Chapter Text
On the rugged, wind swept shores of the northernmost reach of the Earth Kingdom, the cabbage seller found a town built of stone hugging the craggy shores and sharp cliffs of granite that dove into the sea. In the bay, over a hundred Fire Nation ships lay, blocked by a wreck of the Fire Nation finest clogging the mouth of the harbor.
Beyond the protected harbor, the North Sea labored against the rocks, dragging thousands of heavy stones before rushing back in with a boom that hit the headlands like a falling building, sending spray fifty feet into the air. Thick, ghostly wisps of vapor rose from the waves and crawled across the rocks like living things.
Fire Nation sailors wandered the streets in heavy furs dyed imperial red, balaclavas pulled high to hide everything but their gold eyes. Their boots rang against the stone, their voices carried thinly on the wind.
“Hey is that cabbage?!”
“The best cabbage in the north!” Cai said with a toothy grin.
The sailor stopped short, eyeing him. “Old man, aren’t you cold?”
“Not on a day like today.”
The sailor followed Cai’s gaze upward, squinting at the thin sky where ice-laden clouds drifted low and the sun hung weak and lemon-pale, offering little in the way of light and none at all of warmth. He frowned. “What’s happening today?”
“I am meeting an old friend.”
A blast of arctic air barreled through the street, sharp enough to steal breath. The sailor cursed and pulled his furs tighter around himself. “I’ll take a cabbage,” he said. “You spoken to the cooks yet? They’ll probably take everything you’ve got.”
“That’s where I’m headed!”
Beyond the harbor wall, two ships crested the horizon.
Cai watched them come in.
There was an old woman walking the cobbled streets. Dressed in rags layered one over another, her long hair hanging in tatters down her back, she wore a tunic of indigo and bone. She stopped in front of Cai.
“My son.”
“Mother,” Cai ground out. “Why are you here?”
“To watch the port.” Her gaze was sharp, ancient. “Why are you?”
“To meet an old friend.”
“The prince,” she said, “or the Moon?”
“Why can’t it be both?” He gave his mother a feral grin. “I have not seen the Moon in a long time, and I have not seen the prince since I gave him his blessing, which was not so long ago.”
The old woman clicked her tongue. “It has always been your hubris, my son, that undoes you. The boy has come this far because of the choices he made.”
“And if I had not given him the gift of Doubt,” Cai shot back, “would he have made them?”
She leaned closer, her voice dropping. “He is human. They are capable of things we could never conceive. More like the Early Ones than us—embodiment of chaos, every one of them. So tell me: is this because of you, or in spite of you?”
Cai scowled. “This is why we have never agreed, Mother. Your friends would have smothered him in blessings and spared him every trial. I have seen what becomes of a man who is only blessed. You accuse me of hubris? Look to the humans—but do not look to me.”
The old woman sighed. “I have. For a hundred millennia, I have. And for ninety of those, so have you.”
“And?” Cai prompted.
Her gray eyes went to the harbor, to the broken ships and the restless water.
“I grow tired of this argument,” she said. “You search for blame where there is none. Anger, when it is only misunderstanding. You set yourself above reproach, and call it clarity.”
She reached out, briefly—two fingers brushing Cai’s sleeve, light as sea mist.
“I love you, child,” she said, more gently now. “But you are difficult.”
She turned her gaze one last time to the lead ship, her gray eyes narrowing as if seeing through the steel hull. “Be careful, Koh. You gave that boy the gift of Doubt, but Tui has given him the mask of an Immortal. It is an even heavier burden. He will perhaps begin to doubt who he is, what he wants for that of the Moon’s. A funny thing, gifts.”
She drifted into the seasmoke, her form fraying at the edges until she was just another wisp of gray against the granite.
And the ships grew closer.