Bolin was way too excited to take Lemaya up on her offer to go visit Kyoshi Island. At least, according to his brother who was not too fond of the idea of once more being on a boat for weeks on end.
"But it will be her last week on the island," Bolin had pouted, placing his hands pleadingly before his brother's face. "What if she goes back to the South and we never get a chance to see her again?"
Mako had rolled his eyes at his brother's dramatics. "It's not like she's disappearing forever."
"You say that, but then in ten months when we can't get a hold of her because she's gone like the wind, you'll look back on this moment and remember what could have been."
Needless to say, Bolin had convinced his brother to get on the ship. Not for the soundness of Bolin's logic, per se, but because Asami had agreed to go and get them there much faster than a ship ever could.
"That was..."
"Amazing. Wonderful. Thrilling?" Asmai smiled widely as she shook her hair out of her leather helmet.
"I was gonna say scary, but sure, we can go with that."
Mako climbed off first, settling his feet in the lush green fields so that Bolin could toss all their bags down to him. Bolin was very glad that his brother had taken that initiative because it meant that he wasn't the one who had to carry all their bags to the village.
Not that he planned on doing that anyway.
"Lemaya!" Bolin brightened considerably and rushed down to the ground as he noticed his friend make her way across the empty valley. "It's so good to see you!"
Laughing lightly, Lemaya gave Bolin a tight squeeze. "It's good to see you guys too.." Then, she turned to Mako and Asami with an amused brow. "So whose idea was it to fly a plane all the way across the ocean?"
"I think the better question is what happened to make said person consider that idea in the first place," Mako grimaced as he gave Lemaya a side hug. Bolin shot his brother a look. Not that it was a secret or anything, but he didn't think it would be the kindest of them to go and spill business that was not theirs.
Bolin couldn't really talk, he did it all the time, but he was trying to be better.
"Woah, what is that?"
Lemaya turned her head to the small child who had worked their way into the valley and said, "That's a plane, Nou. My friend Asami over there made it." Nou's eyes shone wide.
"You made that?" she asked.
"All by myself," Asami chuckled as she bent down to the little girl's height. "Maybe I'll give you and your friends a ride in it before I leave."
Nou shot her head up to Lemaya, a begging look in her eyes. "Can I?"
"Why are you asking me and not your dad?" Lemaya nearly toppled over as Nou raced past her, back to the other kids who had gathered on the valley's edge to look at the cool thing that had flown over their island. "Sorry about that, my uncle's kids haven't seen anything outside of the island."
Asami shook her head as she pulled Lemaya into a final hug. "No worries at all. How have you been?"
"I've been good. Though, trying to come up with a trip half as exciting as you and Bolin's vacation proved quite a challenge." Asami rolled her eyes playfully as she pulled away and Bolin couldn't help but flit his eyes nervously between them. When Asami said nothing more than that she was sure Lemaya did amazing, Bolin let out a quiet sigh.
He really didn't want to be tasked with taking apart another airship again.
"The only things to really do here are go to the beach, hang out in the village, or climb the mountains. Since there are technically beaches in Republic City, I thought we could go climb the mountain."
Mako frowned as he spread out the napkin Lemaya handed to him over his legs. "We're going hiking?"
"Do you have a problem with that?" Lemaya returned, giving Mako a tense stare. Bolin didn't know what his brother was complaining for, Lemaya had given them quite a nice room to stay in and brought them very delicious food.
Biting into a warm piece of pie, Bolin mumbled, "He'll get over it. When do we leave?"
"Hmm.." Lemaya paused as she turned her wrist to look at a pretend watch on her arm. "At whatever time you guys finish your food."
Bolin nearly spat out the raspberries in his mouth.
"Wait, you mean we don't get to rest on those nice and comfortable beds in the guest house?" Lemaya shook her head at Bolin with a smile.
"No, you will."
"Later tonight when we come back?" Asami hummed, watching Lemaya with careful eyes.
"More like in a couple days when we come back, but yeah."
Mako set down his cup with a loud thud. "You've got to be kidding me. You're also taking us camping?" Lemaya shrugged.
"What? You guys act like it's the worst thing in the world."
