:: promises to keep ::
by thisflyingmachine
When she stretches out her hands, she anticipates pain. But as she places her hands on the limp, lifeless body of the koi fish—the last true physical sensation she'll ever experience, though she doesn't know it yet—all she feels is lightness. Her body is dissolving, becoming into light, and she feels herself becoming a part of everything that light touches. It does not hurt.
The universe whirls about her in a rush, and when it finally settles, she doesn't know where she is. She is weightless, but her feet are firmly on the ground. Her movements are slow and liquid, and the world is dark blue, as if she is underwater. Light filters down from above, and she can feel it, both around her and inside of her, the way she can feel her heart beating.
A cool hand touches her shoulder, and she spins around.
Behind her towers a tall, solemn man. He looks to be her father's age, but she knows he is older than numbers can count. His eyes are fathomlessly deep. He is wrapped in dark, swirling robes that move around him like a curtain of water.
"You know who I am," he intones, his voice like water lapping the shore.
"The Ocean Spirit," she breathes, and immediately sinks to her knees and bows deeply.
His strong hands take her shoulders and, with surprising gentleness, lift her.
"You do not bow to me," he says. "The Moon Spirit bows to no one."
X
When she was flesh and blood, she could not bend water. Her father's physicians and advisers had always found this strange. But here, she finds that she can put the most powerful Waterbenders to shame. Their abilities are a daily gift from her.
Each day and each night, she draws the tides upon the shores of the world and sends them back into the deeps. She can move whole oceans simply by raising her hands and calling the water to her.
X
She dances with the Ocean Spirit, though they do not touch. They are a million miles apart as they do their endless work: push and pull, push and pull.
X
Every night, she watches him—her brave warrior—and treasures every moment. He is invisible to her while daylight touches him; she can only follow him as far as her light reaches.
When night falls, she envelops the world in her light. She does not have to concentrate to do this. She simply lets the light inside her fill her body and spread. And while she shines—the action as easy and unconscious as breathing, as simple as the steps in her eternal dance—she searches for him.
He isn't hard to find. She can feel him, like a tug in her heart, leading her.
She falls around him in moonbeams, the closest she can come to touching him. She can feel the warmth of him as her light caresses his body and face, fills his eyes and lets him see. But it not a true touch, and she knows that he feels nothing of her: neither hot nor cold, and certainly not the love in her distant touch.
It hurts her to touch him. But she cannot keep away.
X
The Ocean Spirit teaches her to form a body and walk the earth, as well as how to appear to mortals. Each lesson comes with a warning: Use your powers wisely, not recklessly or selfishly. His words and her own sense of duty are the only things that keep her from appearing to her warrior.
She can appear as anything, she knows, but she always chooses her own body. She's tried on countless forms, and it's the only one that feels right.
X
She watches the Northern Water Tribe with special care. She feels an overwhelming tenderness when her bright gaze falls upon her beautiful, snow-covered home. She walks the streets and perches on the edges of gondolas, riding through the canals and smiling upon her people. Festival times are her favorite—she loves the happiness and life that pulses in the air—though she is slightly embarrassed by a somewhat new Moon Festival meant to honor her.
Often she visits her father. They do not speak, but she thinks he senses her as she walks the palace and sits in his quarters.
On the night her father passes, she waits at his bedside and gently takes his hand as he breathes his last. Before he closes his eyes, she shows herself to him and smiles. Then she guides him personally to the Spirit World.
X
It is strange to view her warrior's life this way: both part of it and completely apart. She is with him always, just as she'd promised, but she cannot even whisper in his ear.
She is there as he leaves boyhood behind and becomes a young man, noble and respected and strong. He is so beautiful, she thinks, and her heart aches.
But she is also there as he reunites with the pretty warrior girl with the red hair. She notices how he rarely walks with her at night, and almost never kisses her out of doors after dark. Yet despite this, she sees him slowly fall in love.
Part of her dislikes the warrior girl. But her heart is too gentle to hold such feelings for long, and in the end, she feels nothing but tenderness toward this girl who makes him happy. All she wants for him is happiness, a full life, and that is what this girl offers. Still, it is difficult to see them together, and she cannot help but imagine herself in the other girl's place.
X
"You must let him go," the Ocean Spirit insists, glowering. Her warrior is sailing to another land tonight, and she is sitting on the deck of his ship, watching him stare out across the dark water. The Ocean Spirits looms over her, stretched fifteen feet tall, an extension of the water over which they float. "Your earthly affairs are long finished. You must tend to your heavenly duties."
"The Moon Spirit," she replies placidly, watching him ripple all over with agitation, "takes orders from no one."
X
She takes comfort in the little things, small moments like this:
The warrior girl has persuaded him to go star-gazing with her. They lie side-by-side in the summer grass, the warm breezes sighing over them. She is pointing out constellations. His gaze is fixed directly on the moon, but it is very late, and his eyes are weary.
