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Is Your Love Strong Enough? Part 5 - The Land of Dreams
The dreamworld. The personal world that touches both the person's inner soul and memories of times gone past. the strange, the bizarre, the cruel, the comedy, it has a range of colors and emotions. Usually, very personal. Even the mind doesn't remember all of them.
But what if that soul is now shared with another? A windowed view into the deepest part of the body that possibly neither of them ever wanted to share, as one whose body they are currently drifts into sleep and gets carried off by nightfall, the other lives to see the dreams, one by one, even the ones the host body doesn't remember by morning.
How will this affect each other? Or will it just be a problem or things they'd rather forget?
[OOC - This is completely optional, and was a fun little idea that I figured if anyone else wanted to join in and have their characters see each others dreams or talk to them inside, are welcome too. Enjoy ruining each other's images. Again, if you don't want to do it, don't worry, it's all good. It's a good way of sharing innermost secrets and old memories. Ahhh, making out characters suffer for fun and profit.]
But what if that soul is now shared with another? A windowed view into the deepest part of the body that possibly neither of them ever wanted to share, as one whose body they are currently drifts into sleep and gets carried off by nightfall, the other lives to see the dreams, one by one, even the ones the host body doesn't remember by morning.
How will this affect each other? Or will it just be a problem or things they'd rather forget?
[OOC - This is completely optional, and was a fun little idea that I figured if anyone else wanted to join in and have their characters see each others dreams or talk to them inside, are welcome too. Enjoy ruining each other's images. Again, if you don't want to do it, don't worry, it's all good. It's a good way of sharing innermost secrets and old memories. Ahhh, making out characters suffer for fun and profit.]
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There was nothing accusatory in her thoughts, because after all, she wasn't saying anything that wasn't true.
There was only the slightest hint of resentment, as Nima recalled Azula's memories of trying to (and from what she could tell, somehow succeeding at) killing Aang.
Normally I'd start a dialog with you about what is reality anyway - but I'm pretty sure the important thing to point out here is that people who don't have delusions don't have this many voices in their head.
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But that didn't make sense to her. A huntress would learn her prey's weakness, right? A huntress would only learn how to bring him down. And bring him down she had.
Nima still shuddered a little, thinking of that.
You're right about one thing, she thought, when she returned to their mental conversation. I don't know him personally as well as I would like to. My sisters and I didn't raise him. But I know the monks who did, and I know what they teach about human beings and their rights, and about forgiveness. And if they didn't have the time to teach him those things as they should have - then I will do it. I am young and unwise, but I am the only elder he has.
Something about that declaration, though, irritated Nima's sense of propriety. There was something that rankled at the thought of taking up a teaching role in Aang's life. She tried not think it . . . but the thought bubbled up as a quiet order to herself.
It is improper, and I must not become attached.
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She thought of her childhood in the Eastern temple, the soothing images of little nuns playing happily, bison floating over the fall-colored hills, helping her relax in the face of Azula's near-constant agitation.
Her experiences here WERE shaking her beliefs to the core. She understood that all too well.
Let's get some sleep, Princess. It's late, and you never know. We might have a lot to do in the morning.
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If I end up sharing inappropriate private dreams about men with you next I'll find some way to punish you. An empty threat but taking a shot at Nima's longing for the things she was denying herself for Azula's sake made her feel better.
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She thought she'd been doing pretty well at keeping those thoughts under wraps.
Now that you've reminded me, I can't make any promises. Unless you'd prefer inappropriate dreams about women.
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The air is cool in the Eastern temple, and she kneels on the stone before a statue of a great sister of the past, while behind her, a certain monk braids her hair.
A male Air Nomad should not be at an air temple of the Sisters for an extended period of time. This is a retreat for the women, to escape the distractions of the world, including those of the opposite sex.
She's never been much attracted to men of her people, but her other sisters may think otherwise.
"Brother," she says, her voice gentle with amusement. "You really should go to your temple."
The monk continued his work, fastening the end of the sister's long hair with a ribbon. "I'm not ready."
"Of course you're not."
She looked up, and sighed sadly at the sight of the Southern Temple, burning only a few miles away from them. Who could be ready for war?
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But she heard the words coming from her mouth, she felt the ground beneath her knees.
A dream...this is...her dream.
It was difficult even to come to that simple realization in her sleep and so she continued to drift along with Nima's dream as she struggled to make sense of it. The soothing peace she was unused to. The silence.
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Azula, however, had plenty.
Her attention was drawn to the sky, where the bison were suddenly taking flight. She stood, frantic to corral them - until the lead burst into flame, the others following suit, the animals falling out of the sky with wails of pain.
