Change

The grove is not quite as Korra remembers it. The stream is dark blue instead of red, winding through grass that has grown thick with weeds. A few new saplings have sprouted around the water's edge. The blood dragon trees, too, have turned from yellow to green. Their branches are fuller, supporting clouds of leaves puffing out like balloons. Time, it seems, changes even the Spirit World.

She doesn't know why she has decided to come here, when there exist thousands of other lands. But out of all the lands of the Spirit World she remembers this one most clearly – it pulls her as irrevocably as the moon pulls the tide, there and back again, there and back again. Perhaps she will never break free.

"It's beautiful," Asami says. She dips her fingers into the water. They come away stained blue.

"I thought you'd like it," Korra says.

She sits next to Asami on the bank, listening to the soft rush of the stream. Is he out there somewhere? If they wander long enough, will they meet him? The Spirit World is so vast the chances of them meeting must be nonexistent, but the Spirit World has a strange way with tendencies. Distance conforms to the shape of the heart. The furthest destination is no further than your deepest fear. What seems close enough to touch might be as out-of-reach as unrequited love. Here it is the traveler that shapes the land, not the other way around. And he has been traveling for longer than she has been alive.

"What's it called?" Asami asks.

"Xai Bau's grove. It's where I met – " Korra pauses, shaking her head. She smiles and looks up at the sky. " – someone who helped me, in the end."

If they do meet again, it'll be her chance to tell him thanks.