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Chapter Text

The blackness had absorbed Kuruk’s view for the past two weeks. He could only see Koh’s scuttling legs and the freaky pale face that he wore before Kuruk felt his features slip off his skin and be pulled into that vile thing’s cavity. But there was more, not just Koh. For the past twelve nights back from the spirit world, he’d stayed by Ummi’s faint gray aura. While he barely understood what the colours meant, he knew that their faded properties didn’t mean something good.

The sunrise’s warmth peaked through the open doors to his—to their—balcony and cozied his cold, sore hands.

He wanted a drink. Desperately. Urgently. He needed to hold the rim of some expensive bottle of Ba Sing Sean wine and not be met with smooth skin. He already went through withdrawal, gripping his wife’s half-lifeless arm through the tremors, the night sweats, and the vomiting,

“Avatar Kuruk.” A voice came from his bedroom door, and he aimed his faceless head towards the newly entered pink aura. His servant—Nanuq—stood, half covered by the door. “That Earth Sage you requested to come, Jianzhu, is here. Would you like me to help you to your meeting?”

Kuruk nodded, and Nanuq began to help him up. Along the hallway, the gentle pink glow was the only source of comfort in the constant emptiness. He went to swallow the lump in his throat. He couldn’t.

He remembered seeing his estate for the first time. He was 16 and had only bent the crystal that the sages handed to him once. The massive wall of ice-coated stone grazed the horizon, and the mansion traded between nearly every architectural style of the Northern Water Tribe’s history. However, thirty-two years had gone by. Nothing. Kuruk had done nothing to his home, no meaningful trinket or family heirloom. His home—if he could even call it that—wasn’t much for him or Ummi. Outside of being together, outside of Ummi not asking about the scar tissue that littered his skin while they spooned, the estate was colder than a Winter blizzard in Agna Qel’a.

He felt the light of the glowing of the yellow jennamite clusters—specially imported from Omashu—on his skin. The game room. The one place that Kuruk could feel alive: where he could sip whiskey, practice his Pai Sho techniques, and let his healer fix the gashes that spirits clawed into him. Nanuq helped him onto one of the four cushions that surrounded the table.

“Avatar, would you like me to set up a game and some dri-” he realised what he was going to say, his pink aura cowering in shame, “Would you like me to set up a game?”

Kuruk nodded, and Nanuq’s voice called out for another person to bring Jianzhu in.

The empty nothingness of Kuruk’s view was flooded with a shimmering orange aura, nearly blinding Kuruk. Jianzhu had definitely been living his best life during their three years out of touch, unlike his old friend. Neither communicated as his aura slowly dimmed in Kuruk’s melancholic presence as Nanuq set up the Pai Sho board between them.

Once the twenty-eighth clack of the tiles occurred, Nanuq sat beside Kuruk, resting his hands close for Kuruk to take. They spent about two hours working on a new system for him to still annihilate people during games of Pai Sho; it helped that Nanuq had experience in the White Lotus—a group that Kuruk found pesky at best, downright meddlesome at most.

He kept his head down, his hair covering all traces of his absent face. The silence swelled and swelled and swelled until Jianzhu finally spoke up, “I’ll move first.”

His old companions practically created their own set of rules, since all of them were raised on different versions of Pai Sho. Jianzhu always made the same first move, every single time. The dragon tile. His finger planted near the centre of the starting bud formation and pushed forward four cross-sections ahead, signalled by the clicking against the grooves. Like the liar he was, Jianzhu often said it was because the dragon tile was a glass cannon, a perfect opener. He often deluded himself. Jianzhu liked the dragon tile because he simply liked dragons, despite never seeing one outside of Hei-Ran’s petrified egg collection.

Kuruk tapped on the lowest knuckle of Nanuq’s hand—the knotweed—and so the White Lotus member helped move his hand to the tile. Jianzhu often underestimated Kuruk’s second favourite tile. His finger pushed it diagonally along three cross sections.

The trap was set, a trap Jianzhu always failed to recognise.

Clicks and clacks and the soft pats of fingertips on knuckles echoed through the game room for half an hour before Jianzhu’s aura continuously flared. Even though he couldn’t see his face, he knew his cool, sweat-free expression was shattering quickly. It wasn’t just Jianzhu slowly fumbling a game that he could have lost seventeen moves ago; it was the silence.

Silence.

Now, the one thing Kuruk couldn’t handle when alone was quiet. However, with people that he could trust, Silence was welcoming. Outside of that, he needed constant noise, preferably the sound of his hand rubbing Ummi’s shoulder. Her smooth skin was like a miracle drug.

Jianzhu’s aura was peaking; he couldn’t take this anymore. Kuruk had backed him into a corner. He heard the stone tile floor lift, flinging the table up, sending the pieces, the board, and the table across the room.

A crash of splintering wood rang through the room almost as much as Jianzhu’s voice as he yelled, “You! Out, now!” Nanuq took the message and scurried out. “Kuruk, what is this!? I don't see you for three years, and suddenly you invite me around for what!? A game of fucking Pai Sho! That’s it? You won’t even speak to me.” His aura slammed back down around his silhouette.

“Kuruk, please. Please, look at me.” Jianzhu stood up and moved in closer, “Just look at me!” his hand gripped Kuruk’s jaw and pulled it up before he froze. His eyes were watering as he stared blankly at Kuruk’s empty face. Jianzhu fixated on the dips of Kuruk’s eye sockets and the near plateaus of his cheekbones, once high and mighty and strong.

There it was.

Jianzhu’s arrogance, his confidence. The guy who worked his ass off to get to where he was and had already gotten used to the comfort and the money, and the jealous eyes. It was all gone, wiped off the face of the Earth. There was Jianzhu, naked and bare. The real Jianzhu.

Kuruk didn’t need to see to tell what Jianzhu was doing. His bright orange aura distanced itself from the Avatar, and he planted himself back down.

“Kuruk…”

Nanuq reentered, having obviously listened in on the minute of shouting. He reached onto the shelf behind him, pulling out a slate board, a cloth, and a stick of chalk. Nanuq bent the water from his waterskin and dampened the cloth before handing it and the other two to the Avatar.

Kuruk scraped the top of the chalk on the board. His talent for calligraphy could wait; he simply needed to communicate with his old friend.

“Sorry, I kicked your ass in Pai Sho as usual.”

“W-what happened to you?”

It took him a bit to write his name. “Koh, the face stealer.”

“Is that some spirit or a guy who fillets the faces off of people?” Jianzhu tried to lighten the mood, albeit in his weird, dark manner.

“The former. I began to hunt him down at the start of spring, but he got the better of me when I found him a fortnight ago. I need your help.”

“To kill this spirit?” Jianzhu’s aura remained bright and nearly blinding, but it hugged his silhouette so tightly that it remained a thin outline, clearly remembering the first time Kuruk slaughtered a spirit around him.