She had a name for every one of those bison.
The monk behind her had become Sister Sangma, confusion written on her face, a red bloom growing on her robes where an arrow had pierced her heart. She fell, and before Nima could call up a breeze to catch her, had pitched over the side of the temple platform, falling like a leaf to where a black and red horde had covered the mountainside, burning the trees behind them.
She was at once among those hordes, raising her hand with lightning at her fingertips, and above them was little Sister Chandra, who could not fly yet. A man in armor lifted her, holding her above the side of the mountain, and let the screaming child fall.
Lightning arced from her fingers to the falling child.
Nima sat up with a gasp before the lightning connected.
The first image she called upon to soothe herself was little Chandra. Not the Chandra who died in the dream, but the baby who nursed from her, after the Eastern and Western temples had exchanged the children of their year's birth.
She curled in on herself, suddenly, painfully aware of how attached she really had been to those children. The little sisters who ran from her to Sangma and back again for nourishment. The little boys she nursed with them, until they were weaned and sent to the Northern Air Temple. She missed even the little boy she had birthed, and barely nursed at all, before the temples had exchanged their children.
She thought of her fertility, which Stacy had deadened for reasons of practicality, and in the empty silence of the temple around her, her peace dissolved. She put her unfamiliar face into unfamiliar hands and wept.
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It took a few minutes for her to "Wake up" after being woken up a second time and this time not being in control of her own body. But as her mind began to shake away the fog and disorientation of sleep she could hold her silence no further.
You just witnessed the death of your people and you're not even a little angry. How can you live with yourself? Let alone with this situation?
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What would being angry do in my favor?
The question was asked with genuine bewilderment . . . and a growing sense that Azula was missing something very fundamental about what they'd both just witnessed.
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I know better then to try and explain it to you. All the benefits of behaving like a normal intelligent creature are wasted on your kind. No no, best just to calmly accept the horrible things happening and hope to understand rather then change anything.
Her name is Princess Azula and she thinks your people are silly and dumb.
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Nima had been brought up with too much of a focus on the worth of every living creature, princess or otherwise, even to think of anything as silly or dumb.
But in her own language of enlightenment and wisdom, the way she thought of Azula now amounted to something pitiably similar.
You don't see what your ancestors brought on you, by committing all this violence?
Nima had accepted that soldiers of the Fire Nation had destroyed her home, and murdered her sisters, and murdered her in a past that by an unlikely twist of fate, she had avoided. Even in their world, Aang had survived. He couldn't rebuild their nation the way she, and the other sisters on the paths of motherhood, could - but his descendents still could have done it, with time.
Death and rebirth have always been a part of our lives. Your ancestors destroyed the bodies we lived in, but they couldn't destroy our souls. Even if my sisters are still dead, they will be reborn through me.
Her sense of purpose had welled up within her, certain and strong.
The Fire Nation threw their people's lives away to destroy the airbenders, but I am a mother of airbenders. I am alive to rebuild my people.
With that sense of purpose came peace. Nima might never see Chandra or Sangma or Iio or any of the others again as they had been in living - but she would meet their souls again, with new faces.
You're the one who I can't understand not being angry. Don't you see what the consequences of your ancestors' war are? Don't you see what they avoided - the negative karma that comes from the destruction of so many lives - Azula, don't you see what your ancestors' karma has done to you?
They died peacefully, or in battle, but their war was impossible to win. And look at what they lost. I know they were proud of you. I know you were proud of yourself.
Nima's pity was almost unbearable, even to her. How could she be so repulsed by, and yet feel so sorry for, a single person all at once?
You must have been the most talented, the most beautiful, the brightest star in the Fire Nation's sky. And their foolish actions have all come to bear on you.
My people didn't have to die, and you didn't have to be this way. I am so sorry, Azula. I am sorry your ancestors threw themselves into a task that was never possible to accomplish, and I am so sorry you are the one paying for their sins.
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It wasn't the war, war was what I was made for! Since birth I was perfection! It was betrayal that began my downfall! And in the pain and fury she felt from the kindness of Nima tears were running down her cheeks as if Nima was actually stabbing her.
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And yet, perhaps there wasn't a way for Azula to heal without having a few more of her assumptions broken along the way.
Maybe you were made for something more, but you couldn't know, because war was all that occupied your life.
Fire Lord Sozin betrayed you, when he began throwing your peoples' lives away for his own glory. You might know if he hadn't.
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But it always came back to that first betrayal. Mai and Ty Lee incapacitating her, allowing Zuko to live. Even more crushing then how much she missed her life was that feeling that those closest to her would attack her and leave her helpless on the ground in front of her minions and her enemies.