"This was supposed to be a relaxing vacation," Bolin sighed as he savored the last bite of good food he'd get for a while, "Why are we going out into the woods at night?"
"So you can get behind hiking but not camping? Besides, it's not even dark outside yet," Lemaya said, pointing at the various open windows all letting in a warm afternoon breeze.
"But it will be. And then we'll be stranded in the wilderness, all lost and afraid."
He was being very dramatic. They were nowhere close to being stranded in the wilderness and by the time Lemaya had told them they made it to their destination, the sun was still high in the sky. Even the tents she had brought were far more luxurious than some of the nicer places Bolin and Mako used to squat in, so there wasn't really anything to complain about.
But then again, he wasn't his brother who had a weird aversion to flying bugs.
Mako yelped again as he swatted his hands in front of his face. "You know they won't hurt you if you don't hurt them," Asami said as she watched Mako helplessly try to keep himself bug-free.
"That's a lie the bugs made up to get us to lower our guards to them."
"Since when could bugs speak to us?" Lemaya asked out loud as she dropped a hefty stack of firewood between the four of them and their respective tents behind where each of their bodies sat.
Bolin leaned over to his brother and gently cupped his ears. Then, he turned to Asami and Lemaya and said, "Since the burning fever he got from a bug bite seven years made him hallucinate the ground talking to him."
Mako smacked his brother's hands away as Asami and Lemaya tried their best not to laugh. "It wasn't a hallucination. It was real!"
"Whatever you say, bro."
As the sun started to set over the ridge of the nearest mountain, they listened to Lemaya tell stories about what she'd been up to the past few months over the fire they struggled to light up. Mako had offered to just use his bending, but the others had insisted they could do it themselves. And many curses and angry shouts later, they had something to keep them warm during the long night. Not that they really needed it, the air was beyond humid in the dense forest.
"So how's she doing in the South?" Asami asked softly as she passed a marshmallow to her right. Bolin took it without much thought, more focused on Lemaya's answer than anything. He hadn't heard anything from Korra since he last saw her and though he understood why, he really missed her.
Lemaya kept herself quiet by chewing slowly on her marshmallow. Then, after a while, she said, "We haven't talked since she left, so I don't know for sure, but I think she's doing alright." She swallowed thickly. "Is that bad? Not knowing how my girlfriend is?"
Unintentionally, Lemaya's eyes drifted over to Mako who definitely couldn't speak in that moment. "I don't think so, but maybe that doesn't mean much coming from me."
"Not with all your late-night guests it doesn't," Bolin muttered to what he thought was himself.
Asami's jaw slacked. "Late-night guests?" she repeated, her eyes shuffling between the brothers. "Please elaborate."
"Bolin doesn't know what he's talking about," Mako said quickly. Changing the subject, he turned back to Lemaya. "I think that it's normal not to know everything about your partner."
Lemaya, on the other hand, wasn't exactly ready to move on, but she could tell Mako would not budge on that matter. At least not yet. So, instead, she said, "That is true. Sometimes I just feel like I don't know what I'm doing. And it's not like Korra's the first person I've ever dated, but this time just feels...different."
"You and Korra are lucky, you guys already knew so much about each other going in," Asami began, letting a deep breath pass her lips as she leaned back on her hands. "Some of us don't get that good of a start. So maybe that's what's different, you guys gotta figure out a new way to be you."
Bolin and Mako shared a glance. Bolin sometimes felt like he was intruding on Asami and Lemaya when they would have their deep hear-to-hearts and he knew Mako felt the same way. It wasn't because they weren't close—they were each other's closest friends—it was just that neither brother had ever really known people that they had been vulnerable like that with besides each other.
"That sounded personal," Lemaya said into the air, a slight smile pulling on her lips as she and Asami felt a similar memory flash across their minds.
"Yeah, well it was."
"Does it have anything to do with you tearing that ship up?" Mako said, suddenly feeling very left out of their over-the-campfire chat.
Asami tilted her head to the side with a sly grin. "If I answer honestly, will you tell us about what Bolin was talking about earlier?" Mako paused and genuinely contemplated the thought as his brother watched the unfolding situation rather curiously. For once, he couldn't exactly chime in with some relationship squabble of his own.