Kuruk shook his head. He hated that, knowing his goal wasn’t to kill Koh, to kill that vile wretch. He wiped the board of all previous writing. “I need us to set sail to Bhanti Island to retrieve Fire Sage Nyahitha before we travel to Hira’a.” he turned the board around, writing a small paragraph had become too difficult with his constantly sore hands, so he gave himself a break.

Before he could continue, Jianzhu interrupted, “Hold on! You want me to take that worm to some random Fire Nation village.”

Kuruk looked towards the sage in front of him for a few seconds, then continued to write, his hands partially ceasing their aching. “We will continue to the forgotten valley to find the Mother of Faces. She can return my face. There is another woman with the same affliction as me; we must bring her too.”

Jianzhu held his silence tightly, not letting go. Although without a clear view of his face, Kuruk couldn’t tell if he was drinking it in or genuinely thinking this through. He didn’t know how different his friend was now.

Kuruk watched the aura slowly flare up as Jianzhu stood. “You!” he said, referring to Nanuq, putting on his authoritative persona, “I want urgent messages to be sent to the headmistress of the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, Fire Sage Nyahitha, and Monk Kelsang of the Southern Air Temple. Tell the former two to meet on Bhanti Island with supplies at the start of Su-” Kuruk bolted up, halting Jianzhu’s order. He couldn’t let Hei-Ran see him like this, let alone Kelsang. Hei-Ran barely respected him, especially after she walked on him that nurse, but if she saw him like this…

Kelsang was too himself to join in.

He didn’t need to see Jianzhu’s glare to feel it branding itself on his blank face.

Jianzhu continued. “Summer. Inform the latter that he must arrive on Pengpeng with extra supplies for me.” Once done, Jianzhu began to leave the game room.

Kuruk fumbled after him, just managing not to hit the doorframe. He neared, and Kuruk snatched Jianzhu's shoulder. As he pulled on Jianzhu, the orange aura sharpened and flared immediately, and a palm crashed into Kuruk’s face.

Kuruk staggered, watching Jianzhu’s aura sink in shame. “Kuruk…” he weakly began to speak before pulling Kuruk into a hug, holding their warmth tightly together. “Sorry. Kuruk, I've known you since Sifu Lu was calling you an imbecile for not doing your stances correctly. I know nearly everything you're thinking, Everything, and I know you don’t want either Hei-Ran or Kelsang around you. I’ve read about the Mother of Faces—well, Kelsang told me some ostrich-horseshit airbender story for kids—she resides in the Forgotten Valley. In every text I’ve read about it, it’s described as a place no one can exit. You have no face, and you’re bringing another faceless person; me and that stupid mongoose-lizard of a sage are not enough. Bringing more people is a good thing, so stop thinking that you don’t need them. It’s fucking childish.” He didn't let go of Kuruk for what felt like decades, only sliding apart once Nanuq slithered around the corner of the hallway.

“I want a room set up for me for a week.” He placed his hand on Kuruk’s shoulder, redirecting his attention back to him, “I’ll be around.”

Jianzhu’s steps echoed away, and Nanuq slid behind Kuruk. He was wrong about one thing. Kuruk did need them; he just didn’t want to need them. Kelsang was working his way to Abbot, and Hei-Ran had already begun ruling the academy with her usual iron fist mentality. They didn’t need to be dragged down into the mud with him, some drunk avatar who pushed them so far away that they were living on a different hemisphere.

“Avatar, would you like me to help you to your room?” Kuruk took a breath, his face still stinging from Jianzhu’s palm. He turned to Nanuq and nodded. He needed Ummi, or whatever was left of her.

Chapter Text

Kuruk gazed out the doorway as Jianzhu waited in the estate’s back garden. His old friend couldn’t hide his shivering, his aura flickering back and forth like a campfire in the rain. He never saw Jianzhu in a cold environment outside of the Southern Air Temple winters, which was much warmer than his home or its sister tribe.

He looked down at Ummi, her hands clinging to his thick arms. There she was, everything Kuruk ever wanted, clinging to him. Lifeless. He needed her to look up at him again, to smile with perfectly soft lips, and pull the hair from her face to reveal the pools of grey she kept around her pupils. He needed Ummi—the real Ummi—back, not the husk that Koh left outside his cave for him to find.

Soon, a faint roar rang out from the dusk sky. A beige spot appeared in the sky, Pengpeng, her shaggy, greying fur wafting in the wind.

“Avatar Kuruk,” Nanuq’s aura slid behind Kuruk, “we’ve packed all your supplies. Would you like me to help you pack it on your…” Pengpeng lowered with a gust of wind, her fur flapping until the flow dissipated and it draped over her like a thousand blankets. She let out a groan before attempting to give Jianzhu a lick, which he swiftly avoided to the bison’s chagrin. Nanuq was stunned. Very few Air Nomads joined the Order of the White Lotus, and their main form of transport was eel-hounds—known for their extreme speeds on any terrain—so Kuruk let Nanuq have his moment of awe. “I… wow, I- umm… would you like me to pack everything on the sky-bison.

Kuruk nodded, then held Ummi tighter. They were going to get their faces back.

As Nanuq and Jianzhu helped with the supplies, Kelsang hurried to Kuruk, his steps booming and his green aura beaming bright along the way. “Kuruk!” his voice bellowed with cheer, and he collided with Kuruk, burying the Avatar’s face into his soft, feathery beard. Then he pulled back and saw it. It was worse than Jianzhu’s reaction. It hurt more. It hurt more because it was Kelsang; he wasn’t like Jianzhu, he didn’t pour his blood, sweat, and tears into his craft and then work tooth and nail to get that craft so high. He didn’t see or experience the atrocities of the rich. He didn’t spend his time out in the real world. He spent his time baking fruit pies, grooming Pengpeng, and teaching airbender tricks to the temple’s kids.

“Kuruk…” his aura sank like hair after a gale. Kelsang’s eyes watered, but the sound of his sleeve on his face communicated enough. He pulled Kuruk back into the huge bush of beard hair, stroking the back of his head. “I missed you. And who’s this? Is this that ‘cargo’ Jianzhu said?”

Kuruk nodded while he contemplated whether to castrate Jianzhu or not. Cargo. He knew that Jianzhu didn’t know who Ummi was to Kuruk, but cargo? Cargo? Cargo of all things?! He was an old friend, but he was still a cockhead, as he had always been.

“Can you breathe? Are you hungry? I’ve heard about The Face Stealer’s abilities, but there’s not much information on his victims in any temple library.” Kuruk never got used to the rumble that rang out from Kelsang’s mouth.  Kuruk pulled the slate board and the stick of chalk from the tie on his belt—something that Nanuq sorted for him the night before.

He began scraping the chalk on the board. "I don’t need to do either.” Once he began turning the board around, he immediately added another note, “but I do miss your tofu curry.”

