to love is to be brave
Prior to marrying Tenzin, Pema wrote novels under a pseudonym, which Korra has only recently discovered while overhearing the couple speak to each other, exchanges like warm lace. The young woman breathes a paper thin sigh while they chatter in the kitchen, unaware of her presense behind the door.
"You didn't have to give up your passion for me," Tenzin recollects, and he is so full of love that Korra only dreams that kind of intensity.
"You tell me every day. I stopped because i wanted you to love me for me, not for my words. Words only say so much."
The young Avatar's chest drags down with a feeling she cannot name. She scuttles away and paces the rooms and comes across a shelf that she always passed by, squinting to read the spines.
"The Warring Heart, by Pame A," Korra mutters, and pulls it out, flipping to an arbitrary page.
Love is coming to a battle while willingly unarmed. Your heart is both sword and shield, and you must make decisions when to draw one or the other. Only when you find the right one, can you lay down your arms.
She gasps, and flips frantically to the beginning, entranced. A White Lotus member passes by and she hides the book behind her back and retires to the safety of her room.
Dear readers, to love is to be brave. You are tossing your coins into the dark, a game of risk, and there will be people beneath you, above you, under dirt and in the sky. Never settle, it is unsafe. Never put someone in a pedestal so high, that you can no longer see them. Over time, they will not see you either.
Mako enters her mind like a breeze through an open window. Does he fit into this category? Did she lay her weapons down for him? Asami did, she thought. Asami's unfairly perfect presence and kind eyes, and he rejected her.
(Over time, they will not see you either.)
Does he go through love like filing cabinets and short poems, never to be read again? Does she try too hard, and get nothing to return? Never toss your heart in wild abandon. Almost no one is worth your tears, and those who are, will never want them from you.
It clicks in her mind, like a violent fire, that Mako cried over her beaten body, held her in his arms, while dating Asami Sato, just recently betrayed by her father, at a time of great need. Korra thinks of the girl's heart, for once. She was blinded back then.
"Give her space!"
(Did she lay her weapons down for him?)
What do you love about your object of affection? Is he handsome? Is he smart? Is he kind to you? A man can be kind to you all they like, but if he is not kind to others, he is not a man.
Korra closes the book. Asami will still be here for a few more days before returning to her father's estate in solitude, newly single. Placing the tome on her desk, she decides.
She knocks, and is answered. Asami is dressed in her nightgown, milk skin made luminous in the evening light. The Avatar is stunned momentarily, and Asami smiles.
"Korra, can I help you?"
She decides.
"I'm dumping Mako."
Asami's eyes widen. "Why? I thought you loved him. And he seems to love you, too."
It rings in her ears, he loves you, he loves you. A lump forms in her throat.
"But he hurt you. He tossed you aside like dirt. And a guy who tosses a girl like dirt and lies about it, and drags it on, is not someone I want to date."
Raven hair frames her face, a stunning mane around her delicate features. Asami makes an expression like a caged bird reaching freedom, and approaches Korra, giving her a firm, unashamed hug.
"I'm glad, thank you."
Korra relaxes into her arms. "Do you still love him?"
"I can't anymore, because I wondered how long until he'll hurt you too."
Oh, she thinks, Asami is so warm, how was she ever her enemy? It hurts to let go.
(Dear readers, to love is to be brave.)
It's true, she decides. It's true.