And it was actually kind of nice.
"I think I can agree to that." Bolin was a little surprised at Mako's answer, but he let the fact that he wasn't trying to keep a wall up anymore bring a smile to his face. For once, it felt as if things were becoming as normal as Bolin used to wish their lives could be.
"Then yes," Asami answered. Mako gave her a look.
"Please elaborate," he teased as a sea of laughter erupted from Bolin and Lemaya. Asami's face flushed a light shade of red as she tried to shush everyone around the circle. The irony wasn't lost on any of them that Asami's ex-boyfriend of all people was goading her about her love life, but that was just how things were with them.
Asami's nostrils flared with annoyance at Mako as she said, "I decided that I'd rather spend my time actually living my life instead of worrying about all the things I don't know, won't be told, and can't control." She rested her left pointer finger against her middle finger, wagging her three fingers in Mako's face. "Is that enough elaboration for you?"
"Definitely not, but I'll let it slide this time." Mako reached for his already empty cup of a drink he wouldn't let Bolin have and lifted it in the air. With a wide grin, he cheered, "To living life!" Lemaya shot Asami and Bolin furtive glances. The drinks had finally started to hit.
"To living life!" Asami chorused, finding Mako rather funny when he wasn't being so stiff and strict.
"I'd raise my drink if I had one," Bolin sighed as he raised his almost completely eaten marshmallow toward the sky.
Lemaya laughed. "It's okay, Bolin. We'll just be left out of their little unity pact." Asami furrowed her brows.
"But you do have a drink, Lemaya," she said.
"Yeah, but that sounded an awful lot like a single-person revelation and I rebuke that type of negative energy." Lemaya caught Asami's stare as she crossed her arms in an 'x' over her chest. Pursing her lips, she added, "No offense."
Asami let a sigh roll right off her shoulders. "None taken. I let it all go when I tore that ship apart piece by piece."
"What did you even do with all that scrap metal?" Mako asked absentmindedly as he peered one eye into his cup.
"I built that plane."
Bolin almost choked on his last bit of marshmallow. "You built that plane in three months?" Asami shrugged.
"It gave me something to do." Then, as soon as her last words left her lips, she turned to Mako and said, "But apparently some other people had many things they were up to with their time." Bolin bit back a laugh at how Asami made no sense in the slightest as her words began to slur together, but he didn't want to interrupt lest Mako take it as a chance to not tell them what he said he would.
Mako groaned. "I was hoping you guys forgot."
"Of course we didn't. Now tell us everything orrr we'll have Bolin do it." Asami nodded her head rather slowly in agreement with Lemaya's words and Bolin couldn't stop the laugh that started to flow past his lips after he swallowed the last bite of his marshmallow. He didn't know how Lemaya got those drinks, but he was grateful. Watching them try and pretend they were completely present in the moment was really funny.
"What? Bolin doesn't even know what he's talking about, he'd do bad job telling the story." Mako readjusted his sitting position and cleared his throat, clearly trying to capture all his rambling thoughts as they stumbled around in his brain. "Basically, I've had a couple people over lately."
"And by a couple he means fifty."
Now, Bolin was lying straight through his teeth, but it was entirely worth it to see the looks on Asami and Lemaya's faces. And how distraught his brother immediately became.
"Okay, that's just way way way way..." Mako paused as he tried to reorient himself among the far too many ways he had said. "Way too many. It was like five."
"I think Chief Beifong will see it all the same," Bolin shrugged, "But what do I know? I'm just the innocent young brother who doesn't have a clue in the world."
Mako threw his hands up in his defense against the roaring laughter emanating from both Lemaya and Asami. Their own thoughts long forgotten, all that now came to mind being joke upon joke about what Mako could possibly be getting up to. "Well that's certainly one way to become less stuck up," Lemaya snorted as she blew a few strands of her hair out of her face.
