It took quite a bit of time for Daniel and Emily to finally join Loralle outside of the cave. They looked refreshed and happy…

They were even quite close to one another, but Loralle didn’t notice.

“Sit. I take back…Then…I leave.” Loralle said, her voice far away.

They sat next to her, then they traveled, by earth, back to the bottom of the volcano. This time though, Emily wasn’t as disturbed and disgusted by the earth power…In fact she had noticed that the water pool was really good, perhaps liking it more so because she was able to get the attention of one of the strongest males within the tribe…

…None of them spoke until they had arrived on normal ground again, yet, for both Daniel and Emily it wasn’t uncomfortable in the slightest. They still had lingering pains upon their body but the atmosphere around them spoke of a future that led them to be together.

Loralle didn’t even look at them when she stood up, instead she was looking for the direction that she was next going to take.

Daniel happily helped Emily stand, even going as far as being careful to both of their bodies. He noticed that Emily had a similar burnt area like himself around one of her legs and decided to get some help to take them back to his home.

“Bye.”

Daniel finally noticed Loralle, and said, “Wait! Stay! Be with the Fire Tribe!”

Obviously, he was in a very good mood! His intentions from before surfaced again, giving her another chance, even though he didn’t particularly like her very much. But, for selfish means, he wanted to bring her back...

“No.” Was all Loralle said, before leaving upon another lot of earth, that sprouted from the ground.

 

Daniel watched Loralle leave and somehow felt bad. He hadn’t even asked what her name was! But he felt somewhat happy that she had refused…She really was a pain in the ass!

He got over Loralle’s visit very fast, as he remembered the beauty in his arms.

He turned to go home, with his arm still around Emily...He was just going to have to hide this new addition for now...

Emily was glad to see Loralle leave…She really regretted going through all that pain…

But…She did get something today!

Looking at Daniel, she smiled, she was his woman now! She no longer was one of the low, commoner people, who had to work so hard to keep living. Emily silently looked forward to a better life...Which had been another reason she had stayed close to Loralle. She had thought that her power would have meant that she had been a noble. But what she hadn't thought, was that she was, instead, a totally different gender!

None of that mattered now, as she smirked to Daniel demanding someone to bring across something that would help take them away from where they were…No, now she was going to be looked after for a change!

 

***

 

Loralle was out of the Fire Tribe within the hour and recklessly went straight towards the giant cyclone far, far away into the distance. The cyclone could not obviously be seen from where she was, but the target direction was known by easily searching through the earth.

But…It really did make her sad that she felt like she wasn’t leaving anything behind. Again, she had no obligation to stay…In fact, she wanted to leave there as fast as possible!

Even finding her mother was far from being a priority now…Especially when the loneliness had crept into her as soon as she had realized that Emily was obviously not wanting more power.

Thinking earlier, she had made some decisions. After making these decisions, Loralle found that she had felt so much better!

It was like a force had kept her down and had made her feel heavy!

Now…She decided that she was going to find another way, as soon as possible, to free everyone. And doing that, will take time, and sadly, war can’t be held out for too much longer. She will concentrate on gaining approval to the other two elements…Then…Well, she’ll think of something!

Hopefully, there was another way to get rid of the vengeance, hopefully a faster method!

There must be a way!

She could not believe everything was a lie! If she was the only one that could see this and be able to do something about it…Then there is no giving up!

Maybe...She thought, maybe I have another power!

One were I don't give up!

That power seemed to come and go though…She felt…

Because sometimes, especially now, she felt lonely and didn’t feel much of that feeling of power going through her at all! Then…There were times that she would have her earth friend beside her, and she would feel this ‘new power’ of not giving up was giving her more strength, more courage to go forth and fix things!

 

***

 

Within the next couple of weeks of Loralle’s travel, the protectors that had finally found her, had lost her again, not knowing that she had left the Fire Tribe.

Her tracks had been there for them to see but...The inevitable happened! They were finally caught by the Fire Tribe!

Not being immune to fire, it was easy to integrate them within the fire village, but only one had succumbed to talking.

Watching John and Sam die in front of him, Rick cried out why they had been in the Fire Tribe. With his friends, that were as close as brothers, that had left his side, his courage deteriorated as he had watched them suffer and perish. Not only that, the leader that they had spent so much effort into finding, had disappeared again and he didn’t know for how long…

In just a week, the three of them had gone down to one and their leader was nowhere to be seen…Once again, Rick hated his leader, not because of the element vengeance this time, but because this was not the way a leader should act! Wasn’t a leader supposed to be there for their people, their tribe?

