"In essence, there are four colors. Blue, red, green, and yellow. White and black only exist when you have a lacking of all the colors, or a conglomeration of them all. White does not exist in nature: only shades of it. Black, however…

Oh, black exists. Count on it."

-Inquisitor Aurelian

The breeze grazes my cheek with warmth and rustles the small leaves of the bushes around me. With an empty movement, I reach over and run my hand over the nearest plant. The leaves are devoid of temperature and feel smooth under my touch. I lean back against the stone bench and resume my mindless observance of the stars above the Fire Nation. They say that before the Hundred Years war, the people of the Fire Nation had the best view of the starry night sky. Now their smoke of industry dims it.

I sigh and close my eyes. I immediately feel drowsy, and I realize that I have little energy left in me. It has most certainly been a day full of excitement.

"It's been one hell of a time trying to find you." A voice says impatiently. It sounds youthful, definitely female, and combative.

I open one eye and see a tanned woman across from me sitting on the ground with her arms draped over the bench behind her. She wears blue, and her eyes are blue, so I put the two facts together and make an educated guess that she is a Waterbender.

"You can always call me." I say sarcastically. "All you have to do is look up my phone number in the phonebook."

The woman laughs. I put her to be about twenty or thirty years old. She has brown hair with no hints of grey, and it lies around her shoulders in a disheveled curtain. "It's a shame that you don't own a phone." The woman says. "When I was your age, we didn't even have cell phones."

I blink once before I respond. "I wasn't aware the entire world knew that I didn't have a phone."

"Aelius," the woman says sarcastically. "A lot of people have tried calling you. You're hard to contact."

I go through a mental list of faces and voices inside of my head. "I don't know you." I say as plainly as if I was talking about the weather.

"Sure you do," the Waterbender laughs. "You just don't know it."

"Are you here to tell me you're my long lost sister?" I say, impatient. "Or maybe that I owe you money?"

"If you owed me money," the woman says as she stands up. "I would already have it. Now, wake up. You're about to have a visitor."

"Wait," I start to ask.

I feel a jolt run through my body, a sudden surge of energy flowing through my muscles like a burst from a primal battery.

"Who are you?" I ask.

Only the breeze answers me, with its hollow swishes through the tall fire elms. The red leaves rustle against each other with silent scrapes and swipes. The breeze feels as though it has dropped a few degrees in temperature. To compensate, I rub my arms with my hands. Silly me, I think to myself, to think that nights in the Fire Nation would be warm enough to warrant shorts and a t-shirt.

I hear light footsteps clack against tiled flooring. The sound gets closer and closer, louder and louder, then the noise stops completely when it reaches the apex of the volume.

In silent contemplation, I listen to the soft breaths that belong to the newcomer. I hear a girlish sigh, and I immediately put a face to the noise. It is Cathra.

I sigh, exasperated. Just what I needed: another fight. I do not even see the point of talking to her anymore. I think she has made it clear that she is not going to explain to me why she is so upset.

I hear light footsteps on soft grass, and I close my eyes. A frigid breeze runs across my face, and I shiver without thinking. A light plop echoes underneath the rustling trees, and I open my eyes to see a familiar dark figure standing by the side of the garden's central pond.

Cathra's head is pointed directly up towards the moon, barely visible in the smoke of the Fire Nation sky. She wears a long maroon robe with the hood up, but the light of the moon pierces through the fog of the sky and the darkness of her hood. Her face is illuminated solemnly in the light of the night.

A drop of crystal falls from her chin and drops into the silver pond at her feet. The water absorbs the gem without motion.

Ask if she is ok. An old voice tells me inside of my head.

No, I respond. She doesn't want anything to do with me.

The voice inside of my heart laughs at me. Prove that she doesn't.

Prove, I tell myself, that she does.

That is up to you.

I groan at my own skills of persuasion. Silently, I push myself to my feet, and I tiredly stumble a few steps. I clutch my head, but only for a second.

"Are you ok?" I ask the silent girl.

Cathra immediately jerks her head to look at me. The moonlight leaves her face, and her hood obscures her features from my eyes. She looks at me (I think) for a few moments, and the garden is suddenly as silent as a tomb.

Slowly, with hesitant steps, the hooded princess begins to walk towards me. Every step seems like an eternity but I know that it must be much longer than that. The breeze blows against my bare arms and legs, and I feel goose bumps run up and down my body. I am not sure if they are from the cold or from something… else.

