
I feel like my body is being pulled, and I am jolted awake. When I see the vines encircling my body, I scream and open my eyes.
I witness that my friends were also in the predicament I was in. I watched as they each are dragged into the mist. I was the last to be dragged away.
I tried to reach into my pocket to look for my knive as I grunted against the vines. I cut the vines that were subsequently choking me.
On Yue, I swear I could hear the vines hiss as I successfully and violently chopped and stabbed them up into pieces.
I coughed so hard that I fell to my knees. Ugh, this stupid swamp is trying to kill me.
After me coughing session. I began to walk around, looking for my friends or even Appa and Momo.
I was led through a location where white flowers covered the tree roots. I could make out low mumbles calling out my name.
"Venus, Venus, Venus."
I cocked my head to the side. "Sokka?"
"Venus, baby Venus."
My eye squinted as I witnessed a female figure from the distance.
I cautiously approached the women. As the figure turned their body to reveal themselves. I pulled out a knife from behind my pocket as I stumbled backward.
I couldn't stop looking at the stunning women in front of me. She was horrible on the inside, despite the fact that her exterior beauty had always astonished me.
"M-mommy?" My eyes began to fill up with water as my lips quivered.
"My dear, Venus. I apologize for everything that has happened between us. I was stressed out because I had just lost your father and had to take care of you on my own. I reverted to my previous ways and..."
I interrupted her mid-sentence. "It-It..w-wasn't...the-" I struggled to form sentences as I choked on my words. "Do you realize how difficult it was for me, too? I had no recollection of my dead father and, on top of that, my own mother despised me for some reason. You never physically abused me, but you did mentally, and that really fucked me up later while growing up. I-I became you, I don't want to be you. Ever."
I was just beginning to feel like myself again. I was healing...I was getting better, all because of my friends and the people I surround myself with. But, no, of course I was starting to hallucinate my problematic mother who caused me so much pain and suffering.
I held out my hand to steady my knife as my mother got closer to me. "Stay away from me."
"V-"
"I said stay away!" In rage and fear, I flung my knife at my mother causing her figure to poof away in midair as the tip of the knife had gotten stuck into a tree trunk.
My eyes wondered around my surrounding as I began to hyperventilate. I need to get the fuck outta here. I couldn't move, though.
I cover my eyes with my hands as I begin to spill my tears into them. My knees plunged into the swamp water because my legs felt so weak, I couldn't stand any longer.
I stood up after a while to retrieve my knife from the tree in which I had thrown in. I observed the knifes sharp edges.
*Warning! Self harm*
I drew the knife closer to me as I lingered it around my body.
My eyes were still welling with hot tears. I just want this to end. I want to be relieved of all my suffering. I want to reunite with my father again.
I hesitantly attempted to insert the knife into my skin after placing it next to my heart. My hands were trembling, but I couldn't do it, I didn't have the courage to do it.
I couldn't do that to Sokka....I couldn't do it to Katara and Aang. And my beloved Kyoshi warrior friends.
My hands dropped to my side, causing the knife to fall into the swamp water.
I was drawn to the weapon's knife because of its bright shine in the water. I started slowly pulling down my pants, stopping just above my kneecaps so that I could only wear my underwear.
I wrapped the sharp edge of the knife around my thighs after picking it up.
I inhaled and exhaled; snot was slipping out of my nose, I know my eyes were red and puffy from all the crying. I just needed to do it, just one more time. I haven't cut my self in over three years.
As I began to slice the blade around my thigh, I made many and small cuts around the old scars, which were now somewhat healed.
I hissed as I began to cry and lowly whale even more, but for some reason I kept going. I sliced my thighs with the knife, trying not to go too deep into my skin. Blood drew from my cuts as it dripped down my thighs and into the water.
"Venus! Venus! Venus! Where are you?"
I gasped pulling up my pants and cursing to myself from the pain and discomfort that my cuts were causing from just pulling my pants up.
As I quickly wiped my tears and the liquid snot from my nose, I started walking in the direction of the voices that were calling my name.
I better not be hallucinating again.
