Walk like thunder, my little star.
Walk like thunder. Walk like your life matters, that every breath is a gift, and every bit of warmth from the sun on your skin is a blessing and a truth. Walk like thunder, because you have seen the melting skin, and smelled hundreds of people burning, the ash clung to your throat and choked you, as you nearly died yourself, and the burns have peeled and you have seen the puss and blood— you clawed open the wounds and it festers and stinks and the pain may be awful, and yet, you must move.
There were arms, once, a face, a kiss, a smile and he too smiled widely and times were easy and good.
Walk like thunder, my baby, my son—do not hurt—do not join me too soon.. she is saying, he hears her past the willows, on a bridge over a waterfall, he had wondered what it would be like to jump and to fall and it would all be over a lot quicker than this slow death of starvation, this prolonged hard death, when at times he cannot move nor attempt to find food or water. Those my age should not have to die..and he wonders, why, why, it consumes him, what have we done, why, she is so much smaller in his arms—blackened and dying–
and he rises and he stands and sucks in air and feels it moves to his lungs, & his heart has never beat quite the same nor his blood run through his veins..and he wants to live. It washes over him with a ferocity, teeth clacking, he wants to live—he wants to stay alive more than he ever did..
he's able to gain sympathy in his emaciated state..Staying long enough to gain back weight needed—still carrying a pinched unhealthy look of a child grown far too fast with not enough in a short span of time..and the bread he steals and the meat he can manage to trap– he is finding more like him, the fire nation did this, and they are to blame—and he is shaken by the rage and the need to DO to move against to fight to enact violence and rebellion.
Another like him, home destroyed, another, enslaved—he frees, and more as they build a home a community a cohesive group and a struggle to rally around as the fire nation moves in. A comfort as family grows and they take new names and FREEDOM –it sings on his tongue and lips and that is what he desires most, no more fear of them taking everything, no waiting and wondering when they will kill you, free of fear and that pain they cause.
It is all he fights for and kills for, his body a shield and his blade sharp, stolen, their movements he knows, and where now to slice and open a man's body, dead in a few seconds as their guts spill.
It is clutching the hand of those who would have been killed—mass slaughtered—dumped into a grave kicked and spat on and forgotten. He stands for those who were never meant to survive. Those who were meant to be forgotten—another casualty—more ash to the wind. Fire Nation easily sweeping away their injustices their willingness to kill—his eyes have changed he has changed, torn from childhood & thrust into a world of men and war. It is alright. Fighting seems innate.
Making his way across the treetops to the night sky, he will not be stopped. .