Daughter of the Moon - Book 1: Water

Chapter 19: The Waterbending Scroll

- Elara -

Once the information about Sozin's comet had fully set in, Aang had been in full panic mode about learning the other three elements. I mean, I would definitely freak out too if I were in his position—it was probably the only logical reaction for news like this. Luckily, I wasn't really in the same boat (sorry, Aang), but I knew that I should do something to help calm his nerves. So, I offered to try and teach him some things I knew about waterbending—along with Katara, of course. To do this, however, we needed to find a large body of water. Sokka had suggested finding us a small puddle, but Aang had a drastically different idea...

"Nice puddle..." Sokka gaped as he surveyed the stream that Aang had chosen for his lessons.

And by stream, I meant a full-blown river. The body of water was massive—large enough for Appa to swim laps in if he wanted to. The banks were lined will all kinds of plants and greenery, many of which I had never seen before, and to top it all off, there was a large waterfall close to where we had set up camp, cascading over a tall and colorful cliff. Long story short, it was beautiful, and it was the perfect place to practice waterbending.

Appa and Momo dove into the river as soon as we had unpacked, and Aang was close behind. "Hey! Don't start without me, boy!" he whooped as he stripped down to his underwear and prepared to jump in. I laughed at the youthful joy that Aang always seemed to have, but Katara was obviously not pleased.

"Remember the reason we're here," she told Aang, stopping him right before he leapt into the water.

He looked back with a childish grin and began to put his clothes back on. "Oh...right. Time to practice waterbending."

"Great," Sokka spoke up as Katara, Aang, and I began to walk to a bend in the river where it would be easy to practice. "So what am I supposed to do?"

"You could..." Aang began as he looked around for a task to keep Sokka entertained. He then picked up an extra leafy branch and handed it to him. "...clean the gunk out of Appa's toes."

Sokka looked repulsed towards the tree branch, although I knew that it wasn't the stick that was disturbing him. "So, while you guys are playing in the water, I'm supposed to be hard at work picking the mud out of a giant bison's feet?"

"Mud and bugs!" Aang grinned as Sokka took the stick, sighing a breath of defeat as he went to go clean whatever had been collected in our furry friend's toes.

The airbender then looked to me excitedly as he surely anticipated some kind of magnificent lesson. "So, what are we gonna learn first?"

"Well," I began, not sure where I was going to go with this. I didn't actually think we were going to get this far before getting attacked by someone or something, so I had no game plan. "How about this. Let's start with what Katara knows, then we can build from there."

"Great! I'd love for Katara to teach me what she knows!" Aang exclaimed, and I noticed Katara blush slightly in response. I took that as my cue to relax, so I sat myself on a nearby boulder to watch.

"Alright," she began, demonstrating a waterbending move as she explained it. "This is a pretty basic move, but it still took me months to perfect, so don't be frustrated if you don't get it right away. Just push and pull the water like this," she said as she flicked her wrists, the water in front of her moving back and forth like an ocean wave. "The key is getting the wrist movement right," she added as she concentrated on her own water, not noticing the fact that Aang had already produced the same result with his own bending.

"Like this?" Aang asked, obviously digging for Katara's approval.

Katara almost didn't even look at his wave before responding, and I'm sure she assumed that he hadn't figured it out yet. "That's almost right. If you keep practicing, I'm sure eventually—"