Ravindra was born in May in the Southern lands of Earth Kingdom. Like his parents he had dark hair, dark eyes, and dark skin. They named him Ravindra, Lord of the Sun, for his smile and their hope that he would be a leader among people.
Unlike his parents, Ravindra showed signs, at the age of three, of being a water bender, not an Earth bender. This led to a lot of confusion in the household. Ravindra's parents already had their handfuls with Ravi's brand new baby sister, and it was simply unthinkable for the two of them to have produced a water bender. They discussed taking him to the doctor, they tried to hide the strange development from their neighbours, and they tried to train Ravi to be an earth bender instead in the little spare time they had.
Nothing they did was particularly successful, and in the end the news of a water bender born in the strictly earth bending region spread quickly. It brought curious neighbours and even some people from surrounding villages to visit the small house and see a display of Ravi's admittedly proficient, considering his age, bending abilities.
No one expected the young child to draw attention from the huge city of Ba Sing Se, however. When White Lotus members arrived in the tiny town of Rugi it was the sort of excitement that only came along once in twenty years. Ravi was six, his sister Mira was four; they were tested and interrogated by the White Lotus, their parents asked endless lists of questions, and the final result was that they were all asked to move to Ba Sing Se, where further trials would be taken to determine if Ravi was truly the new Avatar.
After that, news of the family exploded across not only the Earth Kingdom, but the entire world. It was a time of relative peace throughout and between the four nations, where international interaction was comprised mostly of commerce and trade. When the family moved to Ba Sing Se tourists from other nations became much more common. They would visit the White Lotus compound, jostle for a chance to catch a glimpse of Ravi, make pilgrimages to Rugi to see where the – potential – new Avatar was born. Throughout the next three years Ravi went through multiple lessons, tests, and training sessions to tap into his potential. The world held its breath through the entire time it took for Ravi to learn to flip over stones with his will. That day, the world celebrated as the new Avatar was confirmed.
Ravi wasn't allowed to leave the compound and explore Ba Sing Se – he was much too busy learning history, doing exercises, spending hours with Master earth benders, fire benders, air benders and water benders. Even at nine he was beginning to learn about politics; he was learning to meditate and discovering the Spirit World; he was listening to long lectures on diplomacy and ethics; he was being prepared to become a world leader, an extreme version of what his parents had hoped for him at his birth.
For his family life in Ba Sing Se was full of mixed blessings. The White Lotus offered to support them fully both financially and socially, but Ravi's parents, who had worked in manual labour jobs their entire lives, could not accept such an opulent lifestyle. They insisted on finding work in the city, making their own friends, and only reluctantly participated in fancy dinners and social events.
Mira took to the city easily, barely even remembering anything about Rugi. She attended school apart from Ravi along with the general public, though she was slow to make friends. Her personality tended to be straightforward to a point that was almost aggressive, and she was decidedly masculine in form: she had broad shoulders, was always easily the tallest in her classes (she was roughly the same height as Ravi, to his constant irritation), and her dark skin set her apart from the other students. There was only one girl she could call a friend: another girl who looked different from the others, who had been born in Ba Sing Se but whose heritage was from somewhere further away. She lived in a small house with her mother, an immigrant from the Fire Nation who had come to the Earth Kingdom with an earth bending merchant who had swept her off her feet, then abandoned her when she was pregnant. The child they produced was named Bai, and her mother had wept with joy when she had shown that she was not an earth bender like her father, but a fire bender like her mother.
Mira herself was not a bender at all. She often complained that her brother could have spared at least on element for her, but she was not one to dwell on the things she didn't have. She enthusiastically tagged along to Bai's bending lessons, and ended up copying the Kung Fu style of each of the moves, which allowed her to spar with others not as a bender, but as a physical fighter.
Ravindra spent the ten years between six and sixteen to master the four elements. Air was the element that came hardest to him. He enjoyed the feeling of water slipping through his fingers, the solid feel of earth in his fists, the burn of fire against his palms; but air left no mark on his body, felt only like emptiness to him. Even when he could easily call it to himself, use it to an acceptable degree; he still struggled to put it to any practical use. His air bending master shook their head at his sloppy displays, tried to teach him through long theoretical speeches of freedom and flexibility, but Ravi continued to struggle.
At fourteen, Mira was even taller than Ravi, much more muscular, wild-looking with her bright eyes and long hair. She never went anywhere without Bai, who was visually opposite in some ways: Bai had light skin that looked close to white beside Mira's dark brown; Bai was small and delicate, almost frail-looking. Bai's own black hair was always neatly plaited, her face was calm and stoic, her eyes were a golden colour. Where Mira dressed in traditional Earth Kingdom shirts for men, with the sleeves ripped off, and brown pants with multiple pockets filled with anything that caught her fancy, Bai wore the soft and ornate kimonos of the Fire Nation. Mira's signature colour was a purple so dark it was almost brown, while Bai's was a soft pink.
Through her near-constant visits to Ravindra and Mira's home, Bai and Ravi became friends too. Next to Mira Bai seemed practically demure, but in reality she had her own defiant streak and didn't shy away from speaking her mind. Out of three of them Ravi was the quietest. He had little experience with socially interacting with people his own age, and even around the adults who were his constant company he was reserved, shy, tended to stutter while speaking.
Eventually the air bending master brought the phenomenon up among Ravi's other instructors and they reluctantly agreed that it was probable the Avatar, who was supposed to be their new world leader, would never be a very good public speaker. The airbending master also decided that his social anxiety was probably the source of his difficulty with mastering the fourth element. Often anxiety takes the form of a kind of cage, preventing the sufferer from expanding beyond their comfort zone.
At the age of sixteen Ravi had mastered earth, fire, and water, and was proficient enough to pass all his tests in the arena of air bending. Mira, fourteen, was his best friend, and often his protector. Bai sometimes fell into the background as people fawned over the two siblings, but she was the voice of reason among their group, and the most reliable of them all.
At sixteen, Ravi was officially introduced to the world with great fanfare and a party that involved every important man and woman across the four nations.
Stay tuned for the next chapter: "The Disaster."