Bella [AANGXOC]

Chapter 82: The Serpent's Pass

The last ferry glided across the water, out of the cave, and into the open ocean. The cave was clear of people now, except for a couple left-behind tents.

There was no going back now, our only choice if we wanted to get to Ba Sing Se was The Serpent's Pass.

"I can't believe we gave up our tickets and now we're going through The Serpent's Pass," Sokka whined. He had not stopped complaining since we began to leave the cave.

"I can't believe you're still complaining about it," Toph replied.

"I'm coming too!" Came Suki's voice behind us.

She ran up to us, all dressed in her Kyoshi armor and warrior paint. She looked like the Suki I remembered.

Maybe traveling with Than, Ying, their friend (who still no one has told me the name of) and Suki, would be better than us traveling alone. At least with Aang so sad and angry right now.

It'd be nice to have company while traveling after the desert.

"Are you sure that's a good idea...?" Sokka asked her hesitantly.

"Sokka, I thought you'd want me to come," Suki replied, clearly set on coming with us.

"I do it's just--"

"Just what?"

"Nothing I'm glad you're coming."

I took the map from Sokka's bag since he was clearly too interested in Suki to do it.

I unfolded it and traced a line with my finger from where we were, and where we had to go to get to The Serpent's Pass. We wouldn't have to go the hours walk back to our camp, because our camp wasn't near the pass. But the bay, surprisingly, was very near the pass. We just had to go a little ways west.

I handed the map to Sokka, showing him the route. And then we were on our way.

~

The pass wasn't how I imagined it to be. I thought it would've been flatter, or at least a little flat. But the pass had high points and low points. The high points looked so steep I doubted we could possibly climb them, and the low point looked like we would be wading through the ocean.

But the scariest part was that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see the end of it. Considering the fact that we had just gotten out of the desert, and Ying was pregnant meant we'd probably have to spend one or two nights on the thing.

Not exactly something I'm looking forward too.

At the beginning of the pass was a large ornate gate with script written on it, and from there, the pass began.

"This is The Serpent's Pass? I thought it would be more windy, you know, like a serpent. Hmm, I guess they mis-named it," Sokka thought out loud.

But he was right, it wasn't windy. Just extremely thin. Three people could walk side by side, but one of them would always risk falling off.

It's probably best we go single file.

"Look at this writing! How awful!" Ying exclaimed. She was referring to the writing on the gate.

"What does it say?" Toph asked curiously.

"It says: Abandon all hope," Katara read for her.

"How can we abandon hope! It's all we have!" Ying cried.

Ying seems to cry a lot.

Then, monotonely, Aang spoke his thoughts, "I don't know. The monks used to say that hope was just a distraction, so maybe... we do need to abandon it."