"I mean it work. I do find that a good scr—"
Cutting Asami off with the loudest cough he could muster, Mako flared his eyes wildly at the two and gestured to his brother with a crazy flush falling over his cheeks. "Excuse me, innocent young brother who doesn't have a clue in the world over here." Asami and Lemaya mumbled playful apologies as Bolin raised his brows in heavy amusement.
He really hoped they would not remember this conversation in the slightest and he'd just get to look back on it and laugh whenever he pleased. "It's alright, I've heard worse," Bolin grimaced as he pushed himself to his feet. Swiping his plants clean, he gave each of his friends a bright smile as he said, "What time are we getting up tomorrow to reach the peak of the mountain?"
Mako's eyes narrowed furiously as he whipped his head around the darkened woods like he'd be able to see anything at all. "I thought this was the peak?" Lemaya bubbled out a laugh.
"No, we're resting because you whine so much," she retorted. Asami snickered at the hiccups that lined her words and rose to her feet as well, stretching her arms against the tiredness that was creeping into them.
"Rest sounds good," she yawned. "Let's return...in the morning."
---------------
When the day broke and Lemaya woke them all out of their sleep with a blood curdling scream because a rabbit-hog was breathing over her face, Bolin tried his best not to mull over everything they had said the night before. It was really difficult, though, because it was all he could think about as he rolled around in his tiny sleeping back as various flying bugs nipped at his skin.
And while Bolin was trying not to be the teller of secrets, his nosy reserves were feeling awfully empty with the lack of updates he had gotten over the past few months. The most exciting thing that had happened prior to the trip was him finding out his brother was finally acting like a typical teenager for once and doing normal young people things, and that was honestly more disturbing than anything.
Bolin didn't know how he was going to survive after the trip without anything interesting going on in his life. As he came to an abrupt stop behind his brother's nearly collapsed body, Bolin realized that maybe he had spoken too soon.
"Duya? Aiyi?"
The two kids snapped their heads up and gasped, nearly dropping the hefty bags in their arms. Lemaya and Asami tried to figure out how Bolin knew the random children as Mako caught his breath, his eyes locking onto what they had in their hands.
Slowly raising a finger, he hoarsely said, "Isn't that...from the village?" Lemaya's eyes almost popped out of her skull as she noticed the rounded edge of a golden gong sticking out of one bag and an etched tablet sticking out of the other.
The kids ultimately took that as their cue to leave.
"Hey!" she yelled after them as they dashed into the words without a second thought. Lemaya whiled around to Bolin, her voice raised into a crazed panic. "Bolin, who the heck were those kids?"
"I'm not totally sure, but I don't think we should let them get away."
"So you're saying we need to go tackle the children?" Asami sighed, rubbing her temples lightly as Bolin gulped.
The more he thought about it, the less appealing going after them sounded. Bolin was quite content to never speak to those children again. "Or we could just let them go?" he offered with a sheepish smile.
One sharp look from Lemaya, though, and his tune was immediately changed.
Almost as if he had been faking the soreness from walking up the mountain to try and get out of hiking, Mako sprung upward, nearly knocking his brother to the ground before he began to chase after the kids. Lemaya, Asami, and Bolin paused to watch the spot where he had been for a good few seconds before running after him.
They swatted at the thick brushes of the forest as they dashed after the kids. The massive trees soon gave way to wider valleys and the four of them began to gain on Duya and Aiyi. Their little legs struggled under the weight of the stolen goods in their arms, and they nearly managed to reach the second wave of dense forest before Bolin came to an abrupt stop and stamped his foot in the ground.
A deep fissure crackled through the ground, curving straight ahead toward where the kids were trying to escape. A flow of lava spouted out of the ground and Aiyi and Duya stumbled backward. Before they could even hit the ground, Lemaya reached for one of the metal fans at her waist and snapped it forward, coating the kids in a wave of water that she froze over their legs.
The bags dropped from their hands as they tried to wriggle free from the cool ice. "That was awesome you two," Asami marveled between breaths as she pushed her hair out of her face. Lemaya smiled as she flicked her fan closed.
"Thanks, I've been practicing."
Bolin paid the compliment no mind as he scrambled past his brother to look Duya and Aiyi right in the eyes. They looked more annoyed to see him than anything, but Bolin didn't let their child-sized judgment stop him from asking, "What are you two doing here?"
