Chapter Text
Fire. Air. Water. Earth.
After Wan became the Avatar, the lion turtles renounced their roles as the protectors of humanity. The spirits had been sent to live in their own realm, the portals to the human realm sealed behind them. Almost every lion turtle village had since been abandoned as people ventured out into the rest of the world, gratefully accepting the gifts of the elements from the lion turtles for the last time. Never again would humans need the haven of the mighty beasts; never again would they travel back and forth from danger to safety, returning their bending abilities to the lion turtles again and again. No, the bonds between humans and their gifted elements were permanent now; they could strive for mastery, for the ultimate connection and oneness with their element, learning from each other and the other creatures with the same fantastical powers. From the North Pole to the South Pole, people began to settle in environments that best suited the abilities they had gained from the lion turtles they had left behind – with the establishment of the Avatar, the world had entered a new age.
Many lion turtles took up exploring as well, diving deep into seas, soaring high above mountains, even tunneling through deserts and volcanos, communing with the earth, air, fire, and water, and the original benders of them. In the steep, jagged mountains to the far East, one air lion turtle still housed a village of several hundred: the very last lion turtle to carry a village of humans. He was isolated from the rest of the world, content to drift through the looming peaks, united with the wind, the original benders of it, and his human companions. When he gave his people the power of air, he did not take it back again; he enjoyed the way they floated and flew over him, their spirits connected not only through their shared environment, but their shared element. Humans, mortals with dreadfully short lives, as infinitely complex as they were individually different from one another, were admired by the lion turtle, who would not know death for a long, long time. Of course, the humans felt equal reverence for him. He instilled in the people of his village that their lives and the lives of all living beings were sacred, and they lived as such, never daring to take another life. The people were free to wander as they pleased, living nomadic lives, befriending the air bison native to the Eastern mountains. Still, many regarded the village as their permanent home, a place to rest, meditate, commune with nature and the spiritual energy surrounding it, and master the power of air.
As human conflict ravaged the world on the other side of the Eastern mountain range, the Avatar trying time and time again to quell the surges of violence that never seemed to end, the great beast and his village lived in peace. Wan visited the air lion turtle of the Eastern mountains many times, desperate to learn how he might end the constant clashing, the suffering that followed. Nevertheless, it proved to be impossible to make every individual sympathetic to the sanctity of existence in such a rapidly evolving world. Even at the end of his life, Wan couldn’t stop the unhappy feuds which robbed the world of so much light. The Avatar died on the battlefield, feeling as if he’d hardly made any difference at all. Despairing at the human world’s lack of peace following his decision to send the spirits away, Wan, in his last moments, wondered how the human world could ever possibly achieve harmony.
~fourteen years later~
The sun shone through the dense persimmon trees in a way that could make even the sternest soul feel giddy. A gentle breeze tickled Tsering’s nose as she reached up on her tiptoes to grab one of the lower-hanging fruits. The air is being so kind today, she thought, closing her eyes and enjoying the sweetly-scented wind. Still unable to reach even the lowest-hanging persimmon, Tsering scrunched her face and inhaled deeply, moving her arms in wide circles and raising them to muster a small cloud of air under her feet that carried her up into the tree’s branches. She grinned, exhaling as she plopped onto a thick branch and plucked the biggest of the orange fruits in her line of vision. The intoxicating sunlight filtering through the trees dappled her mahogany skin as she held her ripe harvest to her lips, the pale patches of skin she was born with glowing in the light. Tsering had hardly finished chewing her first bite when she heard several pairs of running footsteps accompanied by a powerful gust of wind that nearly knocked her off her perch.
“Gyari, get back here! That’s my diary!”
Laughter, and a few more slices of air in Tsering’s direction. “Oh, Lobsang, you must be mistaken! It was in my bag, so it must be mine!”
“If it’s yours, then why are you running?!”
The children burst into view: a very small, very fast girl with a mischievous grin and a small book clutched to her chest, pursued by a boy almost twice her height with a bright red flush in his pale face. Tsering sat up onto her knees, smirking at the sight of her two peers as they ran in her direction. One was always chasing the other, it seemed. The boy thrust his long arms out in front of him, sending a whirlwind of air whipping towards the nimble girl. It caught up to her faster than he could, and the girl yelped, one of her feet slowed in the flurry. She bent her knees, blasting herself up into the air, a flash of chestnut and auburn. With one hand still gripping the diary, the girl extended her free hand to grab the branch directly below Tsering, swinging her small frame up onto it with no extra energy spent – it was clear she had executed this move before. Not noticing Tsering above her, the girl promptly flipped open the diary and began to read in an exaggerated voice. A sweat had not even broken out over her brown skin. Meanwhile, the boy, exhausted from the chase, staggered at the foot of the tree, his hands on his knees as he tried to calm his breathing.
“’…And so, I continue to fear that the demise of Avatar Wan has led to the downfall of the world’s last hope for peace. Will the light spirit ever be seen again, and if so, when will she show herself?!’”
“Gyari, stop,” the boy pleaded through labored breaths. He looked up and saw Tsering, high in the tree, staring them both down. “Tsering! Please do something! That’s my diary she’s got!”
