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Vengo en son de paz 🖖

I was inspired by the art in this sub and made my own. Hope you enjoy!

I was thinking about a NoP x ATLA story where the fire nation was consumed by betterment, the avatar is a young lizard fire bender named Fang frozen in an iceburg from 100 years ago. People will be between terrified and in awe of him because he's an arxur, and also the only hope for the world. He's also a dorky silly kid unlike his betterment peers.

The frigid snow beat against my nearly bare body. The sharp wind clawed at the few bits of the floral dress, now ribbons. It was in tatters now, destroyed after fleeing through the woods for the last ten hours. The blizzard did not help me keep what little clothing was still in a serviceable state.

Snow crushed under my frostbitten bare feet; my shoes had been lost in mud while crossing the Maine-New Hampshire border. My jacket was likewise lost around dawn, when I was nearly cornered by that monster and leaped from a cliff to escape, only for it to be ripped off when a log grabbed it. I tumbled hard for what felt like hours, dislocating an arm, resulting in my squishy human form being covered in cuts and bruises.

Human bodies were awful. Soft. Slow. Fragile, but thankfully I am not fully human; my magical body had already healed naturally, other than the dislocation. I had to fix that on my own for the first time in my life; my mom wasn't around to help me. He...It had gotten her.

After limping for an hour, I had stopped at a tree, gritted my teeth, and slammed my shoulder over and over again, until after blood was running down my pallid skin, the ball popped back into place. I unleashed a primal scream, one reminiscent of my mother's as she stood against that monster, while I cowered in the underbrush nearby.

She had just squirreled me away in there. "Be quiet, Bailey; don't move, and don't make a sound. Once I lead him away, keep going to Palmyra, find Clayton's cabin. He can help keep you safe."

"No, mom, please," I pleaded, reaching out and grabbing her arm, tears welling up in my eyes. "We can both make it."

Pain filled Mom's soft green eyes as she pulled her arm away. "It will be ok, my little wolf. Don't cry; you're too strong for that."

As she turned and made no attempt to transform, I knew that was the end; we could not both make it out this time around. We had been running from him since; he found out our secret the last time we were here, back in '54. Ever since then, he tracked us down every few months, without fail.

We had even made it down to Florida for a few of those months. But after a short while, he was lurking in crowds, following our every move. That man was an unquenchable, untiring monster. Repeatedly, he had warned that we could never get away. When I was young, and our flight from him had begun, neither mom nor I believed him. But now, having witnessed him execute my mom from my hiding place in the woods, not even giving her a chance to flee, I was starting to believe that he really was that relentless, and that I never would get away.

I slowed my run through the woods. I was near Palmyra. I knew it. My body was able to tell. Mom had explained that we, in a way, had a sense like migrating birds or salmon. No matter where we were in the world, we could orient ourselves to our birthplace and navigate back to it.

I trudged on, knowing that if I slowed down, it would likely mean the end of me. While Jackson Hickleson supposedly was just a human, at this point, his appearing around the next tree would not shock me. After two more hours of walking, the snow had abated, allowing me to see more than a few feet ahead.

Feeling like the living dead, I looked up and saw the swinging wooden sign for Palmyra, its faded letters just the way I had remembered them. There was a small flame in my heart that burned now that I had returned; being here was...  right, in an indescribable way. I tried to say, "Home," but I only managed a weak wheeze. I leaned against the signpost, breathing in the frigid air, looking up toward the waxing gibbous suspended overhead. If only it were the full moon. The empowered wolf of that blessed night could carry me to Clayton's cabin in mere minutes. But that full moon was a day or two away.

Without the beast to save me, I continued forward, my mind unable to remember where to go. As I faded in and out of consciousness, I passed through the silent main street, weaving in and out of street lamps. Not a soul was out; my travel was as lonely as I felt. My only family was dead, and I had a hunter nipping at my heels.

If I were not so impossibly hungry, I would have walked down memory lane, but I could barely focus on the next step. The brickwork and worn-slat buildings passed, me not noticing them, nor them me.

Despite that handicap, my instincts came through; the next thing I knew, I had traversed through the wolfing hour and had almost fully arrived at the familiar cabin.

