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The way Tui and La love command constant motion, moving in sync in soft and sliding swimming. They churn the water in their wake, skimming the surface with glittering lights and dive deep in the darkness where two lovers lighten. The world feels their love in the crest of the waves, foamy and fluffed. In the flood that flows in streams, settles oceans, pulses in the body. In the tide that rises, falls and rises forever more, if only to try and kiss their lover right, as any lover should.
It is a love felt by all, pulsing with the rhythm of waves, in the warmth of blood, in the dance that never ends. It is a presence in all things, and ones no being should feel the absence of.
When the man of the fire lands appeared, reaching and wrenching their beloved from their shared dance, the moon bleeds. In the sky, black stained deepest and darkest, the moon glows so beautifully. Now, it succumbs to the wounds of separation, weeping red on the pearlescent face of the moon. Tui writhes in the air, gasping and gagging in a mortal form so small, so weak to the wills of man. La languishes in the water, the feeling of drowning overcoming their self, if just the feeling.
The Avatar is absent, others hollering over them with threats and promises and pleas, but all La wants is for Tui to be returned to them, to the pool of their home. They want them home.
When Tui is dipped back in, for a few precious seconds, all is well. They lock in loops of a familiar dance, round and round in tight turns and close as two can twirl, swirling their essence once more. The water felt so cold without Tui there. So, so cold.
A flash of fire, and it burns, it burns. The dance is disrupted, but now La sees Tui, floating with a festering wound marring their delicate white scales. They lay there, even as the world goes dark, the room erupted in red, and wet blue eyes look down at them in horror.
But all La sees, all they feel is the red red red.
It boils them from the inside out, the fire of hate the only heat in the cold, cold waters. Tui does not mov, fading still, and La burns.
The Avatar, tugged with the same deep burning of a great, unfathomable loss – didn’t the boy lose his whole world, too? – steps onto the water with gentle, gliding soles. He stands on rippling waters, seeking a way to answer for these crimes committed, and La seeks the boy out. They dance alone, drawing the boy with him in a flail of power, warped into two bodies, one body, one unimaginably titanic mass of wrath. The waves warp and drop him in deep, deep into the dark before it bursts with raw potency, the potential for ruination being recognized.
Hate is a burning thing, wrath the wakefulness of such feelings, and La rises with the intention to bring about absolute ruin.
They stride across walls and homes of ice, bright as the moon with luminist blue and black stained water rippling in the abomination of themselves. They fan their frills and flex their limbs, slid across the pathways that squeeze them in, as if it matters. Nothings matters, nothing but retractation they seek.
They slow at the presence of their children, and the intruders. Their children bow, low and worshipful, and so their attention slides away. Worship means nothing to them now, so they are left be.
The intruders tense, then throw their gifts at them as if it would even be enough to spare them. It does nothing but stoke the flames in their own heart, festering there from the embers flown from Tui’s own body, and it burns. Their form bubbles, stretching out to swipe away the intruders, and they feel their blood and armor infect their waters. It feeds their intent, and so they swipe again, and again, and again. They swallow the bodies of the wrong-doers, wrought into twisted shapes in their armor, drowned in their essence, and lost to the depths.
At the walls of their home, the ships continue to flood in. So, with one fin raised as if to reach the moon – dull, dark and so lifeless now – they sever it down and carve into the ocean. Ships are split in twain, torn and thrown into the waves. They push and pull, push and pull the ships and all within until they feel the whole of the army collapse. They wring them of their power, their might and their fire until they feel as drowned as La.
And still, these men will never know. Never feel the loss La feels.
They can feel the little restraint they possess withering, waning with the lack of light, the darkness swallowing them with all the men they drown. The blood that fills them is warm, it burns. Why is everything burning? When will it stop? Will it ever stop?
Will they ever feel anything but this hate again?
Tui would be so distraught, to see them like this. They had always been there, hand in hand, form folded over theirs, always touching and always close. Now, they are as far as a soul can be, and La wishes they could join them. La wishes they could keep dancing forever.
In the midst of battle, they feel a ripple, lost to the waters but felt in the chaos. They feel it, the wave of water, the hesitance of movement, like of a dance being started with the steps planned out.
They feel their other half – a shiver of breath, a chest rising, falling, alive. The push and pull of breath in a body far too fragile for its it as strong as the moons forceful drag of their essence, and they break apart in sheer relief at it.
The Avatar drops with them, settled on the frozen walls, laid limp in his exhaustion. Their essence spills out of the Avatar, a vessel for their wrath, now wrenched from their possession and set to rest. The Avatar is returned, and they flood back to their home, to their love, their-
The man of fire, the murderer is here, and with the dying embers of hate, La makes one more choice.
The man struggles, then he stops, and La feels his resistance seeps out of him. The man must feel the finality of this, how it will all end here. But that would be too kind, too merciful of them. No, no they will find a fitting prison, one deep, deep in the Fog of Lost Souls for this one. It will be their last decision of their own, after all, and they will make it count.
The man is dragged deep, deeper and deeper still, until even La cannot feel his pulse from here. But they will know. And that knowledge secures them, snubs the dying embers of hate in them that linger.
They find Tui right where they were left, but rather then the still form they left behind, they swim and spin in obvious impatience. It must have felt like forever, to be separated for even a second, La thinks. They do not waste a moment more to blend in their waters with their, tangle their essence and their bodies and souls until no one can try and separate them again.
The blood lingers, bitter between their reunion. Tui hums in question, worry weeping from them. La simply tangles tighter, tighter still, and hopes it will be enough.
They feel another presence with them, a soul small and pure. They remember it, from years before, when a babe was rested in their water, sick and quiet. Tui had given them a part of themselves, a kindness that few but La was even given. It seems the child had returned to them that same kindness, at the cost of everything.
La stills, feeling the shivers of loss at this. A father, a tribe, and a young, brave boy that reminds La so much of their own lost love.
With renewed movements, La circles that soul, nestled between the moon and the ocean spirits. Feels the lingering loss and grants it a kindness of its own.
La had wished to dance forever with Tui, their first and forever love. They can find the kindness to grant another a new world, for the one they were lost too.