 

After discovering that their enemy was here to get their leader back, and that ‘The Powerful Water Tribal leader’ had been in the Fire Tribe, the interrogators didn’t know how to respond.

They were worried, until Daniel found them and told them about Loralle.

He didn’t keep any information back and they were all shocked!

Utterly and completely...Shocked!

Not only because the leader of the Water Tribe was female…But Daniel is saying he…Lived through the mouth of the volcano!?

But they had to believe him, he showed his extreme fire powers to them! Even seeing those powers, they still couldn’t be released from their shock!

Then they continued to be in shock when they heard that ‘The Powerful leader of the Water Tribe’ didn’t destroy the Fire Tribe while she had been here and that she herself said that she didn’t want to fight!

They couldn’t believe their luck! They had been secretly afraid all this time, only stating that they weren’t scared because of their pride, but it looked like it was all just a waste of time anyway!

They didn’t have to worry anymore! The Water Tribe was still without a leader and even if they recognized the girl as a leader, she has gone and didn’t want to fight!

Their powerful lineage was gone! They were completely beneath them now!

The Fire Tribe were that happy that they didn’t kill Rick, but just left him in the prison.

Word got out about these fortunate events and a festival took place!

They were alive, and they were going to stay that way!

Hell, many of them gained so much ego through this that they were becoming impatient to start the war up once again!

 

With this festival…Daniel finally started to understand what Loralle meant by the hate. The festival was filled with people that hated the Water Tribe.

To confirm, Daniel went up to strangers and brought up the topic of the Water Tribe and saw it in their eyes…Of course there was the obvious want to go to war, but he was able to see the difference now, when he hadn’t noticed it before.

Was it this, that she was talking about? He questioned.

It was strange…He didn’t feel so much hate anymore, although he couldn’t say it was completely gone…He felt more wronged because of all the deaths that the Fire Tribe had because of the Water Tribe. He knew, though, this was a different hate. The hatred before was unquestionable, it was set in to his mind whether he had liked it or not. This time, he choices to hate the Water Tribe, still following the want to completely destroy them.

And Loralle wanted to change it all…

Suddenly, he felt really sorry for her. His mind could finally see that there was a problem with everyone, but the idea of war still didn’t change from his heart.

 

And now she was gone…What is she going to do? Why was she so fixated in trying to ‘help the people’? Would she understand my feelings even now? Did she return back to the Water Tribe?

It wasn’t confirmed on where she went and that did make them feel uneasy, but the Fire Tribes moral was high, and Daniel did not want to disturb that!

Sighing, Daniel couldn’t help but relax. He wasn’t used to being so serious…

His life had been quite pleasant and easy, he hadn’t cared too much for anything…Except one thing, he really enjoyed the small pool of warm water, so he went to Rick to get him to secretly make him one. Finding out that Rick couldn’t make the water warm, Daniel had to continuously warm the water with fire, which annoyed him. But it was only him and Emily that enjoyed the lovely, small pool, as no one else wanted to see water, yet alone be in it!

He didn’t care much though, he happily continued his life of being a 'playboy' and helping with the war against the Water Tribe, after all, there wasn’t long to go now before they could start their preparations of attack!

 

***

 

Loralle was on her own again, but this time she felt even more determined to finish what she had started.

She stopped for food, but not having anything or anyone close by, made her want to get to what seemed to be the ‘Air Tribe’, faster.

As she traveled, she had watched these people more thoroughly.

Noticing that previously, she had immunity to water, earth and fire because she was born with it, Loralle was certain that she had to first get immunity to this power too. It had been a lot easier to obtain the rights to use the other powers in the first place so Loralle was wondering how she should do this...Is there a way to do this fast?

She was hoping that once she learnt it, she would naturally become immune to it. Of course, she hoped and hoped, because if the immunity didn’t come naturally, she would not know how to gain it…Then, it would be even more difficult to live through the cyclone…And then if it was something that she could not gain at all…

No…She mustn’t give up!

Loralle was reluctant to let go of her hope…She didn’t want to think about the potential of her not even being able to get into the tribe without the immunity, because of the wind around the area, let alone how much pain she might receive by getting the approval from the giant cyclone…Thinking that it couldn’t be done at all, could be seriously depressing and she didn’t want to do that! It’s no fun being upset!

 

Thinking about these things and spending a lot of time out in the big opened ‘dead’ looking land, led Loralle to question the earth power…Well, it wasn’t like she originally questioned it, but she hadn’t wanted to think bad thoughts and the most obvious thing to her was…The sight in front of her…A whole lot of nothing…

How was it that people were able to go into the barren, desolate earth and not feel something from it? Were they already immune from it?