Kelsang’s barely visible lips beamed into a smile. “One more hug,” he pulled Kuruk in again, Ummi still on his side.

“If you two ladies are done, we gotta get going if we wanna return with two more faces than when we left,” Jianzhu said, now on Pengpeng’s saddle with a smirk the size of the estate.

Cockhead behaviour, but he was right.

Once everything was in place, Kelsang lifted Ummi with a small air spout, and Jianzhu caught her, laying her down carefully. At least he understood that the cargo was precious. Ummi’s grey aura drowned in Pengpeng’s green one—only slightly darker than Kelsang’s.

Kuruk reached out his hand; Kelsang caught it and pulled Kuruk closer. He swirled a wind around the two of them and pushed them up, landing them onto the saddle. As Kelsang took the reins and Kuruk waved to Nanuq’s pink aura as it distanced away, Jianzhu prepared his sleeping bag.

“Why did you tell me to come here at dusk, Jianzhu?” Kelsang bellowed once they reached just beneath the cloudline.

“I’ve known you for fourteen years, Kelsang. I knew you’d make sure you were perfectly rested so you could take the night shift to fly Pengpeng. Then, I can fly her during the day.” Jianzhu entered his sleeping bag swiftly, making sure Kelsang wouldn’t say anything else out of politeness, but he did give Jianzhu a look of pure annoyance

“Kuruk, you should sleep too. You can’t fly, so you may as well just get some rest,” he’d spent the past three weeks resting, but sure. Kuruk had been getting the best sleep of his life for those three faceless weeks; a few nights on the back of Pengpeng’s saddle could do him some good. Soon, Kuruk drifted off, although he didn’t spoon Ummi. he didn’t understand why he never told Kelsang and Jianzhu about his betrothal to her, but he suspected they wouldn’t take the reveal that he was engaged and that he never told them so well.

***

“Kuruk.”

He was in an Air Temple, the western one, he believed. It seemed stranger than the drawings he’d seen in the estate’s library. It was grey, all of it was grey except him. The plants, the stone, and the sky had all been drained of all semblance of colour.

Kuruk began wandering around the courtyard built just above the tip of the spire. A massive Pai Sho board lay in the centre, and only a few tiles lay scattered on it. The knotweed, dragon, rhododendron, boat, and blue lotus tiles were spread out mindlessly. Kuruk tried to understand whether it was a deliberate strategy in a custom game or just the result of someone forgetting to clean up their tiles. He reached for the knotweed and examined it. Scratches—deep and confusingly precise—obscured most of the actual knotweed icon.

“Kuruk.”

He dropped the tile as an ear-splitting noise overtook the temple, shaking the foundation of the spires and sending minuscule nuggets of rubble onto the courtyard. Kuruk doubled over, clutching the sides of his head to protect his ears. It was the scream of a young girl, not enraged, not weepy. Just a scream, a desperate scream. A scream that suddenly stopped.

Kuruk leaned over the edge, making sure that if another scream happened and the foundations gave way, he would survive… he wouldn’t. The canyon was too deep, deep enough that the grey daylight couldn’t illuminate it.

A hand appeared on the small of Kuruk’s back, frigid. He turned to see a young girl, no older than twelve. Her hairline had been shaved back to roughly the centre of her head, and she wore the usual breathable temple robes for children. She gripped a glider in her hand—tighter than was necessary—with a name engraved on it. Jetsun. An aura encased her, bright red, redder than rubies. It nearly overwhelmed the temple, spreading like an infection, lapping at each pillar of overgrown stone and scraping the ground as she walked away from Kuruk.

“Excuse me,” he could talk. Kuruk could talk. It escaped his mouth so quickly, and yet it was better than almost anything he’d ever felt.

She didn’t respond. Instead, the girl moved into a stance, and Kuruk did too, preparing to toss whatever he could at this kid. Once she made a move, a rush of air swung towards Kuruk, and he responded, going to block it with a chunk of floor… he couldn’t earthbend. Kuruk was blasted back and crashed onto the spire behind him. Skidding on the floor until he began slipping off the edge, clinging on as tightly as his hands could. It crumbled off almost immediately, unable to hold Kuruk’s weight, and Kuruk fell with the hunk of stone.

Kuruk’s head flooded with the sound of rushing air, splitting apart his ear as a symphony formed with the rising sounds of the tide. Yet as soon as he began to fall, he felt his body crash into wet sand. As clumps of sludge stuck to his skin and the tide rolled over him like a disintegrating blanket, Kuruk scrambled out onto the shore.

“Kuruk.”

He was at what looked like a Fire Nation town—more like the remnants of a town. Each house appeared dilapidated and overgrown with plants. While the thatch roofs had been left half broken and soggy with rainwater, doors were absent for almost every house, replaced with long, flimsy pieces of driftwood that leaned precariously on the door frames. Sand crept beneath the driftwood and accidentally stepped into the home, scattering throughout the grooves in the rotting floors. A persistent growl echoed between every inch of air. It was nothing like an animal, more like the sound of someone’s aching stomach.

Kuruk took off his parka and shoes and tried to bend the water out, but he couldn’t waterbend either. He quickly tried to produce a flame or a gust of wind. Nothing. He squeezed the water out of his parka, letting it splash on his feet—he just fell down a canyon, he didn’t care about sand sticking to his feet. However, once he realised it wasn’t helping much and his parka was still too wet, he left them on the sand. He could come back for it later.

Cautious of that girl appearing again, Kuruk moved through the abandoned town, careful of any noise that came up between the rolling waves behind him. A crash alerted Kuruk to the house on my immediate left. Driftwood lay on the sandy floor, shattered into splinters. Kuruk guardedly neared the door frame and entered the house, avoiding the pointed prickles left over from the shattered wood.

“Kuruk.”

The growl quaked deafeningly, but Kuruk pushed through as much as possible, wincing at it.

A boy sat a few metres from him, weakly clutching his thin frame. “Hey, are you alright?” he spoke, not in his voice but something regal and feminine. The boy turned around, revealing a near-skeletal body, littered with pox scars. His ribs protruded out more than anything, warping the scarred spots along the breadth. He appeared around his early teens, but Kuruk knew that malnutrition could cause him to appear younger.  A poorly repurposed Jinbei top in place of a loincloth, terribly torn up like it was some of the only fabric to spare. The same aura as that girl surrounded him, obscuring any details with the thick, gleaming haze of red.

“C’mon; I can help you. I’m the Avata-” before the alien, clear voice could finish Kuruk’s sentence, the boy took a stance, and a blast of fire erupted from his hands, blasting the house apart and sending Kuruk so high that the town was in full view. Once he landed, he tumbled through the thick vegetation of a palm tree forest, never stopping until he was tumbling through something much wetter and much colder, the sound of harsh winds returning.

