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Daybreak. The low hills shine
ochre and fire, even the fields shine.
I know what I see; sun that could be
the August sun, returning
everything that was taken away—
October - Louise Glück
***
The months they spent apart are easily exposed by the subtle differences between them. Rangi must have seen them, too: the adjustments to her robe, the scratches on her armored bracers, the hidden scars peeking out at the edges of her clothes.
Kyoshi sees them, at least. The new, gold-trimmed uniform is pretty much spotless. It’s a relief to notice Rangi’s hair back to its normal length, even if it goes accompanied by dark circles under her eyes. She stares for just too long—cool bronze eyes meet hers and narrow.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Kyoshi says. A part of her readies to get scolded; a small smile tugs on her lips. “I just realized just how much I missed you.”
Rangi’s shoulders slump a bit as she softens. “I missed you too,” she says, tucking a rebellious strand that had escaped her topknot back behind her ear. “Living with my mother is like I’m back in the Academy again—you might be stubborn as an armadillo mule, but you’re much better company.”
The light redness on her cheeks warms Kyoshi’s chest. She reaches for Rangi’s hand; she’d revisited the memory of the heat and weight of it in her own many times during the arduous journeys throughout the Earth Kingdom and now it was right here, ready to replace the memory, ripe for the taking. But the moment her fingertips come into contact with Rangi’s, she pulls her hand away.
“There is something important you need to know about life inside the palace,” Rangi says. It’s too subtle to know for sure, but her lips have curled up, into a pout. “When you’re not in your room, or in that blind spot under the main gate, you should always assume you’re being observed.”
“Sounds like a great way to make me paranoid,” Kyoshi mutters. From experience she knows that, only because they know to remain hidden, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a small army of servants walking these same hallways to maintain the palace. Staying out of sight is a skill she still possesses herself—and she had come to know her fair share of secrets in the Avatar’s mansion, back in Yokoya. Then she realizes the implication. “Tell me that doesn’t mean—”
Rangi is decided on the issue. “No interaction here is too small to have meaning. So, no public displays of affection.”
“But—” Kyoshi sputters. “We haven’t seen each other in months!” They’re walking down the same hallway they had visited with the Chancellor earlier that morning, with the Fire Avatars and Fire Lords of old staring each other down from opposite walls, but this time Kyoshi only has eyes for one firebender.
“I know,” Rangi says, her tense tone and stiff shoulders betraying her own frustrations. “We’ll have to pace ourselves.”
That’s not what Kyoshi was hoping to hear. The room she’d been given as the Avatar contains more precious artifacts than she’s comfortable with occupying the space on her own, never mind when she’s alone with Rangi… Free to do with as she pleases, out of the public eye. She hums, quietly, as they reach the end of the hallway and step outside.
They’ve reached the gardens, the lush grass soft underfoot. A still lake sits in the center, with a tea house and a weeping willow on its shoreline, the branches reaching the water and creating slight ripples as they move in the breeze.
Rangi isn’t the fondest of neutral jing, so Kyoshi decides to take a page out of her book, taking the route of positive jing often preferred by firebenders. Disregarding the earlier warning, she grabs Rangi’s hand in her own and pulls her along before she can react, underneath the tree. If not for the thin branches and leaves hanging around them like a curtain, Rangi might have hit her.
But they’re alone now—and more importantly, hidden. “I don’t want to pace myself,” Kyoshi whispers, leaning down so her mouth is lined up with Rangi’s ear. A mischievous smirk pulls the corner of her mouth upwards. “I want to sneak around.”
She knows Rangi is opposed; if not for her personal distaste for doing dishonorable things, then for her rank. As a soldier in the Fire Lord’s army, there are certain things that just can’t be done. Such as kissing the Avatar in public. In the Fire Lord’s palace. “Kyoshi—”
“We’re the Avatar and a First Lieutenant,” Kyoshi cuts in. “Besides, we’re daofei. No one will see.”
