Young Writers Society

You wake up in a small tent in a stretch of desert under a star-filled sky. There's a lantern on the inside, with a small, contained, flickering flame. You're on a collection of blankets that are comfortable, even on the dry desert ground. The air is cool and dry, and you can hear crickets and cicadas chirping in the distance. Apart from their song, there's a stillness in the night - as if, if they were to stop, it would be complete silence.

When you emerge from your tent, you realize there are three other tents around you, each with the shadow of someone inside.

But that's not all.

If and when you try to speak, you find that you have no voice.

And if you walk a few yards out into the desert, you'll find that the desert doesn't stretch out as far as it appears in the dark of night. It appears that you're on a very, very small island, surrounded by shimmering, iridescent, undisturbed waters. If you touch it, it's warm, and you find the bottom very fast since it's only about a foot deep. And all that comes up when you dig in with your fingers is sand.

He was not supposed to be here.

The moment the air shifted around him Jay's senses were on high alert. He was in a bed of blankets - not of his own making. The air was dry, but it smelled like petrichor, creosote, and sage. Sweet, dusty earth mixed with rain.

He looked around the small tent he was in. A lantern flickered in the corner - at danger of being knocked over by his arm had he woken with a start - and the ivory fabric that was pulled tightly around its frame was just a little translucent. Enough to see the outline of what looked to be other tents outside.

Jay pushed his head through the flap, looking at the other tents, all arranged in something of a circle, each lit from the inside by a mound of large boulders.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Something in his gut told him he was in danger, but he couldn't see the what behind the suspicion. He tilted his head to the side and listened.

Distant bugs cried out with echoing chirps and buzzing. Wherever he was, the desert was alive with more than just a few people in tents.

He sighed and opened his mouth to whisper something to himself, but when he tried to vocalize, even a little, it was as if his vocal cords were broken. He froze, staring out into the starry sky with eyes wide.

He tried again. This time a little more insistent. Nothing. He tried to be louder, but still, nothing. Not even a grunt, or a moan, or a note that was sung. He couldn't even howl.

With a tense hand he reached for his throat. It felt like everything was there. Nothing seemed to be broken. And yet, he couldn't talk.

He pushed out of the tent slowly, not sure if he should be wary of making noise. He didn't know who else was in the tents, who captured him and brought him here, or if the others were asleep. But from what he could hear - they all sounded like they were stirring as well.

He gulped, before looking at the boulders by the tents. On careful, light feet, he darted behind them to hide.

She was laying in a tent.

Which was...strange. The last thing she remembered, she had been laying underneath the night sky. She was still wearing everything she had been wearing then - the same shirt, pants and lack of shoes - but the place she was in was definitely unfamiliar. She wanted to think that she had been kidnapped, but this wasn't the treatment she had guessed she would get if her secret was ever discovered.

She got to her feet and exited the tent, feeling a sudden but welcome gust of cool, fresh air hit her face. Even the sand (?) didn't feel hot as her bare feet dug into it. She wished that she had her shoes, but maybe she'd be able to find a good replacement.

She glanced around.

There were three other tents. Two had the shadows of people in them. The other didn't. She had always been alert, but she felt like she was even more alert now that she couldn't risk being taken advantage of.

She opened her mouth with the intention of whispering the names of her companions. At least one of them would hear her, right? If not her teacher, his nephew would definitely be alert - if only because he was off brooding again.

But no sound came out.

"Hello?" she tried to say, but she was met with the same silence. Panic began to set in. What had happened to her? Why couldn't she her words out? She was trying to speak as best as she could, but no sound accompanied the words she knew she was saying in her head.

In desperate need of comfort, she slipped back inside her tent. There was a little light in there. Its flame was going strong, but it wasn't going too strong. And that was what she had been practicing, anyways. Making the flame just a little bigger when no one was watching wouldn't really hurt.

She took a deep breath.

And then she tried to manipulate the fire.

But nothing happened.

Eyes widening in horror, she kept trying and trying and trying to get the flame to do anything unusual, but she was still left with the same lack of response. Tears began to prick at her eyes. Losing her voice was one thing, but losing her bending, too? She wasn't even sure she had her friends with her!

Maybe this was a kidnapping attempt. A cruel one, but a kidnapping attempt all the same.

She slipped back out of the tent, wiping away the tears that were still spilling over. She glanced around again, trying to find some kind of explanation. Two of the tents were still occupied, but the other one was still missing a person. She crept over to it and lifted the tent flap up ever so slightly. It looked like a person had been in there.