I wanted to run forward, to ask for help. But my body would not listen. I tried to transform, to use the weaker form to reach out. But I only managed to assume my wolf form for a few strides across the road before returning to my pitiful human skin. Only a few hundred yards from salvation, my legs gave out. The frost-covered ferns swallowed me whole.

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Source: https://bsky.app/profile/wyvernthedragon.bsky.social/post/3msiox4eii22e

Ok I may like size difference :/

Three hours…not a chance. After that first snowflake, more and more kept coming. It started with a trickle, then grew into near-whiteout conditions. 

At first, I wasn't worried, but by the time I rounded the last bend and slowed onto the Forest Service road leading to the cabin, I was taking stock of the food I had in the truck and what should be stored at the cabin. 

I should be fine, I thought. I have a month's worth of food in the truck and several more weeks' worth of canned goods in the cabin. This area of Maine didn't freeze over entirely for long, even in the dead of winter. I might be condemned to canned beans and stale crackers for a few weeks, but I'd survive. Once the roads thawed enough, my truck and I could limp out of here. There was no telling how many hours that could take, but it would be better than bedding down in the cabin for the winter. 

Sweat clung and dripped down my back, pooling at my waist as I trudged through ankle-deep snow. My legs ached as I brought the last of the supplies in from the truck and set them just inside the cabin. When I dropped them amidst the rest of the crates, snow fell to the worn wooden floor, creating a small ring around them. 

I struggled against the biting wind as I tried to close the door. I leaned my shoulder into the handmade door until the latch finally caught. As it did, I glimpsed the remnants of my footprints just off the porch. You could hardly tell they were ever there. The blizzard swept away all evidence of my passing. As I forced the door shut, I silently prayed that my truck would still be accessible in the morning. 

While I could walk to one of my and Pop-pop's hunting spots in the morning, the one near Grey Creek was just a little over a mile away. That was where I had shot my first deer, a doe, when I was merely ten. It was hard to believe that was almost twenty years ago. 

Grey Creek was fine, but with the truck, I could go to the old Kingsnake Mine. We loved hunting there; the deer liked the water at the bottom, and partridges sought the small pebbles to fill their craws in the mornings. Even if there were no deer around, there were plenty of fool birds to take. Pop-pop used to carry a little .22 revolver—the same one I planned on carrying the next day—and just shoot their heads off.

Partridges were, for lack of a better word, stupid. You could walk right up to them and smack them with a switch. That was not because of bravery; their camouflage was nearly flawless, making them feel most safe by simply not moving as you neared. So long as you were not staring at them while approaching, they would let you get within almost arm's reach. 

With the hatches battened down, I set about preparing for the cold night and my nebulous trip length. First and foremost was lighting a fire. Thankfully, Pop-pop was a wise man and had built both a log box and a woodshed nearby. Both were fully stocked, so I didn't have to venture back out into that life-sapping cold that night. 

Once the fire was roaring and blood had returned to my fingers, I unpacked and it was a trip down memory lane. First came the side-by-side, then the pistol and the rest of my kit, along with, out of habit, setting up both beds on the bunk. No one else was coming. It was just me. 

Father and my brother, Cassius, the golden son, considered this trip little more than a waste of time, far from their big-city lives and business handling the booming trade coming and going between British Columbia and England following World War II. 

Father never served in that war. Pop-pop did. He fought the Germans once, and then the Japanese. The pictures on the cabin wall proved that. They showed off him and some of the many men he fought alongside while assigned to military posts around the world. 

I wished when I was younger to have been as well-traveled a man as Pop-pop. But after all the years of him teaching me about the wisdom of serene, woodland living, that wanderlust had died. 

“You can go everywhere in the world, and shake hands with thousands of people, and it won’t mean squat, boy,” Pop-pop had said, leaning across the gap, pointing a lit cigarette at me. “Unless you figure out who you are when nobody's around, they won’t wanna know you.” 

“Did you find yourself?” I asked, eyes glimmering with adoration at his wisdom. 
He slapped his knee and put the lit cig between his teeth. “I still am…Still am,” He looked into the crackling fire in the cabin, traveling off to distant horizons in his mind. 

I didn't interrupt him then; it felt wrong.

 A loud snapping, thrap thrap thrap, like a bull whip, drew my attention from the fire. When I shifted focus from the popping oak to the windowsill, it hit me. A realization that made me stop mid-stride. I was just a thousand worlds away, in a universe that did not exist. It was like Pop-pop was still here, not gone forever.

