Preface

"Miss Kojin, we just got some great Asparagus-pears in from the North—" How offered one to her, his big gray eyes shining. The young girl took the fruit from his hand, rolling it experimentally in her palm, feeling the weight and the softness. Neither she nor Cook Muraki knew how to cook in the Northern style, let alone with northern fruits, but Jin resolved to spend an hour or two consulting cookbooks in the library to perhaps make an appetizer. She knew that the Earth King loved the sweet-tangy taste of asparagus-apples, and she decided that this fruit wouldn't be so different. Jin nodded at How, and he smiled, filling a sack with about seven plump fruits. "It'll be three yuans if we include your lemon-basil and that guavanana." She handed him five and touched his cheek. The twelve-year-old with dark skin smiled shyly and murmured thanks.

"I'll see you tomorrow and let you know how I've done with the Asparagus-pears. They look really good, and I've never tried one,"

How winked at Jin as he began serving another customer, an old woman from the lower ring called Haruka. Haruka had shining white hair, always tied up in a topknot and adorned with old-looking combs and jewels. Everyone knew that in her youth Haruka was a petty thief and good at it. She was a good person to buy trinkets from, but Jin's religious side gave her a sort of aversion to having too many material possessions. The only thing she had ever bought from Haruka was a dirty maroon brooch shaped like a hissing cat, engraved with the words "breathe fire". Jin found it fitting, but said nothing as to why. As she walked away from the market and towards the station, Jin nodded to Haruka. Jin brushed a strand of dark hair behind her ear and boarded the train to the upper ring.

The train ride back to home, if that's what she could call it, was a special half an hour for Kojin. She looked out the window and thought about things. Sometimes she would get home and write them all down. Other times she wouldn't. It was a precious little moment in the hustle and bustle of working in the king's palace as a cook.

Today she gazed out the window and contemplated her name. Kojin. God of the kitchen. When she was younger, she visited her uncle's library and learned that in the Southwestern regions of the Earth Kingdom, Kojin was known as the god of fire. Jin smiled mirthfully to herself as she acknowledged the irony. A wave of fury suddenly washed over her, making her head throb. She knew that feeling, it was all too familiar.

Ever since she reached the age of fourteen, whenever Jin got a little too angry, her head would begin thumping, and she acutely felt the heat of her blood rushing through her body, and it took an incalculable amount of control to do what she was forced to do every minute of every day. It took every muscle in her body contracting, every bone and cell keeping completely still to keep small flames from licking the tips of her fingers, from steam appearing when she exhaled.

Kojin Fei, sixteen-year-old kitchen apprentice to the Royal Cook, was a firebender.