Raika knelt on a welcome mossy patch to examine the exact shade of the plant's leaves. The purplish tinge was almost right, but there was suspect bleaching occurring near the stems. She desperately needed the plant to be bugleherb. It was the last ingredient in a sleeping potion she was otherwise prepared to mix. Please, Raika silently begged the buds, please just turn a little more purple. Maybe the rainy season had neglected this patch of forest? Maybe the rains couldn't seep through the heavy underbrush that even now was poised to strangle the maybe bugleherb.
"Rai, darling, we're losing daylight." Raika's energy had been entirely focused on begging the plant to shift a shade or two and she had not heard Xan's approach. She jolted backward at his voice. Xan had the decency to help her up even if he did not have the decency to help her find this wretched plant.
"Xan, if we don't get the bugleherb today, we'll have to hike all the way back tomorrow." Raika gestured all around before crossing her arms.
"Sure, and if we don't leave the forest now, we won't have to worry about a return because we'll be eaten by a cougar-owl. They're crepuscular animals you know- I read that in your very un-fascinating and very unhelpful book." He gestured to the cover of The Four Kingdoms in Nature: Flowers, Herbs, and Deadly Beasts currently slipping out of the fold of Raika's satchel.
She was unimpressed. "If you followed it through to the ending, which you never do," Raika hoped this was sounding as much a reading critique as a life metaphor, "then you would recall the section on deadly beasts included a healthy number of beastly plants: cannibalius callalillies, incubating iris, necro palms-."
"Yes, yes, quite right and all the more reason to take our leave m'day." Xan swept his arms and bowed down to Raika then pivoted, arms outstretched, toward the trail. Raika stilled into a glare, the corners of her eyes dipping. She fixed Xan is a withering look. He straightened and ran a hand through his ebony curls, which only jostled them into further perfection.
"Alright, I'm sorry." He now reached out to her. "It was joke. I know you don't like laughs about titles or nobility or anything fun really, but I wasn't thinking. And truly, it is time to leave. Mozu's asleep in flower bead of potentially beastly plants." He gestured over to little boy snuggled with a patch wildflowers hugging the trail.
Raika flicked her gaze across Xan's face, unforgiving.
"Agni, you're eyes are really gold. Like piercing. Steely, gilded steel. A light rusted steel." His tone was light, as always. Xan carried his attitude and his body perpetually poised to tell or receive some debaucherous joke. Even when standing solitary, he gave the appearance of leaning languidly against some ridiculous wall or backdrop, like a model from Republic City, body curving into an easy smile. Typically, nothing bored Xan. He was always manifesting humor in the most dull of characters, tugging people out of their comforts. Most were more than happy to be swept of into Xan's little comedy, and the few that resisted became the punchline of inside jokes with Raika. This hike, however, seemed to have undone him. He gestured again down the path.
"If you think this is helping your cause," then you are mortally mistaken, Raika finished in her head. But she could also see the waning sun, turning ochre in Mozu's black mop of hair. It was nearing the four year old's bedtime and they would now need to factor in how the long the hike down would take trading off giving him piggy back rides. Raika loved open spaces, loved the mountains, the sea, the sounds of unbridled winds and brooks. And she loved night night most of all, feeling herself hum to the star's bursting beats. And the moon...
But she also never lost her head for practicality. Especially given that there were scores of people who would delight in literally seeing her lose her head. And Xan was right, any longer in the mountains was not a clever idea.
"The plants are just difficult to distinguish with all the underbrush," Raika began. "There is so much foliage. Without a controlled burn, everything is overgrown and the plants on the floor are drying out." It went unspoken that the final controlled burn would have been well over two decades ago when the fire nation last occupied their Earth Kingdom colonies. Nowadays, everyone was very jumpy around anything to do with fire- even if their forests and fields suffered for it.