Cathra stops a few feet away from me. Every few seconds, her chest heaves, and I hear sobs that follow the movements. But she does not make any other movements; other than her trembling chest, she is as still as a statue. Her arms do not move to accompany her crying, and her shoulders are almost frozen in place.

Raising a palm, I release a small energy sphere to float above my hand.

In the light, I see two glittering rivers running down the front of Cathra's face. With my free hand, I mindlessly try to wipe them off. I have never enjoyed the sight of people crying; let alone myself. It is a sign of weakness, or at least that is how I was raised to view it. Iulia always told me never to cry in front of our father, because he would think that I was weak. She was right, in the end. My father sees weakness as easily as I do.

Cathra is not weak. She is strong.

Her eyes sparkle in the light of my personal stars.

"Are you," I ask again. I realize how soft my own voice sounds. "Ok?"

Cathra closes her eyes, and takes a stumbling deep breath. "I… don't know." Her voice is strong, even with all of the cracks.

The leaves on the garden trees rustle their sympathy. A cool breeze passes over us, blowing against my legs and moving Cathra's hair. I notice that Cathra is holding her royal topknot crown in her fist, and it glows faintly with warmth.

After a few moments of silence, Cathra holds her hand up for me to see. The crown lies patiently in the center of her palm, and I can see in the pure light of the energy orbs that parts of it have melted.

"What happened?" I ask. My voice is carried away by the rustling leaves, and I'm only certain that Cathra heard me when she opens her eyes again.

"This place…" she whispers. I realize how close we are to each other, and yet Cathra seems to be in an entirely different world. "It's not the same place I left."

I keep my mouth shut. I know that no matter what I ask, I won't understand the answer.

Cathra keeps talking, but she turns away from me and looks down at the pond. "The Fire Nation has never really changed, I guess. We're a Nation of warlords, each with a burning flame inside of us. We have no control, no restraint," Cathra clenches her fist, and for a moment I am worried she is going to stab her hand with the sharp top of the crown.

I realize the motion is not with anger, but with a desire to do something. Her fist squeezes the crown, and I hear the faint hiss of melting metal. Unable to control myself, I grab Cathra's hand and open it. With no regard for my own safety, I knock the glowing mound of metal out of the girl's palm.

I clench my eyes shut with pain. The backs of my fingers feel as though they have just touched the sun. I hear a hiss and feel a cloud of steam brush my face. I open my eyes, terrified that my hand is the cause of the noise.

The steam rises up from the pond. I can see, through the clear water, the fading metal lump that used to be the crown of the Fire Lord's heir. In the light of the stars I have floating by me, I see the dark reflection of two figures. One is shorter than the other, and wears a robe that conceals their figure below their neck. That figure has hair that reaches, freely, down past her shoulders. The other figure is tall, muscled, and has two orbs of light haloing the back of his head.

Both figures are staring at the pool, at the reflections, and at the melted crown, but I know that both of them are seeing different things.

One of them is seeing the beginning of a long journey.

One of them is seeing the end of one.

I am not sure which one sees what.

"This world," Cathra whispers. "Is so broken. The people in it are so broken."

I turn away from the pool and look at Cathra. I can't see her eyes past her hair: the only parts of her face that I can see are the tip of her nose and her lips.

"We lost the only thing that kept us together." I say softly. The brokenness of the world has never bothered me. Energybenders profit from disunity. That does not mean, however, that we do not understand how the world came to be this way.

"When we lost the Avatar," I say softly, looking up at the murky sky. "We lost our last connection with something bigger than ourselves."

The moon disappears behind a cloud, but then reappears almost as quickly as it vanished. I watch the dark shadow drift along in the sky for a minute, then return my attention back to Earth.

Cathra sighs. "The Avatar has to be somewhere. The Earth Kingdom, maybe."

I turn to look at Cathra, and realize she is already looking at me. Her eyes are soft, still on the knife-edge of either calming down or breaking out into tears one more time.

I blink, and for a moment the entire world disappears. When it returns, it seems to have a shade of an unknown color to it. "The world needs a healer." I say, more to myself than to Cathra.

Cathra nods, and at the end of the motion keeps her head down. "Aelius…" She starts to say. It's phrased more of a question than anything.

"Ya?" I ask, more of a statement than a question.

"I think that we should…" her voice trails off, and I can see her fighting with her own mind, trying to find the exact words to say.

I remain silent.

"We should try to find them." Cathra says eventually. Her voice falters a little bit, but when she looks up at me, I know that her strength is returning. I look into her eyes, which are illuminated by the lights floating behind me, and I see familiar sparks glimmering in her crimson eyes. "Find the Avatar."

I grin. "Lets."