Soon it ended, but Kuruk was still falling. He opened his tightly closed eyes to see clouds. He manoeuvred his body around to see Ba Sing Se, the upper ring. As soon as he turned around, he felt his body slam into the paved ground like a meteorite. Finally, he realised something wasn’t normal, not just the grayscale environment or the children trying to kill him. Those could all have insane and convoluted reasons. However, he’d seen this neighbourhood before. It led to the main road to the royal palace. Kuruk got up—strangely alive after he fell from the sky—and reached the main road to see the walled-off royal estate. The layout was the same, but the architecture wasn’t. It was old. It was about four hundred years old. It wasn’t the Ba Sing Se of Kuruk’s era.

“Kuruk."

Bells suddenly echoed out, ringing louder than the growl or the scream. It cracked his skull apart, blurred his vision, and forced his body nearly limp onto the road. His eyes watered as a figure approached, dressed in some earthbending training outfit, something Kuruk had worn for the year and a half he spent dealing with Lu Beifong’s graceless remarks on his earthbending.

As his mind adjusted to the sound, his eyes cleared up. The boy reached out a hand, which Kuruk quickly took and got up with the help of. The boy was sixteen and eerily familiar. He was a short and stocky young man with a slightly grown-out buzzcut and a beard that was coming in smoothly.

“Please, help me!” Kuruk’s voice was still regal, but his words were slower and more masculine than the voice that afflicted him before. The boy stared blankly at him. “Please. I’m Avata-” he couldn’t finish his sentence before Kuruk felt the boy’s feet slam into the centre of his chest. The bells rang again, hurting more than the kick to the sternum. A bright red aura erupted from him. The boy moved into a stance, placing his fists low and slowly pulling them up. Behind him, the palace lifted high up, and he moved the palace directly above Kuruk in an instant, and he dropped it.

***

“Kuruk!”

Kuruk shot up and looked around, finding his view only consisting of an endless nothingness and four auras—well, five auras. Kuruk looked down to see a faint red shimmer around him. It wasn't as big as the kids in his dream, but it was still the same shape and colour.

“Kuruk,” he looked up to see Kelsang’s green aura up close. “Kuruk, are you okay? You’ve been asleep for two days straight, and then you just started freaking out in your sleep.”

Two days? It was rare for Kuruk to sleep more than five hours before he lost his face. Perhaps that habit had made him more tired than he expected.

Kuruk reached for his board and stick and slowly wrote, too groggy from his sleep to write anything close to neat, “It was just a nightmare.”

“Kuruk, that wasn’t a nightmare. You were writhing and screaming. The fact that Jianzhu isn’t awake is honestly nonsensical. What happened?”

Kuruk’s mind ran through his dream, but mostly the faces of his attackers, each one growing more and more familiar, the oval face, the shaved hairline. Kuruk almost tossed himself off of Pengpeng out of shame for forgetting her face. His predecessor. Yangchen. The Great Yangchen was her title for a reason; it was astonishing that he had forgotten her. However, it had been well over a year since he’d contacted any of his past lives.

The other two children who tried to kill him were most likely the immediate predecessors, but they often appeared as much older forms, while Yangchen appeared well under forty. So it was a bit difficult to tell them apart from most of his Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom lives.

Kelsang shuffled around, letting Kuruk rest his head on his hulking shoulder and saving him from constantly flipping his board around.

“I don’t think it was a nightmare.”

“Your past lives?”

Kuruk nodded and continued to write, “I haven’t connected to my past lives since the winter before last.” he watched Kelsang’s aura shrink beneath him, definitely disappointed in Kuruk for neglecting his connection. He was sorta his spiritual mentor after all. “I was in the Western Air Temple, then some ruined Fire Nation village and then Ba Sing Se. Each time, I got beaten up by some kids. I think they were my predecessors.”

“It’s most likely. Meditate on it, that usually helped you before.” Kelsang said. Kuruk didn’t want to tell him that he hadn’t meditated for a similar amount of time, so he didn’t. It would just make him worry more.

Kuruk realised something. He got Kelsang’s attention and wrote on the last remaining slivers of his board, “How is Pengpeng flying without you at the reins?”

He put his aura-surrounded finger to his lips, then pointed to a shuffling Jianzhu—thankfully still sleeping. “He doesn’t know.” Kelsang stifled his chuckle “Kuruk, what happened to the Bison that the Abbot Dorje gave you. You know, when you mastered airbending.”

He was disembowelled by a dark spirit and crashed into the freezing ocean.

Kuruk wiped his board and wrote his answer. “Bone cancer.” Not having a face made lying simpler, but it didn’t make it any easier.

Kelsang gave a sombre smile, “I’m gonna take a nap. If you need me, wake me.” Kelsang quickly drifted off, leaving Kuruk to gaze at Ummi, her aura still as faint as before.

Chapter Text

Speckles of distant colour came into Kuruk’s view. Bhanti Island; they were close. The villagers moved around, highlighted by their auras, shuffling along the paths and moving in and out of the temples and houses. As they neared, Kuruk noticed three auras far from the vibrant mass, standing on top of a significantly higher area.

Pengpeng lowered and landed on the ground. “Avatar Kuruk, it’s an honour to meet you once more,” a familiar voice came from a blinding, compact white aura. “I hope my voice is enough for you to recognise.”

It was. Shaman Purnama’s rickety voice was easy to remember. Jianzhu assisted Kuruk off the side of Pengpeng, and Purnama pulled Kuruk’s scared hands up and in, clasping their cold palms together and using a technique that he’d seen Hei-Ran heat tea with to warm them. Her century-old hands were struggling as she held on weakly. “I wish we could have met in better circumstances, but I knew you’d face more hardship than most Avatars when I first saw you in my premonition all those years ago.”

Kuruk went to smile at the Shaman’s memorable milky, unseeing eyes, only to remember his current limitations. Instead, he kept his hands in place for nearly a minute; he was raised to give as much energy and affection to those on the brink of the next world.

“Alright, Purnama, time’s up. Let us greet Kuruk.” Nyahitha’s sleazy voice pounced up from behind the Shaman.

Purnama’s bony fingers slipped off Kuruk. Nyahitha’s purple aura came close; Kuruk almost expected an out-of-character hug—something dramatic and cosy to raise his spirits. However, Nyahitha’s fingers flicked at the centre of Kuruk's faceless head, flinching Kuruk and causing him to curl over slightly to clasp the stung area. “Honestly, Kuruk, are you insane?!” The surrounding auras spiked from the disrespect. “You are my friend, but this is just idiotic. Who in their right mind would go after the Face Stealer of all spirits? I’d rather get a colony’s worth of ant fly bites in my urethra than come anywhere clo-.”

Purnama’s aura hurried behind Nyahitha, failing to stop him from speaking but succeeding in clutching what Kuruk assumed to be his nape. Immediately, Nyahitha crumpled “Ow! Ow! Calm down!”

“Nya! Apologise to the Avatar!”

Kuruk sensed everyone’s auras relax with satisfaction as Nyahitha apologised like he was some bratty teenager.