"The most beautiful woman in the world," he murmurs, half-asleep.
Laughing, the warrior girl touches his arm. "Stop it," she smiles. "You know I'm not."
He just offers her a little smile, unaware of the way the moonbeams are dancing over him, the way they follow him the rest of the night.
X
"I'm getting married," her warrior confesses, his face toward the moon. He talks to her this way sometimes, never knowing that she is right beside him on the grass. Hearing her name on his lips gladdens her heart, though the rest of his words often pain it. "When spring comes. I love her. It's a different kind of love than we had. I think so, anyway." He drops his voice. "Do you mind?"
X
Their wedding night is the first time she leaves him before dawn. She watches the ceremony from a distance, just a moonbeam among the trees. When they walk hand-in-hand to their new home on the edge of the village, all smiles and happy sighs, and he carries her inside, she has to turn away.
She must not break her promise: to be with him forever. This is her mantra, her prayer. She must not break her promise.
But it is such a difficult promise to keep.
X
Some nights, she draws herself together into a body of air and moonlight and follows closely behind him, though she remains carefully invisible. He is unaware of her presence.
Only rarely does she allow herself this luxury—only on nights when he is sleeping alone, and she can lie beside him and close her eyes, imagining what it would be like to share sleep with him, as his wife does.
X
His family is beautiful; she cannot deny that. Blue-eyed daughters and sons fill his house, and she can see how proud of them he is, how dearly he loves them. Sometimes he tells them sad, lovely stories about a princess who loved a warrior, but loved her people more, and she knows he hasn't forgotten her.
Even without her, he is happy. And his happiness is enough for her, too. Almost.
X
No sickness or misfortune enters her warrior's household, for she has touched him and his wife and each of his children, gifting them with good health and good luck. Whenever they journey by sea, she coaxes the Ocean Spirit into tranquility. She lets her light play over his face as he slumbers, sweetening his dreams. These are the only gifts she has to offer him. They will have to be enough.
X
"I still dream about you," her warrior whispers. Inside the house, his wife and children are sound asleep. "Almost every night. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and for a second, the light makes it seem like . . ." He squeezes his eyes shut. "It feels like you're there, next to me. Sometimes it's hard to wake up next to her instead of you."
Suddenly she wonders if she has been right to hold him so close for so long.
X
Time is a funny thing in the Spirit World. She can't keep track of it. She is aware of each night that passes, of course, more aware than anyone. But she is always surprised when she looks down at the world and sees that something has changed drastically. It seems that when she looks upon a thing nightly, she doesn't notice the small, subtle changes in it until they become large.
One night, she looks upon her warrior and is horrified to see the lines around his eyes and on his forehead, the faint traces of gray in his dark hair. They seem to have sprung out of nowhere. When did he begin to grow old?
X
Though the Ocean Spirit frowns upon it, she continues to watch him. But she is painfully aware of the ever-widening rift between them. He has matured. He's built a whole life, a full life. And she has remained a girl, changeless but for the feelings in her heart.
Gradually, she cuts her nightly visits shorter and shorter, until she is only glimpsing him each night for a minute or two, brushing his arm or face, making sure he is all right. Then she leaves him with his family.
X
He still speaks to her, more frequently as he grows older, it seems; he tells her of his life, his family, and even how he misses her. When he does, she allows herself to sit and listen and miss him back with the whole of her being. She opens herself to the joy in his long life, and it helps fill the lonely space in the bottom of her heart, the space he left behind.
While she keeps her distance, his life seems to move more quickly. His children grow and leave and have children of their own, and then, quite suddenly, he is an old man. Time has stolen his handsome face and strong limbs, but when she bends down beside him and looks into his eyes, they are filled with the same blue fire, and she knows he hasn't changed inside. He is still her brave warrior.
X
And then, one night, she enters his home and waits patiently in his bedroom, just a silent shaft of moonlight shining through the window. He lies in his bed, weak and failing, his family crowded around him. Swiping surreptitiously at their eyes, his children tell stories and crack weak jokes, making him smile faintly.
When it is time, she glides over to him, tenderly kisses his forehead, and places her hands on his shoulders.
She does not show herself to him. She does not guide him into the Spirit World; it is a vast and wonderful place, and she doesn't know quite where he wants to be, or whom he most wants to join. Most souls journey through the Spirit World alone, discovering just the right place, and reuniting with those they had loved all on their own. But he has journeyed enough in his life, and she wants to give him one last gift.
Instead of taking his hand, she gives him a choice: anywhere in the Spirit World he wants to go, and anyone he wants to see. She offers the Spirit World to him like a handful of jewels, and smiles as he makes his choice.
finis.