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曙はまだ紫にほととぎす
The dawn is still
Purple in colour in the east,
A cuckoo’s voice is heard.
With a familiar sting in her heart, Asami watches the cherry blossoms come down, floating on the cool breeze of spring like snowflakes. The trees are reforming now that spring has truly begun, the buds letting their flowers go steadily, the pinks and whites slowly but surely being renewed by vibrant green.
It’s early still. The sun has only just risen and paints the clouds in hues akin to hydrangeas, all pinks and purples.
The snow crunches under her sandals where it still lies in heaps. It is the last vestige of winter, fallen a fortnight ago and not quite melted away by the rising temperatures. Asami approaches the cherry tree, tracing the grooves in the bark.
Another year has passed, but she can find little comfort in it. She considers her likeness to the tree. Steadfast, but unmoving. Is she to be like this, remaining at her father’s estate forever, altering only her clothes like the weather?
Her fate is an enviable one, privileged as she is, Asami is well aware. And yet, she yearns to be something more, to go beyond the stone walls of this castle and see what fate might await her there.
“Good morning, ojousama,” calls a raspy voice from the veranda.
Asami turns towards it, her pink robe swishing with the movement; the embroidered butterflies that embellish her sleeves fluttering as if alive.
Where the seasons are most prone to change, this vision never is. Korra sits primly in her usual spot, wearing her usual dark blue kimono, the wisteria crest of the Sato family proudly displayed in silver stitching. She’s donned her outer coat, which is the only true variable, as Asami knows that when the sun grows hotter she will leave it off.
As always, she carries her katana, wakizashi and tanto, as befits an honourable samurai.
“Good morning,” Asami replies with an easy smile and a small nod.
Korra’s presence might be the sole reason Asami has not yet fled this house, other than her duty to her father; her company being the balm that soothes the ache of her responsibilities.
She joins Korra on the veranda, kneeling down next to her. A servant comes in then, bringing their breakfast: a simple meal of steamed rice and broiled fish.
“Have you slept well?” Korra asks, watching Asami pick up a bowl before grabbing one for herself.
“Well enough,” Asami answers, contemplating. There had perhaps been too much sake involved in the observance of last night’s noh performance, causing her to wake several times during the night and leaving her mouth uncomfortably dry.
“I would think the tragedy rather to your tastes, my lady,” Korra remarks, eyeing her with interest. “You sound unsatisfied.”
“Oh, it was.” The story of the twill hand drum was by no means an original story, but one Asami usually liked well enough. “I simply thought the acting left something to be desired.”
“Such as?”
“Well, the actor playing the consort seemed almost bored,” Asami elaborates in between bites of fish. “A true admirer of the story would not have been so… monotonous, in enacting the strange confusion and desperation that befits the character. Perhaps the actor partook too freely in drink before his performance—” She smiles. “Not unlike I did, afterwards.”
Korra, forever in the business of protecting her honourable reputation, replies: “I find that hard to believe, Sato-dono. On your part, that is; I must agree with your assessment of his acting.” She snorts—which is as unbefitting of common decorum as it is befitting of Korra. “I daresay I could have done better.”
“Do not tempt me, Korra-sama,” Asami says with a widening grin. “I shall want to judge your dancing for myself.”
The samurai chuckles and the weight on her heart is disappeared, inconspicuously, as snow does before the sun.
Asami joins in the laughter, still feeling a little like a cage-bird, though gladly forgetting the bars that keep her for this chance to sing.
馬に寝て残夢月遠し茶の煙
Dozing on horseback,
Half-dreaming, the moon far away,
The smoke for morning tea.
Breakfast is a simple affair. Still, Korra happily recognises the privilege of holding the generous attention of the lady of the house, as she does now, retelling a story from her youth.
She’d not been a samurai then, though she’d been daring as one, at the tender age of ten. Back then, she’d considered herself more of a shinobi, sneaking into the manor of her local lord by hiding in a haycart.
Passing up on acts of subterfuge, her grand prize had been a plucked quail from the kitchens.
“I never did get caught,” she recalls, thinking about how her father had berated her as her mother had prepared the bird, the both of them equally exasperated with and proud of their delinquent daughter.
A playful smile dances around Asami’s lips, a silent promise to keep her secret. “How did it taste?”
Korra returns it easily. “Sweet and fulfilling, like a well-earned victory.”