Duya rolled his eyes. "What are you doing here?" he countered.
"I asked you first."
"I asked you second."
Mako pulled his brother back from the kid's face and placed a placating smile over his lips. Then, almost immediately after, he lit a single flame over his pointer finger and pointed it at the kid with the shaved head. Their slight smiles faltered as a look of fear flashed across their eyes. "Answer my brother's question or the bald one gets it."
"Woah, that seems a little extreme," Lemaya murmured as she awkwardly bent down next to all of their feet to pull the burlap sacks toward her. "I just wanted the stuff back."
Bolin scoffed. "I'd say that look you gave me back there was pretty aggressive to just let them go with a warning."
"What can I say, hangovers make me grumpy. And Mako's incessant complaining didn't help."
"You were the one who suggested walking up a large rock, not me," he shot back.
"Um, excuse me?" The bald kid coughed awkwardly. "Can we skip to the part where you guys decide to let us go?"
"And why would we do that?" Asami hummed as she peered over Lemaya's shoulder. "Because you didn't get away with stealing a gong but no mallet?"
"You don't need a mallet to hit a gong," Duya huffed as he shook his head. Then, he remembered he couldn't move his body at all and he said, "This is ridiculous, let us go!"
Putting out the fire on his finger, Mako furrowed his brows. These kids sounded nothing like how his brother described them. "Wait. Bolin, are you sure these are those same two kids?"
They looked a little taller than last time, but Bolin was fairly certain it was them or he was having the craziest dream ever. Both were entirely possible, but he was hoping this wasn't a dream. This trip would make an excellent story to tell people one day.
"I mean, they look just like them."
"Maybe because it is us, idiot." Aiyi wrinkled her nose as a drop of water pattered from the sky. Slowly but surely, rain started to fall around them, drenching them in a bath of warm water. "Come on, you're gonna make us miss the moon shower."
"The moon shower?" Lemaya asked.
"Listen, you can have the gong and the tablet back afterwards. We were going to return them anyways, but first can you let us go so we can get to the Rivervalley Cave before the moon reaches its peak?"
Asami felt a chill roll down her spine, not just from the rain. "After what exactly?"
"After we talk to the moon spirit, duh."
The four of them were sure that the kids were lying, but they let them go just for the fun of it. It's not like they had anything better to do, and Lemaya was most certainly not going to let the kids out of her sight with precious family heirlooms in their possession.
Passing curious looks between themselves, they all silently watched Duya and Aiyi as they moved around a couple of belongings that they had stowed away in the cave. Every so often, Mako would flinch as a bug got too close to his face and Asami would finish drying off each of their bags that had gotten damp in the rain. Lemaya was busy studying every inch of the cave and Bolin could tell that she had never been inside of it.
It was honestly really cool, but he was trying to keep a stern face lest the children think he wouldn't take care of them if need be. Smooth stone coated the inside of the circular walls, leading all the way up to an open skylight perfectly shaped for the beauty of the full moon.
The quiet anticipation of whatever Duya and Aiyi were going to do was making Bolin a little nervous. He started wondering if that was just the effect they had on people. He couldn't imagine how two kids could create such a sense of unease in anyone, but, then again, he and Mako were probably worse once upon a time.
"So.." Bolin trailed off as he slowly scooted his way over to Duya. The boy didn't acknowledge him as he filled a flat wooden bowl up with the clearest water Bolin had ever seen. Clearing his throat rhythmically, Bolin sat up a bit straighter as Duya flared a sharp exhale out of his nostrils.
"What?"
Bolin pursed his lips. "I was just wondering what you were doing with that water."
"It's for reflecting the moon's image."
"Right, right. And why exactly do you want to do that?"
"So the moon spirit will have something to appear to us through." Duya sighed as he set the bottle down with a sharp clank. "You know, your hovering is really annoying."
"This whole mystery seance act is annoying, too," Bolin returned. Crossing his arms over his chest, he asked, "What happened to kidnapping people in alleyways?"
"That got boring," Duya sassed sarcastically.
"So you turned to a life of crime for a little fun?"
