Kiran of Baoshan

Baoshan, a city-state on the Chameleon Peninsula, 91 AG

Let's start with honesty.

I've envied Minato and Hikari for almost as long as I can remember.

It's an ugly feeling curling in the pit of my stomach, twisting my words, pulling at me to treat them terribly. I make them laugh, and fall in love almost to spite it.

I look at them, and they're wonderful, smiling at me after every 'trick' I pull (I tell them the tricks are supposed to help them learn to dodge without dying - so they can make mistakes that aren't fatal. Sometimes I can even believe myself.).

I look at everyone around me in my waking hours, and I can't find it in me to reach out because every other sentence feels like a statement of something I can't do, something I have to force. Every smile is a razor blade, every turned face a rock thrown.

Every time I want to rage, there are hands pulling me back, telling me to ignore him to be polite to him to follow his every word. I want to spit and snarl and growl. I want to learn how to pull boulders out of the ground, how to defend myself with all of my talents, not waste my time on the stupid, finicky detail work that I find shoved at me constantly. I don't want to be calmly repairing ladies jewels and clay pots and priceless artifacts in my grandmother's shop.

I want to learn to fight like Minato - he tells me that on Kyoshi Island, it's unusual for a man to fight, that most of their warriors are female. I want to learn like Hikari learns - she tells me that everyone in the Fire Nation is taught how to fight from when they're young. Jealousy smolders in the pit of my stomach, and I have to suppress the eruptive words that want to escape at every casual mention of these differences they make.

In my dreams, before Minato arrives, I spend all of my time in a large clearing in the forest. I pull up boulders out of the ground with sharp motions and send them flying. When that no longer satisfies me, I switch to whipping halos of pebbles at targets with lighting fast speed and intensity, letting loose the anger I always have to suppress.

Sometimes Minato shows up at the edge of the clearing before exhaustion forces me to rest. He never asks what I'm doing or why, he just offers tips from his training with other earthbenders.

It'll never be enough.

Awake, I watch my mother submit to her work as a maid, in a house where she goes through the same motions everyday, and I remember playing with a boy in that house. Though his face and name are long forgotten, I still remember his sister. She'd come across us once, and I remember the stiffness about her, the immovable way she had watched us, the way she turned and the jewels that hung from her hair barely swayed as she followed the call of her teacher.

Awake, I sneak out of my bedroom at night and listen at windows in stolen clothes. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I catch snatches of great battles between the spirits, and our Lady is as fearsome as the Lord of the Flames. Today, when I hear people swear by the spirits, they ignore our Lady, and swear by Oma and Shu.

Sometimes, I hear stories of Kyoshi, the last Avatar from the Earth Kingdoms. According to all of the public shows and everything the king says, Kyoshi was a man, but at night sometimes I hear whispered stories of an Avatar that was very much so female. (Sometimes, in my dreams, I beg Minato for stories about her, and I sit there, listening to him fumble his way through them.)

Sometimes, I hear whispers of the war, enough over time to slowly piece together a picture of what's happening. The Fire Nation has torn through most of the fertile lands to the north of the Si Wong Desert, and while they're currently busy pacifying and colonizing their most recent conquests, it's only a year or two at most before they lay siege to Ba Sing Se. I don't know what will happen then. Without Ba Sing Se's support propping up all of the smaller kingdoms like Omashu and Anshun - and Baoshan, my home - they will fall quickly. A century after the Genocide of the Air Nomads, and Fire Nation will control the world.

Awake, I steal boy's clothes, and I save up the money my grandmother sometimes gives me, after a particularly trying day in the store. I watch the boys run past the shop, march past in straight lines, pull carts, walk, always on their way to somewhere. I watch how they walk, how they talk, how they move their hands.

Awake, I watch the women around me, sometimes wondering if I'm just being a little bit silly. Why can I not settle like they have, and be content?

Why am I always searching for something more? I wonder when I am called in to smooth pieces of glass together for a stained glass window. (The window is meant to go to a temple to the spirits of the earth, and it depicts Oma and Shu together. I don't ask about Lady Kun.)

When grandmother gives me a free day, I dress myself up in stolen clothes and I pretend I'm someone else, pretend I'm on my way to somewhere. (A whole week after the first time, I'm constantly paranoid that someone will come into the shop and recognise me, recognise the boy who had been playing tag in the streets.) I don't think about what I'm doing. I don't think about the fact that it's illegal.

My grandmother teaches me to read and write with the clay of the pots and the plaques and the tiles and the figures we make to sell. I learn in between fixing and making and selling things, and I feel an almost vicious satisfaction with every new word I learn. This isn't power exactly, but it's one less vulnerability, one less way someone can take advantage of me, of my ignorance.

When I'm thirteen, I run away from home.

()

While I guess you could say that I'd been planning my next move for a while, it hadn't exactly been something I thought about. I dressed like a boy because I wanted to run around playing tag, and when you got older, girls stopped doing it. I wanted to play marbles, to play jump rope. I don't want to be restricted to cooking and baking and sewing and cleaning.

