Asami knows a hundred million things. Ask her about constellations and she'll give you a thousand names of stars, the way to find north in the night sky, and how one can estimate distances on foot by using the distances up above. Her strength is her knowledge, nurturing her thoughts and sharing them when needed.
"This doesn't make sense," she murmurs, the first time it's dark. "Korra, I think the stars are wandering around. Is it winter here? I see Orion - but I see the Sky-Bear, too."
"Oh, they do that sometimes. If they like you they make themselves into familiar shapes, but I'm sure they play tricks on people, too." Korra places two fingers in her mouth and whistles three notes. Orion, the lazy archer stretched out atop the sky, rearranges himself into the shape of a face, and the eyes blink with a stutter that is not the usual shimmering of stars. Asami frowns, and Korra and the night sky laugh at her confusion.
"I'm used to things making sense," Asami says, later that night, as they gather fish-corn for supper. Korra had mentioned a hankering for meat and the plants around them had spit up cobs with gills. "You observe something for long enough, and note what stays the same and what changes, and that's how things will always be. My father -"
Korra places a hand on her shoulder, gently, when Asami loses the rest of her sentence to the dark of the trees and the sound of a lullaby in the wind.
Later still they sit by a little fire Korra's coaxed out her hands, in a clearing by a lake. There's a river of stars in the sky with a green tint to it, like someone turned the night into a watercolour. Korra shows her how to wrap the fish-corn in tree leaves to keep the kernels from escaping when they burst off the cob, and dinner feels like popped corn and tastes like buttered halibut.
"It takes a bit of getting used to," Korra says. "If it helps, I like to think that everything here is a living thing, with emotions. Like, you don't think much about pissing off a plant in our world, but here, if you're rude to a lake it'll tell all the rivers to stay away from you." For effect she rubs the leaves of a small plant growing out of the ground with her fingers, and it snuggles closer to her hand. "Even my bending has emotions, here. If you don't care for yourself, the world won't care for you."
"That makes sense," Asami says, and the world giggles at her, for the very human way of coming to terms with the world. In return for her acceptance the world gives the two of them a few extra hours of night, and the fresh scent of flowers on the air.
Korra finds a tree, asks for its forgiveness, and teaches Asami how Southerners make canoes. It's a tradition that takes two - a waterbender and a nonbender - in harmony. To Korra's people, making a canoe is like singing a love song in duet. Asami's heart swells. She hadn't realized what love could feel like until she scrapes along a birch tree with a two-bladed knife, humming along to Korra singing a paddling song.
"Give it a name," Korra says, when they finish making their paddles. Then she blushes, when Asami opens her mouth. "But don't tell me the name. Not yet."
Asami wants to say, Korra is somehow even more beautiful when she blushes, dark red across her cheeks and the tip of her nose. The lake gets a little pinker when they launch the canoe.
"The Spirit World writes its textbooks in metaphor," a lilypad says, as they float by. "Listen to the world and write love poems about the way it makes you feel."
"Knit your small fears into mittens," a bear-moose calls from the shore. "Wear them against the cold."
"Don't worry, there are lots of ways to have babies," shouts one of her cubs. The bear-moose presses a paw to its mouth, too late. Asami's face heats up, and there's embarrassed silence until Korra bursts out laughing, and her laughter is a world-creating light.
("Don't think too much about it," Korra says, that night, as they lie in a hammock knitted out of spirit-vines.
Long after Korra has fallen asleep, Asami mouths, I think I love you. The words manifest in the air as lightning bugs. Love is okay. Love is a safe place.)
Someone put a million dreams in a teapot and called that the Avatar. If Korra's shoulders sag, it's only under the weight of all that hope. She is past, present and future, and Asami is awed by her, how she holds herself together.
Somehow the river they're paddling leads them to the dinner table of the Dragon of the West, for whom Asami has no words - just stands there, mouth hanging open, trying to think of something impressive to say to a very impressive man, until he offers them tea and something to eat. Korra converses with him like they're family. Asami eats dim sum and feels intimidated until Iroh asks her about a certain merchant of cabbage, and hours like minutes later she's laughing at a story about a broken window and understands the parable of the Fire Lord and the Dragon of the West a little better.
He shows them to a little cabin hidden among flat-leaf trees and refuses to let them stay anywhere else for the night. Korra enters first.
"Have you found what you were looking for?"
Asami turns. He's a strange old man, but his smile is so genuine that Asami misses her father a little less. "I think so," she says.
"That's good." He clasps his hands over his stomach. "She came to me small, and afraid, as most people do. Not that I'm complaining, of course -" He stretches, and yawns, "- But I'm getting old, and it's nice to see every now and then how trust leads to happiness." And he turns his back, as Asami retreats into the cabin.