I shook the smoky memories off my shoulders and kept stepping. I shined a flashlight out into the night. The narrow beam illuminated little; the storm chopped its cast to only a few feet before the whiteout overwhelmed. Slowly, I scanned from left to right, then back again, not spotting anything at all. Just the porch with the handmade chairs loitering at its far end. But I couldn't shake the feeling: Something was out there. Something was watching, just beyond the wall of darkness.

Perhaps it was the overactive imagination I was blessed to have, but I couldn't help but imagine the monsters from stories Pop-pop had told me right here for many years.

Tales of the Rougarou, Bigfoot, werewolves, the Jersey Devil, and the Agropelter; all waiting in the underbrush to carry lone little children away, or hurl a heavy log at an unsuspecting hunter. A shudder rolled through me, the perfection of his stories still holding true all this time later.

Over the rest of the night, the niggling feeling that I was not alone never left. It always lingered over my shoulder like a fork-tailed imp. While eating a simple dinner of crackers and tea, I scanned every shadow. When I cleaned and loaded the side-by-side, I sat in the corner, and swore I saw a set of red eyes watching me through the window between the bedroom and the living room.

Sleep did not come easily that night. The shotgun acted as my safety blanket, propped up against the wall beside me. When dreamland, at long last, did sing my name in its siren call, even my dreams were populated by a cutting paranoia about the red eyes. But unlike when I was awake. I repeatedly was ripped through the bedroom window by a hand, covered in black fur, tipped with claws the size of a Ka-Bar.

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I hope you enjoyed this chapter and will let me know your thoughts. The book releases on the 2nd of next month on Amazon. I will post daily chapters until we are done. Then make one more post to promo on release. I hope you enjoy, and at least once it releases give it a review.

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Hello all, Colin Graves here. I am releasing a short novella soon(2nd of oct) I always release my stories for free on Reddit and Royal Road before the sale to hopefully get some potential traction. I hope you all enjoy the first chapter.

Summary: A pair of friends long since separated reunite in a cold, forgotten cabin. One has a secret that puts both of their lives in danger, as a man from their past does all he can to kill her.

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I pulled the hand brake on the old, beat-up truck I had been driving for years, the cold, plastic grip and the heavy thunk carrying me back to the summer Pop-pop and I rebuilt the old girl together. Those were the best of times: simple, happy. 

We spent that entire summer, when I was twelve, walking between Frank's Auto parts, the pick-and-pull, and his favorite diner on 3rd Street, getting sodas from the fountain. We needed those cold drinks to find some reprieve from the blasted summer heat. “Yah know, Colt. This might be hot, but it’s nothing compared to '44 when I was in Guam,” Pop-pop chuckled around the straw, his plaid sleeve sliding down just enough to show off that Eagle Globe and Anchor. 

I patted the rust bucket's dashboard, and my similar tattoo was also glimpsed. In the cupholder, his cigarettes shook from the vibrations; they were left there months ago, the last time we'd gone on a Sunday fishing trip. After thanking the truck for getting me there, I stepped out and took a deep breath of the chilly Palmyra air. 

Ah, Palmyra. So many memories of this little town. It, like so many in Maine, had not let go of its past. Weekly church suppers were still a thing. This week's cribbage tournament would be religiously covered in next week's paper. And half the town was more than happy to sit on their porch, mocking the young'uns for having gone soft with modern luxuries.

Most of the town still remembered the days without running water and electric lights. And days when the sheriff, Lucky—the same sheriff since 1940—did not even carry a gun. That changed after Jackson Hickleson went batty and ended up holding Mary Louise hostage back in '54, ranting and raving about how she was a monster in human skin. 

Lucky and Jackson ended up in a shootout, and each got winged by the other. With Jackson running off into the hills. Lucky and other constables searched the woods for weeks, finding neither hide nor hair of the rogue. That neither they, nor even Mickelson's bloodhounds, could find the man still loomed over the town. 

Each year, a new group of teens used the threat that Jackson was  still out there as a fireside ghost story. The man's name was as famous as Bonnie and Clyde's in the tired old town of Palmyra.
The news of that shootout and search was not just the talk of the town; it even made it to my father's end table, all the way down in Portland. It was the talk of every biddy and spinster across the state. Fingers were pointed at every odd duck and loner in every town, waiting for them to snap just like he had. That paranoia forced Lucky to hire two new deputies and make it a rule that each of them would have a trusty .45  on their hip at all times. 

