This has been bouncing around in my head for a while, so I finally wrote it down. I'm not entirely sure where this is going, but I've got some ideas.
I've always wanted more information about June and Jet, and it just seemed right to put them together. Maybe it's the names. I should have gotten Jin in there somewhere too... :) I was curious about June's shirshu but found the canon explanation of how she got it kind of boring, so I came up with another explanation. I hope you enjoy, please review :) I'll be updating this soon.
June tried not to think about how hot it was. Maybe if she pretended it was cooler, she'd feel cooler. It could happen.
...Nah.
Sun coated her pale arms and face, leaving the faint prickles of an impending sunburn. Stupid pale skin. She had to take after her mother, with sleek black hair and a light complexion. Not her father, with his dark tan and shaggy brown mane. He worked out in the fields of Cunzhuang all day with the rest of the farmers, eking out a living from the ashy soil. Living on the western edge of the Earth Kingdom, the small village of Cunzhuang had seen drifts of smoke and ash every few decades from Fire Nation volcanoes for as long as anyone could remember. June had never seen it happen, but Aial Win from down the street – sixteen years old, very cool, and June's role model – had seen the black rain when she was very little. June's father spoke darkly of the ash, of how it killed crops and suffocated young plants, but June had always secretly wanted to see it rain ash from the sky. She'd never seen anything like it in her eleven years.
But there was no ash here. Just the familiar, sun-baked rocky trail making its way up the mountain, carved by the passage of many an animal – and June.
Rocks rattled behind her, breaking through her reverie. She flinched and whirled, brows drawing down. "Who's there?"
It could have been rocks sliding on their own, or a startled sparrowmouse. But you could never be sure.
Slowly, a timid figure emerged from behind a boulder. June slumped in annoyance at the bushy brown hair, and the big dark eyes stealing glances up at her.
"Jet," she growled. "I told you not to follow me."
"I just wanted to see where you were going," he mumbled. She glowered at her little brother, wishing that eight-year-olds weren't so curious. "Well, you can't come!"
"But I'm bored, and Dern can't play, and Mom said to go do something else, and you always sneak up this way so I thought you would let me come…"
June's eyes widened. She thought she was so sneaky and clever about how she went off, making sure no one was watching how she always took the same path. But if Jet had noticed, then Mom and Dad had to have, too. And the last thing she wanted was for them to find out what she did up here.
"No!" she snapped. "Go home! And don't ever follow me again. And if you tell Mom and Dad that I'm up here I'll put rattlescorpions in your bed!"
"But-"
"Go home!" she yelled. His lower lip wobbled, and then he turned and ran back down the scree-littered slope, slipping and stumbling. June watched him go, feeling a little ashamed for treating him so harshly. But she couldn't let him find out what she was doing. Jet kept secrets like a merchant kept rotten vegetables: he flung them out as quickly as possible for anyone to stumble across.
And there was always the possibility that if he followed her, he might not come back.
It took her another fifteen minutes to scramble up to the smoothed-out opening in the mountain. A rare shaft of sunlight slanted in, lighting up dirt and stone.
June stepped in, peering farther ahead. The tunnel extended back into the mountain. She'd never been to the end, but usually she didn't need to go very far. And… ah. There they were. Shadowed, wriggling lumps on the tunnel floor, where it was almost too dark to see.
She watched as they suddenly froze, then turned towards her and started moving. Coming towards her. Three little forms that emerged into the brighter light near the tunnel entrance and revealed themselves as wriggling balls of black-and-brown fur, with fat pink noses that wriggled like a face full of worms.
June had never seen anything cuter.
"Nyla!" she cooed, kneeling down. "Pano! Ginar! How are you?"
The shirshu cubs scrambled onto her. Pano, the smallest, ran headfirst into June's knee and flumped down with her paws over her nose. Nyla, wirier than his siblings, successfully vaulted her leg and landed in her lap. Ginar, the biggest, ran right past her and had to double back, tripping over his paws in his hurry to get to her.
Laughing, June scooped up Pano and rubbed her soft head, tracing the irregular black fur that covered half her face and splotched across her back. Nyla, jealous of the attention his sister was getting, reared up and tried to climb June's front. "Ow!" she yelped. "Ow, ow! Easy there, Nyla." She set Pano down and untangled Nyla's claws from the weave of her shirt, avoiding his questing tongue. "Gotta watch those slicers there."
Ginar started gnawing on the end of her boot, and she jerked it away before his sharp teeth could penetrate the worn leather. She didn't need Mom asking questions.
She had found the shirshus when she was nine. Dad had told her and Jet stories about the legendary creatures that saw the world by scent and hunted with venomous fangs, and they had always scared her – not that she'd ever admit it. But when she'd been exploring the mountains, trying not to think about the fight she'd had with her best friend… that was when she'd found the creature.
It was huge, a massive, motionless lump of black and brown fur sprawled in a clearing. She hadn't known what it was. But something pulled her forward, and despite all common sense she approached it.
It wasn't until she found its head, with the strange nose and no eyes, that she realized what it was. But by that time she'd also found the gaping wound in its shoulder, studded with boarqpine quills, and seen the ever-so-subtle rise and fall of its side.
It's alive. But hurt.
Thinking back on it, June could see that it was one of the most spectacularly stupid things she'd ever done. But her nine-year-old self had acted almost without thinking. She'd helped Mom with hurt animals plenty of times. She could help this creature too.
