hello. shizuoh here.
when i was very young, i wrote a story titled "the tauln" that featured an oc of my own, in the a:tla universe. it was moderately-successful, not very much so, and i doubt anyone remembers it. i've since deleted it, and now i'm back, with a new and improved version of it.
my reason for writing this is because i'm nearing adulthood, and i wanted to reminisce my younger days, even though those days were filled with not-so-pleasant experiences. i wrote "the tauln" to distract myself from the way my life was at home. for a long time, "the tauln" had been postponed and put on hiatus because i had become homeless. once i was able to, i deleted it, because i was embarrassed.
i suppose i am a little embarrassed for posting ANOTHER zuko x oc fanfiction, but really, i'm doing this for myself.
apologies for the long author's note. but here's a little background information that i hope will help you understand this story.
my oc, ka, has been changed compared to her original design. as such, she now has very dark skin, white hair, violet eyes, and black tattoos that cover her entire body.
without further ado, let's get into this, shall we?
Since the beginning of the Avatar, there was the Minder. No one knows how they exactly came to be, but they have always been there, by the Avatar's side, guiding and protecting them, while the Avatar would do the same. They are born as the next nation in an Avatar's cycle, as in, an Avatar born to the Water Tribe would have an earthbending Minder. They are meant to be a guardian, a teammate, a companion, a friend.
They are connected in almost every way, and equal all the same—they are both bridges to the Spirit World, they are both defenders of the world, and they both have the capabilities of all four elements.
As time went on, and reincarnations continued, the people of the world began to see the Minder is simply a guardian, lesser to their Avatar, as the Avatar was believed to have been the first of the two. So, customs changed, and the Avatar became the more powerful, the more respected, the more feared. The Minder was another way to show power—and whenever one was found, they were taught to respect their Avatar first and foremost.
Some defied this, some accepted it, and some Minders were never found at all. The most arrogant of Avatars, of course, didn't need one.
When the Fire Nation attacked, and the airbending Avatar disappeared, the world turned to the Minder they had ignored and put down for so long. But there was no Minder to be found, no defender of the world to protect them.
So the war raged on, the airbending's Avatar original Minder died, and now the destiny has fallen on a young spirit's shoulders.
This will be a fun tale to tell.
A five-year old child splashes in the murky river, her face set in a forced deadpan. She resists the urge to smile, because she knows her father is watching from the shadows, and her father is a ruthless man. It does not matter that she is young, it does not matter that she is his own child—if she shows the slightest upturn of her lips, if she raises her eyebrows in surprise at anything, he will steal her face.
She is five years old and already fears for her existence.
This is one of the rare times her father lets her out of the dark cave they reside in. He does not speak to her much even when she is inside; he usually only tells her riddles, or information about the outside world she will never understand until she is well over centuries old. He does this to confuse her, to ridicule her, and his reasoning is that it will make her stronger—his mother did the same, and here she is.
Her father steals faces. Her grandmother gives them away. This young child cannot do a single thing.
(Or, at least, not yet. Fate has a funny way of stringing things together.)
Her father slithers back into his cave, already sick of seeing the animals stare at him. He calls for his child, but she does not respond. Very rarely is she permitted to speak. The child does not move, does not make a sound, and peeks back just for a moment to see if he is truly gone.
When there is no sight of him anywhere, the child rolls up her sleeves and dashes down the edge of the river, allowing herself a small smile, because she is sure there is no one to rip it from her face. The child does not pay attention to where she runs, or where she's going, because this is the Spirit World, and if she asks kindly enough, certainly a spirit somewhere would be willing to take her home. Perhaps that nice Fire Nation man who calls himself Roku. He comes to speak to her sometimes.
The child only stops when she realizes she is about to run into a pole. She freezes, and looks all around, eyes wide. She is standing by a strange structure, almost like a gate, but it only leads to more trees. She steps back and forth between it a few times, but nothing happens, and she frowns, disappointed.
She hears a sound, and turns quickly, wondering if it is her father, coming to retrieve her. She does not hear the telltale hiss of his voice, nor the sound of him crawling around, and she lets herself exhale slowly. There are elemental spirits hiding behind trees and bushes, watching her carefully, observing her, as if she were a work of art.