Rangi looks like there is more on her mind, the words already on her lips, but Kyoshi takes away any opportunity she has to speak by snaking an arm around Rangi’s waist and pulling her close, into a kiss.
All of this, she’d had to miss for so long and she’s determined to commit it all to memory again: the softness of Rangi’s lips, the tickle of her breath on Kyoshi’s cheek as it leaves her nose, her hands bunched up in the collar of Kyoshi’s tunic, keeping her firmly in place.
The firebender stiffens when Kyoshi’s hand comes up to her cheek, but Kyoshi retaliates by pressing the both of them against the trunk, as if to say see? No one will notice when we’re like this, absorbed in the willow’s shadow. She’d elected to take her bracers off, earlier; now her bare hand rises further, her fingers tracing paths through Rangi’s jet black hair.
They stay like that, pressed together, even after their lips detach. Rangi is leaning her head back against the trunk, her bronze eyes observing Kyoshi patiently. Her hand finds Kyoshi’s free one, the smooth white skin clashing familiarly with the wiry red lines that run down Kyoshi’s hands and wrists, down her arms in branching patterns not unlike those of the weeping willow. Kyoshi presses a kiss against Rangi’s hairline. Her hair smells like moon peaches and jasmine. “Alright.”
Kissing Rangi always seems to have the same effect, taking her up to a whole new plane of existence without taking her back down, afterwards. “Huh?”
“I said, alright,” Rangi mutters, her tone of begrudging acceptance being undermined by her grin. “We’ll sneak around. I suppose it’s possible, if we’re careful.”
Kyoshi grins back. “You must know all the good spots. Where should we go?”
Rangi glances around, considering their options. “The stables? Though with this much people around, that may be too risky.” Right. Kyoshi had almost forgotten about her professional obligation, the reception that is to be held in honor of her arrival. The stables, aside from housing Yingyong, will no doubt be busy with stable hands tending to the mounts of the other guests.
“And I don’t think Jinpa would be too happy if we somehow managed to traumatize his bison,” Kyoshi mutters, eliciting a dry snort from Rangi.
“I don’t know what you’re meaning to do with me,” she says, “but I believe we should find a… More deserted place.” The look in her eyes when the words leave her mouth is more searing than the fire from her fists during their sparring sessions.
Kyoshi nods, silently trying to get her beating heart under control. “Somewhere we can be truly alone.” Her gaze pierces through the hanging branches of the tree, looking at the walls around the garden and the buildings beyond. Somewhere where no one could possibly interrupt them. “How about over there?”
Rangi follows her gaze and groans. “If we get caught, I’m restarting the Avatar cycle myself.”
With a chuckle, Kyoshi steps back into the open again.
They don’t make a show of sneaking around, walking calmy through the gardens, close enough together that the back of Kyoshi’s hand can brush against Rangi’s. Only when they reach the side of one of the two pagoda’s that flank the palace’s central spire, do they step into the shadows.
Kyoshi’s thighs feel a little weaker and a bit less reliable after the harsh stance of training this morning, but even if she has occasionally neglected her firebending training, her missions around the Earth Kingdom have made her a better earthbender. She takes out her fans, the metal cool and reassuring in her hands. A look is exchanged with Rangi, too familiar for words; Rangi nods and then they’re off.
She counts the seconds in her head how long it takes them to reach the top. Rangi is still better in her own version of dust-stepping, but Kyoshi’s paces are larger so she manages not to fall behind too much. Out here, in the air, there is no telling who will see them—they can only be quick about it and hope the guards look for assailants on the ground, and not in the sky. Like that, they circle the spire, climbing higher with every step until they’ve reached the top.
The gold ornamentation that obscures them from view is sheening in the warm light of the setting sun. From here, the central position of the palace in Caldera City becomes even more clear; all around them are high reaching towers that house the Fire Nation elite, rising to the heavens like ivy climbing towards the sun. Their height is dictated by status, so Kyoshi and Rangi are looking down on all of them.
