Omashu rose from the cliffs like a labyrinth carved by giants, its terraced streets coiled around towers of green stone. Zale craned his neck, dizzy. "It's like… a mountain decided to become a city."
"Or a city decided to become a mountain!" Aang grinned, balancing on Appa's horn. "Bumi and I used to slide down the chutes for hours. We'd race rotten melons!"
Sokka squinted at the mail carts zipping along suspended rails. "You sure your friend wasn't insane?"
"Genius and madness are cousins," Zale muttered, recalling Bumi's cryptic wisdom.
Katara elbowed him. "Since when are you a philosopher?"
"Since I met you guys."
The gang entered the city with great difficulty. Katara and Aang had to become an elderly couple to get us in. Zale thought it was weird for Katara to be so natural at being motherly old grandma, but who was he to judge.
The mail chute beckoned.
"Last one to the palace buys dinner!" Aang shouted, air bending their cart into motion.
Zale gripped the sides as they careened downhill, wind whipping tears from his eyes. Sokka whooped, Katara screamed, and Zale—Zale bent.
A waterskin on his hip unfurled into a icy rudder, steering them around a hairpin turn.
"Since when can you do that?!" Katara yelled.
"Since now!"
!!!CRASH!!!
The cart plowed into a cabbage cart, vegetables exploding like confetti.
"MY CABBAGES!" The merchant wailed. " NOT AGAIN?!"
Guids swarmed, spears glinting. "By order of the King of Omashu: halt!"
---IN THE PALACE---
King Bumi slouched on his throne, picking his nose with a chicken leg. "Ah, trespassers! Let's play a game. Solve my riddle, or… lunch."
Aang stepped forward. "We're just—"
"Silence! Riddle the first: What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
Zale's jaw clenched. He's testing Aang. Always testing.
Sokka raised a hand. "Uh… a high-five ghost?"
Bumi cackled. "Wrong! Guards, prepare the—"
"His name is Bumi," Zale hissed to Aang.
Aang froze. "…Bumi? Like… melon lord Bumi?"
The king's mismatched eyes narrowed—then softened. "Took you long enough, Twinkle Toes."
The feast hall erupted in chaos. Bumi juggled roast ducklings while recounting Aang's childhood misadventures. "He once airbent a lemur into a chimney!"
Aang flushed. "You dared me to!"
Zale nibbled spiced lotus root, marveling at the spread. Earth Kingdom cuisine meets Water Tribe portions.
Bumi sidled up, his breath reeking of lychee nuts. "You, boy. The quiet one. Water bender with a storm in his heart."
Zale stiffened. "I'm just… figuring things out."
"Good!" Bumi cackled. "Storms make the best teachers."
Later, atop Omashu's highest spire, Aang traced the stars. "Bumi's right, y'know. About finding your own path."
Zale frowned. "Even if it's messy?"
"Especially if it's messy."
Below, the city hummed—a symphony of clattering carts and distant laughter. For the first time, Zale felt the tide inside him settle.
Morning the next day, Zale cornered Bumi at breakfast, the king gnawing on a rock candy the size of his fist. "Aang needs training. Real training. You're an earth bending master— Please teach him."
Bumi's eyebrow (the one that still had hair) twitched. "Ah, but earth bending requires stubbornness, Twinkle Toes here floats like a dandelion!"
Aang pouted. "I can be stubborn!"
"Prove it!" Bumi lobbed a boulder at him. Aang air-bent sideways, yelping.
"Wrong!" Bumi cackled. "Earth doesn't dodge. It stands."
Zale facepalmed. "Maybe start with something smaller?"
"Nonsense! BIGGER!" Bumi hurled a pillar.
Later, in Bumi's "treasury" (a glorified broom closet filled with pickled eggs and stolen trinkets), Zale sifted through moth-eaten scrolls. "You confiscated these from pirates?"
"They tried to smuggle them in barrels of snail-slime wine!" Bumi chortled, juggling three cabbages. "Disgusting. Brilliant."
Katara unrolled a water bending scroll, her eyes widening. "These are Northern Tribe techniques! Look—ice daggers, tidal waves!"
Zale frowned at a diagram of a water whip. "Why would pirates have these?"
"Why do pirates do anything?" Sokka shrugged. "Gold. Mayhem. Bad hats."
