8.Effects

86 years after the genocide of the air nomads.

 The Northern Tribe of Water. The personal training ground of the tribal leader.

 In a large and spacious room, completely built of ice, which is usually used for training the Leader and his defenders, a handsome white-haired young man was currently practicing. Moving all over the field, his body smoothly made fluid movements, and in time with his changing position, water shimmered through the air, as if completely alive.

 A little girl of three years old looked at all this performance without taking her admiring gaze off. Her sky-blue eyes followed the boy's movements, ostensibly trying to memorize all the tricks they saw. And even her little hands, which she held in front of her, unconsciously tried to repeat what she saw.

 After a couple of minutes, not yet a man, but no longer a boy, stopped his training, and smiled, looked at the little girl.

 – Did the little princess want something from me? – he asked with a slight smile and a visible warmth in his eyes.

 – Brother, you promised not to call me that anymore, – the girl said, sweetly puffing out her red cheeks. - Mom asked me to invite you to the table! And when will I start practicing water magic? Aunt Healer said that I would become a strong conqueror!

 – Wait just a little longer, and then I'll personally start teaching you, – the boy said, stroking her soft white hair.

 - This time I won't believe it so easily, come on, let's swear on the little fingers, – the girl demanded, putting her hands on her hips, thereby trying to give herself a menacing look... That's the only thing that made her even cuter.

 - Of course, of course, - the guy said, obviously having fun, holding out his little finger to seal the most indestructible oath in the world. And as soon as they linked their little fingers, the boy suddenly put the squeaking girl on his neck and ran towards the kitchen.

 And in the empty room, the distant children's happy laughter still sounded.

 ***

 Yuki

 The day after Yue's birth, I woke up with a severe ache in my body. It feels like yesterday I was overloading whole wagons of bricks into one. And so it went on for a whole month – thirty days of bed rest, when boredom makes you want to climb the wall.

 At the same time, the energy industry was in utter chaos... I was even afraid to just "go down" there, so it was clear that nothing good was definitely happening there...

 All that month I lay in a solitary ward, under the constant supervision of healers, where my parents and healers looked in every day. And each time, outside viewers could watch a theatrical scene called: "The mother hen that cares about the egg." I don't think it's worth saying who was in the lead roles. It was clear that my parents were very worried about my condition, but often their overprotection went over the edge. Sometimes, in order to send my mother home, I had to really persuade her. It's also good that every time Yui was mentioned, she immediately got ready to leave.

 There were also positive aspects of my long stay in the healers' ward. For example, there is a lot of time for simple thoughts. Comparing the date of the sister's birth and her age at the time of the Avatar's arrival, it turns out that the canon is more or less following the scenario already known to me. Of course, this may be the only coincidence so far. However, everything we have seen so far leads to one important fact – there do not seem to be any strong changes. It is very difficult to come up with a name for a younger sister, especially something East Asian, when only Slavic and Germanic names are spinning in my head. But I did it... He simply left the name that was given to her from the cartoon.

 And finally, after asking my parents carefully, I found out the whole sequence of events that developed behind the wall of the ward while I was waiting in the corridor. As it turned out, Yui had weak breathing at birth, and the doctors fought for her life for half an hour. Most likely, the parents, seeing hope in the healing magic of water, completely forgot about the spirits of Tui and La, which could definitely help. Of course, it's good that it ends well, but when I came to the world of people, I relaxed too much – I completely forgot that one should not lose vigilance. And this whole situation was a good demonstration that the world is a whole bunch of unforeseen events, both good and bad.

 One day, lying in the ward and being on the verge of sleep, I felt someone else's emotions, faded, barely noticeable, but... definitely not mine. This uncontrollable phenomenon occurred with regular frequency, and each time they were felt more clearly. I won't pretend to be a thinker, but it was easy to compare their source. Firstly, the epicenter of these emotions was the Leader's Palace. Secondly, the emotions themselves were somewhat primitive and could change just at breakneck speed, and thirdly, I felt a piece of my particle in the same direction.

 Feeling Yui's emotions was fun enough. I even learned how to send her mine myself. Often, when she was unhappy with something, I tried to cheer her up, and it worked. I don't know, but there are guesses why in just a couple of weeks she became even a little closer to my parents. I think I would have loved her so much, but the part of me that is still inside her seems to have just connected me to Yui on some deeper, spiritual level.

 A month later, when I came home, I finally saw Yui. And to be honest, I realized why I had been subjected to such tenderness in the past. Yes, because it's impossible to just see and not squeeze such a concentration of kawaii.

 Our parents began to be jokingly jealous of me, because as soon as I appear in the range of her feelings, her hands immediately stretch in my direction. The rest of the family members are ruthlessly ignored. Only I can immediately predict what she wants, and I'm also better at calming her down. I should have seen my parents' faces when they let me babysit with very contradictory expressions. They did not understand what the reason was, so they even began to reduce their working hours in order to spend more time with her.

