People don't generally associate Avatar Korra with stillness.
She announced herself boldly, a child bursting with flame and the roar of landslides, a tiny tsunami belying the serenity of her Water Tribe origins. Her confidence is mythic – she runs long before she walks, and leaps knowing that somehow she'll learn to fly… and though there may be turbulence, she soars. That's the avatar the newsreels proclaim, the avatar whose name is shouted by pro-bending announcers and cursed by the powerful across nations. That's the Korra of legend… but I know another Korra.
I've seen her shy, and insecure – the new girl in the city trying to step into a statue's very large shoes.
I've watched over her body in meditation as she roamed the spirit lands, memorizing every line of her face, every angle of her physique waiting for her eyes to open, praying for her to come back.
Her stillness is the intense quiet of pai sho, layered with complexity. Her solitude is a polar bear-dog's sprint across the ice, a tiny boat in an endless sea. The chosen one of a generation, she spends more time alone than anybody would guess.
And in quiet moments, she came to know me.
She trusted me to guide her wheelchair, and to read the words she set to paper when her voice failed. She whispered to me of her demons, the fears that thrived in the darkest nights.
Amazingly, sometimes she'll even sit still for me, allowing me to place the last pin in her hair just so, to hand her a cup of tea, and so to help her find her balance; a little softness with her strength, a little sweet in a bitter world.
So often, I simply stand behind her, almost unseen, but she knows I'm there.
Oh, make no mistake – I've seen her move. I may take the wheel for the sake of my transmission, but she exults as we fly down the roads I've engineered to mimic her airbender's joy. Fighting beside her, I feel more powerful, rather than less, caught up in an elemental force all our own. To hold her is to feel the tides turn, the winds caress, to be overcome by the inevitable heat of a volcano. Oh yes, Korra can move.
I know the world needs the brash, assertive warrior, the outspoken advocate, the indomitable spirit. There are moments when she vibrates with life, a bright, blinding light that has nothing to do with her legacy, that is simply her.
But I love her most when she is still, in the peaceful places where I am alone beside her. And so it is only right that we enter the mysteries of the spirit world together, hand in hand, in silence. We've never needed anything more.