Havi of the Earth Kingdom

Chapter 50: The Painted Lady

Havi's pov

Of course, the next morning we woke up and Appa still wasn't feeling well. After a slight hissy fit from Sokka, we decided it was best to head back to the village. A short trip later, we end up at the same old man's shop. "Hi, Dock. Is Shoe around?" Sokka asks him.

"Let me check," Dock runs around the counter to change his hat before returning, "Hey, there! Back again, are you?"

"We need more food," Toph explains, "Our friend is still sick and we can't leave until he's better."

Shoe takes out some coins and places four clams on the counter, "Oh well, that's too bad. Maybe if you guys are lucky, the painted lady will visit you in the night and heal your friend."

"And maybe she'll cook us a midnight snack and we'll all have a sing-along," I smack Sokka for being sarcastic but Shoe didn't  seem to notice.

"Yeah, maybe. You know, last night she visited us again. Healed most of our sick folks."

"Is that why this place seems so festive?" I ask, watching them put up a large statue of the spirit.

"Yup, it's all because of the painted lady."

Katara wows, "Can you believe how much an entire village can be affected by one lady-? I mean, spirit."

"Well, I hope she returns every night otherwise this place would go right back to the way it was," Sokka explains.

Sometimes his bad attitude got under my skin, "Why would you say that?"

"Yeah, look how much better off these people are," Katara adds.

He defends, "yeah, now, but without her they wouldn't be able to fend for themselves. If she really wanted to help she would use her spirit magic to blow up that factory," Sokka begins to make weird noises and imitate an explosion.

"Spirit magic doesn't work that way, Sokka. It's more like....," Aang starts to make other strange noises and a different explosion impression. Those two are something else. I continue to watch as Katara storms away and looks oddly reflective into the distance.

Something ain't right here..

• • •

The next morning was just as chaotic as yesterday. I woke up to quiet bickering, "What do you mean she's not here?"

"I mean, her sleeping bag is empty, Toph. Can't you se- feel it?"

"No, actually I couldn't. I was too busy not caring."

I sit up and yawn, "What's going on?"

"Katara has been lying about Appa being sick," Sokka tells me.

"How do you know?"

"Toph, stick out your tongue," She does as she's told and it's all purple, just like Appa's! "See? And now both Katara and Aang are missing. I bet she's been pretending to be that spirit this whole time."

"Sokka, calm down. It's gonna be okay. Plus, even if she was, isn't that a good thing? She helped all those people... isn't that our whole purpose?" He just huffs as footsteps come closer.

"Shh, we don't want to wake Sokka," Katara walks out from behind a rock and jumps when she sees us, "Oh- Hi.. Sokka. We were just out on a.. uh.. morning walk."

"Oh, really? A morning walk?" He dumps moss from her sleeping bag to the ground, "I know you're the painted lady. I know you've been sneaking out at night, and I know you've been lying about Appa and feeding him purple-izing tongue berries!" Toph sticks out her purple tongue as evidence, "Katara, what you did put our whole mission in jeopardy. We're leaving right now. And how long did you know about this?"