Suddenly, I hear the screams getting louder as my friends come barreling down from one of the tree root. They hit me in the back, knocking me over along with them.
While Katara's body was laying around my thighs, I let out a loud hiss. I tried not to scream out in pain as I gently rolled her off of me.
Sokka stands up and puts his machete away. "What do you guys think you're doing? I've been looking all over for you!"
Katara has not moved, although her hand is on her head as she sits on the root we have fallen onto. "Well, I've been wandering around looking for you!"
Aang looks away before airbending himself to his feet. "I was chasing some girl."
"What girl?" Aang walks over to Katara and helps her up before rubbing his ear.
"I don't know. I heard laughing and I saw some girl in a fancy dress."
Aang also took my hand and pulled me on my feet. I clenched my jaw together, trying not to slip a few tears. Maybe if I didn't think about the cuts. I wouldn't feel them.
Sokka sarcastically, with exaggeration hand movements speaks. "Well, there must be a tea party here and we just didn't get our invitations!"
"I thought I saw mom,"
Sokka looks at his sister a little dazed, but shakes his head. "Look, we were all just scared and hungry and our minds were playing tricks on us. That's why we all saw things out here."
"You saw something too?" I ask lowly.
Sokka looks away for a moment, before turning back away from me, embarrassed. "I thought I saw Yue. But, that doesn't prove anything. Look, I think about her...at times," Sokka turns back around taking a step closer to his sister. "And you saw Mom, someone you miss a lot." Sokka stopped as he walked near me. "Venus, who did you see?"
My dazed eyes met his. "My mom," I really didn't want to talk about it. I say it quietly, trying not to choke on my words and begin to bawl my eyes again.
"Oh," Sokka's voice dropped low. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." I gave him my best fake smile. Hopefully, he bought it.
"What about me?" Aang asks. "I didn't know the girl I saw. And all our visions led us right here."
Aang begins walking around as if looking for something.
"Okay... so where's here? The middle of the swamp?" Katara questions.
Aang looks around, his gaze finally resting on a massive tree growing right next to him. My eyes pan up to reveal exactly how enormous the tree really is.
"Yeah, the center... it's the heart of the swamp. It's been calling us here. I knew it." Aang smiles.
"It's just a tree." Sokka raises his arms above his head. "It can't call anyone. For the last time, there's nothing after us and there's nothing magical happening here."
As Sokka finishes his sentence, a seaweed monster jumps out from the water. The group huddles together and screams but we all separate as the monster begins to attack us.
The seaweed monster goes after Sokka first as the four of us split up, each running in different directions.
Sokka is picked up and swung around, only being released as Aang uses airbending to slice part of the monster's arm off. The monster goes after Aang, flicking the monk away and into the surrounding trees.
Sokka is fighting with the vines that had him captured only seconds ago, and so intent was he at destroying them, he failed to notice a column rising behind himself.
The column attaches to the seaweed monster and Sokka is swiped from the ground. Katara and I comes to his rescue this time as she slices at the monster's arm and I crawled myself around the monster, stabbing it numerous of times.
It did not have the desired effect, as more vines grew to patch up the hole that Katara's waterbending created. The seaweed monster had flung me off his shoulders.
Katara manages to push the monster back a little, however it is not long before she is flung away as well.
Sokka is absorbed into the chest of the monster.
"Sokka!" I ran over to the monster, trying my best to pull Sokka out of its grasp, but the seaweed monster grabbed me as well as it began to walk off. It's large hands held me by my stomach, squeezing my insides.
"Venus!" Sokka shouted.
The younger kids fight of the seaweed monster. After Aang uses a tornado-like airbending move, Katara freezes Sokka in place before shooting him with water, expelling him from the monster's body.
I had slipped out of the monster's grasp, as I fell hard onto the swamp water beneath us.
The fight ends as Katara begins to waterbend repeatedly at the monster, slicing through the vines and not allowing the monster to regenerate. A person is seen inside the monster, bending the vines.
"There's someone in there!" I shout over to the waterbender. "He's bending the vines!"
With a final slice, Katara cuts through the mask on the seaweed monster, the whole top half falling off.