Then there she was. Hei-Ran. Her sapphire aura sank more than Jianzhu’s or Kelsang’s. Strange. She never seemed to be anywhere close to the emotional type, but as Nyahitha was pulled away, she dove into Kuruk, her arms tight around his waist. Once his surprise faded, he held her back. Their warmth pushed against each other, his red aura being overtaken by the weight of her blue. Hei-Ran pulled back after a few seconds—somehow longer than any physical interaction between them.

“I missed you.” Her voice seemed less stern than usual for just a moment, but then she returned to her normal tone, “But, honestly, that mongoose lizard has a point. You could try not to be a total idiot.” Nyahitha glared in response to the comment with his golden eyes until Purnama flicked her hand on his arm. “Worse, you've made me agree with him.” She gave an unfamiliar smirk.

Purnama interrupted the moment, her bony hands clapping together, forming a sound that wasn't anything like a clap—more like the thud of two wooden bowls. “Alright, everyone. I've set up rooms for the two of you,” She said towards Jianzhu and Hei-Ran, “and I believe our Avatar would like a moment in the basalt caverns.”

A sage came from behind her, and she responded to the silent signal of his presence, “Perfect timing. Please take Headmistress Hei-Ran, Sage Jianzhu and Kelsang to their rooms. Nyahitha, come.”

The group moved down the hill and along the path, several auras coming into view as they pushed through the Bhanti’s village. Then, they separated, Kuruk being led into the temple—Ummi still on his arm—and the sound of grass crunching under their feet became shoes tapping on the stone-tiled floors of the temple.

Once Nyahitha has led him down the stairs into the cavern, methodically helping him down the stairs while Ummi was cradled on his chest. He was exhausted. Holding Ummi was a full-time job that he'd happily accept, but it was still a lot, especially in his current situation. Obviously, he would never let go of her, but if he didn't accept that he needed some time to himself in the spirit water pools, he'd probably go insane.

“Here we go.” Purnama’s voice echoed between the geometric basalt walls.

Nyahitha went to assist Kuruk onto the net hanging from the cave's ceiling, but Kuruk stopped and held out Ummi.

“Kuruk, I am not putting this random lady in the pools. You're the Avatar, you take pri-”

“Nya, we will respect the Avatar's wishes.”

“Purnama, Kuruk should be down there as soon as possible.” Nyahitha’s voice returned to that of a bratty teenager again. “He needs this more than her. She's just some random woman that Kuruk feels obligated to help for some stupid reaso-”

Nyahitha was interrupted again as Kuruk's back hand struck his face. He wasn't the violent type—at least with people—and he knew Nyahitha hadn't realised who she was, but this was Ummi. This was his soon-to-be wife. He wasn't obligated to help her for a stupid reason. He was obligated to help her because that was a husband's job. They weren't technically married, but in all other senses of the word, they were.

“Nyahitha. I said that we will respect the Avatar's wishes. I would prefer him to go down, too, but he appears to want his wife to go first.” Nyahitha was stunned by the revelation, his aura shrinking back into an outline. He didn't speak yet. “In fact, Avatar Kuruk, would you like to join them?”

Kuruk nodded again.

He stripped off down to his undergarments, and Nyahitha helped him into the spirit water. He'd spent time in these pools before, but it was different. It was the same thing with pools of spirit water in the north. Water that was blessed by the spirits was ever-changing, just like their benefactors. It was freezing, yet boiling to the touch. However, it didn't hurt at any moment. It was perfect. It was honestly the greatest feeling he'd felt in all thirty-two years of his life. Strangely, he could somewhat see the water, having its own aura, glistening along each ripple that spread across the surface in a shade of white.

Nyahitha joined him once in the water. The crank of the net’s mechanisms echoed loudly throughout the cave. Kuruk hoped they would replace the several centuries-old, creaky wooden machines with a newer, stronger one before his next incarnation came to be. Ummi was lowered carefully on the net until her face was outlined by water. Nyahitha called out to Purnama to stop cranking.

Immediately, Ummi's aura lit up familiarly. A baby blue light erupted around her as the water’s spiritual energy flooded into her porous husk, illuminating her, filling more than her spirit. Something was different.

Nyahitha’s palms erupted with the roar of flames, shown as an extension of his aura, preparing his technique as they came close to Ummi and adopting the same visuals as her aura. Nyahitha dragged his hands back and forth, the flames and Ummi's baby blue glow growing as he did so. It wasn't a permanent solution, but Kuruk hoped it could return her to some form of conscious state, even for just a moment.

“Usually Koh’s victims are entirely lifeless.” Nyahitha’s voice perked up, reverting to his usual tone again. “It's normal for her to be like this, but you…”

Kuruk finally opened up his mind enough to realise what Nyahitha was on about. How was he able to be so awake? Koh had torn part of his spirit out of him, gifted to him by the Mother of Faces. A vital part of his identity. His identity. But he—Avatar Kuruk—was still stuck in his scarred, achy body.

Kuruk shrugged.

Nyahitha’s aura sank again; he often preferred to have all the information he could, not as much as Jianzhu or Hei-Ran, but far from Kelsang’s attitude.

“I'd assume the Avatar spirit clung on as hard as it could. Koh’s ability is guaranteed to take your face, but you must have been forced into the Avatar state.” Purnama's voice echoed from above.

“Wouldn't that risk the cycle, if Koh killed him?”

“The Avatar state is a defence mechanism in the same way a cat-deer freezes when a tigerdillo appears. It’s gonna die either way, but fear lets it die how it wants.”

Kuruk had zoned out. He was curious about how he was in his current state, but he didn't care for the question much. Ummi was what mattered, and he remembered how long it took for Nyahitha’s technique to finish. Not long until he would know if Ummi would be okay. Although he had to accept that as just wishful thinking. Nyahitha’s technique was relatively new enough that he hadn't even bothered to name it, so no one would know the effects it had on people in Ummi's situation. She wasn't plagued with dark energy; a part of her was ripped away.

The aura from Nyahitha’s palms faded, “C'mon. Your turn. Bring her up, Purnama!”

The crank echoed through the cavern again until Ummi was high enough for Purnama to request Kuruk's help with moving her off the net. Immediately, he responded by swirling the air around Ummi's aura. He hadn't bent anything for the two weeks, so it came as a surprise when his own faint red aura streaked around his fiancé. He lifted her off the net and carefully brought her next to Purnama, twisting the air loosely until she was entirely on the basalt ground, and Purnama placed what he assumed was a cushion or folded cloth under her head. She returned to the crank—she must have been worn out by now—and spun it once again so Kuruk could be supported in the water.

He didn't need Nyahitha’s help getting on it; the shadowy grid on the water’s aura was enough. Nyahitha repeated his technique and let Kuruk drift off in the water as he remembered Kelsang's advice from the previous night, although he had little faith that it would work.

