A.N.-This takes place at least a millennium before the current Avatar timeline. So the Avatar mentioned is not Roku, as my beta assumed, and the dragon is the volcano spirit, not Roku's spirit guide.
The Painted Lady-Origin
The Painted Lady was not always a spirit.
Her story began long before the Fire Nation tried to gobble up the rest of the world, before they were even unified as a nation. It began when the children of Fire had just begun to settle down on the outmost of the islands in their archipelago.
She came with her tribe to this island, and they settled here before they realized the volcano was not dormant. Its spirit was not pleased with the intruders, and it spewed fire at them, too much for their too few benders to handle. They could barely build shelter to survive in before the volcano spirit burned it down again. Eventually, their elders came to a decision. They needed a sacrifice.
It was not a cruel and barbaric custom, as it may seem in this age, but the hope that one person could fearlessly face the spirit's rage and explain their need to survive. They should have waited for the Avatar, for that is part of his duty to mediate with spirits, but their lives were burning up fast, so she volunteered to die.
She was neither the most persuasive, nor the bravest, but she had the least to lose. A young widow, her husband and her beauty had been destroyed when the downpour of fire caught them unaware on their wedding night as they slept on the outskirts of the village in their new hut. She had burns on her face and arms, and a peculiar one in the shape of a crescent moon on her forehead, caused by the melting of the gold charm on her bridal headdress from the heat.
So she covered her burns in curls of red paint (for fire, for heat, for pain, for lost love) and put on her wedding robes and a covered hat to protect her from the ever present hot ash in the air as she climbed up the volcano. She reached its summit and began to sing to the spirit.
She sang of the fight with another tribe on their old island which caused them to flee and settle here in hopes of a new beginning. She sang of the troubles they had gone through, even without the spirit's fiery disproval of their presence, of how there was little fresh water here and how they could barely survive, but that they did not have enough supplies to gone on another voyage to find a new home. She sang of the people they had lost to the fire, how even their best benders had been swallowed in flames as they tried to stop the onset of the magma he sent at them. She paused and softly began to sing again, of her wedding night and how it was during one of the worst eruptions they had seen and how her husband had perished in the destruction of half the village, but saved her life. She sang even louder of the burns she wore and the pain she felt. Then she closed her eyes and fell.
She woke up in the spirit world to the arguing of a fiery dragon, too bright and hot to look at, and a glowing man. The man, the dragon called him Avatar, said she was human, and must move on, that she was not a spirit and could not stay there. The dragon said she could become a spirit, then; that she had cooled his anger and he knew it was time for him to sleep; that he wanted her to watch over his island, and he would give her some of his spirit energy in return for this. They both turned to her. One nod gave her consent, and suddenly they returned to the island.
She and the dragon watched in spirit form as the Avatar tapped into many large springs close to the top of the volcano, deep below the earth. He forced the water to the top and let it flow down to cool the magma. More and more water poured down and it soon became a river. Before leaving, he turned to them and said it would become a great river over time, flowing across the entire island.
The dragon turned to her. He said he was very old, but his time there had passed. He told her that he had guarded over the island and made it grow for many ages, and he did not think the children of Fire who came to his shore, even the ones who mastered the power of his brother Sun, were worthy of guarding his island. But she came to him and poured out her soul for her people and he told her she was his worthy replacement. He faded away and she began to glow.
Time passed and her mountain stream reached the valley where her village lay and became a river. She could feel every bend and twist and knew exactly where it reached the ocean. Then she went down to see her people.
They cowered and hid from her at first, for she glowed with power, but they listened to her story and her offer of protection and called her their Lady. She watched over them as they finally built a real village and spread out across the island. Over time, there were several villages she protected, but her favorite was one that they built in the middle of her river, where the water was deepest.
Eventually, the other villages did not remember her but as a name passed down over generations, The Painted Lady. The river village knew better, for she had to protect them more over the years. The children of fire may have been creative, inventive, and know how to turn resources to their ends, but they had trouble adapting to living on water at first. She guarded them from sickness and gave them her blessing in the form of a large supply of fish from the ocean. It is the river village that best remembers her as a beneficial spirit.
