Chapter 1-

She had always loved riding the locomotive train before and traveling to the places it would take her. But those journeys lasted only a couple of weeks at most and were usually family trips to the coast for summer vacations.

Packing this morning was the hardest and most dreadful experience Shinju had ever had yet in her life. She did not want to leave her hometown of Anshon, a strong, close knit community located in the rolling hills and green mountain valleys of the south central Earth Kingdom. She did not want to give up the beautiful nature she called home to go live in a stuffy city composed of nothing but factories and skyscrapers. But she also did not wish to disappoint her parents who had given her so much before to get her to this point. She always loved them and gave them all her respect and she wasn't going to break that record today by not going through with the plans they had already agreed on.

She also felt the pressure to live up to the legacy of her older sister, Intan. Shinju looked up to her with great admiration her whole life, but there was always a hint of jealousy as well. She excelled in the local school like her sister, but it seemed like because Intan did it first, she was the prizewinner and her unbeatable earthbending skills didn't hurt either. All of the other kids at school bullied Shinju for being a waterbender and excluded her. Because of this she liked to keep to herself most of the time at school, but at home she was extremely close to her younger brother Shai. He wasn't a bender at all which made him pretty sociable at school compared to Shinju, but nowhere near as popular as Intan. Although the rep of being Intan's brother didn't hurt either. But at home, the story was different.

Their father, Babur, was a very well respected earthbender in the farming village, but everyone was shocked and didn't understand why he decided to marry a savage woman from the Foggy Swamp Water Tribe, a waterbender named Miia. The family was the first interbender family of Anshon. As the rest of the world advanced with technology, the Foggy Swamp Tribe decided to preserve their traditional way of life at their home in the swamp and refused any proposal for development. When Miia was a teenager, she decided she wanted to be a part of this new world and left the Foggy Swamp Tribe reservation and also left all her friends and family behind. She never saw them again and Shinju and her siblings never met their grandparents or extended family from their mother's side.

Although she didn't want to be a part of the Foggy Swamp Tribe, Miia was still very proud to be a waterbender and always dreamed of mastering the style of either the Northern or Southern Tribe. But in her travels about the Earth Kingdom, searching for somewhere to go, she met Babur in Anshon and settled down to marry him and started a family. Miia taught Shinju everything she knew about waterbending from the Foggy Swamp Tribe, including the skill to bend the water within plant life, but that wasn't going to do her much good in the city now would it? Shinju wanted to be more than a novice waterbender and master her element in either the Northern or Southern Tribe like her mother always dreamed of, but her father insisted she focus on her studies because he could tell that the age of agriculture was vastly shrinking due to industrialization. He wanted to provide his children with an education that could get them a career to be successful in this new society taking form where he knew the family farm, as successful as it was and made the family quite wealthy in Anshon, would struggle to survive when he was gone.

Along with her academics, Babur valued Intan's earthbending just as strongly and because they were in the heart of the Earth Kingdom, he made sure to get his eldest daughter the best master in the area money could buy. While he was also proud of his wife's and Shinju's waterbending, there weren't any masters nearby and he preferred that Shinju go to a university to study rather than one of the poles to master waterbending. There were no universities anywhere in the southern Earth Kingdom and Intan was in her third year at Ba Sing Se University, but Shinju didn't want to be at the same school as her sister again and be constantly overshadowed by her. If she could have, she would have gone to The University of the Northern Water Tribe, but they only accept actual citizens of either the Northern or Southern Tribe. Between Ba Sing Se and Republic City, she was going to end up in an urban setting either way. So Shinju decided Republic City University would be the better way to go because she heard there were plenty of waterbenders in the United Republic of Nations' capital and that the people of Ba Sing Se were snobby and didn't take too well to benders other than earthbenders in the Middle Ring which was where the university was located.

Babur loved his youngest son unconditionally, but there always seemed to be a lingering sense of disappointment because he didn't turn out to be the earthbending son he always wanted. Shinju's parents always denied any idea of having favorites but sometimes it was just impossible to hide Babur's pride for Intan, Miia's special connection with Shinju, and the feeling of undervalue Shai felt most of the time. The most heartbreaking thing that Shai had to live with was his last words to his father being ones of a fight between the two over the issue of the neglect he felt before he went off to school a year ago. When he returned home that day, his father had passed away from a sudden heart attack.

The loss of her father was probably the most important reason of all for Shinju to attend Republic City University this year like her father died expecting she would. As she was stepping onto the train, Shinju looked back behind her at her mother Miia, her sister Intan, and her brother Shai standing at the gate to watch her until the train was too far into the distance to see anymore. Then Shinju brought her eyes up to gaze at the towering Qing Mountain, the natural protector of the Nasib Valley and started to tremble at the thought that this would be the last time she would see the mountain in a very long time. The leaves of the trees on the mountain were just starting to turn yellow for autumn and it was always the most gorgeous sight in the world to see the valley turn into a sea of reds and oranges. Ever since he died, Shinju would look at the Qing and think only of her father, for the mountain was just as strong and gracious as he was.

Shinju took her seat on the train and got herself comfortable so she could face her 4 days straight of traveling which would require many transfers from train to train, heading northwest, Republic City bound. She drank up the sight of the Qing outside her window as much as she could and strained her neck as they increasingly raced farther and farther behind her. When she realized she did not have super sight or the ability to turn her head 180 degrees, she rummaged through her carryon bag to pull out her poetry notebook where she spent most of her time lost inside of. There was also her attempt of a sketch of the Qing Mountain next to one of her poems titled Summer Sounds in the Valley.

Another reason she chose Republic City was because in the pictures she had seen before, she was enchanted by how the city opened out into the ocean and how it fit itself into the giant mountains behind it. Shinju felt she had the strength to do this, no matter how much she would miss home, as long as there are mountains.

Just wanted to point out that I started writing this fanfic and came up with the idea for a university in Republic City before it was confirmed on Welcome to Republic City online, but it's not really a surprise that there is one so it works for me! =] Korra will come soon in the story, but I wanted to establish Shinju's character first and I want to take my time developing her story in Republic City.

Here's to hoping you like it and want to read more!

Enjoy!