She was felt like she was playing hide and seek like she had back in the village, checking behind each tent in case the owner of the empty tent was lurking behind. Maybe they had gone off somewhere in the desert, but wasn't it better to check here first?

She couldn't find them there.

She looked up at the beautiful night sky, thought for a moment, and then turned her attention to the great boulders towering over the camp. Without her bending - or her shoes, for that matter - Jun felt almost completely defenseless, but she had to remind herself that what she did to bend also doubled as a great fighting technique. She was still a total beginner at both bending and the fighting part, but she could handle herself for at least a little bit.

She stepped behind the boulders.

He could smell her before he heard her, and he heard her before he saw her.

Unless he ran into the darkness of the desert, he wasn’t going to be able to avoid the others forever. The only source of light apart from the stars were the lanterns in the tents.

Jay withdrew into the darkness at first, but he knew his overall silhouette could be seen.

He tried to talk again, without thinking. Nothing again.

He took a step out of the boulder’s shadow, revealing himself as he looked at the young, brown-haired girl in front of him. She, of all people, was not who he expected to see as his potential kidnapper, and he didn’t believe she was. He pointed to his throat, did a waving motion back and forth across it with his hand, and shook his head for good measure.

Then he mouthed: “No voice. You?” He gestured back to her with a questioning look, eyebrows raised.

She couldn't tell what he was mouthing, but she thought she understood the meaning behind it. She gave a nod and pointed to her own throat. Whoever had brought them here must have taken away both of their voices, right? But why? And how?

Jay hadn’t expected the girl’s answer to actually be yes. He almost wanted to test it - poke her, or push her, or something to make sure she wasn’t lying or pretending - but he didn’t. Instead, he frowned and looked behind her, over to the other tents.

He looked from her and then gave a sharp nod pointing in that direction.

How was he supposed to ask if other people were inside? Trying to play gestures was already getting annoying. He paused, rolled his eyes and grabbed a stick off the ground before walking near his tent, where the light inside it shone out and onto the sand.

With the stick, he wrote: “Can you read this? Nod if yes.”

She followed him back over to the tents. She made sure to grab a stick of her own before they reached the light spilling out of his tent.

She wasn't that fast of a reader, but she thankfully had been taught how to read. She gave a nod a few moments after the question was asked.

"Who are you?" she wrote in the sand. The movement of the stick was embarrassingly slow, but writing was something she had never been great at. She really had to think if she wanted it to be legible. "I'm Jun."

She paused, thought for a moment, then added, "Have you seen anyone else here?"

She wanted to describe her companions, but she knew it would take too long to. Instead, she tried her very best to draw them in the sand. The drawings didn't come out all that well - and the blush on her cheeks clearly showed it - but she tried to ignore her embarrassment. Her teacher or her friend had to know what to do in a situation like this!

She looked back over at the man.

"Have you seen them?" she wrote.

It was a dream. It had to be. A very vivid dream. Claire knew because she was in a tent, and she'd left that life long ago. Still, she heard the cicadas, and felt the warm night on her skin. She was wearing was wearing denim cutoffs and a yellow short sleeved blouse, not exactly pyjamas but not unlike the kinds of clothes she wore at Eagle Rock and before.

Still, the only time she'd been in a tent was her first night, when she and Jay had made love. She'd changed her clothes to her white dress and jumper and Jay had told her she looked beautiful. She'd laid her head on his shoulder and she told him about how much she missed Liverpool, and she pushed that had been back in her mind down. Now she had Amy and Amy was half him.

Claire sighed. A lantern was giving the tent a soft glow, and there were Birkenstocks close to the flap. She took them, and slid on the Birkenstocks. There were three other tents, but they didn't appear to be occupied. She looked up and saw the stars. It was beautiful, but it made her heart race.

That was when she saw two people knelt into the sand. Se called out and realized something. She had no voice. Okay...

She approached the other two. A man and a younger girl. She didn't know sign language. She covered her mouth, trying to signal to them that she couldn't talk. She saw they were writing messages in the sand, and they couldn't talk either.

She took a stick and wrote, "My name is Claire."

Jay squinted at confusion at the crude drawings Jun made in the sand. He shook his head and shrugged in reply before looking up as a woman emerged from one of the other tents. He watched her try to sign something, and then grab a stick.

So, she couldn't talk either.

Was it something in the air? Something they'd eaten? Some kind of magic?

He watched as she wrote her name, and cleared away his previous writing for space, writing: "I'm Jay."

