Daughter of the Moon - Book Three: Fire

Chapter 18.2: It Was Not a Good Idea to Go to the Boiling Rock

- Elara -

It was never too difficult for me to pretend to be asleep—I had done it for Sokka every night to convince him to finally doze off instead of worrying about me all night long, after all. It was the same old routine—slow my breathing, slowly relax my body (as much as I could, anyway), and try my best to ignore the thundering sound of Sokka's heartbeat as he settled next to me to retire for the night—and I did it all again as we traveled to the boiling rock, only this time, I was on a war balloon resting on Sokka's lap, the night having left long ago with the break of day.

Perhaps things would have been easier for me if I could have had a distraction—and I was hoping for anything at that point—but the two boys I was stuck with did little to improve my situation. They refused to talk, they refused to bicker, and they refused to do anything but sit there silently and make several sad attempts at a conversation.

I couldn't understand how they could do it—just sit there for hours on end without anything to do—because it was driving me crazy. It was like they were used to having their head full of nothing more than empty thoughts.

The only reason I had to lift the veil that was protecting me from the inevitable loom of small talk was to avoid the torture of listening to the boys talk about me while they thought I was sleeping. The only conversation that survived past the manly grunts they called an introduction just had to be about how much what's-his-face cared about me and how Sokka had dated my great-something grandmother. Yeah...that conversation was going great...

Thankfully, I didn't have to suffer through too much conversation of my own (I suppose both of the boys were extremely embarrassed when I had woken up during their emotional conversation), and we were speedily approaching the Boiling Rock, meaning that there would be no need for it. All I had to do was be patient and stay quiet—two things that had become second nature as of late.

"There it is," that idiot of a firebender pointed out as our balloon approached a large volcano plastered on the horizon, the large plumes of steam jetting from the cone warning you of just how miserable it was going to be on the inside.

"There's plenty of steam to keep us covered," he added once we were within spitting distance of the cone. "As long as we're quiet, we should be able to navigate through it without being caught."

Sokka and I nodded curtly as we entered the clouds of steam, and no sooner had we made our way over the cusp of the crater than we suddenly dipped into a nose-dive. At first, I only had a hunch that we were descending too quickly, but when I noticed that increasing the fire in the fuel tank did nothing to change our trajectory, I began to feel uneasy. It was like we were free falling, and there wasn't anything we could do about it.

"We're going down!" our guide called out as he frantically tried to throw flames into the balloon itself, his efforts proving to be useless against the seemingly magnetic pull of the prison. "The balloon's not working anymore!"

"What do you mean it's not working?!" I hollered back as I eyed the boiling water below us, knowing that if we landed in the middle of that lake, there would be no way to swim to safety without getting absolutely poached.

"The air outside is just as hot as the air inside!" Sokka explained nervously as he joined me at the rim of the war balloon. "So, we can't fly!"

Our basket tipped violently to the side as the balloon began to fold in on itself, and our unwelcome team member was only just able to spit out his concerns as we continued to plumet. "So, what are we supposed to do?!" he asked.

"I don't know," Sokka answered with a shrug as he wrapped an arm around my waist and grabbed hold of the fuel tank to keep us steady. "Crash landing?"