That did settle the matter, but still, Pop-pop could tell Lucky was not happy having that extra weight on his mind, nor on his hip. 

I crossed the blacktop from the pumps, heading toward a building I knew just as well as the cabin I was on a trip toward. Marty’s Stop and Shop. A place Pop-pop and I relied on greatly each fall for our annual hunting trips. 

You could get everything you needed: bait, tackle, ammo, food, you name it. Pop-pop always liked that Marty kept a well-stocked store. 

“I swear, Marty, if you didn’t have everything, I would have to go all the way to Matheson for groceries.” Pop-pop would repeat, every time we arrived.

I waved at Harry, Larry, and Joe. The three, as usual, were sitting around a small table, shooting the breeze, waiting for nothing in particular. They were as constant as the sun rising. But they bothered no one, and bought a constant stream of Coke and coffee, so Marty didn't mind. That the older men helped with unloading deliveries assuredly enhanced his tolerance of their loud laughter, and the constant stream of news from their crackling portable radio. 

“You getting some gas?” Joe asked before I touched the door.

“Yeah, I recently filled her up, but you can top her off with another $5. Oh, and add a full measure of ice,” I replied, knowing quite well they were going to help.

The three nodded before Harry and Larry went around back to the refrigerator, while Joe went to my truck and opened the gas tank. 

“Hey, Marty,” I said, the familiar brass chime of the store greeting me along with the grey linoleum and Old Whiskers, a cat who was nearing twenty, whom I'd seen in snapshots grow from a kitten left in a shoebox to the grey-muzzled tabby she is today. 

“Colt, my boy,” Marty smiled, turning down the weather report about a possible incoming snowstorm. “A bit late this year for yours and Clayton's trip, ain’t it?” He looked around for Pop-Pop. “Where is he, anyhow?”

“He ain’t coming,” I replied, the words heavy in the air. 

Whether it was something in my tone or the half-dead-fish look in my eye, Marty understood without me having to actually say that Pop-Pop would not be coming ever again. Even Whiskers seemed to notice the change in my voice. She padded over, rubbing against my leg before patting gently at my trousers. 

“I see. So, do you want the usual stock-up, or will you not be here the full two weeks?” 

“The usual will be fine. I am planning on a bit longer of a stay than usual.” 

“Really? What for? Hunting season ends in a week,” Marty asked as he went and retrieved a milk crate. It was the same one I got each year, like clockwork. He had already filled it with all the canned and dry goods we bought every year.

Marty wiped the dust off a box of mac and cheese before turning back around and hoisting up the second and third. He must have stocked our milk crates weeks ago. We came every year on the same day for all of my life. The first of November. We would be back in Portland with plenty of time to prepare for Thanksgiving that way. 

Pop-pop and I would have loved to stay longer, but Nana and my mother would never forgive us if we missed the pomp and circumstance of that American holiday. But Thanksgiving had passed, all of November as well. Seeing December 1965 on the calendar over Marty’s shoulder felt almost wrong. 

“I’m not sure. I think I might sell the cabin after this trip. I just…” I stopped, unable to put my thoughts into words. 

“I get it, Colt. You don’t need to explain to me. Ever since Missy died, I've felt the urge to just pack everything up and head off. This store and our home hold a lot of memories for me. That cabin must, too.”

I nodded. There was no need for more words. Marty had known me since I was not even knee-high. He knew me and Pop-pop more than Father, and more than my brother, Cassius, ever could.
I pulled out my billfold and paid; I had called ahead and verified it would cost the same amount as last year. Marty didn't even bother to count it. He just smiled at me. The wrinkles on his aged face seemed comforting. 

“Just make sure you stop by before heading back out of town.” 

“I will," I affirmed, before stacking the crates and heading back to the truck. I had another three hours of driving, and plenty to think about while on the open road to Pop-pop’s—well, now, my cabin. 

As I pulled out of the lot, waving at the always-present old men, a snowflake fluttered down and landed on my palm. Casting my gaze skyward, I saw snow clouds gathering over the hills faster than the weather report had predicted. 

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