It really stunned Loralle, because, for so many years people left their tribes to fight across the earth place and easily stood there like they aren’t affected by anything. Over the long time of history, did everyone have earth inside them somewhere already?

Yet, when she had used the earth power, they had all shunned it, and this fact confused Loralle completely…

But what was really going on!? Vengeance, elements…Their powers…

Loralle had to admit, that out of all the powers, the earth power was the most mysterious one out of the lot!

It was everywhere, yet no one used it…It didn’t have a Tribe and its powers were just as great as the Water and Fire!

…Questions…Answers…

Loralle’s head started to hurt, not just because of scratching it, but because she figured that she was thinking too much!

 

When she got closer to the Air Tribe, so that she was only a day or two travel time away. Loralle slowed down and decided to build a house and learn the air power from that distance.

Trying to imitate the Air Tribal members, Loralle desperately tried harnessing the power, but to no avail.

She asked the air many, many times but nothing ever happened.

Loralle, who had expected more, couldn’t help but feel a little downcast about discovering this.

Here she was, worried over gaining immunity, when she had already fallen before even gaining the power in the first place! There were just way too many steps to follow with this, having made Loralle want to jump over one of them and cheat!

Gain immunity and be able to use the power, ask the power then to be able to use it and then go the where the power wants you to go to gain approval…That is how it has to be done and Loralle grumbled and pouted when she realized that this will take a lot longer than she had originally thought!

 

With no other idea in mind, she left her house and went closer to the Air Tribe.

She knew when she was getting closer, as the air was notably stronger and more piercing. Her hair got into her eyes many times and her clothes were flapping about, making Loralle even more upset because nothing was doing as it was told!

Stopping, she tried to harness the power of air once again and felt a little different.

Was it because there was no wind before that she had not been able to gain the power? She questioned.

She was honest with herself though and decided that she had only felt different, but had not seen anything to state that she had made the power work…

Deciding to build a house there for the time being, Loralle continued to practice. And so that she wasn't alone, she made an earth 'person' to practice with her...

Through seeing that nothing was changing with the earth ‘person’ beside her, except the wind threatening to knock it down, Loralle really started to wonder if this was working at all!

 

***

 

Another week went by and Loralle was unsure on how to feel. She continued to feel different but did not ever see any kind of change!

All this time, she had watched others in the Air Tribe but when she imitated them, nothing happened!

Giving up on following others, Loralle sat there instead and remembered how she had learnt the earth power.

When she had been very small, she had liked the dirt, climbed the trees and watched the ground through sunsets and sunrises...Well, it wasn't like she had any other choice...

Smiling, she opened her eyes and patted the earth 'person' beside her. She had thought for a while that she was on her own…How could she forget her most precious friends?

Feeling guilty, she apologized to the earth ‘person’ and looked towards the giant cyclone in the far distance.

They are all my friends and you will be too, she thought as she looked happily at the huge cyclone.

Loralle laughed, actually, she already felt better, even though she felt like she hadn’t accomplished anything yet.

Closing her eyes again, she tried to seek the air, to touch it and softly speak to it.

Yet, it was so deathly quiet…

All that could be heard was wind…But…Didn’t it used to be stronger then this?

Remembering her hair and clothes being moved so strongly before, she did notice that it wasn’t as bad as before…

There has be something happening…Right?

 

***

 

Besides eating and sleeping, Loralle continued to sit there and ‘search’ for her newest friend.

Days had passed, but she never moved closer or further away from the Air Tribe.

It was still strange to feel that something was going on, but she continued to see…Absolutely nothing! Well, except that of the wind going around her and not making a mess of her hair and clothes anymore…

Until…Finally, one day, a light breeze that she made herself had surrounded her!

How excited she was!

It was ever so light, but to Loralle, it was like she was being caressed. She felt like she had finally been accepted to use this power. Haha, another power!

There were two things that she hadn’t known, one was that, she hadn’t been doing ‘nothing’ all this time. For the most part of air…It can’t be seen…Of course, she had to learn more, but the prelude to gaining the air power had already been accomplished, even though she couldn’t see anything change.

Not only that, the power of air starts with everyone on their first breath, when they are born...So, the very beginning of learning to use the air power...Is with everybody living on Mondal!

But...No one seems to know this fact...

The second thing unknown to her, was that she had been doing this for two months already. And in these two months…There was, indeed, changes in the far distance.

Having not watched the Water or Fire Tribes since she had left, she wouldn’t know that war was very close to happening once again…

 

***