Or an attraction at a zoo.
The child frowns. She knows she does not look like her father (and she does not know what her grandmother looks like, so she does not know if she looks similar to her), or like any usual spirit. She looks as if she came from the physical world, born with a humanoid form as opposed to the centipede body her father has. She does not know why she was born (or—created, supposedly, considering the child does not have a mother, and her father created her himself) that way, and why her father chose that form for her, but she is only five, and does not know a lot of things.
Suddenly, she hears a collective gasp, and looks around to see what they are reacting to. There is a bright light coming from the center of the gate, almost like a beam, before settling into an orb-like shape, glowing a bright orange. The child stares with wide eyes, and if her father were here he'd scold her before stealing the look right off her face (literally). She takes a few steps towards it when it does nothing but hover, and shields her eyes when it starts to pulse with light. Her five-year-old curiosity cannot contain itself, and the child only manages to poke the orb before a force suddenly knocks her onto her back and shakes.
The child shrieks when the orb forms into a strange mist and flies straight through it. She turns around, and the orange orb is gone, and there's a sudden strange feeling coursing through her. She tries to rise to her feet, but finds herself frozen, quite literally.
There's a tug on her very being, and suddenly she feels ice cold all over. She's so cold it hurts, and she wraps her arms around herself and trembles. When she exhales, she can see her own breath. The Spirit World is known for being warm and damp, so why is she freezing? Why does she feel like she's been encased in ice? The child is so cold she feels as if she could die, and all the elemental spirits are whispering to each other in words the child cannot understand, and nobody is helping her—
"Oh my, " comes a soft voice.
The child shakes and opens her eyes—when had she closed them?—and there stands two figures. The Fire Nation man (Roku? Right?) and a woman of the same height. They are both slightly see-through, almost like if the child blinks they would disappear. The woman has wispy brown hair that hangs around her shoulders, but cut at the top of her head to let a blue arrow show through. The two glance at each other, sharing a look, and then stare back down at the child.
"The Minder has passed, " says the woman.
"So she has, " Roku replies. "With no further Avatar spirit to guide her, she has come here. "
"To no avail, it seems, " the woman says, and it seems as if the child isn't even there, "don't you see what has happened? " The woman takes a step forward, and takes the child's hands so she can pull her up to her feet. "You are Koh the Face Stealer's child, no? "
The child opens her mouth to reply, but stops herself out of habit. Embarrassed, she nods, and shivers again.
"You are feeling a connection to the physical world, " Roku speaks up, catching her attention. "By absorbing the spirit of the past Minder, you have bonded with it. The current Avatar is trapped, and you are feeling that same feeling. "
"She is five, Roku, " the woman admonishes, shaking her head. "She will not understand what you're saying. "
The child blinks, her eyes blank. The woman gestures to her as if to say, See? I told you so. Roku looks off to the side for a moment, as if contemplating something, and then back to the woman and child.
"Do you remember who I am? " he asks curiously.
"Roku," the child says; her throat burns as soon as the words leave her throat.
"I am the past Avatar, " he says, and the child is sure she has heard him explain this before, "and this is, or was, my Minder, Divya. She originated from the Air Nation. "
Divya, what a pretty name, the child thinks. Said woman smiles, and pats the child's head softly.
"You will understand once you are older, what this means for you, " she whispers. "Your destiny has changed into something wonderful. "
Then they disappear, the touch is gone, and in the distance the child hears her father's voice shouting for her.
She turns on her heel, still confused, shaken, and cold, and puts on her deadpan expression.
"You will understand once you are older, what this means for you. Your destiny has changed into something wonderful."
What truth those words would become.
Growing up in the Spirit World has its fair share of pros and cons.
Pros? You can learn from all kinds of spirits from all kinds of time periods. The child, who has long since broken the definition of "child," has learned so many interesting things about the physical world just from the accounts of those deceased.