And so they eat, converse, joke and gossip about some of the retainers in Sato-dono’s household, until the sun has risen fully and the mists of the morning, dissipated.
After they’ve eaten, Asami prepares their tea.
It is a familiar part of their morning ritual now, Korra supposes as she watches the other girl pour the water. By far, not the first time her lady had poured her tea, but Korra feels the worth of the gesture as if it were. That brief abandonment of rank and rule, the invitation into her world.
The taste of the green tea and jasmine, warm and bold on her tongue, is more precious than any food the daimyo in the village of her birth might have kept in his kitchens. For this is shared so freely, that for a brief moment, Korra is able to forget that she and Asami aren’t equals; that she is in service to her, her life offered for Asami’s if fate commands it so.
Two swallows flit through the empty sky over the garden, chasing one another for a little while before they fly up to hide under the upturned eaves of the roof, undoubtedly to nest. The only other sounds are the comforting song of a nearby turtledove and the wind, that rustles the leaves of the great oak trees in the garden.
Her cold hands cup gratefully around the tea bowl. Steam hits her face when she takes a careful sip.
There is no peace quite like this, Korra thinks. This moment, and the two of them in it.
She watches Asami over the edge of her cup, tracking her eyes from the peonies and butterflies that adorn her kimono, up to the alabaster of her skin, where her neck and collarbones are bare. Already looking, Korra spots the exact moment those jade eyes lock with hers—she blushes deeply and glances back down.
The simple truth of the matter is that no bowl of tea can come close to the glowing warmth that fills her when she stares at Asami for a little too long. She suddenly feels hot under her outer robe, cursing herself for putting it on even now that spring has started in earnest.
With slow movements, she puts the bowl back down and gazes out into the garden.
The feeling stays with her throughout the day, burning low in her chest, like the embers of a fire unwilling to go out.
Korra digs her heels into the horse’s flanks, willing it to move faster along the trail.
She has trotted through the forest north of the village for the better part of the afternoon, searching, after hearing the townspeople speak of bandits around those parts. She’d had no luck so far, but Korra supposes that ought to be reassuring.
The trail leads her up to a hill, where the trees part and Korra is granted a high overview of the surrounding area. She halts her horse with a firm tug on the reins, her eyes gliding over the horizon in search for any curl of smoke that could mark a camp.
Alas, there is nothing. With a sigh, Korra dismounts.
She saunters towards the edge of the hill, where it starts to drop off rather suddenly. Squinting against the harsh sun, she gives the landscape another onceover, before going back to her horse and guiding it to the treeline.
Korra ties its reins to a tree. She takes another cursory glance around, but there is no one, and there hadn’t been for several leagues.
Deciding it worth the possible risk, Korra takes off her helmet. She walks back to the hill’s edge and sits, placing it down into the tall grass. Her cuirass is next; Korra only has to fiddle with its strings for a little bit, before it opens on its hinge and she can slide out of it.
Unburdened, she sighs and lets herself fall back against the long grass, revelling in the warm sun of spring.
Korra gives the cuirass a sideways glance. The Sato family crest glitters in the sunlight, a pure white against the black metal and indigo dyed cotton.
She turns her face back towards the endless skies and smiles.
稲妻や顔のところが海の穂
A flash of lightning!
Showing just by her face
A miscanthus plume.
Black clouds and heavy rains blot out the sky by the time twilight falls, the sun of that morning rendered a distant memory.
Asami listens to it as she takes her evening tea on the veranda; how the rapping of it against the roof roars with every surge of the wind, quieting when it falls again.
Normally, she’d have retired to bed already, but Korra is keeping her waiting.
A flash of light from the heavens illuminates the dark garden for a singular moment and is soon followed by a low rumbling, so loud it seems to shake the very foundations of the house.
She nearly jumps when the sliding door behind her opens and out steps the object of her musing, dripping water onto the wood and smiling sheepishly down at her.
Asami gives Korra a onceover when she stands, grimacing at the rivulets of water that still run down her cuirass. She’d taken off her helmet and sandals already, but the remainder of her armour remains firmly in place, wet and muddied.
“You’re late,” she admonishes her guard, while her fingers find the strings holding up the armour at the shoulder and start undoing them.
“My apologies, Sato-dono,” Korra starts. She keeps still as a stone while Asami works. “The rain turned the trails to mud and I encountered an elderly man whose cart had gotten stuck. I stayed to help, but it took a while.”