 Now about magic. The result was not as bad as I expected it to be. Yes, there is no part of my energy, but it regenerates at a visible rate. Yes, because of this, the merger was suspended a little, but the period is short and by the age of ten I will definitely recover. It turns out that the date of the full merger has been pushed back by only six months, which is not very critical.

 Having firmly decided for myself to develop in other areas for now, I began to complicate my training by adding more strength exercises, which often drove me to exhaustion. I did not feel very well, especially when my mother did not want to treat me, thus arranging a boycott against my hard training, but seeing the futility of her protests, she thawed and began to heal again. This body never ceases to amaze me: everything heals much faster, and all body parameters are exactly higher than my peers. It was just a bit embarrassing to check it out in childish brawls.

 My parents tried to bring their friends' children for my socialization, but just once after looking at the faces of my peers who were not yet burdened with thoughts and comparing them with me, they decided not to bother much with this undertaking, correctly believing that somehow before that I got along with adults.

 The books in the library lying on the shelves of the palace library have run out, now you have to run to the city library and read there. I would like to take it with me for comfortable reading at home, but knowledge is very valuable here, which is why library staff can safely send both the son of the leader and the leader himself with such wishes to hell.

 I am determined to finish all the books before the age of twelve, or most of it, anyway, I am not allowed to actively practice magic yet. So, I need to pump my brains and muscles. But when the magic is activated, I will be able to fully devote all my time to just bendering!

 By the way, I now know from Dad's library purely in theory: how to properly carve up different animals, how to determine how old the carcass was, which parts of them can be used for medicinal tinctures. I know how to build ice houses for a comfortable stay in them, and I have also read many books on fortification from the Kingdom of the Earth. I reviewed a whole bookcase of books on waging war with the people of fire from past leaders, and they died quite often then – they really paid with their blood for this experience.

 The flora of the North Pole was described in a thin book that was gathering dust on the top shelf. I even liked to read records where just tons of useless text. It was even worse than some Chinese ranobes, but when you have the wildest information hunger, everything ceases to matter. Apparently, before everything was carried to the monastery of knowledge, somehow the correspondence of two lovers who lived in warring tribes caught my eye.

 In the city repository of knowledge, the situation was not much better – only there was a whole section for water magicians: techniques, various enlightenments of masters, there were even scrolls with authors who found a thread that would stretch to methods of controlling blood, and pumping water out of everything around us.

 Yes, all the materials were essentially simple arguments – before confirming their research, the authors did not have enough of their century, and other masters, twirling their finger at their temples, threw their scrolls at the very end, as utter nonsense. After all, they don't like to deviate from tradition here. It seems to me that in the Southern Water Tribe, they would only ask how many enemies they could put down with these skills.

 I found another treasure in the middle of an ocean of water – one scroll authored by not just a man, but a Human Being. The author created the first magic of healing, well, maybe she's not the first, but it's not enough to just learn, and who will reflect on the sources of these abilities and write for an uneducated people? Otherwise, I know firsthand exactly how this branch of water magic is being taught in Healing Huts right now. There's more practice, couldn't you do it right? You will do it until you learn! They do not like theoretical justifications here, the continuity of generations is still strong, when masters enlighten only personal students.

I say right away that auntie was thorough, between the lines she was not even too lazy to throw mud at the policy being pursued at that time. Calling the leader and elders short-sighted stubborn sheep was also very strong.

 After visiting Wang Shi Tong's Library, she found records about energy magic. After making my own conclusions, I came to other knowledge that tells about vital energy. At the end of her "journey," she found records of Qi. As a result, she called the authors of these books morons for not being able to read each other's books... Here I completely agreed with her.

 The authors of these manuscripts described and studied, in fact, the same thing – it's just that the first book on energy magic was written back when people lived on lion turtles. The second author studied the same as the first, only already at the beginning of the age of Avatars, calling, in fact, the magic of energy – vital energy, which is also true, because even in the first book the author wrote: "Energy magic is the ability to control vital energy." The third author, having also begun studying this topic, has already given his name to this type of energy. As a result, it turned out that the authors were talking about the same thing!

 It turns out that during treatment, the healer must add a piece of his vital energy. And the vital energy, in fact, flows in each of us. For me personally, it looks like the proverbial prana, which has the same properties. The author has established in a number of statistical analyses that healers live significantly longer than even the most powerful magicians of any element. Therefore, she believed that every time healers bring themselves to depletion of vital energy, they unknowingly increase its density and conductivity. As a result, it gives them stronger health and increases the chances of seeing not only their grandchildren, but also their great-grandchildren.

 And now I can't wait to do healing magic myself, because what opportunities it opens up! And what if you learn to manipulate your blood and already charge it with your qi for healing? Is it possible to increase the efficiency of rejuvenation itself in this way?

 You could even say that this is the way to make the people you care about long-lived. Because I'm definitely not going to leave this world until I really get bored, and with the opening of the chakras and my nature as a kind of hybrid of spirit and man, I have to live for a very long time.