He looked back over at Claire and Jun. Claire had... odd clothes, and both her and Jun smelled of unfamiliar scents.

He added in the sand: "I don't know where we are or how I got here. Do you know?"

She shifted in her restless sleep. She already knew she wasn't where she was suppose to be, mostly because it was more comfortable then what she was used to. Again she shifted, her hand coming in direct contact with a lantern that sat near her, burning her and waking her with a start.

She swore loudly, or at least she thought she did. Her mind was fuzzy as she carefully stood the lantern up. It wasn't till she grumbled in frustration that she realized she wasn't making a sound.

Taking in her surroundings finally she found herself in a tent: just her, the clothes on her back, and that annoying lantern. She didn't bother spending much time wondering about how she got there and focused on how she was going to get where she wanted to be.

Upon exiting her tent she was greeted by the sight of three other people and 3 other tents. Somehow she was more bothered by the company than the fact that she couldn't speak and was in the middle of nowhere. She hesitated to approach them, but stood in the open still, watching them.

Claire had strange clothes, but Jun had never been outside of the Earth Kingdom - maybe those clothes were considered normal in other parts of the world? Jay's clothes were more of what she was used to, but even he felt a little off.

And then the fourth person emerged from their tent.

The little hope that Jun had disappeared with the girl's appearance. She was without either of the two people that she had come to trust. She didn't know who the newcomer was, or why she was lingering a little while away from them. Maybe - hopefully - she was just shy.

Jun really didn't want to think of the alternatives.

She gave a shy little wave, pointed at her throat, and then pointed down at where they had all written their names in the sand.

As Jun waited for her to come over and write her name, too, she looked back down at Jay's question.

"I don't know," she wrote. "I just woke up in the tent. We must be somewhere in the Earth Kingdom, but I'm not sure where."

The man's name was Jay. What were the odds of that? As Claire sat in the sand, she took a minute to compose herself. This Jay couldn't know. It wasn't his fault, and besides, how would she have even begun to explain that to him? So she ignored it for now. He didn't even look anything like her Jay. She saw his question, and the younger girl's response. Earth Kingdom? That was a way of putting it.

She wrote.

I don't know. I live in California. I have a daughter. I would like to go home to her.

Claire softly touched the ring on her finger. She had Larry now. And he was going to take care of her.

Jay looked up as the last person emerged from their tent: another girl, with purple hair, and purple eyes. Something about her seemed almost familiar, even though her hair and eye color were off-putting and unlike anything he'd seen before.

She smelled more like Nye, from what he could catch drifting through the air from where she stood. He didn't know if that was comforting or not.

He wished he could talk. He found himself opening his mouth only to shut it in frustration.

He didn't know what Claire or Jun were talking about.

California? Earth kingdom? Neither of those were places he'd heard of, and neither were versions of names of places he knew either. But what reason did they have to lie? They couldn't talk and they appeared to have woken up like him too - confused, with no idea how they got here or where they were.

But where were they from, then?

He didn't know if he really wanted to know, and he didn't have the energy to write all of that out. That would take forever.

He erased more of his previous writing. "I've never heard of those places," he wrote. "You probably don't know Midea, where I'm from."

He looked back up at the purple-haired girl, eyes squinting.

He waved a hand for her to come over, insistent.

Rose tried to let out a heavy sigh, but even her disgruntled noises were unheard.

She approached slowly and cautiously as the man beckoned - not that she even had the slightest level of trust, but she couldn't ignore the confusion painted on their faces. As she looked down she saw the message he had scribbled in the ground. Midea? Sounded like something that could exist, but she'd never heard of the place.

Kneeling down as close as she felt comfortable to them, she wrote her own message in the sand with a finger. "Outlands, Ruddlan, Nye."

She could only assume none of them would know what these words meant, judging by the other things she saw written on the ground. What exactly did misspelled cauliflower have to do with anything?

Jun looked at the words everyone had written.

California. Midea. Outlands, Ruddlan, Nye. All of those were places that Jun had never heard. She didn't know a lot about the world outside of her little village, and she knew even less about the world outside of the Earth Kingdom. But she couldn't help but get a sinking feeling in her chest when no one offered a regional term she knew - one of the water tribes, the Fire Nation, or even just saying that they had been to the Earth Kingdom before.

"I've never heard of those places," Jun wrote, following Jay's lead and erasing some of her old writing. When no one seemed to recognize her drawings, she decided to - reluctantly - erase those, too. "But I've never left my village before now, so that's probably why."