Cons? You are bound to the world by birth, and more importantly, bound by another spirit. The child's father does not like her new destiny, or her new identity. While he is determined to keep her as long as he can in his control, both he and his child know that she will eventually be free of her shackles to the Spirit World once the Avatar awakens and the powers of the Minder, locked deep inside her, are freed.
The child is sixteen. The child has years of experience of being tutored of the physical world by the past Avatar and Minder. While her ability to bend is still locked until her Avatar awakens, the forms she has learned will certainly give her a head start.
She is confident, but also not, because Divya tells her of how the world views a Minder, compared to the Avatar. She wants to change that, but she does not know how, and she has never seen another living person's face before.
The child goes outside the cave for a few hours every day (or so she thinks—time works strangely in the Spirit World), and return back to her stoic form when she resides inside her father's cave. Years of parenthood does not warm up Koh to the idea of not taking his child's face as soon as she makes a simple expression. She has had a few slip-ups, but they were either gone unnoticed or ignored. She does not know how much longer she will be able to keep from making an expression, or, once she gets to the physical world, if she will ever be able to make one at all.
One day, while she is going over a form with her mentor, the child suddenly feels an odd pull on her spirit, and she freezes in place, eyes wide. She stares at Divya in anticipation, and wordlessly asks What's happening?
It feels like her soul is being pulled, and she screams in pain. Divya gasps, and disappears for a moment, and returns with Roku in tow.
"Your destiny is approaching, " Divya urges. "Do not fight it! "
She wants to, she wants to stop this pain, and the child falls to her knees and grasps at her chest. Her eyes begin to glow a bright blue, and her skin is covered in goosebumps as chills run down her spine. She hears her father's voice in the distance, but it sounds far too faint to be real, and then suddenly—
There is wind. There is light. She is laying in something cold, and she shivers.
When the child lifts her head, she is surrounded by ice and snow. Jumping to her feet, she sees a forest coated in frost and ice, never to melt and grow. The child looks around, eyes wide and full of confusion. It isn't until she feels another tug on her spirit that she realizes.
She is in the physical world, and her destiny is beginning to shape itself.
The child takes a deep breath, and does the first thing her mind tells her to: bend. Lifting her hand, she strikes it through the air, and the snow in front of her follows her movements. The child allows herself a grin, and keeps going, running as fast as she can and tossing the snow into the air with her newfound waterbending. She has never felt more free, more alive, more real.
Here her father cannot touch her, and here is where she can laugh, smile, and express herself.
When one of her sleeves rolls up, she sees it. Black marks. The child pauses and turns the snow underneath her into a sheet of ice. She leans forward and inspects her reflection in it. Running all the way from the bottom of her jaw, down her arms, back, and chest, and to her feet, are black swirling tattoos that almost look like they're moving. There's a multitude of odd, contrasting patterns, and the child can only wonder, because she hadn't had these marks before.
Then she thinks for a moment. These must represent her status as a spirit, and recall her connection to the Spirit World.
Shackles, she thinks, and frowns. She bends the ice away and starts walking.
There is a small village up ahead, filled with young children and older people. It is her first time seeing a living person's face, and she's stuck in the snow in awe for a few moments.
"Hey! Who's that!" Someone can see her, and it fills her with inappropriate dread and fear. What kind of Minder is she if she's freaked out by someone noticing her existence?
"I—" she starts, and cuts herself off. She's never been good at speaking, and her voice decides to die on her. Instead of answering directly, the child decides to walk right into the village, taking note of all the looks she gets from the villagers (mostly from the children, who are staring at her with a mix of awe and terror. Her face, now marred by the tattoos, must look horrendous).
There is a boy who stands out from the other villagers. He is smaller, decorated in arrow tattoos similar to Divya's, and carries a staff. He stares at the child like he knows her, and even though she herself has never met nor seen him before, she had felt his presence, and his cold.
This is her Avatar.
The child takes another deep breath and bows at the waist.
"My name is Ka," she forces out, "and I am the Minder."
so? yeah? good enough? yeah.
i haven't used this site in years. so, uh... review? i suppose? it'd certainly help with my motivation, and to give me feedback on my writing and the flow of it would be very helpful. let me know if this story is interesting enough to continue, i guess.
until next time.