"Here, come look at these leaves." Raika waved Xan down to peer at the plant. She hoped her voice communicated a sense of yes, we're leaving but please help your dear friend with one last good faith effort. "Do you see how they lighten toward the stem? I can't tell if that's a natural shade or if it's just nutrient deficiency." Xan made an incredibly obvious eye roll before lowering himself level with her. He had difficulty with outright apologies and Raika knew he would humor her whims for the next hour or so as penance for the m'lady falter.
Xan studied the leaves, reaching out to them before Raika intercepted his hand with warning tuts: beware the beastly plants. "I think it's a natural color. I mean, the whole thing is off. It's all too faded," Xan reasoned.
"No, no the color toward the tips is correct, see?" Raika showed him the bugleherb drawing from the Four Kingdoms in Nature.
"Raika, no," Xan ground out the vowel sound longer than was polite.
"What?"
"You've said all day we're looking for a purple plant. This drawing is clearly of a mauve plant."
"Isn't that a shade of purple? I don't see how it matters."
"Well first, if you're going to be healer-."
"If I'm going to be a healer?" Raika quirked an unrelenting left brow.
"As a healer, you're going to have to be more precise about the nuances. And furthermore, this is the exact shade of the curtains I wanted for our living room and you rejected them as having a 'ghastly pallor.'"
"Alright, so look for the plants with the ghastly pallor then."
"No, the point is I've buggered off from dozens of purple plants today. We need to scrap it and return tomorrow."
Raika didn't give Xan the satisfaction of looking at him nor indicating any kind of assent as she stood, dusting off the knees of her overdress. She eventually let out a complacent sigh and asked if Xan wanted the first Mozu carrying shift.
"Yes, fine. Here we go little man." Xan tenderly cupped a palm under Mozu's head and then cradled the child into his arms. Mozu did not even stir. At least Raika knew the insomnia plaguing the village, and thereby plaguing her healing business, did not rattle Mozu in the least. There had been many late night and early morning knocks on their door. Patients all claiming an inability to sleep because of a high pitched buzz and slight tremors in the ground. Neither phenomenon had reached Raika, Xan, and Mozu's home on the outskirts of the town limits. Raika suspected a toxin in the water as the only plausible explanation and had asked Xan to boil their water to such a heat the pots groaned. She would cool it quickly when he was finished. Raika advised the villagers to do the same but there was no alleviation of nighttime visitors. Moreover, her sleeping potion stores had run dry and the herbs were difficult to find this close to the Earth Kingdom coasts.
Xan, carrying Mozu in front of him, navigated the path down with a quick sureness. Raika followed behind him, still covertly scouring her periphery for purple- mauve- leaves. But the light was leaving and Raika resigned herself to another trip up the cliff side and into the woods tomorrow. And another evening of patients she was quickly running out of beds for.
The trio passed a secluded lookout point, cupped on all sides with a jagged rock face. They paused only a moment to watch the sun dancing on the horizon line, before continuing out of sight.
At the little family's retreat a boulder began to quake, pulling loose from the surrounding rocks. The boulder, however, was not taken by gravity. Instead, it hovered upward and unmoving before two men slipped out from behind it. It thudded back onto the ground resolutely.
The men were bulky, as if carved from the same cliff as the stone they used for concealment. They had wide set eyes with stocky shoulders and square jaws. The men's muscles were sculpted in anticipation of soldiering, but any war to fight in was long over.
The taller of the pair spoke first. "What do you reckon? I think the lanky guy was muttering 'Agni' every time the girl stopped to look at a flower."
"They have the complexion. Pale and dark hair, all of them."
"I don't know, the girl seemed darker skinned."
"Even the fire nation will tan if they spend their days outside looking for a fucking bouquet. I saw her eyes, she's fire nation. They all are." His words were biting and eyes stone.
"We will tell the captain and get ready to mobilize tomorrow." The shorter man turned away from his companion, sure in his assessment and surer in his disdain, and leapt down from their hiding place. He would tell the commander. The commander would be pleased. And he would get to see the fire leave three more pairs of stupid eyes, evil eyes, in the morning. Cleansing the world felt nice.