Tsering was chilled by the rendition of her peer’s words. She had just dreamt of Avatar Wan that previous night, and it hadn’t been the first time. She was told he’d died in the same year that she was born; she had never met him in the physical world, but she certainly had in her slumber. He had been running, towards or away from something, she didn’t know, when he had abruptly stopped and looked right into her eyes, his sharp face awash with emotion. The ensuing quarrel below Tsering snapped her out of her thoughts.
“If it’s yours, why don’t you come get it yourself?” Gyari called down to the panting, red-faced boy below them, unconcerned with Tsering’s presence. Before the boy, who was regaining his composure, could bend any more air at her, she changed her mind. “You know what? Here, you can have it. I’ve read the whole thing anyway.” Gyari tossed the book unceremoniously, just out of Lobsang’s reach. Groaning, with his lanky body still leaning over in fatigue, the boy bent a raft of air under his diary as it fell, sailing it quaintly into his grasp.
“Why must you taunt me every waking moment of my life?”
Gyari laughed. “Because no one else will, that’s why,” she said matter-of-factly. It was true. Lobsang was well on his way to becoming the first master Airbender of their peer group. Clearly, he still had more to learn about patience, because he looked about ready to blast Gyari right out of the tree.
Tsering thought about what Yu had said to her earlier that very same day when she had asked him about a tiff between two of her other peers. When two individuals fail to see but their own two perspectives, it may help to offer them the space in between, he had remarked thoughtfully. Tsering smiled as she remembered her wise friend’s words. She inhaled deeply again, letting herself fall backwards off her roost as she bent another whirling cloud to guide her feet to the ground. Gyari started at the move of confidence – Tsering may not have been the leading Airbender in their cohort, but her and Lobsang were both certainly more skilled than her. Feeling all too aware of being the least adequate bender present, she bristled in insecurity.
“Hey, we’re all friends here,” Tsering spoke with a lighthearted tone, trying to sound wise as she landed beside Lobsang. The boy inched away from her instinctively; she didn’t notice.
“Let’s not ruffle each other’s robes… at least not too much.”
With a lighthearted chortle in her throat, she smiled with sincerity, first at Gyari, then at Lobsang, an expression all too familiar to them as one of their peer group’s most prominent peacemakers. Tsering opened her mouth to speak again, but the smaller girl only scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“Friends? I wouldn’t say we’re friends,” Gyari retorted defiantly, spinning around and launching herself from the tree, charging away from Lobsang and Tsering with leaps and bounds: the negative jing of a true Airbender.
The comment stung. The two girls had never been very close, given that Gyari was a few years younger. Still, Tsering had been all too aware of how she and the rest of their peers “subtly” excluded her from group activities around the village, the way that their eyes darted down to look at her abnormal skin, fractions of seconds of stares that felt like millennia to her. Would any of the children in the village say that they were friends with her? She glanced down first at her left hand, then at her right foot before her gaze hit the ground. Despite hours of meditation to try to instill self-acceptance, the moon peach-colored skin that covered her whole wrist and hand except her thumb, ending in large, pale freckles constellating her brown forearm – with a similar pattern repeating over her foot – may as well have had air bison fur sprouting from it.
“She doesn’t mean that,” Lobsang offered weakly as Tsering stared at the ground.
She felt his hand hover over her shoulder, considering a reassuring tap, before it fell away without making contact. Was this really her life? A village of people who were perfectly comfortable with physical affection struggling to touch her? Tsering shook her head, forcing herself to clear her thoughts away, a pile of leaves blustered out of a clearing.
“It’s okay,” she said, looking up into Lobsang’s eyes, his expression twisted in awkwardness. “She’s right. We’re not friends. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being kind to her.”
Sometimes, when air children entered adolescence, they developed an aura of rebellion against the tranquil atmosphere that the villagers worked so hard to maintain. Tsering herself had had an almost identical streak of stubbornness and malcontent a few years ago, and though she had tried her best not to take it out on others, she understood what Gyari was assuredly going through.
“Anyway… about what you wrote,” Tsering started carefully. She didn’t want to tread too far into the subject of Lobsang’s personal writing, which had already been exposed to at least two people who were younger than him. He flushed again at the mention of it. “Do you really think that the Avatar’s passing is the end of the world?”
Lobsang sighed. “Listen, you weren’t alive to meet him. I was only three, but I remember the day he came to the village. There was a bad storm, but he was unfazed. He bent the water and air around him like it was nothing; if he got wet at all, it wasn’t obvious. When the rain stopped, and we were soaked and shivering from standing outside to greet him, he bent the water right out of our clothes and bent us a huge fire to warm us up. His power was incredible. And he spoke with the lion turtle for a long, long time. How many of us can say they have ever even had a full conversation with it one-on-one?” Tsering carefully suppressed any reaction to this.
“Anyway, Raava didn’t show herself then, but we could all feel her presence within him. He was practically glowing. And now he’s gone, and no one knows where the light spirit is now. Did she die with him?” Lobsang looked like he could cry. Tsering could tell he’d spent a lot of time pondering the subject. Opposite what he had – or, well, hadn’t – done moments ago, she put her hand on his shoulder, smiling genuinely at his pained expression.
