'The Warriors of Kyoshi' – The Painter
"Mmm, painting the Avatar, that's easy enough." grumbled the Painter: putting up his paintbrush and studying the slight, tattooed boy in front of him. With swift motions, he sketched the outline of the bald-headed monk and the little girl who had her arms wrapped around his arm. He looked up. Another girl in clothes of blue-bell colour and a high ponytail had clutched the boy's other arm.
"There's another one, err little adjustment here." Slightly annoyed the Painter added her in. However, when he glanced up again there were three more girls. Grumbling at the inconsideration of the models, he squeezed the additions in.
"There's more." For a third time he peeked towards his subjects and was startled to see a whole group of girls trying to clamber over to get in the picture. In fact, they were teetering so much that they swayed and fell into a dusty heap. With a disgruntled expression the Painter simply stood up and walked away from the giggling mess.
He walked through the simple street of Kyoshi to his slightly run down house. He had never been a spectacular painter, he knew that, but it was the only thing he truly enjoyed doing. Even though he wasn't a complete failure at other skills, he quickly got bored and went away. And when the village chief Oyaji asked him to paint to the first ever portrait of the mystical Avatar, he leaped at the job. But during the whole charade of the chirping, besotted fan-girls of Kyoshi Island, he just didn't have the patience. He brought the painting in his hand to his attention. The simple, black outlines of the Avatar and his fans leapt off the pure white canvas.
"It would be a shame to leave it unfinished," the Painter murmured to himself, and he sat down and copied down the bright scene from his memory.
20 years later- Ba Sing Se, Lower Ring, Market Place
The teeming crowds of the weekend market mingled within the fascinating stalls and streets of Ba Sing Se. A town official was walking along the Craft section, humming to himself and admiring the Earth Kingdom's greatest works when he spotted a canvas leant against the stall, as if forgotten. Something about the inanimate object intrigued him; he bent down and picked it up. It was a lot heavier than he anticipated and as he turned it around he was met with dazzling colours depicting a forest clearing. And when he realised who was in it, his mouth hung a gape with wonder.
"Excuse me good sir," he called to the respectably looking stall holder, "How much are you selling this painting for?"
"Well that one," he scratched his head, "it was found in the attic of some dead Painter who lived on that Kyoshi Island, you know the one, where Suki the Warrior lives. He left quite a few old paintings, I sold most of them today in fact. But that one, it's had no takers, I mean, why on earth did he want to paint some weird boy surrounded by smiley little girls. There's just so many of them, you can't even see his head properly!"
But The Official, who had studied Foreign cultures at university, could identify anyone's culture by their clothes, and this boy was wearing some special clothes indeed. "Um, you wouldn't happen to know when this was painted, would you?"
"Well it's written there in the corner, with his signature and everything. That was about a year before the Great Avatar Aang defeated the old Fire Lord."
The Official nearly squealed with excitement. If those clothes were genuine Air Nomad cut, then this would be the first ever painting of Avatar Aang, before Sozin's Comet, when he was in training for the massive showdown. In fact, if his knowledge was correct, this was before the Siege of the North, not long after he had been discovered in the iceberg.
"I'll give you four copper pieces." He was worried that he had started too low, and that his breathless expression might give away the paintings true worth.
The Stall Holder mulled it over, and then nodded in agreement. The Official walked away, holding the precious canvas under his arm with a distinctive skip in his step.
After telling his fellow colleagues about his new findings and showing them the painting, word travelled further up the social circles, until news of the extraordinary painting reached Earth King Kuei. He asked to be shown the painting and even invited Avatar Aang to view it. Aang commented that he remembered the day when it was painted, and then his wife Katara added how the attention had gotten to his head, so much that he nearly got eaten by the Unagi. From that day on, the late Painter was a well known name throughout the Art and Cultural World, all his remaining paintings rocketed in price and the selling of them boosted the previous owners to millionaires. The Official never sold his and passed it down through his family.