Mist
Chapter 3
Sokka rolled over in his bedding, and then sighed. He was having the
most difficult time sleeping that it had ever been. He usually just
conked out after only a few minutes. Usually, he had been awakened bye
Aang’s antics about beetles, snakes, and the like in his bag. Frowning
at the thought, Sokka rolled over, and tried to shape the hay that
currently resided next to him into a pillow of sorts.
“This sucks. Why do I have to be the one captured? Why not Momo? Or
Appa? God, I hate life...” Sokka pouted out as he felt the sticky
needles of hay poke into his cheek.
Angrily blowing them away, Sokka tried to think of a way to escape. He
couldn’t leave while the Prince ‘interrogated’ him. The stupid man
would probably try to kill him before he could move more than three
inches away from his bindings. Not to mention, he didn’t have a plan to
get OUT of his bindings in the first place.
He lay there shackled to his small prison. Sokka looked down to his
wrists that were starting to crust with old and dried blood. It’s
crimson colour had been dulled to a motley brown. He winced as he
twisted the cuffs expiermently, and his large clotted scabs chipped off
letting loose a sluggish flow of blood.
‘Well that wasn’t smart...’ Sokka thought sadly to himself.
Curling up upon himself, he started to wonder if Katara and Aang had
even started searching for him yet. What if they didn’t even care? He
had always known that they had something for one another. He didn’t
really care that his younger sister had found a special someone, but it
more bothered him that he didn’t have any one.
The Ice Princess had been nice, and so had Suki. He just...he just
couldn’t see himself with them for the entirety of his life. It felt as
if he were forcing himself to be close to others that people would
expect him to be with. He didn’t especially like the manly woman from
the Earth Bending tribe who had forced him to wear a dress.
Pouting in an irritated manner, Sokka tried to reason with himself that
it was custom there to dress like that. That the woman in that village
were the fighters. He closed his eyes and breathed outwardly in a
rather harsh manner. His own village didn’t have such customs. The only
customs that they had were about picking a life partner, or in the more
slang terms a ‘mate’.
Sokka rolled his eyes, and tried to think of why his tribes only rules
were about who you chose your life to be wife. In his village it wasn’t
different for a woman, and a woman to be together. Or if a man and a
man were together. It was all sacred as much as a woman and man were
together. At times, the same gender pairings pleased the God’s they
worshiped more than normal mates. Sokka never really approved of the
same gender pairings as much as his sister, and other friends cared.
Katara naturally loved everyone, and his friends were so young that
they didn’t seem to understand. He was the oldest male of his village
that hadn’t gone with the war party that his father had been part of.
He curled up closely to himself as Sokka reminded himself that pitying
himself wouldn’t get him anywhere in this situation. He sneezed, and
wipped his nose with the back of his hand.
Grimacing, Sokka looked towards the gate where his guard stood at the
ready. Scratching at his head, Sokka undid the tie that forced his hair
into a tight ponytail. Letting the locks fall down from it’s restraint,
Sokka wondered what he looked like at the moment.
A bedraggled, and disgusting mess he would think. The Water Tribe’s Man
had hair that was slick with grease from no bathes for over a week, and
his wrists were crusted in blood from it’s shackling. He sighed
heavily, and let his head thump to the floor. A disgusting mess he’d
gotten himself into.
~*~
Zuko groaned in his bed. He lashed out with fire at his wall, and the
cinders from the burn fell to the ground in a soft clump. His eyes
moved restlessly underneath his eye lids, and he sweated. Calling out
everyonce in a while, he yelled hoarsley beneath his breathe
Does eating another human being sicken you? Does it make you cringe,
and shake your head in pity? Or does it make you wonder with some
fascination what it’s like to bite into another’s flesh, and bone to
hear them moan, or scream? I wondered that. I did, and then I tried
biting myself I got to hooked on the thought that it could fix me.
Zuko moaned, and tried to deny it. A demon behmoth was stalking him,
and trying to make him think thoughts that weren’t his own. He didn’t
want whatever it was trying to tell him. He was his own person. He
didn’t have to listen to what whatever was there was saying.
I left marks in my skin where my teeth bite into my skin, and drew
blood. I felt the tendons, and muscles separate underneath my jaws, and
I almost gasped in pleasure. How do you know what it’s like unless you
try it? It’s like sex, once done, you can never have enough. I had to
have more of this glorious feeling. What if I felt my mouth fill with
the sweet taste of irony blood. It would be warm, wet, filled with
iron, and red. The color that attracts attention.
“NNNnnn!” Zuko tried to move, but it was starting to wrap around him in
large gaping tentacles. All were slimy with some sort of dark ichor
that smelled of a odd mixture of blood and urine.
Red.
Zuko struck out again with fire, only at the ceiling. The ash felt to
his face, and he twitched. It was blood that was sliming him over. A
disgusting clotting blood that begged him to drink it in. A syrupy
substance that was being controlled by the monster in his night mare.
It can mean love, blood, or death. Such odd things, and beings we
are. We watch as crows feed off of their friends, and foe alike for
they are scavengers. We are the same, and some cultures surround those
that eat humans. I wish I could know what they think.
“Leave....’m alone...” Zuko slurred out in his sleep. He tried to shove
off the tentacles that were wrappeing around him in a chocking embrace.
He fire blasted at the living, and breathing shadows. He tried to
control his Hell Fire, but couldn’t as the tentacles started to squeeze
the breath from him. It was strangulating him, and starting to crush
his bones.