However, this does not stop the monster, and vines spring out of the marsh, capturing Katara high on a pillar. Aang airbends over to the monster using his native bending, rips apart the vines.
Aang's voice is demanding offensive. "Why did you call me here if you just wanted to kill us!?"
"Wait!" The vines drop to reveal a slightly larger man wearing nothing but a leaf loincloth. "I didn't call you here."
Aang shares a look of confusion with Sokka, who is in an defensive stance. "We were flying over and I heard something calling to me, telling me to land."
"He's the Avatar." Sokka announces, "Stuff like this happens to us a lot."
I slap the back of Sokka's head. "You can't keep going around, telling random people, Aang is the avatar."
"Venus!" Sokka loudly whines as he rubs the back of his head. "He's lives in a swamppp. Whose he going to tell?"
"The Avatar?" The half naked leaf man speaks. "Come with me."
Eventually, the man who told us his name was Huu is leading us to the top of the giant tree Aang noticed earlier.
Huu bends a vine out of the way. "I protect the swamp from folks that want to hurt it, like this fella with his big knife."
"See, completely reasonable." Sokka finally puts his machete away. "Not a monster, just a regular guy defending his home. Nothing mystical about it."
"Oh, the swamp is a mystical place all right. It's sacred. I reached enlightenment right here under the banyan-grove tree." Huu sits on the tree, looking at the group as he explains. "I heard it calling me, just like you did."
Sokka humors Huu. "Sure you did. It seems real chatty." He elbows me in the side numerous of times as he cracks his joke.
However, I didn't smile. Because I typically am the only one laughing at his jokes, Sokka turned his head toward me in concern. "Are you okay? What did you see in your vision?"
Replaying seeing my mother again and the words she was saying, honestly made my stomach feel queasy. I think I'm going to pass out.
In an effort to keep from throwing up, I press my lips against my hand, while making a fist. "I'm..g-good."
While Huu is explaining, I slowly look more and more at the swamp. It shows how large the banyan-grove tree is compared to the others, but at the final magnification, it is impossible to distinguish it from the other trees.
"See this whole swamp is actually just one tree spread out over miles. Branches spread and sink, take root, and spread some more. One big, living organism. Just like the entire world."
Aang looks Huu. He is still openly skeptical. "I get how the tree is one big thing, but the whole world?"
"Sure. You think you're any different from me or your friends or this tree? If you listen hard enough, you can hear every living thing breathing together. You can feel everything growing. We're all living together, even if most folks don't act like it. We all have the same roots and we are all branches of the same tree."
We all decided to sit as we listened to Huu. "But what did our visions mean?"
"In the swamp, we see visions of people we've lost, people we loved, folks we think are gone. But the swamp tells us they're not. We're still connected to them. Time is an illusion and so is death."
I looked down at my hands that were fidgeting in my lap. The vision I had of my mother...did I still love her deep down? After everything she has done to me.
I am a person who loves being loved. If you don't reciprocate your love for me, I begin to question myself. Am I cable of being loved? Why didn't my father just stay out of the war, so we could be a happy family? Why did my mom neglect me so much and turn to her old ways? Why did Jet start to become so malicious? Did I hurt Neymar, leaving the North Pole? I just fell alone when I'm not being loved by the people I love.
"But what about my vision?" Aang asks snapping me out of my deep thought. "It was someone I had never met."
"You're the Avatar. You tell me."
Aang looks down as he tries to understand. "Time is an illusion. So, it's someone I will meet."
Huu nods his head.
Sokka stands up as he begins to stretch his body. "Sorry to interrupt the lesson, but we still need to find Appa and Momo."
"I think I know how to find them." Aang kneels down and places his hand on the tree. "Everything is connected." After a couple of minutes, the tree starts to glow a gold color and Aang stands up. "Come on! We've got to hurry!"
Everyone promptly rush to the animals' aid. When we finally arrive, Aang and Katara use waterbending against two men who had had our animals strapped, but the swamp-dwellers use waterbending themselves.
Upon this discovery, the fighting stops. The two men unite with Huu; who had followed us, showing the waterbenders know each other.