When I learned enough characters, I made papers for myself as a boy. I didn't make them to deceive people, but because if I wanted it to look realistic, my handwriting had to look neat. Later on, I got bored of copying the same thing down, so I started making up names, and stories to go along with them. It wasn't too hard to make a copy of the red official seal after my many years of practice piecing gems and pots back together.

I could have gone for years like that. Maybe I would have lingered as I was for the rest of my life - gotten married or become a spinster, taken care of the family business - if it hadn't happened.

There's something about finding your aunt rocking silently in the corner, eyes staring past a dress covered in blood and . . . and other things. There's something about seeing the strongest woman you know flinch away from your touch - from everyone, from her husband. There's something about knowing exactly what happened to her, knowing how very easily it could happen to you, that leaves an impression.

So I ran away. I stuffed all of the clothes that I would need - clothes I'd gathered over the years that could pass, some food, the fake papers I'd made, and the money my grandmother had given me over the years, and I headed straight for the nearest army recruitment post the next morning. I registered while I was supposed to be manning Grandma's shop.

I was thirteen - stupidly young, naive - but there was a war going on, so I'm accepted for training and placed with a group of boys my age for training.

Training lasts 14 weeks, and it's so different from anything I've experienced before. They threw benders and nonbenders together for the most part, with the exception of classes on how to fight other benders. For those classes, they split benders off and teach them how to fight with their bending.

I learn quickly that I'm too aggressive to be the perfect fighter - when you fight with earthbending, you are supposed to respond to your opponent's attacks. It's not all throwing huge rocks around like I'd practiced by myself. That's what fighters did in matches were held on the spring solstice for the public's entertainment, but you can't do that as a soldier without hitting someone on your side. Instead, they teach us how to pull up walls and spikes and how to send small rocks flying with a flick of the wrist.

When we aren't learning to bend, there are the lessons on how to fight without bending, swim lessons, endurance running, climbing ropes and cliffs the instructors made for us. Though the work's hard, and I'm more sore every day, I refuse to complain like some of the other boys. Mostly, it's the noble boys who complain, grumbling under their breath time after time that they won't ever use this training, that they're going to be officers, not common grunts, but I recognize most of the rest of the complainers as children of the artisans that serve the nobles.

Because I'm so determined not to complain like the lot of them, I notice that out of the whole lot of them, there only one who isn't constantly whining - who isn't whining at all. I note him, and get back to training.

I eat, sleep, drink, and breathe the training. If it hadn't been for an instructor pulling me aside after the first week of training and telling me on no uncertain terms that if I kept practicing on my own, I would hurt myself and get kicked out, I would have kept practicing long after we were dismissed. Without that, I find that I don't have much to do during the breaks. All of the boys had made friends while I was out in the field, and whenever I try to join a group, they would stare at me until I went away, then whisper about it.

Without much else to do, I find myself fiddling with a bunch of small rocks that I dug up. They feel odd, and it takes me a while to realise why - I've bent regular rocks this size before, but I've never really focused on them like I focus on the clay pots or the precious and semiprecious stones that people bring us to fix. These stones feel different, so I spend my free time nudging at the miniscule particles with flicks of my fingers.

The training seems to last forever, and for no time at all, and suddenly I find myself at the end of it, taking papers that confirm my graduation on one side, and assign me to the City Guard on the other. I passed. I sit there on my bed for an hour of the day we'd been given to pack up and make our way over to the Guard barracks. Then I take a shaky breath, roll the orders back up and shove them back into my bag.

That night, after I've settled down in the new barracks, new and different people filling the air with snores and groans and the other myriad sounds of a bunch of humans sleeping together, I dream. Minato comes first, like he always does, and I tell him what I'd managed to do. He's only ten, only just starting to think of joining the Kyoshi Warriors like his mother instead of simply farming the fields, and he's so excited. He jumps up on me, yelling that he knew I could do it, then asking me what it was like, if I was out fighting the Fire Nation yet-

I have to tell him to calm down, to remind him that I'm going to be a City Guard for years before I'm sent out to battle.

Hikari comes a while after him, and she looks confused when I tell her I've graduated.

"What do you mean you've graduated? It's only been three and a half months! It hasn't even been a whole year!"

She gets worked up, insisting that I need to learn more, and that I hadn't leaned nearly enough, and are they trying to get me killed? No matter what we say, neither Minato nor I can manage to get her to calm down as she starts crying, so in the end we just curl up under a tree and let her wear herself out. It takes her maybe an hour before she stops crying, sitting on my lap, with a possessive hand around Minato's arm, and she refuses look up.

"I don't want you to die," she mumbles into my shirt, her breath still uneven. "I don't want you to die, but everyone else is always telling me not to worry, that they'll kill the big bad earthbenders and waterbenders for me. And everyone spends years training - and you only spent a couple of months! I don't want you to die!"

