Too Many things have changed...
8th of Autumn, 9th full Solar Day, 50th year of Homura

Ship log one:

Grandmother once said that things in this world, good or bad, always happen for a reason.

If that's true, then I wonder what the reason is why this has happened.
I'm not even sure I want to know



Father says that a firebender shouldn't hold in all their feelings inside all the time and keep it locked away.
He says it's unhealthy.
It builds up anger and pain.
Until it heats up and burns oneself through the inside out.

So that's why I'm writing this right now.

But even as I'm writing this, I'm beginining to feel even more unhealthy.

As of now, I'm not writing in this journal in the same place and way I used to;
sitting in my comfy room at home with grandmother cooking downstairs in the kitchen,
she would always cook roast duck at about this time and I would always smell it.
I would let the warm breeze and sunlight in from the open window,
listening to the sound of the birds outside while looking at the red and yellow lilies in the garden
...the flowers that grow in my native home.

But instead, I'm writing this by candlelight inside my quarters in the dark hull of my father's ship.
It smells like rotting wood and fish. I have to hold the brush carefully because the ship's movement
on the ocean is making it difficult to write well; all the words are looking squiggly now and I'm spilling
splots of ink everywhere on the paper. It's far too cold, so I cannot open a window to let in light,
or else the painfully freezing air comes in and makes my blood curdle.

I'm trying not to complain. Father is doing his best to make me feel welcome on the ship as much as he can.
He even had to practically beg his Commander to let him off his duties just to sail all the way back to Aizuru to fetch me and take me to his post, even if he says that things over at the Fort Hsu Wei and the embassy are getting frustrating and the Commander needs all the men he has. But father says that Commander Ijima is an understanding person,
so I suppose I'm glad for that.

No...honestly, I'm not glad for any of this.

It's all too much. Too much has happened for the past few weeks.

So much if that I think about it too deeply...that day.

I start to shake.

And before it happened that day when we were walking home...I can't believe how
normal
everything was the moment before it happened.

The sun was setting.

The light was golden. The sky was red.

Her gray hairs.

Her wrinkled hands.

There was this smoky smell in the air around me.

That moment changed everything

This feeling erupted in my chest and head for the first time, all dark and so horribly frightening, when I saw that...

grandmother fell down and would not open her eyes or breathe or speak or...

and it floods me with a maddening sadness when I even think about it now
and I still get this feeling of sinking into someplace dark,
not the same comforting sadness I would have now and again before over stupid little petty things,
but a feeling of something darker. A sort of darkness in the corner of my mind,
a feeling of helplessness, things spinning and growing blurry all around me and when it happened

I was screaming and crying and crying so hard like a crazy person and she wasn't moving and
I thought if only she just tripped, maybe it was a joke, maybe she just fainted...

I had to drag her to the house.

Later, an idiot doctor took grandmother and hours went by and I paced around so much my feet hurt and the nerves inside
my hands and legs were doing strange things.

I went in and started pleading with him if she was alright and if she was just tired or something but...

he shook his head and said

I'm sorry,

Just those two words.

I'm sorry

and...
I remember
made this
noise come out of my mouth
like the sound of some wild animal
couldn't stop shaking and things went blurry
and my legs gave out.

Grandmother.
---

They told me I couldn't stop shaking for three days,

Narita had to come over as fast as she can and she had to hold me
and put some calming tonic in my tea and forced me to drink it,
it smelled and tasted like garbage and I threw it up because
I hadn't eaten anything for three days and my stomach couldn't keep anything down,
because I spent those three days, that entire time crying in my room
and holding myself, I couldn't even go to the bathroom properly.

she explained to me that I had to eat something and get well or I might end up like grandmother

And when she said that, for the first time in my life,
something that I had never done to another person,
I cursed and shouted and hit her with my fists.

But she held me down firmly and still made me drink the tea.

It put me to into a dreamless sleep.

I woke up later I could almost swear I could hear grandmother singing.

It took a while for me to remember and realize in my head that...