The group saf around a fire in the Foggy Swamp Tribe after being invited to stay over. There is a member waterbending some liquid in a pot to stirs it, and the man, Due who told us his name grabs a fish from the pot before moving over to the fire. "How you like that possum chicken?" He offers me a kebab.
"Tastes just like arctic hen. So why were you guys so interested in eating Appa?" Sokka indicates the catgator lying behind Tho. "You've got plenty of those big things wandering around."
"You want me to eat old Slim? He's like a member of the family!"
Due pulls the fish off the branch and gives it to Slim.
"Nice slim!" Sokka throws a bug at the catgator; it bounces off his nose and he growls at Sokka, who cowers slightly.
Due laughs hysterically. "Oh, he don't eat no bugs! That's people food."
To be honest, I liked the energy of swamp people, they seemed like really nice people and were super honest, plus I loved their accents.
Tho leans in as he points his kebab at me. "Why shorty ova there, so quiet?"
I looked away from the fire. "I saw a person, in my vision that I was really trying to get over....and it made me do something bad to myself."
The group huddled around the fire remained silent from my sudden confession.
Sokka who was sitting beside me leaned in more closer to me. "What do you mean, do something to yourself?"
I tried to not make eye contact with him. "Next question."
The swamp guys uncontrollably laugh. "I reckon I like her a lot ."
I cracked a little smile.
"Where'd you say you was from?" Tho asked the water tribe siblings.
Katara smiles while Sokka is chewing nonchalantly next to her. "The South Pole."
"Didn't know there was waterbenders anywhere but here. They got a nice swamp there, do they?"
"No," Katara replies. "It's all ice and snow."
"Hmm. No wonder you left."
I let out a burst of laughter. Even though I was feeling a bit empty inside, I could never pass out on a naturally funny person. Plus, I loved the people surrounding me, they always made me feel safe.
"Look he here, I got her to laugh." Tho smiled.
Sokka rolled his eyes and then turned to Katara. "Well, I hope you realize now that nothing strange was going on here." He raises his arms for emphasis. "Just a bunch of greasy people living in a swamp."
I slightly elbowed Sokka arm. "What about the visions?"
He smiled knowing I was back to my regular self...kinda. "I told you, we were hungry. I'm eating a giant bug!"
Sokka holds up a giant bug, taking a bit of its abdomen. He swallows it with some difficulty before exhaling sharply, sticking his tongue out.
I cover a hand over my mouth. "Sokka, that was gross." I giggle lightly.
Sokka smiles placing his hand over my thigh. I wince harshly as he takes his hand away from my thigh. "Are you okay? I noticed you've been wincing a lot, Did you get hurt?"
I thought of a quick white lie. "Yeah, I fell and tripped and bruised my legs, earlier while I was looking for you guys."
Sokka smiled waving his huge bug around. "Why didn't you just say so? I knew you were in some weird mood for a reason. I'll let Katara know and she'll heal you."
I didn't want to instigate the conversation even more, so I just nodded my head, agreeing.
Momo crawls into my lap as he opens his mouth for some food. I feed him the kebab I was holding in my hand.
Momo shrieks, throwing the kebab into the distance.
"But what about when the tree showed me where Appa and Momo were?" Aang asked answering Sokka's previous question.
"That's Avatar stuff, that doesn't count." Sokka then talks To Huu. "The only thing I can't figure out is how you made that tornado that sucked us down."
"I can't do anything like that. I just bend the water in the plants." Huu answers.
"Well, no accounting for weather. Still, there's absolutely nothing mysterious about the swamp."
I quickly stand up to grab the kebab Momo had thrown, but soon regret it as I fall to my knees.
"Venus!" Sokka scolds. "Be careful, you're injured." He takes my waist and pulls me into him as I am now sitting on his lap.
I blush, trying not to make too much eye contact with him because If I did. I would be boning him here, in front of everybody.
A/n: To be honest, I felt like this chapter was kinda bad, but more towards the end. I lowkey gave up. If you or anyone you know is suffering from depression or self harm, call the number 1-800-273-TALK (8255) :))