“I don’t know. But I do know that we’re very lucky to be where we are, safe from war and violence. We’re very lucky to have Yu.”
“Huh? Who’s Yu?”
Tsering’s heart pounded in her chest at her slip-up. She couldn’t betray the secrecy she had sworn to herself, not to someone like Lobsang. He may have been one of her peers who she was the most civil with, but she still felt in her heart that she couldn’t trust him. She had seen his lingering glances down at her skin as well, after all.
“Um… I mean you, Lobsang. You’re on your way to becoming the first new master in forever. Pretty soon, you’ll have your tattoos.”
Lobsang beamed at her, delighted by the sudden flattery. “Thanks, Tsering. I really hope I’m worthy of the title.” Whew. Tsering smiled back at him, trying to subtly calm her racing heart.
“You actually kind of look like Wan a little bit,” Tsering commented vaguely as she turned away from him, hoping to end the conversation quickly with some meaningless small-talk. “If you didn’t shave your head, people might assume you’re kin.”
Lobsang stared at her in astonishment. “How do you know what the Avatar looked like?”
Tsering cringed as she watched Lobsang speaking in hushed tones with three of the four head abbots of the village in the old wooden pagoda where they frequently meditated. It rained lightly. The sweet scent of damp earth would normally soothe away her worries, but this time, she was too preoccupied for the musky aroma to relax her. Occasionally, one of them would turn their gaze to her, surveying her. So, what if she had seen the Avatar in a few dreams before? This is why I don’t tell anyone anything, she thought despairingly, cursing herself for saying anything to Lobsang at all. She had yet to figure out the meaning behind these dreams, and was certainly not ready for anyone else to know about them. Eventually, a hand gestured for her to approach the group. Tsering, who was usually lighter than the air around her, felt each step with a weight that she was not accustomed to.
Tsering only ever entered the pagoda for guided meditation sessions with an individual Airbending master, usually Sister Miksha. She had never been here for any other reason, nor with three, almost four, masters sitting around her, all observing her quietly. She squirmed; usually, when people looked at her for a long time, they were probably looking at her skin, wondering why she was different. Finally, Sibling Aarav spoke, their tone soft and even.
“There is no need to feel nervous. We simply want to know what you saw in your dream,” they murmured. Tsering focused on where the blue Airbending master tattoos came to a single point above Aarav’s bushy eyebrows.
“I saw Avatar Wan running. I don’t know where he was going. Then, he stopped and looked right at me, looking like he wanted to tell me something. I always wake up before he says anything.”
“Always? You have had these dreams before?”
“A few times, yes,” Tsering replied. Aarav’s calm voice had soothed some of her anxiety, but she still felt a bit like this was an interrogation. I have not done anything wrong, Lobsang can just never keep his mouth shut. Ironically, the boy said nothing now; he looked lost in thought, his pale eyes fixed somewhere in the distant mountains. A herd of wild air bison floated by the pagoda, their fur painted scarlet in the light of the sunset as it poured through a gap in the rainclouds. Tsering wished she could be out with them, released from this conversation and from the pull of gravity.
“Hmmm.” The abbots considered her testimony. Miksha was also quiet, but she was looking at Tsering with compassion. She smiled at Tsering as their eyes met.
“We’d like for you to have an extra meditation session with us every week,” Brother Norbu said mildly, sensing her tension. “You are not in trouble. We’d simply like to guide you toward looking further inside yourself and finding the source of these dreams. It is a very curious thing that you dream about such a significant person who you have never met before.” With a pale hand, he stroked the part of his face where a beard would grow if not for shaving daily, his dark brown eyebrows furrowing in contemplation.
Tsering nodded, relieved that this was the outcome of the meeting, instead of more prying questions or worse. Had she expected to be punished?
“I understand. Thank you,” she said curtly, rising to leave.
Tsering felt unexpectedly gloomy after the meeting with Lobsang and the abbots. She couldn’t quite place where these emotions were welling up from; sure, Lobsang had ran and told the abbots something she hadn’t yet wanted anyone to know about, but it had turned out alright, hadn’t it? Tsering tried practicing meditative breathing as she walked away from the pagoda, but her mind only felt increasingly clouded with uncertainty. The rain had picked up, and when she gazed down into a puddle, she halted, blinking hard. Had Wan’s reflection been staring back up at her for a moment? Why am I seeing the Avatar everywhere?
Now, Tsering only gazed back at herself, her metallic reflection in the light of the full moon distorted in the circles of raindrops falling on the water. Her gaze fell to the left side of her face, where her bronze skin met cream. As she had done so many times already in her life, her eyes traced the outline of the patch of pale skin that extended from the corner of her mouth to her jaw, covered the left side of her neck, and sloped back up her trachea to the middle of her lower lip. They don’t want me to look inside myself, they just want to study my outside, she decided angrily, dashing the water as she turned away. She wanted to go and meet Yu, to laugh and chat while they ate persimmons together like always. It was only after she had taken several paces away that she realized the puddle of water had been splashed without her touching it.