I wasn't going to hear that ever again.

It makes me sick.


______

I took things one day, no, one moment at a time after that.

Doing everyday things became painful and hard.

Getting up in the morning.

Remembering to fix myself something to eat.

Remembering to take a bath.

Remembering to change my clothes.

Sometimes even remembering to breathe.

----

Some people tried to help, Chise came to visit everyday, since I was mostly alone in the house.

I hadn't gone to school, I didn't go outside. I didn't even play the flute anymore.

But during that time, I was listless and I wouldn't even talk but she took me with her outside

and threw some cold water on me.

I yelled at her

"What was that for?!"

but she just said in a calm voice;

"Wake up, Rei."

So I did.

---

I hated the funeral procession.

I hated it.

I hated hatehatehathatehathahate

A bunch of fire sages moaning and wailing long tiresome prayers
and stupid rituals that don't even mean do or anything,
and guests I don't even know who come over feeling sorry for me and giving me
useless horobi gifts and whispering and gossiping behind my back, idiotic, untrue things about me
and my family and my father's military position and my grandmother and about the whole thing
and pretending that they care and that they understand when they really don't
and then going home to their happy little lives and eating and sleeping while I sit there looking
at my grandmother's flesh getting cremated and slowly turn into white ash.

Madame Luo-Yi took me aside and said to me in a phony sympathetic, preachy voice that it was Agni's
all powerful will that such a thing would happen since
it was "inevitable" and my grandmother was stubborn, and that "Miuradai
is an incurable blood disease anyway and that if I didn't
show my respects at the ceremony then it would be blasphemy and ill-wishes to my grandmother."

I almost wanted to spear her with a sword through the gut for saying that tripe.

But by then I was to tired, spent and weak, and I don't think I wouldn't have had the will to do or say such things.

So I just nodded and bowed to her and agreed with it.

__

It was just ...
I don't know how to describe it...

emptiness,

no anger, no feeling sick, no sadness,

just that...empty. Black and quiet and empty.

After the Agni-Horobi ceremony, I sat there after all the guests had left.

It started raining.

One guest still didn't leave.

A man with a beard, dark red and black armor, he was looking at the jar where they put grandmother's ashes.

He had tears in his eyes.

I apologized to him and told him that the ceremony was over, and that he could go home.

But he turned to me and said.

"Rei? Is that you?"

It was him.

"Is that my little firefly? Look how you've grown."

Without knowing why, I rushed into his arms.
And hugged him tighter than I've ever hugged anyone.

"I've missed you Rei."
"I missed you too, Father."

---

I was happy to see him...

I really was.

He had gotten my letter. He sailed many miles and away from his duty just to come back.

But it was strange...

I couldn't really talk to him about everything.
He'd been gone for six years,
I didn't know how to talk to him.

More things were happening in a whirl.

"So...do we have to sell the house?"

"Probably. You're too young to live on your own and own the property, Rei...Shame....
I love this house...Many good memories. But it can't be helped."

"Am I really going with you?"

"Of course."

"But...Narita offered to let me stay with her, and even Satomi said that her mother might let me..."

"You're MY daughter, Rei. I'M taking you with me."

"You mean, you're taking me with you while you serve your duty at the Fort Hsu Wei?"

"Yes."

"But isn't that all the way in..."

"Yes."

"The SOUTH POLE!?"

"Yes, water tribe territory."

"THERE?! I have to...to...to leave the Fire Nation? What ...What about.."

"Well that is where I'm stationed. That's where the conflict is, where I need to serve. You know that.
It's going to be a new start for you my child."

"..."

I didn't know whether to be shocked or sick or angry.

But the only thing I said was;

"oh. Alright."

What else could I say?

---

Everything in the house was put into storage, or given away.

Mother's old dresses. Grandmother's scrolls,books, and jewelry.

The only things I took from the house were my training uniforms,
this journal, my old flute.
and...
the doll that mother made for me long ago.

__

Not just things, but I had to leave people behind.