The cuirass clatters when Asami drops it to the wood floor. She returns to her work, undoing the guards the cover Korra’s arms. “I suppose his time was more valuable than mine?”
The way Korra’s face heats up is adorable and Asami takes pity on the girl, letting her lips curl up into a playful smile. She pulls the bracers from Korra’s hands, taking special care to caress the pads of her fingers with her own. “Just kidding,” she mutters, holding her hand for brief moment. “I wanted to take my evening tea with you.”
“Let them brew it fresh, my lady,” Korra offers. “The night is still young.”
More pieces of Korra’s armour come loose and once her arms are free, she starts helping Asami undo the bracers that cover her legs. Asami thinks it’s somewhat of a gift, to be so close to her, to pull on her clothes as if they were her own.
Korra lets out a breathless sort of laugh when they both bend over and their cheeks brush—Asami’s heart skips a beat, her fingers stilling against the cold metal just for how long it takes her to breathe again.
The rain has dwindled to a steady drizzle and the wind has died down entirely, by the time they sit with a fresh bowl of tea.
Some errant drops of water fall from the roof, but other than that, it’s silent.
Asami notices Korra shivering in the cool night air and scoots closer to the girl. Their shoulders aren’t touching yet, but she sits close enough to feel the warmth of Korra next to her. Immersed in that familiar scent, contradictorily both musty and fresh, that never fails to reminds Asami of horseback rides through the forest when she was younger.
“How was your patrol?” she asks.
“Uneventful.” Korra sighs, sagging and ever so slightly, leaning into Asami’s side.
“Tell me about it anyway?”
Korra understands, she thinks, her desire to hear even about the smallest details of her excursions beyond their small castle town, so that she may envision herself there, alongside Korra.
And so Korra starts recounting her day, from the very moment she saddled up her mare. Asami cradles her tea, content in listening.
雲霧の暫時百景を尽しけり
The clouds and the fog
make the scenery change fast
In a hundred ways.
Korra is in the middle of an inspired account about the farmers hamlet she passed through around the eighth hour, when she is rudely interrupted by a yawn from her singular audience.
It comes as no real surprise. The stars have been moving across the heavenly plane overhead for a long while now, their conversations having become so longwinded that this night is starting to feel like one without an end.
Under the clear skies, a fog has been rolling in from the east, casting a haze over the garden and making the world much smaller than it was at breakfast.
She could be content, Korra thinks, if they were to remain here in perpetuity. There isn’t anything she craves the way she does being in Asami’s presence, after all. This foggy garden could be their domain. The worn down wood of the veranda, their house in it. They’d live off the flowers and the fish from the pond, with none to be accountable to, save one another.
The lady of the house listens with her eyes half-closed, her normally straight-backed posture mellowed by the comfort of sitting close enough together that she can lean fully against Korra, her head coming to rest on her shoulder. Korra stays as still as she can manage.
She is her protector by decree, but this task is just as significant.
Still, reality comes creeping in slowly, catching up with them now that the night has grown cold and the hour late. The exhaustion of riding all day has settled in Korra’s limbs at last, creating cracks in her resolve.
She yawns once more and Asami follows not long after.
“I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome,” Korra smiles bashfully. “I seem to have worn you out, Sato-dono.”
“It was worthwhile,” Asami answers, attempting to settle back into a more formal sitting position. The distance between them is restored and Korra shivers against the night chill. “You have a talent for speaking, Korra-sama.”
“You think to highly of me, my lady,” she answers. “Come. We ought to retire for the night.”
She stands, expecting her lady to acquiesce and follow her, as is their habit. But Asami breaks with the pattern, grasping Korra’s hand from where she sits.
“Thank you,” she softly says, squeezing her fingers. Korra, somewhat dazed, only nods.
That is where the night should have ended.
When she wakes, Korra expects to see the sky brighten with first light, but it is still as pitch black as it was when she went to sleep.
A bloodcurdling shriek, followed by the swishing of a blade through flesh and a paper wall is what wakes her up in earnest. Korra is on her guard in an instant, already throwing off the covers and grabbing her tanto, the short dagger that she keeps next to her bed.
Her thoughts race with a feverish intensity, but they keep circling back to one thing only: I need to keep Asami safe.
One of the shinobi that have infiltrated the house bursts into the room then and Korra stabs him twice in the ribs, blocking his attack and throwing him to his back before slitting his throat.