She'd found a nearby stream, and washed the gash. She'd carefully extracted the quills, watching to make sure the shirshu wasn't waking up. She'd gotten as much water between those terrifying teeth as she could. And she'd made a very makeshift poultice from plants to put on the wounds, hoping to ward off infection with the elilroot and dancing poppy she'd included.
Then she'd inspected it. Ran her hands over its muscled body, feeling the coarse and wiry hairs on it's back and legs as opposed to the almost silky fur covering its face and belly. It had a thick black stripe running from its nose, all the way along its back and down the tail, and everything else was a deep brown except for a small white spot on the chin.
And when it twitched, slowly pulling out of its unconsciousness, she'd ran as fast as she could.
But two weeks later, when she'd rounded a boulder in the mountains, she'd found herself facing the same shirshu down. Terrified, she'd waited for the creature to devour her whole.
Instead, it sniffed her thoroughly, then rubbed its head against her side. Disbelieving, she scratched behind its soft ears, and followed it's leisurely lope to the tunnel entrance. I'll call you Feyiph, she decided.
And six months ago, Feyiph had had a litter of cubs (proving her sex once and for all). For a few weeks she snarled and snapped if June came to visit, but then she relaxed, and June fell in love with the tumbling balls of fur and claws.
True, they liked to play rough. True that their teeth were sharp and their claws long. And true that their long tongues held a paralyzing toxin. But in these little cubs, it only made her go numb for a little while, not like the adults that could drop a sabertooth mooselion in its tracks. She hoped to train them not to use their tongues on her before their venom got more potent.
June reluctantly knew that it was a really bad idea to have four shirshus in the mountains around her village. One might have been okay, especially one that was wild and wary of humans. But four… someone was going to spot something, even if they didn't spend as much time in the mountains as she did. And one day the cubs might just decide to follow her scent, and the first farmer to see them would raise the whole village to kill.
But for now she ignored that painful reality and just played with them. Their wide front claws were equally suited for digging and fighting, their sensitive noses in constant motion, telling them about the world around them. It was said that shirshus could track a scent from one side of the Earth Kingdom to the other. June had always wondered if they could track in the Fire Nation, too. Maybe their supernoses only worked in the Earth Kingdom.
Maybe her mother would know, June mused. Seingin dressed and spoke like any other Earth Kingdom citizen. But June knew that she was from one of the Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom. "I was supposed to marry a nice Fire Nation boy and maybe move back to the homeland," Seingin had told June, smiling a little at the memory. "But then I met Boshun by accident, when he was delivering a cart of hay to the stables, and fell in love. Hard." Seingin's father had found out about his daughter seeing an Earth Kingdom farmer boy and was furious. He forbade her to meet Boshung again… but he didn't realize how much Seingin was in love. Two days later they eloped and settled in Cunzhuang, where they started a new life together. "And then you came along, and three years later Jet was born," her father rumbled. "And we've been happy ever since."
Not that anyone else knew that Seingin was Fire Nation. She looked different, with her silky black hair, milk-white skin, and golden-brown eyes. But here, they didn't see many Fire Nation people. No one had connected June's mother's exotic looks with the tyrannical oppressors across the ocean. June took after Seingin, but both she and Jet had gotten Boshung's dark eyes.
Her parents had told June about her Fire Nation blood when she was ten. Jet didn't know yet, but he would in time. She didn't care about being half Fire Nation. Mom was a nice person, even if the rest of the Fire Nation was bad. It wasn't like they ever bothered Cunzhuang, anyway.
Pano rooted into her lap and settled down, pawing at her skirt. June smiled and scratched the little cub's tummy, feeling her growl of contentment.
Ginar flopped down next to her, his warm body pressed close to her. She touched the little scar in his ear from an overenthusiastic scuffle with Nyla, chuckling as Ginar snorted and shook his head at the light, ticklish touch. Ginar had the most black of the cubs, with a thick blaze covering a lot of his face, and black spreading down his back. It looked like someone had taken a brown cub and poured black paint along his spine.
Nyla still hopped around. He was the friskiest, always eager to tumble around or chase some food down. She pulled the leather headband out of her hair and dangled it in front of him. As soon as his nose hit it he lunged, sharp little teeth worrying and tugging. She hung on as he tried to pull it away, making frustrated little snorts when it wouldn't come.
Noise from outside the cave made them all turn. Nyla abandoned the strap and ran towards the entrance, squealing. Ginar followed. Pano raised her head but stayed in June's lap.
A hulking shape appeared, blocking out the light as it stepped into the tunnel. June watched as Nyla and Ginar ran up to it, and it bent to sniff them. "Hi, Feyiph. I stopped by to visit. I figured you wouldn't mind."
The massive shirshu moved towards her, gait a little awkward due to the fact that Nyla was hanging off one leg, trying to bite it. June felt hot breath wash over her face, accompanied by the smell of rotting meat. She made a face and rubbed underneath the mama shirshu's chin.
After a moment, Feyiph moved past. June was a familiar presence and there was nothing to be concerned about.
June lifted Pano up. The sleepy little cub made a noise of protest and squirmed as June looked at her. "You're a pretty little girl, huh?" she said, smiling.
Pano flopped around until June relented and set her back down in her lap. The cub wriggled back into a comfortable position and relaxed as June rubbed her soft side.
I could stay here forever, June thought as she stroked the napping shirshu, lazily watching Ginar chasing the scent of a moth down the tunnel.