"We're just borrowing things, I don't see why its such a big deal." Duya pushed the bowl over to Aiyi so she could align it perfectly center with the skylight. "Besides, I doubt that you've never done anything illegal before."
Bolin shifted slightly. Duya was right, of course, but he couldn't admit that to him. "Why do you even want to summon the moon spirit anyhow?"
"Kisuta told us this really funny story and we thought we'd ask her about it. And we're hoping she can tell us where Kisuta is at the moment." Bolin blinked. He wasn't exactly the most fond of her after their meeting because she scared the living crap out of him, but that didn't mean that he didn't understand why the kids might be worried.
"Did she not tell you where she would be or something?"
"Obviously not if we're trying to find her via moon."
He could tell that Duya was resisting the urge to roll his eyes once more so he dropped it. Clearly, the kid was quite temperamental. "What exactly are the mechanics of this seance?"
"It's not a seance, it's a ritual."
"Same difference."
"Actually, they have two very different purposes," Aiyi added, suddenly appearing over Duya's head. "Seances are to summon to the dead, while rituals are used to create some sort of change or reaction." Her voice had carried across the cave because, unlike Duya, she wasn't speaking in an annoyed, monotonous whisper that Bolin struggled to hear. Lemaya perked up at her words, her eyes flashing to the bowl of water they had set up and the shining gong Aiyi had set up against a nearby rock.
"Wouldn't this technically be a seance then because Yue's, you know, dead?"
Mako clapped his hands together around a bug that had been particularly vexing him and then said, "I thought spirits were immortal. Isn't that their like whole thing?"
"They're not immortal," Asami corrected as she scrunched her nose up at Mako as he rubbed his hand along his pants. "But they're not mortal either. They're above human labels like that."
"Sounds confusing," Mako mumbled. "Why not be one or the other?"
"Because spirits aren't meant to follow the rules of our world. Otherwise, they would be here which they clearly aren't," Lemaya answered with a sigh.
"So then how are these kids expecting to speak with the moon spirit in our world?"
It was a fair question.
Their eyes turned to Aiyi and Duya as the two kids shook their heads like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "First of all, just because they don't follow our world's rules doesn't mean they can't come here from time to time or don't."
"And second, with the amount of spiritual energy pouring over from their world to ours, it's a miracle that we still need rituals to contact the spirits instead of them just showing up at our doorsteps." Duya pulled a long pendant from his pocket that reminded Bolin of those watches the hypnotist scammers used to use on the street corner across from where he and Mako slept before their Pro-bending gig.
"Are you talking about the spirit vines?" Lemaya asked out loud, her eyes moving from one kid to the other. When they both nodded hesitantly, she continued, "How do you know about those?"
"It's kinda hard not to, they've started coming out of the ground everywhere just like they did in Republic City." Aiyi dropped to the ground and folded her legs over themselves, skimming her eyes across the ancient tablet. Or, Bolin assumed it was ancient, otherwise, why would they have taken it for their ritual? "Don't worry, though, it's not like anyone blames you guys for not dealing with the issue. We know that spiritual matters are a different breed of difficult."
Duya wiped his nose as he moved across from Aiyi, mirroring her stance on the other side of the bowl. "That's not true. There's so many people complaining about it, that's why that woman is—" Duya yelped as Aiyi kicked his leg, her hands jutting out to keep the bowl steady as a warning look passed across her face. The four of them looked away, pretending like they hadn't heard whatever it was Duya had just said. Clearly, Aiyi was not messing around.
"Why would anyone blame us?" Bolin chuckled awkwardly, trying to cool the tension in the room.
"Because you're friends with Avatar Korra," Aiyi said between her teeth.
Mako narrowed his eyes. "How do you know that's us?"
"Your faces are all over the papers," Duya breathed out forcibly as he rubbed his foot. "And we're very thorough about studying the places we borrow things from."
"So you did choose this place for a reason?" Lemaya asked, crawling her way over to the bowl. The question had been chewing at her mind and she looked like she was about to burst with a million more.
"A successful ritual always starts with the perfect setting," Aiyi smiled as she relaxed her shoulders. "A friend of ours taught us that."