Bumi tossed Zale a scroll labeled "Fog of the Moon." "Careful, boy. Water bends secrets too."
---LATER THAT DAY---
Aang stood knee-deep in mud, Bumi's latest "lesson."
"Feel the earth's heartbeat!" Bumi shouted.
"It's mud!"
"Exactly! Earth and water—life's first argument!"
Zale watched, scribbling notes. Katara practiced nearby, her ice daggers sharpening with each throw.
"You're staring," she teased.
"Just… impressed."
She smirked. "Jealous?"
"Terrified."
At the market, Sokka bartered for supplies while Aang apologized to the cabbage merchant.
"My cart! My life!"
"How about… free airbending deliveries?" Aang offered.
The merchant paused. "…Deal."
Zale tossed him a gold piece. "For therapy..."
That night, Zale traced the scroll's symbols. Fog of the Moon. Concealment. Deception. He exhaled, and the campfire's steam coiled into a mist.
Katara gasped. "How did you—?"
"I don't know. It just… clicks."
Aang flopped beside them, mud still in his hair. "Bumi says I 'think like a pebble.' Whatever that means."
"It means you'll get there," Zale said. "We all will."
---NEXT MORNING---
Aang stared at the jagged boulder, his palms slick with sweat. For the third time that morning, he'd failed to shift it an inch. Bumi's laughter echoed from the sidelines. "Stubborn as a pebble, you are! But earth doesn't yield to stubborn—it yields to resolve!"
Katara wiped a trickle of water from her brow, her own training paused. "Maybe we're pushing too hard."
"Or not hard enough," Zale muttered, though his tone softened when Aang flinched. The Avatar's shoulders slumped, his usual spark dimmed.
"I'm trying," Aang said, kicking a pebble. It skittered harmlessly into the mud.
Bumi ambled over, plucking a flower from his ear and tucking it behind Aang's. "Earth waits for no one, Twinkle Toes. But perhaps you should wait for earth."
That evening, the Gaang huddled in Omashu's guest chambers, scrolls strewn across the floor. Sokka jabbed a finger at a map. "Face it—Aang's not ready to earth bending. Let's focus on what we can do: water. We've got scrolls, Katara's a prodigy, and Zale's… weirdly good at making puddles menacing."
"Hey," Zale protested, though a smirk betrayed him.
Katara unrolled a water bending scroll, its edges frayed from pirate hands. "These techniques could take months to master. But if we start now—"
"We start now," Aang said quietly. "I can't stall the world forever."
Zale nodded. "And we take the earth scrolls Bumi offered. For when… you're ready."
"If," Aang mumbled.
"When," Katara corrected, squeezing his hand.
At dawn, Bumi met them at the gates, a satchel of scrolls slung over his shoulder. "For the pebble who thinks he's a leaf," he said, tossing it to Aang. "Earth's secrets aren't in muscle—they're in roots."
Sokka peeked inside. "These are basics. 'Rock Gliding for Dummies'?"
"Genius is simplicity!" Bumi cackled, then turned to Zale. "And you—water may flow, but even rivers freeze. Don't drown in your own depths."
Zale blinked. "Uh… thanks?"
"You're welcome!"
Days later, camped by a secluded river, Katara drilled Aang and Zale on the scroll's forms. "Whips first," she instructed, snapping a tendril of water against a tree. "Precision, not power."
Aang's whip fizzled into a splash. "This is way harder than air bending!"
Zale's flickered, then held—a shimmering ribbon. "It's like… music. You don't force the notes. You let them rise."
Katara arched a brow. "Since when are you a poet?"
"Since Bumi melted my brain."
They laughed, the tension dissolving like mist.
By the firelight, Sokka sketched battle plans while Momo gnawed a stolen jerky strip. Aang traced the earth scroll's symbols. "What if I never get it? Earth bending, I mean."
Zale stirred the stew—a spicy concoction of seaweed and sweet potatoes. "You will. Just… not today."
Katara nodded. "We're a team. We don't have to carry everything alone."
Aang's smile returned, fragile but true. "Thanks, guys."
Zale lingered on Appa's tail. The earth scrolls weighed heavy in his pack, alongside the ghost of his knowledge. Toph's out there. But this isn't her time.
Katara settled beside him. "You're quiet."
"Just… thinking about roots," he said.
She followed his gaze to the horizon. "They grow in their own way."