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Beila has been volunteering at the hospital for a week now. About four percent of the population can waterbend, and all benders have to be trained some just to control their powers instead of being plagued by constant accident, but most don't acquire significant skill, and most don't specialize in healing. There is always more demand for waterbenders than there are waterbenders to be had, so Beila's working alongside nonbending and other-element doctors and nurses and techs. They start her in the burn ward, because burns are easiest and Avatar or no she's a novice, and she washes away hurts and refuses to sign autographs and takes her legally required twenty-minute breaks at regular intervals and then heals more.
The school term ends. Beila withdraws from classes. She writes an open letter about that, thanking the teachers and so on for their time and attention, explaining her decision, and she puts it up on the public-facing official Avatar screenserver that the nuns set up for her. She divides her time between classes with Shifu Hayaka, volunteer work at the hospital, intensive meditation, reading, and Dao.
She's with Dao when the earthquake hits, sitting on her roof while he does homework and she reads.
The ground shakes like gelatin, and Beila's been airbending to keep from falling over too long to react with anything other than an instinctive shove of air; but the air is sluggish, reluctant, something is wrong.
The roof has a view of the sea, and the sea is bubbling - no steam, it's not boiling, it's just angry -
And the air is too warm.
Something has the elements spectacularly agitated.
And Beila doesn't know what.
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roc_on
roc_on
"Oh good! It would be kind of awkward if we were dating and didn't like each other."
roc_on
Eventually they reach the address at which the owner of the lot is supposed to live. Beila rings the doorbell. There's no immediate answer; she taps her foot.
roc_on
"I sure hope not, because in that case I pretty much have to sit here all day," says Beila. "If he's on vacation we're in trouble, especially if there's any work already scheduled on the lot to take place while he's gone."
roc_on
"Nothing," Beila sighs. "At least nothing easily accessible. I suppose it's probably on file somewhere less public and I could storm into city hall and demand it. But I'll give him another hour to come home first, I think."
roc_on
Beila plops down on the owner's front steps and carries on poking around for a phone number. "As long as we're waiting," she says, "tell me something. A story," she suggests. "Fiction or non, whatever, fill the silence." She waves a hand imperiously, but she's smiling.
roc_on
"Fact about panda carp aren't stories, anyway," Beila giggles. "I dunno. How did you spend the year you were eight years old?"
thinklikethis
He giggles. "Yeah, that'd be a story. Not that I have any idea what I would've been doing if I had."
roc_on
"Petty theft, long days at the beach, buying a little scooter and zipping around unsafely?"
thinklikethis
"That sounds way more fun than the year I actually had, which was apparently so boring I don't even remember it."
thinklikethis
"I'm not sure," he says. "You know how people tell you things about when you were young and then you don't remember if you remember them or just remember the stories?"
roc_on
"Yeah, I wasn't really serious about writing stuff down till I was seven and halfway competent with a chordpress, and even then there's still the question of whether I naturally remember what I wrote or if I'm reconstructing it from notes, just like if I'm remembering something because I do or because Ranyi told me about it later."