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.
The air is still hot. And Beila experimentally blows a puff at her hand. It obeys, but not eagerly.
"Something's wrong," she murmurs.
"Wasn't touching the earth, little bird, and you know I mostly work in metal," says Chali, troubled. "...Bigger than most though. Didn't feel becalmed at all."
Beila tries another puff of air. She turns the faucet - nothing, apparently the pipes were disturbed in the quake - she spits into the sink and tries to bend that, and it'll go, but - not readily.
"Not just an earthquake - something else - has somebody been annoying a spirit, a big spirit - or several spirits -" she mutters.
"Little bird," he says as he picks up his armor from where the quake knocked it, "should you be at the hospital?"
Beila shakes her head, looking at her clenched hands. "I'm one more half-trained healer, there, they'll be triaging like mad and I'm not qualified to help with the worst of it - and my bending's not working right anyway -"
Chali nods. "Stay safe," he mutters, and he's out the door.
"I need to try to go into the spirit world and find out what's wrong," Beila tells Dao.
Breathe. (Though the air comes too slow, too hot, she's sweating now.)
Feel her heartbeat. (It slows as she calms herself, steadies.)
Reach for spirits.
There's a spirit!
She's never done this before. She doesn't recognize it till she's already reached out and touched it, and then she opens her eyes and this is not her house that she's in.
That they're in.
"...Oops."
"It shouldn't," says Beila uncertainly. "Earthquakes aren't uncommon exactly, just that was an unusually bad one, and the house survived that - I'm sorry. Figuring out how to put you back in your body could take a while, I know how to go back myself, at least in theory, but I don't even know quite how I brought you along for the ride. The spirit could start throwing around more power any moment and I need to find it now."
"...She told me, she warned me," Beila mutters, picking herself up with difficulty, "no bending in the spirit world, bending doesn't work in the spirit world, I did not think this through -" She gets on her feet, takes three more steps, and trips again and catches herself on a spirit tree only with great difficulty. "I've been using airbending to get around since before I could walk. Cinders, cinders and dust -" She tries again, gets a little farther, trips again. "I am apparently unable to walk without airbending. Do you suppose you can carry me or do I need to go get us out of here and find a way to bring Liqing in?"
It's a long walk, and on their way, the world shakes - only visually; there is no instability under Dao's feet - and Beila winces.
From the bottom of the pit is a low-pitched rumbling moan that starts up when they approach and dies down a moment later.
"Put me down," Beila murmurs.
"Tell them to stop," rumbles the spirit.
"I will carry messages for you, but I must know who to carry them to," Beila says.
"They who promised me."
"You've been promised that someone would stop something and they haven't?"
"Yes," growls the voice.
"Who is it? What do they need to stop?"
"Pouring."
"Someone is pouring something somewhere and promised to stop and didn't."
"Yes."
"Is this happening - here? In this corresponding place in the physical world?"
"Yes."
"What are you?" Beila asks the spirit.
"The pocket," says the spirit.
"A pocket of - something under the ground? Magma, water, air -"
"Yes."
Beila gulps.
"Who promised you?"
"Humans," says the voice. "Lying humans."
"Names. A company, an individual, a group -"
"Humans," repeats the spirit.
"Yes."
"What are you, when you do?"
"I am myself."
"Has anyone named your manifestation?" Beila tries.
"No."
"Do you look like an animal? A human?"
"No."
"I will carry your message. Please calm down while I do it. It is harder to travel in the physical world while a powerful spirit is upset."
"Lying humans."
"I'm the Avatar," Beila reminds it.
"Avatar," it muses. "Yes."
"Will you be calm for - three days?" offers Beila. "And I will spend those days looking for the humans who lied to you so I can pass on your message."
"If you lie I will listen to no more promises," rumbles the spirit.
Beila swallows again.
"No," it rumbles. "Make them stop."
"I will carry your message," Beila says.
It rumbles without words and falls silent, and Beila creeps back from the edge of the pit and manages to stand up and position herself near Dao for picking-up. "I'm going to try to count your steps while we go. I'm pretty sure we traveled north and a little east; help me out and mind the sun when we can see it. It'll be a start at finding what place matches the pit."