Another one enters the room—it is so dark that Korra almost drives her blade into them before she sees it is Asami, who grips her wrist so tightly it takes a moment for Korra to notice her hand is wet with freshly spilled blood.
“Ojousama,” she breathes, her heart still racing in her chest.
Asami all but climbs over her, finding the scarcely used hinawajū Korra keeps in a chest in her room. She starts pouring gunpowder into the barrel of the gun, quick to tamp it down. Then in goes the bullet—Korra’s head swivels away from her lady to where quiet footsteps announce another arrival.
Nearly invisible in the pitch black, the assailant enters the room and wildly swings their dagger towards Korra, who blocks it, and blocks again, and then a third time before she’s able to push the shinobi backwards; tripping him up as she does.
She follows him down to the floor, attempting to drive her blade into his heart, but he grabs at her arms and succeeds in diverting the knife. Korra grunts as she attempts to pull it from the tatami mat, but there is no time—she has to avoid his counterattack and in doing so, falls to the side.
He is on top of her now and her position devolves into truly a perilous one. Korra struggles against the attacker with a flurry of jabs against his torso, her knees kicking up against him as well. She manages to push him off, but only for a second. Before she can recover he rushes her again and this time, the cool metal of the blade slices into her middle with a sickening noise.
Korra grits her teeth and punches at his face, hitting him just as he drives the dagger into her side a second time.
She can feel her clothes growing warm and heavy with the blood that seeps from the wounds and grits her teeth. The masked man growls as he lifts his knife for the third time. Korra lifts her arm to block the imminent attack, but then there is a bright flash of light, followed by a clap of thunder—then all the life leaves his body and he limply falls on top of her.
Korra pushes him off and sits upright, wincing at the searing pain in her side.
The room smells like gunpowder and metal and when she finds Asami again in the dark, the girl is near fully obfuscated by the smoke that still curls up from the matchlock gun she just fired.
She looks otherworldly in the haze, her eyes wide and her inky black hair more messy than Korra has ever seen it. The determination in the way her fingers claw at her arms, undeniable. A pang of pride shoots through Korra’s chest, followed by a pang of excruciating pain throughout her abdomen.
“Terrific shot, Sato-dono,” Korra manages to groan, before she falls back down and slips out of consciousness.
紫陽草や薮を小庭の別座敷
The hydrangea blooming
In the small thicket garden
Of a detached room
If Asami didn’t know any better, she might have guessed Korra was dead.
She lies unmoving on the tatami with all colour drained from her face, covered by a white sheet that stops just short of her chin. Under it, her wounds are freshly dressed, leaving Asami with nothing to do except to wait for Korra to heal, and hopefully, finally wake up. The sheet shifts with her shallow breath and if she hadn’t been paying such close attention, Asami might have thought it was only the wind, rolling in warm and comforting through the open sliding door.
The morning breeze smells clean. The scent of rain lingers, having washed away the iron that had stained the air in those long hours before sunrise.
The assassins had all been killed. Their bodies had already been taken away someplace, to be burned or buried. One look out over the garden, that lays still and beautiful as it does on any other day, and one would scarcely know what happened here.
The house would have to bear the scars of the attack a little while longer—although, sliced paper walls and bloodstained mats are easily replaced.
Asami’s eyes train on Korra’s stomach again with the sharpness of a hawks gaze, cautiously keeping watch for spots of red welling through the white.
They were Amon’s men. Asami could’ve guessed that even without seeing the crest of his clan embroidered on their black tunics. Her father and Amon keep a dubious, problematic history that her father has always been secretive about, except for in the taking of protective measures. Asami knows they were allied, once. What happened to break that bond, she can only speculate about, in the knowledge that this is the threat that has kept her locked away for so many years.
The events of the past night are exactly what Hiroshi Sato had always been most afraid of.
She’d briefly seen him before sunup, had let him fuss over his only child, pacifying him as best she could. Her father had departed then, off to meet with his council about how to respond.
Asami had taken her place at Korra’s side back immediately, in time to see the healers dress her wounds.
With most of the blood washed away, what had remained were the raw, jagged cuts that oozed red with every labouring breath.
She turns her head away, looking down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap.
The possibility of losing Korra has paralysed her more than she had been prepared for. It weighs on her shoulders like a yoke and it closes its invisible fingers around her throat in a vicelike grip, making her breath come shallow and hurried into her lungs.