Beyond the beige ring around the palace it’s a tangle of reds, golds, spires and upturned eaves, sharp like the claws of a tiger monkey, all of it encased by the rugged edge of the caldera. It’s like they’re sitting inside of a stone flower, the sharply tipped petals opening to the sky around them. From here, they can see over the edge and look at the ocean stretching out beyond the island on all sides, the water glittering in the light.
“I’ve never seen the sunset quite like this,” Rangi mumbles. The wind up this high is cold and biting but she’s tucked against Kyoshi’s side, burning hot like the hearth in the Avatar mansion’s kitchen. The way the sun is seemingly sinking into the sea reminds Kyoshi of the similar view from Yokoya. “Normally around this time, I’m eating dinner with my mother.”
Kyoshi tenses a little at the mention of Hei-Ran, all of a sudden remembering the conditions of how she and Rangi had had to separate.
“She’s doing well,” Rangi continues, sensing her worry. “You’ll see for yourself tonight. She’s pretty much unchanged, aside from her bending.”
As if to emphasize the dreaded welcome reception, Kyoshi’s eye falls on the gardens below, where preparations are underway. The lanterns that are hung throughout the city and the palace in celebration of the Szeto festival have been lit, creating a sea of twinkling light in the onset of twilight.
It’s beautiful—when Kyoshi glances over at Rangi, she sees her bronze eyes are already watching. She smiles, tightening her arm around Rangi’s shoulder and pressing a kiss to her temple.
“So,” Kyoshi starts. “How was the North Pole?” Although they’d already caught up on most things back in Kyoshi’s room, she still feels the need to ask. The Earth Kingdom is her home, she has visited the Air Territories and now the Fire Nation as well, but the Water Tribes are still very much a mystery to her.
“Pointlessly cold, and the food pointlessly salty,” Rangi answers. “The people and the healers were more than adequate, though. How is the Earth Kingdom?”
“Pretty much how we left it,” Kyoshi sighs. “The bandits have grown less reckless, but the rest of them…” She scoffs. “The sages still think I’m inadequate, the tailors of Ba Sing Se still mend my clothes without charge and the farmers still ask me to bless their harvests.”
They had been almost everywhere she’d gone; asking for good fortune and more often than not, reminding Kyoshi of the life she left behind in Yokoya. Most of the girls who used to bully her on her way to and from the market to fetch things for Auntie Mui have never made it off the peninsula. They live on and toil their family’s land. They marry a nice boy from the next farm over and raise their kids together. They thank the spirits and the Avatar for good harvests.
A whole life, contained on that island-sized bit of land. There was a time where Kyoshi would’ve considered herself lucky to lead a life like that. Now here she is, sitting on what is probably the highest point in the Fire Nation, on top of the Royal Palace.
Rangi’s hands are warm as they hold onto hers, her body glowing like embers. A new wish settles in Kyoshi’s heart.
She wants to travel the world with Rangi, she wants to go to the Air Temples, to the barren Poles, to everywhere and back home. She wants to marry Rangi, so they’d never have an excuse to be apart ever again. The girl in question turns her head and catches her staring—she smiles, the last light of the sun turning her bronze eyes to a glowing amber. Kyoshi wants to thank the spirits for her good fortune.
In the way only Rangi can get her to do, Kyoshi forgets about the reception organized in her honor, about how they probably can’t stay up here much longer. She forgets about the festival, about Yun, about Kuruk and everything that has been stirring in the back of her mind. There is only Rangi and herself, in their own little world on top of the Royal Palace’s central spire.
Surrounded by flaking gold paint and fading orange light, Kyoshi takes Rangi’s perfect face in both of her scarred hands and kisses her.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispers against Rangi’s lips, trying to put the full meaning of her feelings into the words. I’ve missed you like Oma missed Shu. I’ve missed you like the long night moon misses the sun.
“I’ve missed you,” Rangi breathes in answer. It’s two admissions of love, but to Kyoshi it sounds like a promise—I’ve missed you, and I never want to miss you again.