***

Nyahitha and the spirit water had done him some good. He felt rejuvenated, less heavy, although it was hard to tell with his facelessness having drained him so much; the difference was too slight. The Bhanti’s Cruiser swaying on the water didn't help either. Except for his backside proving he had planted himself on the bed of the ship's cabin, creaking the wooden frame, he was weightless. He was as light as a feather; Ummi was even lighter.

Kuruk has splayed her hair outwards from her head, forming what vaguely resembled a flower. He half-expected her to giggle as he did so, but as usual,
nothing happened. Her silence was going to kill him long before his liver kicked his bucket or before he was torn to ribbons by a spirit.

Creaks emerged from behind the door, and Kuruk sensed Hei-Ran’s sapphire aura as she opened the rickety panel of wood. “Nyahitha said the two of you should wear these ma-” the energy of the room choked Hei-Ran immediately, and she took to reading the situation in front of her. “Are you okay?”

Kuruk shook his head. Honestly, was he ever okay?

Gently, Hei-Ran’s blue rim placed herself on the floor, her nape only a few inches from Ummi’s side. “You seem different. Worse.”

Well, that was pretty obvious. Kuruk gestured to his face, which would have been scrunched up in sarcastic disbelief had it still been there. Hei-Ran was different, exceeding more than Kuruk was. The only different thing was that she was married, but Hei-Ran wasn’t the type to let anyone break her emotional defences down.

“Not like that.” Hei-Ran’s outlined hand reached for a clump of Ummi’s hair, her thumb and index dragging down only to replace themselves and slide down once more. “You didn’t come to my wedding. I half-expected you to show up in the middle of the ceremony, interrupt Junsik’s vows and profess your love to me like you kept trying to do a decade ago.”

Kuruk grabbed his board and chalk. “Sorry.”

“Was she pretty?”

Hei-Ran was never the best at changing the subject, but Kuruk still nodded and wrote, “Is he handsome?”

“Yeah.”

A silence stretched out between them, their filler conversation ending quickly. Kuruk needed to speak, to stuff the longing for connection that he sensed deep within himself. Out of all his companions, he missed Hei-Ran the most. She was never affectionate—barely his friend—but something about her called to Kuruk, and it wasn’t her beauty. It hadn’t been her beauty for a while. He suspected it was her inner fire or her aura, only now visible to him. Kuruk doubted she yearned for his presence in the same way. He needed to find out why.

Kuruk picked up his chalk again and alerted the headmistress with the taps and strokes against the framed slate. “Are you still my friend?”

“Of course I am, Kuruk, why do you need to ask?”

“Even before we stopped talking, you were different. You were prickly and detached as usual, and then suddenly you were cold. I know I’m not the best, most agreeable person, but you just stopped acting like my friend.” Kuruk held the board up and let Hei-Ran read it.

Hei-Ran bit her tongue for just a moment. “It was in Yaoping. Jianzhu found you in the middle of the night, frothing at the mouth and all you did when we took you to a healer was sleep with that nurse.” her face swelled with frustrated rosiness “Kuruk, you are the Avatar. Your health is the most important thing in the world and instead you just decide to be stupid and…” she forced herself to calm down and kept quiet, knowing that she’d say something she couldn’t take back.

Kuruk wiped the board and stroked it with his chalk. This time, Hei-Ran didn’t look up until Kuruk held the slate on his thigh, “Sorry you guys had to see that. I was pretty drunk."

“So you get put in the hospital and you and some nurse decide to get drunk?”

“Well, she wasn’t drunk.”

As her scrunched nose smoothed out, Hei-Ran’s frustration sank and gave way to pity or concern or anything melancholic in nature that Kuruk struggled to decipher, “Kuruk…”

Then it hit him.

He looked away from her and down to Ummi once more. Carefully, his hand took a clump of her hair from the base of her scalp and joined them together as he slid his hand down. Kuruk knew that he would never view that night in the same way, although he barely remembered it anyway. That’s what stung the most. Knowing that the half an hour alone with her was mostly a blur of colour, shapes and bodies meant… something else. Something sour. Something bitter. Something that left his stomach at his feet.

Hei-Ran placed her hand on his knee as if it would change the despairing clarity that she gifted him. “Can I tell you a secret?” Kuruk nodded, “Junsik and I are trying for a baby.” Perhaps she was good at changing the subject. “Although it’s been a struggle, to say the least.”

Swiftly, Kuruk slid himself off the bed and onto the floor, his knees bruising on the creaking wood. He jolted Hei-Ran as she was pulled into his grasp. He hugged her, and he didn’t let go, letting the pause speak his mind.

“You will always be my friend, Kuruk.” She understood what he meant by his silence. Once he did let go, Hei-Ran slowly stood up, “I almost forgot. Nyahitha said you two should take these,” she picked up what she had placed down earlier and held it out. Opera masks. “Turns out, Hira’a has a rich theatrical history. Also, I think people would feel better seeing masks than… that.”

Kuruk reached out for the mask and fiddled with it until he finally put it on his face.

Chapter Text

After making it through the mountainous island’s rainforest, the hexad had reached Hira’a, finally being greeted with the softwood panelled houses and thatched roofs. Each building had been coated in shadow by the massive forested mountains and cliffs, and in the centre of the village sat a stage, kept in a more pristine condition than any other part of Hira’a. Around the stage was a crowd, all dressed in minimal, thin, red attire, watching a play… or at least that’s what Kelsang described to Kuruk in his interested rambles. He usually came out of his big beefy shell and became—while he meant in the kindest way possible—a kid. It at least made Kuruk’s mostly dark environment more enjoyable.

Carefully, they moved closer to the collection of auras, swirling and overlapping with each other like sheer fabric.

The group joined the edge of the crowd, and Kuruk raised his senses to the stage. A tall, powerfully built man outstretched his hand to a point and bellowed, “Curse thou and the wicked legacy that follows your shallow, dark heart.” Kuruk looked towards the actress facing him. Her aura was as green as Kelsang’s, so he doubted she was as supposedly wicked as her character. His line struck Kuruk with a faint and unknown memory. He’d seen this play before, although he quickly assumed it was just deja vu.

“Love amongst dragons.” Hei-Ran whispered beside, “Remember, we went to watch it when Kuruk mastered firebending.”

Guess it wasn't deja vu. He reminisced back to that time, sitting high up in the galleries with Prince Chaeryu, Kelsang, Jianzhu and Hei-Ran’s uncle, who was supposed to have taught him before an unfortunate diagnosis from his physician. But the most important person there was Hei-Ran, dressed in her finest robes. She seemed genuinely impressed with Kuruk for the first time. He then painfully remembered how his first real confession to her was rejected during the play's intermission. A confession unlike any other because, at that point, he'd actually known Hei-Ran. It was the most emotional he’d ever been at that point in his life. They had stepped onto the balcony, letting the humid night air cool them down from the drinks and applause during the break. The stars had illuminated her face in a gloomy, cool light. He had genuinely loved her,

It felt wrong to think about such times as he felt Ummi's weight shift beside him.

