The Adventures of a Tiny Metal-Bender
152 AG
Kuvira sat up in her bed glancing around the dark room, holding the stuffed bagermole Suyin had given her close to her chest. Less than an hour ago, Suyin had put the very reluctant little girl to sleep. But minutes later, Kuvira found her eyes opening; the energy inside her bustling and rejuvenated.
Throwing her short legs over the side of the bed, she hopped down, sliding the stuffed animal off with her. Defiantly crossing the room in her green shorts and white t-shirt, she headed to the door and reached up to grab for the handle, missing it on the first and second try as her eyes adjusted to the night. Standing on her tippy-toes, she hooked her palm around the silver knob and turned.
A creak and groan sounded from the door's hinges as she opened it gently, poking her head out to peer down the dark hallway with anxious eyes. Swallowing her fear, she took her first steps into the hall, before standing in place to look up at the walls that towered over her. Focusing straight ahead, her eyes set her destination—the staircase at the end of the hall; a single light left on at the top. She moved forward, feeling the cold touch of the marble floor under her feet, that sent chills through her with each step.
She glanced side to side, the dark corridors of the house seeming to hold as much tension in the silence as no man's land on war's battlefield. Shadows cast on the walls by the sconces, artifacts, and abstract metal sculptures, took on the creepy forms only a child's mind could imagine.
As the shadowy "monsters", illuminated in a dim glow, peeled themselves from the walls and moved closer, Kuvira's pace hastened, moving her small feet faster and faster; her stride too much for her short legs to keep up with. Before long, her legs entangled themselves, tripping the little girl in the process. Colliding with the floor, her knees hit first, then her jaw crashed into something plushy.
Shaking off the slight daze of pain, Kuvira picked herself up, and looked down at the stuffed animal staring back. She had been saved by Mr. bagermole, and this wasn't the first time. After another second, she stood and without any hesitance took off for the staircase once again. This time she made it.
Arriving to the top of the staircase, she stopped and looked down to the bottom. That was her new destination.
She grabbed onto the rail, tentatively moving each foot down step-by-step, dragging the bagermole as it flopped behind her.
Reaching the bottom, Kuvira turned down another hallway, seeing light coming from what she knew was Suyin's office. Her pace quickened as she ran closer, eager to see if the woman was indeed still awake.
Suyin always put her and the baby to bed early, even though it was no secret that she would often stay awake into the early hours of the morning, working through contracts and other agreements.
Kuvira peeked through the door, seeing only a partial image of an empty desk. "Suyin?" She whispered.
Escaping the darkness, Kuvira opened the cracked door enough for her to squeeze through. Looking over the room, the little girl's mouth broke into a smile as she spotted a sleeping Suyin lying sprawled on the couch, exhausted from the day's work. She ran into the space between the table and Suyin, taking notice of a silver pen on the ground, resting just below the woman's dangling hand. Picking it up, she dropped the bagermole, looking at the shiny metal in awe before turning her attention back to Suyin.
"Pssssst…" Kuvira poked the woman in the arm only to receive no response. "Pssssssssst…" She grabbed Suyin's hand, only to watch it slip from her grasp and swing back to its limp position.
After the second futile attempt, she decided to take more drastic measures. Putting the end of the pen in her mouth, Kuvira climbed up onto Suyin, pushing a hand into the woman's side for leverage as she reached a foot up to step on Suyin's thigh.
As Suyin began to stir with a groan and mumble, the girl managed to make her way into her lap and sit up.
Suyin blinked, turning her head as her tired eyes adjusted to the light; opening them each time to see the little blurry figure in her lap get clearer and clearer. Knowing the fuzzy blob was Kuvira, she sighed. "What are you doing up?" She rasped, her eyes blinking a few more times as the image of Kuvira's face sharpened into view.
"I can't sleep." The girl pouted, folding her arms over her chest.
"More like you don't want to go to sleep, right?" Suyin said, raising an eyebrow at Kuvira's guilty smile before yawning and turning her head to look at the pile of papers on the table. It was another one of those nights where she had fallen asleep again while reading the construction contracts for Zaofu. Coarse, dry legalese was just the thing to drain all her energy and knock her out cold.
"What are these?" Kuvira said, as her eyes were drawn to the dark framed glasses lying on Suyin's chest.
Without answering the girl, Suyin looked to the floor, reaching down to pick up the papers that had fallen from her hand.
'I could've sworn I had a pen.' Her eyes darted up to the table surface above before looking back to Kuvira with a suspicious eyebrow raised. "hmmm…" Sitting up, she straightened her back against the arm of the couch.
Holding Suyin's glasses on her face, Kuvira stared mesmerized at the new look of the world around her.
Suyin poked the girl in the side to get her attention. "Where did my pen go?"
"I have it!" Kuvira said, thrusting it up in the air as the glasses began to slide from her face.
Suyin took the pen from Kuvira's small hand, noticing the drool and tiny scratch marks in the metal. "Aaaand…you chewed on it." Suyin said, examining the pen before cleaning it off on her shirt.
"Wooo…these are cool." Kuvira ignored Suyin as she fell onto her back between the woman's legs, looking up at the magnified ceiling as though she were stargazing.
