Dao yelps.

"I can tell that much by myself," says Dao.

Dao trails around after her, looking worried and confused.

"Um... okay," says Dao.

"I need you to be - present, and sort of - look after me, because if this works I'm not going to be in my body and something could fall on me if there's another quake and I could die."

"...okay," he repeats. "I guess I'll try not to let anything fall on you, then."

"Yeah," says Dao. "Oops is right. Well, I hope the roof doesn't collapse on us."

"It shouldn't," says Beila uncertainly. "Earthquakes aren't uncommon exactly, just that was an unusually bad one, and the house survived that - I'm sorry. Figuring out how to put you back in your body could take a while, I know how to go back myself, at least in theory, but I don't even know quite how I brought you along for the ride. The spirit could start throwing around more power any moment and I need to find it now."

"So what do I do? Follow you around and try not to get in the way?"

"Or stay here by our bodies, up to you, but we could run into any number of things I have a better shot at defending against than you do so you might want to stick with me," Beila says uncertainly.

"...I think I'll stick with you," he decides.

"Thank you," says Beila. And she looks around, and thinks, and concentrates, and points in a direction.

Dao goes that way.

He has to put her down and rest once or twice, but mostly, he just carries her.

Dao puts her down.

Dao hangs back worriedly.

Dao worries some more!

...Where are they? Dao looks around, although he isn't sure that's going to help.

Maybe he'll pay attention on the walk back. If direction and distance even mean the same thing here that they do in the material world.

Dao hangs back and frets.

"Yeah, I was thinking that," says Dao. "Will do."

Beila counts steps, and peers at the sun when it's visible, as they go back the way they came.

Dao does likewise.

When they get back to the spirit-shadows of their bodies, which appear to have fallen on their sides in the second quake but aren't obviously injured, Beila says, "Okay, um, I have a set of instructions for how to get back into my body. Which I really, really hope apply to you. You have to line up with it, and then - we aren't actually breathing, here, it's just easy to feel like we are because breathing feels like normal to us, but there's no air to breathe and no real bodies to need it even though we're sort of pretending on both counts. You focus on breathing, which you are doing in your body and are not doing here, and this should, on top of being lined up with yourself, put you back in your body. Try it, I'll wait for you."

"I didn't know bringing you into the spirit world with me was even possible," Beila muses, counting steps, pausing to account for an office building in the way, counting more steps.

"Me neither," he says wryly.

"I guess I'll ask the nuns about it. You're okay, right? You feel normal?"

"Yep! As far as I can tell, anyway."

"Okay, well, tell me if that proves to be - temporary or anything. I would be upset but not surprised if I'd managed to accidentally kill you, doing that, I would've taken precautions falling-over or no falling-over if I'd known it was a remote possibility."

"I'm so reassured," Dao mutters.

"I'm sorry!" exclaims Beila. "To the very best of my knowledge it's never happened before!"

He smiles and shakes his head. "Okay."

Eventually she's coming up on the right number of steps, and she slows down. "Tell me if you see a sinkhole, anyone looking shifty, or - anything weird," she says.

"Will do!"

"...That looks like a thing," says Dao.

"So... solutions?" says Dao. "Cover it up better? Put up a sign? 'Do Not Dump Here, May Cause Earthquakes'?"

"Sign draws attention to it. I think it just needs to be thoroughly covered up. And also I explicitly agreed to pass on the spirit's message so I need to find who owns this lot. I'll call Shifu Hayaka, failing that the nuns, I'm sure one of them knows an earthbender who can handle it. I don't know how to handle it myself yet. Here, you borrow my screen, look up the address in the recordhall files." She hands over her screen and chordpress and pulls out her phone.

Dao looks up the address.

He gives her the address.

"That's where the owner lives? Okay, he gets a visit after this place is shored up, then." Beila sits at the edge of the sinkhole to stand guard and wait. "Well, this has been an unreasonably exciting day."

"Yep," says Dao.

Dao snorts.

"Please don't suddenly keel over, I'd be sad."

"I would be sad too," says Dao. "Well, no, I'd be dead. But I'd be sad about being dead, if that was an option."

"Just don't be too sad about being dead or you'll be a mischievous kinda ghost. Shoot for a gentle melancholy."

He giggles.

"And whatever you do, don't be angry about being dead! Especially not at me."

"Why, would I haunt you?"

"You might! It would be really inconvenient. I could not at all miss you properly if you were haunting me, being obnoxious."

He snorts.

"Better yet, be alive," Beila says, reaching up from her sitting position for a hug.

Dao sits down beside her and hugs her.

"A while, I bet."

"Yeah. I hope they get the plumbing mostly handled promptly or it will be harder for waterbenders to help with disaster relief. I wonder how far those shocks spread, if it got the suburbs much..."

"I hope my place still has water."

"If it doesn't you can crash with me for a few days, if nothing else I can ask Shifu Hayaka to teach me to separate salt from seawater, it doesn't look too hard."

...He hugs her.

Hugs!

Hugs.

"Sure," shrugs Dao.

"Aww," he says, smiling.