Mildly intrigued, Asami inched a tad closer to Lemaya just so she could see what was going on, but not far enough that the rain seeping in from the skylight could wet her drying clothes. "Did you pick the island because of its connection to the Avatar who is a known conduit for the spirit world?"
"Sorta. Back when this place was called Yokoya, a few islanders had found the Rivervalley Cave and began using it to track the passage of time given its ability to see the sky from inside the cave. I couldn't really tell you how they did it, but that's how the story goes. There's only a few places like it in the world that give you a direct glimpse of the natural processes we all have come to know, so it's places like these where we are most in tune with the spirits."
"And there's a bunch of spirit vines running under this place," Duya added with a crooked smile at the glare Aiyi shot him.
"You're ruining the mysticism."
Duya shrugged. "They don't care. They just want to know why we stole the gong and tablet." Aiyi smacked her lips and fixed her posture.
"We overheard someone say that Avatar Aang's friend Sokka made the gong and we figured it would give us a stronger connection with the moon spirit."
Lemaya snorted. "And the tablet?"
"It's so we look like we know what we're doing. Gotta appear sophisticated to spirits otherwise they'll con you out of your face or steal your soul. Sometimes both."
A moment of silence passed before Bolin burst out laughing. They sounded like such kids, and while it made sense—they were children, after all—Bolin could not take it seriously. "I'm sorry, but this is crazy. If she is supposedly going to know where your friend is, would she not already know that you guys are just faking it with the tablet?"
Aiyi and Duya looked to the ground. They hadn't exactly thought about that part.
"And it's not even nighttime. How are you guys gonna see the moon?" Mako asked, peering up at the sky.
"The moon can show even in the daytime, Mako," Asami said.
Mako furrowed his brows and Bolin could tell his mind was still a little fuzzed from the night before. "What?"
They all jumped back as a beam of light floated down into the cave like a feather, lifting the water out of the bowl with the care and expertise of a waterbender. None of them had any words, each of them doubting in their own way that anything would happen. Bolin couldn't say for sure what he had seen in the white light bathing the cavernous walls, but what he did know was that as quickly as the light appeared, it vanished, flinging the water forcefully toward the golden gong.
The ring of metal clanging against the earth echoed across the walls as the gong was flung off the rock it was perched on. For a moment, no one moved. Then, Aiyi slowly stood up, walking toward the gong as it came to a slow stop. She peered over it as the water dissipated and all that remained was a freshly cleaned surface a startling reflection staring up at her.
Her head shot upward and she jerked her hand toward Duya, urging him over. "Duya, do you see that?"
While she wasn't speaking to them, the others most certainly wanted to know what the kid had found and rushed to their feet, crowding around the gong to stare up into the ceiling of the cave. "I can't see anything," Duya said, trying to squint his eyes against the darkness.
"Look!" Aiyi insisted, pointing her finger to the gong. Looking down, Bolin was able to make out the faint glow of some rocks lodged deep in the ceiling, a light that even his eyes couldn't pick up on. The gong, however, seemed to soak up every inch of its reflection, painting a familiar picture before all of their eyes.
Asami gasped. "It's a map."
"A map of what?" Mako wondered as he bent down to get a better look.
"Looks like another island," Bolin said as he tilted his head to the side. Maybe it would make more sense at a different angle.
"But there are like a million islands!" Duya whined as he plastered his hands onto his face.
Lemaya traced her finger over the faint outline, her fingers pausing over each jut of the landmass into the space around it. Then, her eyes drifted over to a smaller island, just off the horizon of the shiny gold lining her vision. "But how many islands do you know with a landmark just on its outskirts."
"A landmark?" Aiyi asked as she tried to follow along. From the kids' inability to realize what they were staring at, Bolin figured that geography wasn't taught in How to be a Sketchy Kid 101. Luckily, that's why they were there.
"Oh, you're right. I do see it," Asami nodded as she took a step back from the gong to let the kids have more room.
"Pretty spot on, I would say," Mako continued.
Aiyi exhaled roughly. "Just tell us!"
Bolin smiled. "It's Air Temple Island."
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