“Foul fails to capture my presence. Your futile attempt to capture me once more shall be your last, so-called emperor!” the actress playing the darkened water spirit said, her voice holding a feigned rasp. Kuruk forgot that most people didn't understand spirits, even Jianzhu and Hei-Ran had to work off of the children's stories that nomads, parents and sages told, each based on experience from a minimum of five hundred years ago. Spirits weren’t evil; they could be as complex and multifaceted as humans. Unfortunately, Kuruk knew that more than anyone.

A yell came from the dragon emperor, and his pink aura shrank down into a weak kneel. Kuruk remembered most of the play now that he remembered seeing it before. It wasn’t exactly his thing. He only went to see it for Hei-Ran, but it was nice to enjoy even a fraction of the arts after so long..

The Emperor shed what sounded like a cloak as the water spirit exited with a flourish, laughing maniacally. Behind and above the stage was a different aura that had extinguished the flame in what Kuruk assumed to be a funnelled lantern, only to reignite it to highlight someone else. Another character came on stage, whom Kuruk faintly remembered as the Dragon Emperor’s mortal companion. “Pick yourself up, my lord, please. We must not rest for as we speak, the water spirit is terrorising and tormenting the physical realm.”

Still crumpled on the floor, the emperor weakly bellowed, “Leave me, my friend, let me alone, let me wallow. Thine emperor is no more than a weak man.”

“I refuse.”

“I SAID LET ME ALONE!”, the Dragon Emperor unfurled his body and struck up, nearly hitting his fellow actor on the chin, leaving Kuruk to imagine vermillion ribbons acting in place of fire. “Noren!” the dragon emperor screeched with pained sorrow. His companion’s actor lay still, his aura flaring with excitement. “Noren, please forgive me… I shall slay the water spirit, but to do so, I must regain my immortal form. Bless me with your light as I use thy name on my quest.”

He didn’t need to watch anymore. Kuruk pulled the slate from his waist tie and—careful not to interrupt the play with the squeaks—wrote and showed Hei-Ran beside him, “We need to find the magistrate here. We’ve wasted too much time.”

Kelsang guided Kuruk and Ummi, along with everyone, as they questioned people as quietly as possible, avoiding all detection until the information led them to a house, described to Kuruk as somewhat larger than the other buildings in Hira’a. Nyahitha stepped up to the door and rang what sounded like a bell, which seemed to be at his side. After half a minute, the door slid open to a short, somewhat plump woman with an aura barely a shade lighter than Hei-Ran’s. Her aura grumbled until it spiked in shock at Nyahitha. Hurriedly, she straightened herself up to her best ability in a second, then attempted to greet the sage with all the available formality in her bow. “Oh my! Forgive my less-than-appropriate appearance, your grace. I am so sorry.”

Kuruk was confused at his title as a sage; he’d heard it before during their escapades between planned spirit hunts when Nyahitha would use his position to get a few extra pleasures within the Fire Nation.

Nyahtiha returned the bow, “No need to apologise…”

“Mirei, I am the magistrate's daughter,” she answered the connoted question in a weathered voice, which concerned Kuruk as she sounded like someone in her sixties. How old was the magistrate? It’s reasonable to assume she’d be in her seventies, but in a region like Hira’a, quality of life wasn’t the most desirable. Being that age would have come with more than a few challenges. How helpful would she actually be?

“Mirei, I am escorting these scholars on a mission to cartograph the valley, and we have concluded that it would be best if we could have a word with her honour. Is that alright?” Nyahitha’s formal tone sank Kuruk’s stomach. It wasn’t right to have seen him in such embarrassing situations and hear him speak like a lord. “We will not be a bother to the magistrate, her heir or anyone else in the home.”

A subtle grumble in Mirei’s aura returned, but she agreed, allowing them all in, her aura spiking with the pleasure of the good omen that was Kelsang’s presence in her home. She guided the group through the small halls of the house to the room. Mirei gripped the indented grip of the sliding door but paused and turned to Nyahitha, addressing him as the entire hexad instead, “I must tell you before any of us entirely. My mother is extremely irritable and has been for plenty of years. Let me address her before any of you utter a single word. It’s too risky. Is that alright?” Nyahitha nodded, signalling to Mirei to slide the door open. Bringing in a gentle whoosh of the humid breeze from outside as they stepped onto what Kuruk assumed to be a balcony.

Sitting in a chair, with a dark, colourless aura highlighting long, likely near white hair, was assumed to be Magistrate Yumerei. Mirei gently walked—careful with each step—and lowered to a knee,

“Mother…” No response. Yumerei’s outlined profile remained looking at something that Kuruk could not sense.

“Your honour…” Still nothing.

“Mommy…” Still nothing. “Well, it’s better than her being upset. I’m sorry, I can’t do more.” Mirei held her mother’s hand gently, eyes watering.

Nyahitha placed his hand on her shoulder, kneeling to her level, “Is it alright if I try something? I’ll need you to stand back, though.”

Mirei looks at the Fire Sage, merely nodding and moving to the corner of the room. Nyahitha took the same position as Mirei, moving Yumerei’s hair over her shoulder as he did so. Slowly, his hands erupted into flames, and, as he had with Kuruk and Ummi, he dragged them up and down, following her chi paths closely. Something was familiar about Yumerei. Something Kuruk had found deep within himself. Her aura wasn’t lifeless; it flared up even outside of Nyahitha’s fire, adopting the colour. It was just dark, only separated from the void surrounding it by the knowledge that it was there. It was more than her mind slipping. She housed a dark energy within her, although a mere fraction of what Kuruk had inside him. Dark energy that was pulled slowly from her and out into the world, thanks to Nyahitha. He had almost finished his first cycle over Yumerei’s chi paths when suddenly…

CRASH!

A sharp, clattering sound came from beside Kuruk. He turned to Ummi, her aura flickering softly into a faint life. Kuruk went to reach out, but a scream erupted from Yumerei. The Magistrate had leapt up from her chair, “Wh-who are you?!” Her lip quivered like a child, “Out, get out of my house, now!” Mirei reached out, about to say something, but Yumerei slapped her hand, “I said get out! Mother!” she called out, “Mother, help!”

Mirei’s aura spiked, and her voice erupted louder than her mother’s, “I want her out, now!” Taking action, Kelsang hurried Kuruk and Ummi outside before he could even understand what was actually happening.

***

Kelsang guided Kuruk and Ummi to a pagoda in a garden on the edge of the village, still in view of the entrance of the magistrate’s home. Kelsang had set up a Pai Sho board to pass the time. He had pushed the boat tile to the centre. Kuruk didn’t need to see it to know which tile it was. It was always the boat. It was better than Jianzhu’s opening, showing much more knowledge of the game than the earth sage.