Korra blushes all the colours of the earth as she takes off her clothes, says that Kyoshi knew how to do this but she's never done it herself, and that she wishes she had a little guidance because she's scared of letting Asami down. The Spirit World breathes a little warmth and a hundred glowing dandelions into the night, surrounds them with soft light.
Asami knows a bit about sex like love, and shows her, and shows her, and shows her.
"I felt this unbearable lightness," Korra says, much later, pressing a hand to her chest. They're lying chest-to-chest on a bed with red sheets and Asami regrets nothing, for having brought them to this moment. "I'd only had all of them there for three months or so, but they wrote all over me. People always kept saying, she's the reincarnation, but it was - more than that. I was them, all of them. All of me. I'd be messing around with Mako and suddenly I'd remember being myself as a man, like an Earthbender from twelve hundred years ago, or whatever. It was hard, because I couldn't find the words to say hey, Mako, today I think I'm a person who doesn't like sex, or hey, Mako, right now I miss Katara. And then after all that with Unalaq, it was just...gone."
"I think I understand," Asami says, thinking of her father, and the ways the world is constantly being remade.
"I'm awed by you." Korra's voice is quiet but sure, and Asami looks to her with surprise. "At first it pissed me off. How could you be so sure of yourself, so calm? How could you be so - okay, with figuring things out for yourself while Mako and Bolin and I could just punch rocks through everything in our way? Yeah, I could bend all four elements, but that's only because there always has to be an Avatar. But you. You're amazing."
"Thanks," Asami whispers. "You are, too." Korra has a lot of expectations written onto her, and Asami had never thought about all the expectations she had been forced to hold for herself. Korra lets herself cry a little, she's so happy. These are not things to take for granted.
(Iroh winks at them in the morning. "While it is best to protect oneself from unwanted surprises," he says, "Sometimes life has a way of working itself out." Asami blinks. Did the Dragon of the West just make a joke about contraception?)
There's a place in the Spirit World called the Glade of Lost Things, that Korra takes Asami to thinking it would be filled with childhood toys and eyeliner pens and that one bra Asami is certain is mixed up in Mako's luggage, but instead they find it full of statues of past Avatars. Asami places a hand on Korra's shoulder, saying it might be best to leave. Korra's eyes get a little wider.
"Hey, Asami," she says, touching a statue of a stern-looking man who looks surprisingly like Prince Wu. "Did I ever tell you about Gaius, the Earthbender prince? He was left-handed, you know."
There are hundreds of them, some of whom Korra can recall the names of, or a few relevant details. As it turns out the old masters were all right, and people are at their most spiritually inclined at the moment of orgasm.
(It takes a bit of teasing to get it out, but Avatar Gaius had a certain fetish for sucking on the toes of noblewomen.
"You know that banned scroll of different, uh, sex positions?" Korra's blushing. "He wrote it. The world was really peaceful when he was Avatar, so he decided it was important to travel the world, um, having lots of different kinds of sex, and catalogued it all."
"I have a copy, if you're interested," Asami says, and laughs at Korra's red ears. Then she pulls Korra close and kisses her like Kyoshi kissed her most beloved wife. The scroll would make a nice birthday gift. Perhaps with a little research she could find a nude portrait of an Avatar who had a penis, and produce a facsimile of the package for Korra to wear when she'd like. Would Katara consent to something like that? Varrick would find the challenge amusing.
"You're smiling," Korra murmurs, against Asami's mouth. "What for?"
"You'll see," Asami says, planning birthday gifts for the next twenty years. They make love in the shadow of Korra's past lives, sex against death.)
And that's just how it is. Asami had always associated sex with power and loneliness and secrets, but love is nice, and it makes her excited for the future in ways she didn't know she could ever feel.
She learns all twenty-six Southern paddling songs and teaches Korra a game her mother taught her to pass the time during long car rides. Korra teaches her a few hundred bending forms good for circulation and flexibility, Asami teaches Korra a martial art specifically designed for nonbenders to take down benders. (Begin by knowing your opponent's bending style, she remembers her sensei saying. Thankfully, you'll never be fighting the Avatar, as I've heard she's a pissy little girl with her head in the clouds and no mind for politics. If only her sensei could see her now.) Asami teaches Korra how to make a fire with flint and steel. Korra teaches Asami prayers of thanks.
Eventually the lakes and rivers take them to the portal at the South Pole, which is a sign, they suppose, that they should return to their world for a while. There are a few brave pilgrims gathered around the portal looking to start an adventure, who look up and wave and shout their names when they appear upriver. Theirs is a big world that just got a whole lot bigger.
Asami turns back, from the bow. "Shall we?"
Korra grins. "Yeah," she says. The best part of any adventure is returning home, wide-eyed and dirty, thoroughly changed. "Let's go."
then looking upwards
I strain my eyes and try
to tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites
from the passenger seat as you are driving me home
"do they collide?"
I ask and you smile
with my feet on the dash
the world doesn't matter