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Stuffing 4 kids, two adults and a dog into a car was definitely not the way Tenzin expected to be spending his summer vacation. Ever since his sister, Kya eloped with his ex girlfriend Lin (Tenzin still wasn’t sure how he felt about that), family vacations had became a little bigger. Instead of just them, Lin and Suyin’s family came along too.
They hadn’t planned to go to Ember Island at all. It was sorted out oh so quickly, Kya only giving Tenzin a week’s notice to pack everything up and leave Air Temple Island. And since Kya and Lin had no idea what kids were like, they thought it would be perfect to book a morning flight.
So there he was now, with his teenager, two cranky pre-teens and a toddler (and his dog), stuffed in a boiling hot car and driving all the way to the island after landing in the Fire Nation.
“Meelo, quit kicking my seat!”
“You quit ignoring my texts,” Meelo growled, sending Ikki another string of emojis.
“Dad, Meelo’s sending me rude emojis!”
Tenzin sighed, turning to his wife to sort it out. He was usually the one who sorted their bickering, but he was driving.
“Guys, we have an hour left. Can’t you just get along for the last part?”
“No!” “Never.” Ikki and Meelo replied in sync, the one thing they could agree on.
“Get me out of here,” Jinora mumbled under her breath.
Just as everything settled down, Rohan started crying.
This was the longest trip of Tenzin’s life.
—
“Finally! I’ve been holding my pee for an hour!” Meelo ran out the car and straight into the villa, abandoning all his luggage.
“Dad, when are Huan and the others coming? And why are we here so early? It’s like… 7 in the morning.”
“Time zones, Ikki. They’ll be here around 3.”
“3?! But that’s like, forever! Ugh, okay. C’mon Twinkle Starchild, let’s go to our room.”
“Twinkle Starchild….” Tenzin’s voice trailed off, before turning to Ikki with a stern expression.
“Ikki, did you bring your hamster on vacation?”
Ikki just simply smiled and ran into the villa with her backpack, skipping and humming a tune.
Meanwhile, Jinora was struggling to get Rohan out of his carseat. The buckle was fiddly with just one hand, and the other hand was occupied by her phone, pushed up against her ear and talking to Kai.
“I feel betrayed by your dad that he didn’t let me come. He said I was part of the family!”
“Kai,” she giggled, finally unclipping Rohan’s seatbelt and carrying the sleeping toddler out of the car. “The Beifong’s are technically my cousins now. And Dad says this is a strictly biological family vacation, no significant others allowed. Although, Ikki gets to see her girlfriend because she lives here, which is kind of unfair, but whatever.” Jinora rolled her eyes.
“Will you keep me updated?” Kai asked, before the line completely cut out.
No service. Great.
-
Kya, Lin, Suyin and the kids had finally arrived at the island, settling in to the villa next door.
“Wing, Wei, finally! Let’s hit the beach, I’ve been waiting forever! Boys time!” An excited Meelo burst in, practically dragging the twins out onto the beach.
Huan watched the encounter and frowned a little, slightly upset about not being included. Although they weren’t a boy, they felt excluded from their siblings. Just on cue, Ikki arrived and immediately pulled Huan into a hug.
“Hi, I missed you! Do you wanna draw pictures in the sand with me? Ooh, or maybe we could make sand sculptures and get Aunt Lin to rate them. Is that okay?!”
Huan nodded and ran off with their little cousin. They had to admit, they did enjoy her company a lot. She was the complete opposite of them- loud, energetic and uncaring- but she understood them, and that’s all that mattered to Huan.
Jinora, Opal and Rohan were already at the beach along with the adults, and as they talked over fire whiskey and caught up with each other, Jinora and Opal were stuck with babysitting duty.
Rohan splashed in the sea while the girls talked, keeping a close eye on him as he waddled around.
“It’s been 3 years and dad still thinks that Kai is a bad influence on me. If he was, I would’ve changed, right? And I haven’t changed much… right?”
Opal laughed, patting Jinora’s shoulder.
“You haven’t changed a bit. Although, Kai did tell me about a time where you shouted at Tenzin about getting tattoos…”
Jinora gasped in fake shock, splashing water in Opal’s face.
“That was different! He knows I deserved those tattoos.”
“I know, I know, just teasing.”
Rohan saw the girls splashing and wanted to join in, so he lifted his hands to splash… and noticed that he was bending the water, just a little droplet.
“‘Nora!” He shouted for his sister, grabbing her and Opal’s attention.
“Holy- Rohan! You’re waterbending?!” Jinora grinned, lifting him up and hugging him.
“TENZIN! PEMA! ROHAN’S WATERBENDING!” Opal got the attention of the adults as they walked out of the water, Jinora holding the restless toddler who had no idea why he was getting so much attention.