When they get back to the spirit-shadows of their bodies, which appear to have fallen on their sides in the second quake but aren't obviously injured, Beila says, "Okay, um, I have a set of instructions for how to get back into my body. Which I really, really hope apply to you. You have to line up with it, and then - we aren't actually breathing, here, it's just easy to feel like we are because breathing feels like normal to us, but there's no air to breathe and no real bodies to need it even though we're sort of pretending on both counts. You focus on breathing, which you are doing in your body and are not doing here, and this should, on top of being lined up with yourself, put you back in your body. Try it, I'll wait for you."
"Okay," she says, "now we - walk thataway, I guess," and she rummages around under fallen objects for her screen so she'll be able to do some simple geometry on the way to compensate for not being able to walk in as straight a line as the forest permitted. (The trees in the spirit world are huge; they are none of them the size of city blocks.)
There's not exactly a sinkhole over there, but there are some long boards latticed over an area in an empty lot.
She heads for the thing.
She peers at the lattice of wood, then nudges aside one board with her foot. It moves readily. Under it is a deep, dark pit.
"Okay," she says, "my guess is whoever owns this lot met the spirit's manifestation and agreed to cover it up but didn't do it well enough and people are dumping things in here and the spirit of the underground river slash cave slash magma pocket is pissed off."
"Sign draws attention to it. I think it just needs to be thoroughly covered up. And also I explicitly agreed to pass on the spirit's message so I need to find who owns this lot. I'll call Shifu Hayaka, failing that the nuns, I'm sure one of them knows an earthbender who can handle it. I don't know how to handle it myself yet. Here, you borrow my screen, look up the address in the recordhall files." She hands over her screen and chordpress and pulls out her phone.
"Hi, Shifu Hayaka. Yeah, it was, I figured it out. I need an earthbender - no, I don't have to do earthbending myself, just a specific job that needs doing. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes once whoever it is gets here. No, my father mostly works with metal, I need structural integrity. Do you know someone who - Shifu Hayaka, I've told you that it really bothers me to be interrupted. It's fine. Okay. We're at -" Beila rattles off the address. "We can wait."
She calls the nuns.
"Hello, Master Dechen! Yes, I heard. Yes, I'm solving the problem. Yes, I'll tell you all about it, but first, I have a question. I went into the spirit world, and I had my boyfriend nearby, to watch my body. I accidentally pulled him in after me. No, Master Dechen, I didn't know that was possible, that's why I'm asking you. He got back in just fine, yeah. He seems all right. Yeah. No, just like normal, like me. Okay. You're sure? Okay."
Beila hangs up. "Master Dechen doesn't have a clue what happened either, sees no reason to expect you to suddenly keel over, and will look up some references to double-check."
"I'll have to tell the guy not to build on this lot, at least not anything heavy," says Beila. "Or it'll just re-open."
"You could sit a house on this," says the earthbender. "Not an office building, I'd have to sink it deeper to give it that."
"Thank you very much for your help," Beila tells him.
"No thanks necessary, that earthquake was the spookiest thing I ever felt," says the earthbender, shaking his head. "If you say this'll stop it, I'm satisfied."
"It should," says Beila. She wafts up to a standing position. "Dao, d'you want to come along to talk to the owner?"
"What is it like to - feel like whoever has your soul next will automatically be doing a better job with it? I mean, I would instantly press a button that made me immortal, stopped the entire Avatar Cycle right here, I would not feel a moment's conflict over it, if I talk to Random Waterbender Boy assuming I fail at producing such a button in my lifetime I'm probably going to mostly want to say 'give me my soul back, jerk'. I don't know what the other way of thinking is like at all."
"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."
"I - I covered the sinkhole," he says.
"With boards that could be easily nudged aside if someone didn't feel like finding somewhere else to pour their refuse," says Beila conversationally. "Instead of hiring an earthbender for a - how long was it, ten minutes?" She glances at Dao. "Maybe not even that."
"Of - of course, Avatar Beila," stammers the lot owner.
"Wonderful," says Beila. "I'm glad we had this talk. You'll take spirits more seriously in the future, I imagine."
He nods mutely.