"Have you ever - interacted at all with spirits in any way, shape, or form? I'm trying to come up with a hypothesis about why you could've been dragged along with me," Beila wonders aloud as they walk.

"Um... not that I recall? Maybe something knew you'd need me to carry you," Dao suggests.

"Maybe," muses Beila. "I don't think Avatar transitions into the spirit world are mediated by anything that knows stuff, though."

"Some dead Avatar watching over you?"

"...Possible. Maybe I should work a little harder at learning to get into the Avatar State and ask them."

Dao shrugs.

"If you had past lives you could talk to what would you say to them?"

"I... have no idea," says Dao.

She laughs. "What would you say to somebody a hundred years from now who was using your soul?"

"Probably 'good job, you're making better use of it than I ever did'."

"I don't think you're doing badly. Do you?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe. I guess."

"But - how so?"

"I don't know," he sighs.

Beila takes his hand and squeezes it. "You live a pretty ordinary life, plus, you just helped prevent an angry supervolcano spirit from going unappeased," she points out. "I don't think that adds up bad."

"...okay, yeah."

"You don't look completely convinced."

"I'm not not convinced."

"You sound kinda not-convinced."

"You're very convincing. I think maybe I just... don't know what being convinced would be like."

"Hmm."

He shrugs.

"What is it like to - feel like whoever has your soul next will automatically be doing a better job with it? I mean, I would instantly press a button that made me immortal, stopped the entire Avatar Cycle right here, I would not feel a moment's conflict over it, if I talk to Random Waterbender Boy assuming I fail at producing such a button in my lifetime I'm probably going to mostly want to say 'give me my soul back, jerk'. I don't know what the other way of thinking is like at all."

"...I don't know what your way of thinking is like at all," says Dao. "Well, it's not hard to imagine you thinking like that. But it's hard to imagine me thinking like that. I just - I've been like this for a long time."

Beila squeezes his hand. "It's like you don't even like yourself. If there were two of you would you just sort of stare resentfully at each other wondering why they were taking up space?"

"...If there were two of me we'd probably make out," he says, and then blushes.

"Ooh."

"Maybe. If there were two of me we wouldn't make out. We'd probably plot."

"I think you'd definitely plot."

"There would be so much plotting! It'd be great. But if you'd get along with another one of you - so to speak - why don't you get along so great with just the one?"

He shakes his head. "I don't think it works that way."

"Why not?"

"Because it doesn't?"

"I am enlightened."

He snorts.

"Not liking yourself sounds really uncomfortable."

"It is."

Beila squeezes his hand again. "I like you," she offers.

"I like you too!"

"Oh good! It would be kind of awkward if we were dating and didn't like each other."

He giggles.

Eventually they reach the address at which the owner of the lot is supposed to live. Beila rings the doorbell. There's no immediate answer; she taps her foot.

"Maybe he's out."

"I sure hope not, because in that case I pretty much have to sit here all day," says Beila. "If he's on vacation we're in trouble, especially if there's any work already scheduled on the lot to take place while he's gone."

"You could try to find his number and call him...?"

"Was there anything like that in the directory you found?"

"No-o. But maybe there's another directory?"

"Maybe." She pulls out her screen and starts hunting.

Dao waits.

"Nothing," Beila sighs. "At least nothing easily accessible. I suppose it's probably on file somewhere less public and I could storm into city hall and demand it. But I'll give him another hour to come home first, I think."

"Okay," says Dao.

Beila plops down on the owner's front steps and carries on poking around for a phone number. "As long as we're waiting," she says, "tell me something. A story," she suggests. "Fiction or non, whatever, fill the silence." She waves a hand imperiously, but she's smiling.

"Sorry, I'm all out of facts about panda carp," he laughs.

"Fact about panda carp aren't stories, anyway," Beila giggles. "I dunno. How did you spend the year you were eight years old?"

"I don't remember. Probably I went to school and stuff."

"I bet you'd remember if you'd spent the entire year truant, yeah."

He giggles. "Yeah, that'd be a story. Not that I have any idea what I would've been doing if I had."

"Petty theft, long days at the beach, buying a little scooter and zipping around unsafely?"

"That sounds way more fun than the year I actually had, which was apparently so boring I don't even remember it."

"What's your first memory?"

"I'm not sure," he says. "You know how people tell you things about when you were young and then you don't remember if you remember them or just remember the stories?"

"Yeah, I wasn't really serious about writing stuff down till I was seven and halfway competent with a chordpress, and even then there's still the question of whether I naturally remember what I wrote or if I'm reconstructing it from notes, just like if I'm remembering something because I do or because Ranyi told me about it later."

"Yeah."

"But what is your earliest plausible memory?"

"I wish it was my mom, but it's probably not."

...Beila decides to wait for a silent moment to see if elaboration is forthcoming.

"I feel llike I remember her, but I don't know any details, I just know she must've existed once because babies don't fall out of thin air."

"They don't," agrees Beila. "Do you know anything about her?"

"Not really."

"I'm sorry."

He shrugs.

"Do you live here?" wonders Dao. "'Cause if so, we're here to talk to you about that spirit you pissed off."

"More like five," says Dao.

Dao grins a little.