He looked to Ummi, who had rested down, her head on Kuruk’s thigh. Then, Kuruk reached for his slate board, writing, “I want to try something. Can you set up Ummi’s tiles?”

“Umm… sure.”

As the clattering of wooden tiles tapping on the Pai Sho board emanated from the board as Kuruk helped Ummi into a sitting position. He placed her hand on the white jade tile for her usual opener. Ummi was never the best Pai Sho player, and Kuruk always went easy on her at the start of their relationship. Although she did get her revenge by proving herself when they went elephant koi riding.

Ummi’s aura flickered to life again, barely the colour of an overcast sky, but it was a noticeable difference. Her fingertips gripped the tile’s round edge and placed it behind her. Knotweed tile. She moved it. She made a conscious decision to move her piece. Ummi ma made a conscious decision. Expecting them, Kuruk went to wipe the tears from his eyes, moving his hand under the opera mask, only to remember he didn’t have tear ducts anymore. She had spent two weeks barely able to walk with him, and when she wasn’t walking, she was lying in bed.

Kuruk moved his knotwood tile two cross sections diagonally. He doubted the rest of the group would take any longer than an hour, so he didn’t need a harmony that would give him the chance for a long game. Although it would grow difficult to keep track of the pieces once they’d all moved at the same time.

Kelsang placed his thick index fingertip in his boat tile again and pushed it to the side, blocking Kuruk’s alike tile from moving. Finally, Kelsang had learnt from their previous games. The elemental harmony was out of the question, leaving the compass as the next best option. He waited for Ummi to move her wheel tile to the other side, moving it behind. Then Kuruk had his opportunity. He needed to enjoy this. Kuruk’s shell tile moved to block Kelsang’s tiger tile, followed by the air nomad pushing his Rhododendron by it, threatening to block it from whatever offensive move he expected. Ummi used the slingshot tactic to blitz her White Jade to the centre of the blank right segment of the board, stopping Kuruk’s feather tile from fulfilling its purpose. She often played with preventive methods during Pai Sho, unlike when she played Sparrowbones. However, she didn’t see Kuruk’s dragon’s opportunity to place itself behind her white lotus, mirroring where her white jade sat.

After plenty more rounds, the repeated clicks and clacks of gently scraping tiles stopped as Kuruk felt Jianzhu’s well-manicured, amber-outlined hand on his shoulder, “If we’re sticking around, I’ll happily play the winner.”

Kelsang abruptly answered, somehow still not noticing the finer details of their game, “Just wait your turn.” It was at least nice seeing Kelsang be overconfident, though; any man who could break your femur with a good kick deserved to act like he can.

“Kel, I’m obviously talking about Kuruk and only Kuruk.”

“Hey! I’ve improved; I could probably beat you.” Kelsang didn’t realise that saying that wasn’t the huge brag he meant it as.

As the guy’s bickering continued, Kuruk sensed past them, feeling Nyahitha and Hei-Ran starting to leave the magistrate's house. He picked Ummi up and carefully made his way to them, making sure he wouldn’t trip over any hidden, auraless rock by skidding his heels with each step, and wiping his slate clean.

“You think I would know anything about this?” Hei-Ran’s voice came up as Kuruk neared, sensing their auras spiking with bitterness

“You’re the headmaster of the most prestigious school in the nation, you’re supposed to be smart, right?” Nyahitha’s squirmily replied.

“I don’t teach how to decipher secret codes from demented old ladies; I teach young girls how to act like smart, sensible people. You should sit in on one of my teachers’ classes; you might learn something, dipshit.”

“Oh! Dipshit! Because that’s how high-class ladies like you are supposed to spea—” Sick of them and their prickling, bursting auras, Kuruk whooshed a gust of air between them, knocking Nyahitha’s hat off his head and onto the ground, which he hastily but carefully retrieved. “...sorry.”

Hei-Ran held out a piece of parchment, which Kuruk took from her. “Right… sorry. It’s what we got from the magistrate, but it’s not much. It’s more of a poem than instructions, so I don’t exactly know what to do, and neither does this mongoose-lizard.” Nyahitha’s aura pricked up in childish fury as he stormed off to Jianzhu and Kelsang, who sat facing each other, leading Kuruk to make the reasonable assumption that they had decided to duke it out in a game of Pai Sho. “Sorry, he just…”

“Just calm down.” Kuruk wrote.

“Helpful.”

“Jianzhu should have stayed in there; he knows you guys don’t get along.”

“He’s Jianzhu; if he doesn't wanna do something, he won't do it.” Hei-Ran’s silhouetted hand rubbed the bridge of her slender nose, “Also, don’t say that; you make us sound like bickering children.”

“Because you’re acting like children, Kelsang and Jianzhu, too.”

“I think every time we get together, we just start acting like twenty-two-year-olds again.” Hei-ran’s sapphire aura sank slowly, “Are you okay, after what we talked about… on the ship?”

A massive part of Kuruk's foolish hope was that she was talking about her and Junsik trying to have a baby, but he knew what she meant. He’d remembered more of that night after the day at sea. He remembered how it felt, sluggishly downing cup after cup of Yaoping’s signature wine, laggardly holding her hips onto himself as they struggled to pull the covers over, poorly struggling to ignore his freshly healed fractures and scabbed-over gashes, and finally opening his heavy eyelids in response to the annoyed and uncomfortable yelps of his companions. What hurt the worst wasn’t seeing Jianzhu’s apathy or Kelsang’s judgmentless discomfort, or Hei-Ran’s loss of respect. It was his doctor. He noticed that after reprimanding the nurse, he glared at Kuruk. His wrinkled nose scrunched up into his face, his thin eyes squinting with disdain—disdain for the Avatar.

He remembered the first story of Avatar Yangchen he was told when he was about seven, something about her healing hundreds upon hundreds after a tsunami had wrecked most of Agna Q’ela at the age of twenty-eight. What was Kuruk doing at twenty-eight? Having someone, some guy, some random doctor in Yaoping stare daggers at him for sleeping around with some nurse. The Avatar. A lousy excuse for one.

He still felt like that, sort of. Some part of him did. Some part of him kept clawing at him constantly. He was a shitty Avatar, and there were probably a good few like him. Although that information didn’t help when the previous three Avatars were some of the greatest. Yangchen alone had no wars in all of her one hundred and fifty-five-year lifespan. It sounded like bullshit when Kuruk first learnt of it, so when he first communicated with her, he asked her. The answer being “yes” didn’t help the expectation he had for himself.

What helped was knowing it wasn’t his fault, but it made a whole new problem. He knew now. He actually knew what happened—albeit a blurry memory—and he couldn’t exactly go back from that.

“I’m fine,” he wrote out slowly on the board, carefully writing each letter.

“You sure?”

He gave Hei-Ran a thumbs up and wrote on where he believed had the most space for his writing, “Trust me. Mind getting the guys? We should go.”