The familiar distance that they keep becomes all at once unbearable. Asami loses the last bit of resistance that resided in her limbs and finally reaches out, finding Korra’s hand under the white cover and trapping her fingers with her own.
In spite of their long standing friendship, because of their differing standings, this is something they have never really done. Casual touch is reserved for Asami’s handmaidens, not for her personal guard. And yet, when her warm hand touches Korra’s cool fingers, it feels familiar more than anything.
She shuffles a bit closer on her knees. She lifts Korra’s calloused hand, hesitates only for how long it takes to exhale, and presses a soft kiss against the back of it.
起きあがる菊ほのかなり水のあと
Starting to rise up—
The chrysanthemum is seen faintly,
After the downpour.
The mellow plucking of a melancholic tune is the only thing that breaks the silence, played so quietly that it is a wonder that the strings of the koto produce any sound at all. It wails softly, lamenting in the place of its player.
Korra wakes unsated, feeling something akin to hunger in the pit of her stomach, strong and all-consuming. It’s dark, yet she instinctively knows she’s in Asami’s room. The second thing she feels is the cold of early morning biting at her fingers and her toes, followed by a searing pain in her middle when she moves to sit up.
A discordant chord rings out, only for a second before the instrument is shoved aside and a pair of warm hands land on her shoulders, easing her back down.
“Korra,” Asami breathes, and the lack of the honorific paralyzes Korra as much as the vision of Asami does; she looks as ethereal as ever, although there are dark circles under her bright eyes, eyes that are wet and wide as they fall upon her.
“Only one with your skill could make those harsh strings sound so gentle,” Korra manages to whisper, wincing at how even the movement of speech pulls at her injuries.
“Stay still. You were badly wounded,” Asami whispers back. She’s so close that her breath tickles Korra’s cheek when she speaks.
“How long have I slept?” Korra asks.
Asami sits back and Korra would lament the loss, but her lady has tangled their fingers together in a disregard for decorum so unexpected that she cannot help the way her fingers twitch against the grip, so wholly unprepared they are for the gentle touch.
Her hands have known the tattered leather wrappings of sword hilts, the roughness of a horse’s reins, the stickiness of blood. Scarcely have they ever touched something so soft.
“A little over a day,” says Asami as she turns Korra’s hand in her own, almost reverential in the way she cradles it. “There were moments where I thought you might never wake up.”
The admission nearly breaks Korra’s heart.
“My duty to you has not ended,” she softly replies. It is meant to be a comforting sentiment, the affirmation of her promise to stay by Asami’s side for however long she’d wish to have her, a promise so resilient it can only be broken by death.
Asami’s face twists into something pained, instead.
“I do not know if I could ever forgive you if you gave up your life to save mine,” she whispers.
“I don’t understand,” Korra replies with a furrowed brow. “This is my purpose.”
“Then let me redefine your purpose, your duty to me.” Asami closes in once more, raising her hand to Korra’s cheek, tucking strands of hair away from her face before it comes to rest there. “I have found that I am selfish,” she tells Korra with a watery smile. “And in these past, eternally long hours in which you slept, I have had to entertain the possibility of a life without you.”
Korra’s breath hitches. A shiver rolls down her spine. She can feel a pressure behind her eyes and knows tears are gathering in the corners of her eyes.
“It is not much of a life at all, Korra-sama,” Asami concludes gently.
She bends over to lean in impossibly close, her eyes fluttering closed—Korra cannot close hers, not when her heart beats so fast and hard it might burst through her chest, not when Asami is closer now than she has ever been.
The kiss is tender and chaste. It unwinds something within her and Korra lifts a hand to grasp weakly at the collar of Asami’s dark blue kimono, holding her close.
“I serve you, Sato-dono,” she starts. “In whatever way you wish me to. For however long you need me to. And you know—” Korra is interrupted by a twinge of pain in her abdomen; she winces and her grip on Asami’s robe tightens. “I will follow you everywhere—through mountains, over seas, to where the sun disappears to when it sets. And further still, if such a thing is even possible.”
As she speaks the words, Korra knows them to be true. Her loyalty is not with the Sato clan, but only with this girl, who is hunched over her trembling form and smiling down at her like Korra hung the stars.
“Thank you,” comes the grateful whisper. Korra smiles, content, and the room is filled with silence once more.
やがて死ぬけしきは見えず蝉の声
Shortly dying,
Yet showing no sign of it,
The voice of a cicada.