The dead bodies would not be the same, they have to be living,
breathing entities. They must plead with you, and they must cry for
your forgiveness. I want to see the chunks I have taken from them, and
seen how they clutch, and try to keep themselves together. I wonder
what you think about me now? Am I so horrible that I want to taste
you?
“STOP!” Zuko screamed out to his empty room as he shot awake.
Panting heavily, The Fire Prince sweated on his mattress, and looked
about his room. He’d done it again, and started to ruin his walls with
the nightmares that kept attacking him. He had surmised that it was the
curse of being turned away by even your own father. It had started with
things fallowing him in the darkness when he was a boy, and then to
dark and slimy things grabbing at his ankles when he was at 11.
Then, when he was banished, Prince Zuko went to the horrible plant like
creature that started to eat away at his body, and soul. It had only
retired for one night, and that was the night that he had been captured
by the friends of The Avatar, and had them watching him. It seemed as
if one of their party was a guardian which kept the monsters at bay.
Something that had enveloped him like a large blanket to keep out the
shadows which chased him.
He’s slept well that night, but had woken up to find that he ached
everywhere. It was as if his entire body had let go of its restraints,
and let him actually sleep. Let him actually recuperate. Zuko had
shaken his head, and called it the drugs that he had been put to sleep
with, but at the back of his mind he knew differently.
‘What is wrong with me?’ Zuko thought in a rush of panic.
Zuko stared at the wall in front of him, and thought. He thought of the
wishes he made as a child to make sure he could, and always would
impress his father. He would rule the Fire Kingdom in a fair manner
that his sister had never planned to do. He wanted to make sure that
his people were safe in the hands of a ruler that could see their
problems, and fix them.
Zuko breathed out, and let out a smoking fume as he breathed out. His
Hell Flame was demanding his attention as it licked throughout his
entire body, and into his soul. It was shouting, and calling for
something. Something long lost, and forgotten but by the body itself. A
lust for something just out of his reach. A need, and a want that he
felt he could never fulfill. He had researched when he was younger
about his Hell Flame that fought so strongly to take away his sanity
completely.
He had learned that the only way to control the wild natural part of
him was through the patience of another. The mate of a Hell Flamed Fire
Bender was a strong one indeed. In most cases, the mate would be a
bender and help meditate the Fire Bender with the Gouka Curse. Prince
Zuko slowly closed his eyes, and winced as his injured eye burned
slightly.
Ever since his father had given him that curse, the Gouka seemed to be
more controlling over that orb. He couldn’t see as well out of that
eye, than the other one. What he could do with that eye was much more
useful though. He could almost sense the fire through others with that
eye. He could tell if another of his race had been there earlier, and
whatnot. It was really a lowly talent, but it showed that his unnatural
talent could take over his body.
It was frightening.
It was frightening to know that your own body could betray you, and
turn against you. He had to find his mate quickly, even if he had no
such plans to spend ANY of his life with said person. He would keep the
girl around only to fulfill the duties of calming, and nothing else. He
wished for no children, for sister would have many more than she could
handle.
He would stand tall, and proud before his people. He would not need the
help of some lowly female to control his own flame. The flame inside
that made his very soul burn so brightly that it sometimes blinded
others.
Zuko opened his eyes again, and fell slowly back to his pillow. The
Fire Nation Emblem was painted across his ceiling, but the charred
remains of the middle was gone from his attacke. He smirked as the
thought of his Uncle asking what had happened. Knowing the old coot, he
would think it was either something perverted, or he would understand
that I was a nightmare. Zuko almost wished that his Uncle would think
it perverted.
Weakness was the death of all. Zuko then slept.
~*~
Sokka winced a second time as something pulled at his heartstrings.
Usually, when a beautiful song was played over an instrument, or a
particularly beautiful sunset came he would feel a slight twinge in his
heart, but nothing so hard and strong as this.
Did he have a disease of sorts?!
“GAH!” Sokka screamed out, and clutched his chest.
It felt as if he were burning up on in the inside. It was like some one
were taking a hot poker, and sticking him with it while laughing. He
wanted to get away from the pain, and yet it was pulling him towards
it. It was pulling him towards a completion that he needed. Why
couldn’t he see what was at the end!?
Sokka groaned, and rolled over as the pin pricks of pain faded, and
almost completely disappeared. He could still feel the sweat drip down
the small of his back, and he reached back to itch where he was stopped
short by the shackles. Shaking the iron incarceration devices, he
surmised that the itchy bodily fluid would have to wait, or dry.
“That sounds really nasty...” Sokka reminded himself as he thought.
Sokka sighed, and rolled over onto his back to look at the small
opening in the ceiling. He could barely see the stars that resided
overhead every night, but then again, the hole that was called a window
was only one foot, by half a foot. It was barred as well, and so it was
basically to let in oxygen, and out carbon dioxide. Sokka yawned as the
night seemed to grow blacker. He’d never been afraid of the dark, just
concerned about what could happen in the dark.
“You’d get attacked..or...or you’d get robbed...’r..” Sokka started to mumble as he yawned widely once more.
The Water Tribesman sleepy closed his eyes, and let out a soft snort.
His heart strings pulled gently as if to say that he was allowed to
sleep, but he was reminded of his purpose. Something was waiting for
him, and god help him, it would not be an easy task.
Sokka stretched out his shackled arms above his head, creaking out his
spine, and he let his head fall to the left in a sleepy gesture of
using his arms as pillows.
“G’night...” he called out to the guard, and joined the Fire Prince in
the land of dreams, and wishes that would never happen...for most.
