[X] A saltwater swamp with mangrove trees that scrape the sky.
Hama drifted in and out of consciousness for... well, she couldn't tell how long. The trip across the ocean had taken all of her strength away. She felt dead. Was this what being in the spirit world felt like?
...
Hama did not know. She could not force herself awake; she was too dehydrated and starved. What she could tell- she may have felt dead, but she was alive. As long as that she remained that way, there was hope.
-
Hama felt better than she had during her last bout of tortured clarity, though that hardly said much. Regardless, was she strong enough to force herself to consciousness? Time to find out.
-
Hama's eyes felt, oddly, unclogged with grime as she woke up. That was an oddity. She must have been washed extremely well as she recovered from her traveling ordeal. Hama's eyes opened to behold... the leaf roof of a hut. Huh.
"You're awake, stranger! Welcome!"
If Hama had the strength, she would have lashed out with whatever water she could reach. As it was, she still nearly jumped out of her skin, and did manage bump her back on the wall of the hut. A leaf in the roof gave way, and the top of Hama's head was introduced to a splash of water.
Considerately, the unfamiliar barefoot woman in a green dress managed to stifle her laughter. "Ah, sorry about that, stranger. Here, I can-"
Hama wordlessly flicked a finger and rendered herself dry. Though, given how humid this place was, dry was a strong word.
"Now that that's out of the way, where am I?"
Hama returned her attention to the stranger in the room, only to find that her eyes were wide. Hama tensed. That was sloppy. She blamed her own weakness, frustration, and relief at theoretically being able to freely bend again for that. But then-
"Oh, goodness! You can waterbend, too!" The woman looked positively overjoyed, but then concern tempered her expression. "Oh, but don't you go doing that again, sweetie!" She moved her hands, and the water coalesced around her hands. She continued her dressing-down, ignoring Hama's jaw-dropped shock. "You're still not well. No bending until you're better, you hear me!"
Hama was so shocked at meeting another waterbender at... wherever this was that she remained silent as the woman, who somewhere along the line had introduced herself as Uma, moved the water around Hama's body and used water healing to ease the pains of Hama's battered form.
When Hama finally got her voice back, she choked out, "There are waterbenders here?"
Uma smiled gently. "Where else would they be? Aside from wherever you come from, of course." She seemed tor realize her mistake at Hama's tortured expression. "Ah, this is the Foggy Swamp. You'll not find a better place for waterbenders anywhere in the Earth Kingdom!"
Hama sighed in relief. Earth Kingdom. She had made it across the sea. Uma noticed, however.
"You all right, cousin?"
That one word cut Hama deeper than any sword. Eight years of no positive human interactions, especially from those who could be family, had worn her down to almost nothing. Hama was sobbing her heart out on Uma's shoulder before she could even realize it, the older woman holding her tight, rubbing her back, and whispering meaningless comforts into Hama's ears. But meaningless they were not. And appreciated they were.
-
Hama's story, and her new technique, turned out to be less controversial than she had initially feared. The Foggy Swamp tribe was kind, gentle, and understanding; more in-tune with their natural environment than Hama had imagined possible. After Uma mentioned that the waterbenders of the Foggy Swamp could direct and control plants with their bending, Hama shared what she had tapped into in order to escape her captors. Somehow, the Swamp waterbenders had been completely isolated from the war until Hama washed up at their shore, and were appropriately horrified at the thought of a waterbender being so horribly isolated from their element.
Hama was more than happy to exchange knowledge and techniques with them. Uma and the rest taught her "plantbending." It was very interesting, but it was only combat-capable in the Swamp itself. Only swampy, water-filled plants could be pushed and pulled enough to be moved. Vines and algea were mainstays, but rooted plants were inclined to stay where they were. The mangroves themselves were too massive anyway, let alone the titanic banyan tree at the center of the Swamp.
"The trees are rooted where they are for a reason," confided one of the plantbenders, a young man by the name of Choo. "To move them is not our calling."
It was a surprisingly, and fittingly, Earth Kingdom way of thinking about it for a waterbender.
It was perhaps that very Earthly, rooted stubbornness Hama learned from them that let Hama make a breakthrough in bloodbending. At least, she thought so. Hama categorically refused to practice it on anyone from the Foggy Swamp Tribe. They had saved Hama's life, housed her, fed her (even if it was giant flies), and gave her what almost felt like a home again over the course of the year she spent in their Swamp.
She owed them that much. They were not quite a new family, but they were a new tribe. Their ancestors had come from the South Pole, after all. They were kin.
-
Even after all that, all the knowledge and healing Hama had been freely given by the Foggy Swamp Tribe, there remained an ember of wrath, deep in Hama's heart. Hama was no longer broken by it, but she was still deeply, deeply angry. She felt she could not stay in the Swamp forever when she could be making a difference against the ashmakers. She could have. It would, perhaps, have been a wiser move. Hama was not the Avatar. It was not her destiny to save the world from Sozin's Hell.
Hama's destiny was to die, alone and unmourned, be it in the barbaric Fire Nation prison, or after being sent home, having failed to accomplish anything.
But Hama never was one to care much for destiny.
[X] Omashu awaits.
[X] Kyoshi Island awaits.
AN: An apology for taking so long. Sorry. Another apology for making the choice so barebones. Sorry. It's just that I don't think you guys will pick anything but Omashu. The Spirit Library is off the table. Obviously. Gaoling's biggest claim to fame is being Toph's hometown- in about fifty years. Ba Sing Se is too far from the action and would take quite the traveling montage, even if we do have an Earth King who isn't completely incompetent, which would be interesting, I admit. Kuei's predecessor was probably a lot more competent than he was, given the fact that his kingdom was still completely intact by the time of Ozai the Insecure's reign, minus the initial colonies- founded by Sozin at the start of all this. Huh. Maybe the reason Long Feng managed to essentially raise Kuei to be his puppet was because Long Feng got rid of his much more impressive father. Something to think about for later. But Omashu... has Bumi.