ATLA, the but the spirits have HAD IT
There are two worlds, across from each other. They stay side by side, shimmering with equal amounts of life and wonder.
There are two world intertwined, opposites but twins. Delicate but strong, endless wells of ingenuity and adventure.
Two worlds slowly melding, whether they like it or not. They orbit, they crash, they seperate. The balance is delicate and critical, lest everything fall asunder.
Unfortunately, the human realm is filled with a race of maniacs. While the spirit counterpart is armed with limitless power, the human are the ones to truly use what they have.
Spirits can choose to become a part of the human realm. To guard, protect, maintain, search, teach, watch, lead. The spirit realm is crowded, even though most don’t take up much space at all.
Most don’t really know what they’re signing up for, but then again, how does one accurately describe humanity in naught but a handful of words?
Aishika knows she couldn’t without vaguely gesturing to a nearby human and saying something along the lines of “You know, like… that.” instead of a proper explanation. The ‘feeling’ of the race can be imparted in thousands of words carefully crafted to do so, and that’s about it, and even then one would only be scratching the surface.
In any case, Aishika is well settled in her new home. She found a lovely fishing community with a thriving swamp life and marshlands nearby. An estuary provides a lovely nursery, the forest a solid force to keep everything from drifting away. A village popped up, grew, adjusted. She loved her humans, as short-living and peculiar as they were. They were so fun and quirky even when normal, it was almost astounding. They fished and built and weaved, generation after generation. Young children played on her shores and learned to swim in her depths. Older ones pushed each other in and foraged for shells and ‘cool’ rocks on the banks. Adults smile with every catch and the smell of dried herbs harvested from her watery floor never fails to calm the young spirit.
Then the bad humans came. Those that smelt of smoke, ash, anger and fear. They built strange buildings on the hill, just outside her direct reach, a structure that leaked poisonous liquids into her waters and noxious fumes into the air. They took water, fish, reeds without any sort fo payment or gratitude. Slowly, her mortal form became muddy, polluted, murky. Fish died, the people starved. She mourned the slow death of her humans, and resolved to layer them carefully into her new clay upon their eventual deaths, when their bodies quit and gave out. They would be together at the end, as she went to sleep with them, possibly to never wake again.
Then the Strange Ones came. Models of the strangers of all humans, four of the elements and one of pure humanity. They took water, but they also filtered out the muck. She wept in ehr human form, at the bottom of the depths, the first time the Water Child did this. She martialed the last of the fish scraping by at her shores and shone with the good news. They replied in their own skippitty way, swirling and swimming every which way in excitement.
The Water Child, however, could not stay. She had duties elsewhere.
But she stilled helped. And not just the filtering.
If more mist than strictly should have come when the Water Child took up her image to save her humans, it was of little consequence. If her movements more powerful, quicker, more sure, than none where to know.
She stressed, even as she wept for joy. She did not fully understand human time. What if Water Child left before her side of the deal could be fulfilled?
When the well-meaning deception was revealed, she protected her new image-bearer to her best ability with her diminished power. Her littermate went to the ‘fak-tore-ie’ and returned smelling of pride, exhaustion, and concentrated something that made her very being cringe.
But she got the message just fine when the solemn goodbye was given at her farthest shore, a final bit of water gathered.
She had not fully known what to give in exchange. Maybe nothing could ever repay the great deed this human cub had done for her, if not physically then in spirit. Maybe she would care for her for a millenia after her death to show her thanks, maybe she was doing this all wrong and she defientely didn’t know what to think, let alone what to do-
A crystal vial she had found in her banks, filled with Moon Water, such as the girl had hanging from her neck, floated by her feet. The girl gasped, which was a good sign- maybe Moon Water was as valuable to humans as it was to spirits. She cried just a little bit, and the water spirit felt the need to reach up and wipe the sadness away. But she could not, even with the slightly healed power she had. She thanked Ashika, so she must be young enough to not understand a proper deal.
Ashika didn’t mind too much. If she could teach as she had wished to in her journey Between, she would be thankful.
Later, that very blessed water would be used to heal a scarred boy’s vision and chest, a tattooed boy’s back, and a traumatized girl’s soul after a bit of struggling and hope-filled force-feeding. She would not knwo this, only feel the ring of gratitude through their flimsy Trade bond and burble happily below one villager’s house.
A Trade had been made, ideas shared. No Faktoreies would be anywhere near this lake ever again. Fire Humans could stay, if they improved themselves- she sensed the fear they had for their higher ups, she wasn’t totally oblivious or ignorant.
She would spread the world, and the spirits would be just a bit more prepared for the enigma that was the human race.