The Chewer of Fate
By: Luna Kahlo
(all characters and places are the property of those clever and hardworking writers and animators of Avatar: The Last Airbender…we're not worthy!)
The idea for this came from the encouraging Lala Ness. Thanks, Lala!
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The door, a red moon of exciting revelation, was closed for the day. The steps were swept; the mats rolled up and stacked against the wall. Screens were dusted and dishes scrubbed with lackluster ambition. The candles in the waiting room were extinguished. Her assistant, Meng, had bid her goodnight and took with her the leftover salmon puffs for a bedtime snack. This was the end of her day, the end of every day since her arrival in this quaint and simpering village.
As a child, she had possessed a gift for seeing things before they happened, though her mother called it 'luck'. It was luck that she knew her brother's fishing pole would break that day, it was luck that she was right about the rice they purchased being bad and her father would suffer a stomach ache, it was the purest luck that she knew her family would lose their home to the floods of her tenth year.
'Is bad luck,' her mother would say, 'but luck all the same.' Her family continued to ignore her warnings and soon, her premonitions were not the only things that were being ignored. She was shunned by her family, thought to bring curses upon them. When they arranged her marriage, they saw their chance to get rid of her.
'She will bring us good fortune by bringing them bad luck!' her mother whispered to her father.
'The Shun-li clan is not so bad. You shouldn't wish such misfortune on people.'
'Why not? Someone wished misfortune on us! Look at the daughter we have!'
She lay her head down on her arms, cursed like the prophet Cassandra. Despite her efforts, she was going to disappoint her mother and father again-she would not be getting married. Her husband-to-be would not live through the summer.
And she had been right. Her betrothed choked on a lichi nut and died shortly before summer ended. Her parents were convinced this was her doing and promptly banished her from their home, arranging her to live with an estranged aunt near the Great City of the Fire Nation.
Her aunt, a woman who didn't take superstition lightly, raised her with a sharp tongue and an even sharper brain. She taught her niece of literature, of science, of the cycles of the moon and the way they affected water. She taught her history, the legend of the Avatar and the rise of the Fire Nation. She told her niece matter-of-factly her gift should be protected from the Fire Nation, since they would exploit it for their own gain in this war.
'Don't show off,' she told her niece one day, 'people's brains may not work, but their ears unfortunately do just fine.'
Not long after her aunt gave this advice, she betrayed it by telling a boy in the village his fortune. It couldn't be helped, in her opinion: the boy was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. His eyes were smoke blue, large hands with thick knuckles (he wasn't afraid of hard work) and a smile that hid his struggles. She loved how friendly he was, and how he took her away from the stresses of her life with a trip to the local lake or a cup of ginseng tea. He was an accomplished horn player and she drank up the music, relieved that he chose to communicate with her this way instead of with words.
And with those eyes and the way he insisted on holding her hand as they walked through a dark part of the bamboo forest, she couldn't keep her secret to herself and told him she could tell his fortune.
'I would like to see what fate has in store for me when I am an old man,' he replied, a joke in his voice. They sat on the ground, facing one another and she read his palm.
'Very long life line. You will see grey in your hair and wrinkles around your eyes.'
'Great!'
'A moderate fortune line. You won't be poor, but you won't be rich.'
'Good. I won't have to worry either way.' She traced a thinner line.
'This one describes fate. It starts low-you will be involved with something you don't like but feel compelled to do, and will rise, perhaps because you quit doing the thing you don't like and then it kind of humps up and over, like a hill. You shelter someone with…wisdom I think. Like a mentor.'
'Interesting,' the boy murmured.
A week later, he left, summoned to the Fire Nation palace and placed in the war as a Commander. She found out a year later he had been promoted to General. His terror swept across the land and she was not surprised to hear it was the boy she had loved who was bringing this devastation-she had foreseen it.
She left the village when the Fire Nation raided it for Earth benders. She traveled North, hiding her secret, growing old, never forgetting the boy, who by now was a man.
Years later, she had settled in a small village that stared up to a massive volcano. The villagers were a misguided and trusting lot and she felt, from the confidence and work ethic her aunt had bestowed in her that this was the place to reveal her talents. The boy once confided in her that she should do anything to help people, including using her power of fortune telling, even if it was mundane love fortunes.
'Any distraction or union you can make from all this hate-do it.' So she did. She told love fortunes and predictions on the future. She read the clouds year after year and watched for the Deathmark that would signal the destruction of the village by the volcano.
And after the boy whose fate would change the world had departed, after she settled her old bones down onto a cushion to contemplate her last few years, she caught a ghost of the past in her mirror and stopped. She went to her cards and shuffled them, turned over the first three. They showed the Fool, the Lovers and The Magus.
'The Fool-a traveler will come here. The Lovers-a lost companion is found. The Magus-a revelation will be revealed. Oh, Iroh, you will return to me after all.' And she pulled the comb through her hair, unable to slow the pace of her heart, and she pulled the silk covers up to her chin, and Aunt Wu tumbled into sleep, anxious for the next day.