Spring is nearing its end, although in some ways it is only just beginning. A seedling has been growing in Asami’s heart, more and more now that she’s learned to nurture it.
She suspects it had been taking root for a while now, growing steadily until it finally peaked through the dirt, in search of sun.
A fiery, crimson sky announces the dawn. Asami lays on her side and listens to the birds, having woken some time ago.
In the days following the attack, Korra had insisted on keeping watch throughout the night. Just outside her room, at first, but all too soon having walls between them had become unbearably stifling and Asami had contended that, to truly feel safe, she needed Korra closer.
So she had slept deeply, comforted by the knowledge that her guard watched over her, and she had awoken to the opportunity to look back, unabashedly.
Painted in pink by the rising sun, Korra sits on the other side of the room, nodding off next to the open sliding door. Her brown skin glows in the light, a welcome juxtaposition to the ghoulish pallor that coloured her features before.
Asami sighs deeply, pulling the covers a bit tighter around her shoulders.
Nothing much has changed on the surface. They take breakfast together on the veranda, looking out over the garden. Asami sees it differently now: caged she still is, but she does not feel lonely like before.
Korra has changed, too. When Asami holds her gaze a bit too long, she is unafraid to stare back with a bashful tremble to her lips, like she can barely supress a smile, and Asami suspects it has everything to do with her treading the line.
The kiss, however natural it was to give to Korra when she lay wounded, is still unbecoming of a lady of her stature; let alone of a samurai, a sworn protector. Never mind that Asami aches for her now, so much so that she feels her heart may stutter and altogether stop if she is not comforted by that familiar warmth at her side.
They are scarcely apart these days. Korra no longer patrols, instead joining Asami on her peregrinating walks through the garden. Endlessly, aimlessly, wearing out the path. Speaking about everything and nothing.
“Did you not do as your father did?” Asami asks when they pass through the shade of the green cherry tree, ever curious to learn all the things she does not yet know about Korra. “As many do?”
Korra looks at the passing clouds as she debates her answer. “My father was a farmer more so than a warrior, ojousama. Rather more familiar with his plough than with his sword. His time was one of peace.”
“Do you envy him?” Asami tries to imagine Korra in the fields, ankle deep in water as she tends to the rice, and finds she cannot quite manage it.
She expects wistfulness, maybe, or longing, but Korra only grins and shakes her head. “My life has not always been easy, nor peaceful, but it has always been straightforward…” She pauses, glancing sideways at Asami as their hands brush. “And getting to know you has brought me a different kind of peace.”
Asami’s heart stutters and she nods, looking back at the path ahead. “I know what you mean.”
Another tantalizing brush of their fingers is enough for Korra to abandon propriety and hold Asami’s hand in her own, letting their joined hands swing between them as they walk.
“I have never envied my father, but I have on occasion pondered what my life could look like, as samurai at peace,” Korra mentions airily. There is a hint of a smile playing around her lips. “Of course, you’d have to join me on the farm. I would be unable to protect you, otherwise.”
Asami smirks. “Of course.”
“Although you would scarcely know what to do, I would take it upon myself to teach you,” Korra continues, squeezing her hand, “and, once settled, there is not a doubt in my mind that we could be happy there.”
They’ve stopped walking, thanks to Asami freezing in her tracks once Korra speaks of we. If imagining Korra amongst the plants had been hard, envisioning herself there was impossible—the thought of sharing such a life fills Asami’s chest with a weightlessness regardless.
It takes a second for her to recognise the feeling as hope.
“You would do that for me?” she cannot help but ask.
Korra brings their joined hands up to her mouth and presses a kiss to Asami’s hand. “I would do anything for you, Sato-dono,” she mutters against her fingers.
The sun sets late. Tomorrow the evening will grow later, still.
The day after that they set out, covered by the darkness of the first new moon of summer. They sneak through where the castle wall is weakest, clambering over moss-covered bits of ruined rock to a patch of wood where two horses await.
They trot past the rolling rice fields in silence, onwards until the Sato estate is rendered to nothing but a shadow on the horizon, and make camp once it is entirely out of sight.
Nothing but this moment matters, anymore—nothing that came before and nothing that is yet to come. There is only this.
Being together. Being free.
Listening to the choir of cicadas while she is lulled into sleep on Korra’s chest. Feeling her heart beat steadily under her cheek. And when she turns her head just so, cracking open a tired eye, she can watch the songbirds flit freely overhead, their melodious chatter heralding the coming end of the night.