“He’s what?” Tenzin looked up from his book, putting it down on the beach lounger and eyeing Jinora with a raised brow.
“He’s waterbending! C’mon, Ro-Ro, do what you did earlier!”
With his tongue poked out in concentration, he started to bend the water off of his chest, tiny droplets forming in the centre of his hands.
Everyone went crazy.
-
Ikki and Huan were at the other side of the beach, surrounded by different structures made of sand and drawings.
“Can you run out of sand? We’ve used so much of it!” Ikki exclaimed, lying in the sand. They’d been building sand-men all day, and frankly, she was exhausted.
“Eventually. We’re running out of sand because people are using it for everything.”
“...Huh. I never actually knew that. Huan, you know all types of things. How come you’re so smart? I’m definitely not as smart as you but that’s because I’m not smart in general. But that’s okay, because I’m good with people!”
Huan just shrugged.
“I’m not smart, I just like researching things. That’s all.”
“But isn’t that boring? I hate research. Dad makes us do that for homeschooling and it’s so boring. I wish I could go to real life school but dad says we can’t because we’re airbenders and we’re special. Do you get to go to real school?”
Huan nodded, opening their mouth to speak before-
“Hey nerds.”
Great. Wing, Wei and Meelo were here.
“Meelo, we’re not nerds. We’re artists,” Ikki growled at her brother, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. We want you to help us prank Suyin.”
“Why are we pranking mom, exactly?” Huan asked, giving their brothers a weird look.
“Because-“ Meelo started, but was interrupted by Wei.
“Because we want to. It’s not that big of a deal Huan, you don’t need to ask so many questions.” He remarked rather rudely.
“And we don’t need your kind of negativity!” Ikki stood up from the sand with her fists clenched, bending the sand out of her hair with a blast (not-so-accidentally) into their eyes.
All three boys started complaining while Ikki gasped melodramatically,
“Oh my! I must’ve miscalculated my wind path. Sorry!” She giggled, before grabbing Huan’s hand and dragging them back to the other side of the beach where everyone else was.
-
Days went by, and Jinora still hated dinner. All of the kids bar Bataar Jr. were around their own little table.
Jinora had always been pushed to the little kid table because of her siblings, and just when she thought she’d be included with the older ones- come on, she was fourteen now!- the ratio of children to adults was off, therefore meaning she was stuck with the younger ones.
She wasn’t alone, though, because Opal was there too, enthusiastically telling a story.
“And I’m about to beat the Enderdragon- but guess who joins my game? Kai! And he gets all whiny that he wasn’t there to beat it to and he makes me restart the game so he can be there too.”
Jinora laughed at the mention of her boyfriend because yeah, that was exactly something he would do.
Ikki, who was sitting across the table, was slightly listening in to the conversation. With a wide grin, she immediately turned to Huan.
“Don’t tell anyone, but since Jinora’s talking about her boyfriend, I wanna tell you about my girlfriend. Her name is Anzu and she’s amazing. She’s so pretty and smart and perfect and she lives here, in the Fire Nation!”
Huan listened with a small smile on his face. They were happy for her, and Ikki seemed to love this girl dearly.
“Good for you, kid. She makes you happy, so I’m happy.”
“Yeah, she does…” Ikki was in a daydream, but snapped out of it quickly. She had loads more questions to ask.
“So how about you? Do you have a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend, that’s cool too. Or a partner. Or a… friend?”
Huan laughed at her attempts, poking her on the head.
“Nope. I don’t need anyone, I’m a strong individual. Besides, they wouldn’t understand me…”
Ikki frowned, hugging her cousin tightly.
“It’s okay! You’ll find someone super awesome and amazing soon. Ooh, do you think we could go on double dates? Wouldn't that be fun, huh?”
Before Ikki could ask anymore, Kya stood up, clinking her class with her fork.
“Ahem, I’d like to make a toast.” Her voice sounded serious, as if she was going to say something upsetting… before she cracked into a grin.
“I just wanna say thank you all for coming on vacation with us, especially on such a short notice. Mrs Grumpy Pants over here won’t ever admit it, but she’s grateful too.”
All that prompted was Lin flipping her off.
“As I was saying,” Kya blew Lin a kiss between words, “This trip has proved very memorable for us all, but some more than others.”
She was meaning little Rohan and his waterbending discovery, not that he knew that.
“We’ve learned new things about each other, and rediscovered the meaning of what it’s like to have a large family..”
Now that Jinora thought about it, it was true. She’d been limited to only seeing a select amount of people throughout her life, only people that lived on the island. And now she had this large, extended family. Yeah, maybe Meelo, Wing and Wei were insufferable. And Ikki and Huan could be gone for hours once they discovered something new.
But that’s just what families were like, huh?
“To Ember Island!”
Jinora smiled and picked up her glass of lychee juice.
“To Ember Island!”