6 Chapter 6

"Well, make yourself comfortable. You're going to be here for the rest of your days!" said the First loudly to me, and I heard his retreating footsteps.

"Sure. Thank you."

"For what?" asked the Second after a couple of seconds.

"For listening, for your words."

"What words? The wish to settle in here?"

"No. During the whole story, I was thinking about how to use my bending here, to break out, but... The First is right, my bending is completely useless here. This is, perhaps, the ideal prison for a waterbender of my level, because I have to constantly use bending to survive. Ah, I didn't think that I would end up in prison at sixteen, and even as a one-armed invalid... now I won't waste a lot of time thinking about how waterbending will help me get out of here. Your words helped me realize its futility in the current conditions."

"Hmm, I'm glad you realized that. And now be quiet for a while, you're getting annoying." Said the First, returning to his post. Did he go to relieve himself for a short time?

"As you say. You're the boss here, I'm the prisoner. You said, I obeyed."

Silence settled. There was nothing for me to do here. The size of the cage did not even allow me to stand up to my full height, the edge size was one and a half by one and a half meters. And there was stone everywhere. Good thing it wasn't metal, that would have heated up from the lava heat below. The stone was a bit better.

I sat down on my legs, which I folded in the lotus position and sat in the very center of the stone cage with bars on the edges. It was best to sit in the center. At the bars, the heat from the lava was much more intense and it baked more, so I tried not to approach there too often, and I had to constantly work on getting rid of excess heat energy from my body into the surrounding world and not lose moisture in the process. If it weren't for the bloodbending training, which allowed me to achieve greater and greater heights in ordinary waterbending, I wouldn't have survived here - the conditions here are too harsh for a waterbender. And not only for water.

Sitting in the cage in the lotus position, right in the middle, I thought. The First was right - waterbending won't help me get out of here on my own. There are big problems with water here. In the worst case, I can use my blood, but that's really the worst case, when the alternative is guaranteed death. Now I manage to survive and quite successfully.

From the forced idleness, various thoughts constantly crept into my head.

One of them was the thought of where people really learned bending. On their own? But how, in that case, did they come to control the elements right away? Among the guys from my gang, there were legends that before, all benders were one. They did not control the elements, they were all energy benders, but then they mastered the elements.

Is it possible that the division into peoples is just a consequence of the fact that from generation to generation, benders developed abilities to some one element and it reflected on them. It reflected in the fact that they gained huge abilities and potential in their element, but... completely, or almost completely turned away from the other elements. In principle, such a hypothesis has the right to exist. And, since there is nothing to do anyway, you can try to test it.

Remembering the distant childhood with my brother, when we sat for days on end in the backwater, meditating on the element of water, I sat in the cage in the same way and meditated, detaching myself from all irritants. From the sounds of boiling lava far below me, from the hot and dry winds, arising from temperature differences, from the multitude of other extraneous sounds, which gathered into one general background, which was very distracting. From the feeling of liquid in me and the feeling of liquid in the soldiers of the Fire Nation, who guard me at a distance sufficient for me to do nothing to them, but insufficient for me not to feel them. I detached myself from everything. Absolutely from all feelings. Leaving only one. Focusing only on one single object.on one element.

With all my being I focused on the element of Earth

"Do you think I achieved success, was able to feel it? Nothing like that."

I sat like that all the time, distracting myself only by drinking two more sips of water a day. Such a trance, when you focus completely on one thing, goes very unnoticed. You don't understand how much time has passed, only the feeling of water made me come out of it, when it was near me. I counted the days not by the sun, no, and not by the moon. I didn't see them, only two new sips of water every day let me know that another day had passed.

Soon they turned to me again.

"Hey, are you still sane?" a familiar voice asked me. Thinking for a second, I remembered that it was the voice of the Second.

"Don't hope. Decided to talk? Stopped annoying with your chatter?" I asked him.

"What? What are you talking about?... Wait, you were silent for half a year just because my partner told you to shut up?" he asked me in shock, but I only paid attention to one thing - half a year had passed.

"He's the boss, I'm the prisoner. He said, I obeyed."

"Yes, I remember. You know, rumors reached us about what was happening in the outside world. I still have half a year to serve here, after that I can finally return home, to my wife and three children. They missed me so much. I received a letter from them once three weeks ago, so they can't wait for me to come back. She told me. I want to tell someone, but there is no one. The others already found out about it themselves. Imagine, Prince Zuko, the eldest heir of the Fire Lord, was exiled and stripped of all his regalia after losing in Agni Kai to his father - Ozai. That's incredible! Such an event happened for the first time in the history of the dynasty. Now the Fire Lord has only his heiress left - Princess Azula. They say she's a beauty, and in firebending, they say, she's a genius. Maybe even comparable in genius in her element to you, Joe. You know, when everyone found out that you are the same Elusive Joe, the name stuck to you. Only now without the Elusive. Well, you're to blame, you never told me what your name is."

"Let it be so. Let it be Joe. Also a good option. Hey, what does that mean, since half a year has passed, does that mean I'm seventeen years old now!" I exclaimed.

"I don't know. I didn't count. Probably. Just don't expect a gift, hehe."

"So I didn't expect. But maybe at least let me drink normally? A couple of glasses, at least. There's not enough water for me to escape anyway, so I promise to just drink it all right away."

"You want a lot, Joe."

"Actually, not that much. Well, okay - no means no."

But this time, when I came out of the trance, I saw that the cup, which the guards lower by a rope, was full this time, although before there was always water at the bottom. Extremely carefully drinking the water, and also using bending to collect everything to the last drop from the cup, I immediately began to help the body assimilate all the drunk water, so that I didn't even have to pee! That would be too wasteful. And so, during the captivity here, despite all my efforts and endeavors, despite my skills in controlling the processes in the body that have grown during this time, I still dried up a little. I can't completely stop all the processes and stop spending the available resources, I just use them as economically as possible, not wasting anything in vain. This one full cup of water alone will prolong my life here, preventing death from dehydration and starvation for about three or four weeks.

"Hey, Second, thanks for the gift. I won't forget."

"You're welcome. Just don't tell anyone, I broke so many rules with this action, that mom don't grieve. As if they don't throw me into the same lava from my place. And yes, I'm already the first, and so far the only one. My partner left a month and a half ago. His term of service here came to an end. And I'm very bored here alone."

"Stay in my place and you'll know what boredom is."

"Yes, you're right here."

The meditative trance, if it didn't help, then at least it allowed to pass the time, not letting me die of boredom.

However, one day, when I was just resting, I was concentrating on one point of the cage, almost drilling it with my gaze.... and what was my joy when a small hole began to be drilled in the stone, millimeter by millimeter. Or rather, the stone just very slowly diverged.

As soon as I realized this, the process stopped, but now it was clear to me that I had found a new path. I had found the path to freedom!

Earthbending.