That was even harder for me.

For some reason, Peng-peng came over at sunrise one day and told me to run with her.
Of course I couldn't catch up, but she just smiled and she showed me her special excercises, the ones that
she would perform to prepare to warm up for sets, the ones she never showed anyone.

"Whenever I feel like things aren't going well, I just take these stances and punch the air until everything in my head evaporates around me"

Later, Satomi kept making me promise to write to her, I told her that whatever I would write to her would end up being several months or even a year late...since I was going somewhere very far away.

She said she didn't care.

Chise and Narita came over and made me some of their special soup.

By then, It was a bit embarrassing to see Narita again, even if I had lashed out at her that time,
she still smiled at me and told me;

"You'll be fine Rei, you're a stronger person than you think."

I went back to Yuiren for the last time, to gather my school things.
Master Zaimi came up to me,patted me on the shoulder and...made me promise that by the time I came
back, I would be better trained and prove her wrong about my abilities.

I have no idea what she meant by that exactly, maybe she still looked at me as her worst student,
but I just nodded and bowed to her.

And who would have guessed,
Mimiko came up to me crying, for some reason that's beyond me, and babbled about how sad she was
for me and what had happened to my grandmother and that she'd miss me and
that she had always jealous of how well I could play Rurui and that she always wanted to be friends with
me but was afraid of me because I seemed so quiet and serious around her.

It sounds terrible of me, but didn't care if what she was saying was sincere,
I wanted to tell her that I had NEVER liked her,
I hated how she would go around flailing herself and making
friends with other crazy people who were interested
in the same crazy things she was, and that those who weren't she considered as evil,
and how she would unintentionally make a mockery of the same things that I kept sacred and used that
and gain favors and friends with it,
just because of her thick-headed and needy nature.

and that I hated her so much because she would get away with things that I could never do,
and that I hated her the most because in most ways she was a stronger and braver person than I was and
that if she had gone through the same thing as I did, she wouldn't have acted as weak as I would have been. and...
being around her made me feel nothing but anger and pity for myself for being so hateful.

But I held back and just put on a smile and told Mimiko to take care.

I don't think I have the energy to hate her as much anymore. I don't think it's worth it.
...

It's strange how in what seems to be the blink of an eye, I left all of these people.

---

When I saw Father's ship ,
I thought it looked like a giant wooden falcon with red sails.
It was the largest one in the whole harbor.

I had never seen anything like it and I wondered how it could possibly bring us across the ocean without sinking.

But Father said that the ships of our nation have always been designed to cut throught the waters fiercely
without relenting, and that perhaps someday our ships might even become more powerful and travel farther than
anyone can ever imagine...

---

We've been sailing on this for many weeks so far, I got over being sea-sick, but sometimes I still keep a bucket next to me...
Father's crew...I suppose... is nice to me, they smile and tell me stories about the ocean. But it isn't the same.

I miss my friends, I miss Satomi. I miss Narita, and Peng-peng. Heck, I even miss Master Zaimi,
the man who sells fireflakes at the festivals, the farmer who would wave to me
over by thicket next to the river where I used to run off to, the boys who would hoot and call out to me when I walked past the marketplace...

I miss the warmth of the sun, the hum of the cicada-crikets during the long summers,
the smoky air in the evenings,
the fireworks, the fireflies,

I miss my home.

I miss grandmother...so badly.

Grandmother, if she left me for a reason...

What would that reason be?

I don't want to believe that her being gone is meaningless, and all this craziness that has happened is simply what has come to happen because of that.

Is it so that I could finally ask Father the question I had been wanting to ask him for years?

If I ask him that question, what kind of answer would he give me?

...

Or is there something else that is supposed to happen?


I think I've written too much.
I'm running out of ink.

Father is calling me to the galley downstairs to eat some dinner.

This is the longest and most... insane entry I've written so far.

But...I guess father was right.

At first, It made me feel ill putting it down and seeing it in front of me,
but feel a little bit better now that I've released it in words.