Suyin smiled. "Hey, I need those back." She reached out for her glasses, taken back when the little girl sat up and stuck them back on her face in a crooked fashion. Smiling again, Suyin straightened her reading glasses, wedging into a comfortable corner of the couch as she held the document up, obscuring her from Kuvira's view. "You should be in bed…"
"I don't wanna sleep."
"I promise you you're more tired than you think." Suyin said, attempting to read through the sections of the contract agreement she missed; the words already starting to run together, exemplifying her sleep deprivation. Still, she wanted to at least get some work done before Bataar came back from his trip. She knew she'd feel bad if he came back to no progress made.
Kuvira poked her head around the contract to look at Suyin, before tunneling under it, forcing the woman to raise her arms as she made room for the girl.
Suyin sighed, watching Kuvira turn around to look at the documents in her hand. "Ok, you have five more minutes up here." She paused, holding up five fingers to emphasize her point. "Then you're going back to bed, you got it?"
Kuvira stayed silent as her small fingers reached to grab Suyin's hand. With her tongue stuck out from between her teeth, she breathed through her nose, staring with an intense concentration as she inspected the larger hand.
Suyin looked down at the girl playing with her hand, as her mind drifted back to her earliest memories of Kuvira.
She had taken in Kuvira about a year ago, never once thinking she'd pick up a homeless kid off the streets of Ba Sing Se. But there was something special about this little girl, Suyin could see it written in her eyes; she was destined to achieve greatness.
She tried forgetting about that little pick-pocketing street kid when she went back to her cozy hotel room, but her mind wouldn't let her. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the bright emerald ones of the little girl staring back at her under a furrowed brow, framed by a dirty face.
It wasn't easy getting the girl to come to her, and trust was far out of her reach. It took multiple trips to the same desolate alley, hours of sitting on the ground telling life stories, and many hot meals just to get the girl's brow to loosen a little. But after that, the girl followed her everywhere, taking a tattered blanket to sleep outside the entrance of her hotel.
By chance, the night she found Kuvira balled up under the blanket outside the hotel, she had been trying to get some air to relieve her mind of restless, sleep depriving thoughts; thoughts wondering if that little girl was safe and warm.
That was when she took her in, realizing that the girl's constant silence came from her limited ability to speak.
But the moment that suck out in Suyin's mind, was Kuvira's first bath. It was in that hotel where she washed away all remnants of the lonely street life that came before. The girl sat silent and still, watching ripples flow through the murky water, not catching the redness in the eyes above or the tears that started to fall from them. At one point, scrubbing the girl's back, Suyin remembered breaking down, stopping to lift a wet hand to her mouth, muting her sobs as she looked at the tiny body below her, knowing the girl couldn't be any more than three and a half.
Something in her changed that night. She was never the same afterwards.
From then on, Suyin promised Kuvira that never again would she go back to the life she had before. As long as they were together, her life would be free of hardship.
Suyin made a promise to herself too, that she would make Kuvira the best earth bender she could. Every precious piece of Beifong knowledge would be passed to her, and in the years to come, there would be no telling as to the extent of what she'd be capable of. The determination already set in Kuvira's eyes at such a young age, was enough to guarantee her success in the future.
Coming back to the present, Suyin watched the girl trace the lines of her palm. "What are you doing with my hand?" She smiled as Kuvira shrugged, placing her own palm in the center of Suyin's; her eyes glazing over in wonderment at the size difference.
"When are my hands going to be this big?" Kuvira said, not bothering to look up at Suyin.
"Never…" Suyin laughed when the girl looked back at her with wide eyes. "Relax, I'm just joking with you." She finished, moving her eyes back over to the document she had forgotten about.
"What are this?" Kuvira asked, losing interest in Suyin's hand as she gazed at the paper, trying to read words she couldn't pronounce.
Distracted again from her reading at the girl's voice, Suyin corrected the obvious grammatical mistake. "You mean, what is this?" She smiled; her eyes shifting down to see Kuvira nod her head.
"Just boring adult stuff you won't have to worry about for a long time."
For weeks, Suyin had been busy working through all the requirements for land ownership, making sure Zaofu was adhering to the Earth Kingdom's land codes. Writing requests and reading tirelessly through piles of documents was proving to be the hardest part of building Zaofu; not the constant construction.
"And the signer agrees…blah blah…to the clauses in this contract." Suyin dropped her hand still holding onto the papers. "Ugh…I really should have gotten Bataar to do this part." She finished, raking her other hand over her face. "He has the attention span for this."
Bringing the papers back up, she looked down at the girl who had gone silent, drifting to sleep with her mouth hanging open. Suyin smirked, using her finger to push Kuvira's jaw closed. "So, this stuff put you to sleep too, huh?"
Letting out a defeated sigh, she took her glasses off, placing them and the papers on the floor. It probably wasn't the wisest move, but at the moment, she was too tired to reach for the table that seemed so far away.
Stretching her arms out above her head, she glanced back to the window behind her desk, watching the early morning sun begin to break through.
'It has definitely been over five minutes' She thought, looking down at Kuvira with a smug smile crossing her face.
Nestled between her arms the little girl slept content, each inhale bringing with it a small snore. Kuvira wasn't always the easiest kid to take care of, but she made up for it through moments like these. Finally closing her eyes, Suyin took a deep breath, allowing herself to ease into the void of sleep.
She could finish her work after a few hours of quality sleep.