()

The dreams ends eventually, like it always does, and I sit up in the busy barracks. I grab my clothes and soap and make a run for the bathroom. And I wonder, in that half abstract way I always do when I wake up, if Minato and Hikari are even real.

I pull up a curtain of rock in front of the shower/toilet cubicle, and outside, a couple of guys call me a prude tauntingly as I relieve myself and wash off quickly. I call back to them that there are some sights I want to save for my wife, and they laugh. I know what they're thinking - in training, guys only pulled up a curtain if they were ashamed of something, or if they wanted to have some fun. Once I'm done, I pull the curtain down and step out of the cubicle with my pajamas under one arm. I head back for my bed, and sit down to strap my boots on.

"You're Kiran, right?"

I glance up to see a guy staring at me. It takes me a moment before I recognise him as one of the boys who had been in my training group - the only obviously rich one who hadn't complained about everything the instructor were putting us through. "I am."

"I'm Gopan," the guy offers as I finish tying my second boot and stand.

I glance over at him and nod. "Hello."

Then I turn and and walk towards the hallway to I can get to the mess hall for breakfast. I sit down at one of the wood benches with a tray after standing in line, and glance at the hourglass over the doorway to see how much time I have. Gopan sits next me as I start in on the porridge, and I try to ignore him as I eat. I finish the food on my plate, then turn to look at him.

"So. What do you want?"

Gopan glances at me, then pushes his bowl away, ignoring the rest of the porridge. "They're going to put me in charge of one of the City Districts in a couple of years."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"I was hoping you'd be my deputy."

Short, sweet, and to the point. At least he isn't trying to talk circles around me like the other rich boys.

"Why me? There are dozens that you could choose from, and most of them will have a good lot more experience than I do, especially seeing as I've got none."

"I've been watching you. You're smart, and you can think, which is more than some of the others can. And frankly," he pauses, looking a little embarrassed, "You don't have any set habits I would have to train out of you."

Very to the point.

"And none of the others were good enough? Or one of the guys from the previous sessions?"

"Intelligence and creativity are valuable commodities in the army. So, will you be my deputy?" Gopan asks, leaning towards me. With his face so close to me, it's hard not to focus on his eyes, which are a lighter shade of green than most of the people I've met, and slightly unfocused.

I wrinkle my nose, push him back so that he's not in my face, and glance at the hourglass. "Maybe once I get to know you. Right now, I've got to go. I'm not going to be late for my first day of work."

()

Months pass, and I get used to patrolling the section of the district that I'm assigned to or standing guard at a door with whatever partner I have that day. They never send me out with Gopan - probably something about having at least one experienced member per team - but whenever I'm not on duty, he finds ways to spend time with me.

Around the third month, my period starts in the middle of a patrol. I've heard of periods before - it was kind of hard to miss my mother and grandmother washing bloodstained cloths when there was no reason for us to have any. The hardest part was figuring out how to get the cloths washed and dry. I manage that by getting enough cloths to last for a week, and taking them to a laundry house, telling them it's for my sister.

I overhear some of the older guards talking in the break room, betting on which of the new-guards they thought would actually make it into the army. The pattern wasn't hard to discern - a couple of minutes later I could easily see what lines they divided us on. Most of the boys who'd been better at bending during our lessons - the calm ones, the ones who reacted to their opponents and didn't make the first move were all shoe-ins from staying as guards, while the guys who were aggressive like me were all sure bets for getting into the military.

I have to leave before my name comes up, but what I overheard was enough to make me wonder and think. I'd mainly joined the army in order to learn how to protect myself, to get away from the harsh truth of what happened to my aunt, to make sure that what happened to my aunt couldn't happen to me. I knew that I wouldn't go straight out to patrol the land and the smaller villages under Baoshan's wing, but I hadn't known that I could stay in the city.

I have four years before I'm sent out to the actual army. Four years to convince my superiors which job I'll be better at - soldier or City Guard - and now that I have that choice, I'm not sure what to do. I know how to defend myself now - I've learned what I ran away to learn. I thought joining the army was the price I had to play, but now that I know there's a lesser option . . .

I'm not patriotic. I don't quite hate the place I grew up - it'll always be home for all of it's faults - but I've heard too much of other places where women and girls have the opportunity, the right to defend themselves. I'm not patriotic, and now that I know there's a way for me to be safer than I could ever be outside the city, I should take it.

I should. I'm not patriotic.

But I am jealous. I am the only one of the three of us in my dreams who isn't serving my home. Minato made the decision to join the Kyoshi Warriors like his mother when he had turned eleven. Hikari's only six, and she's already a servant in the royal household, already training to be handmaiden to a princess in line for the throne. They have some greater cause than themselves, and I want that. I'm the eldest, but I want to be more like them.

This is what makes up my mind - the decision that I'm not going to take the easy way out. At breakfast the next morning, I tell Gopan I'll do it, I'll be his deputy.

I almost want to laugh as he visibly pauses. I kept him waiting for months as I weighed the pros and cons, but suddenly my path seems clear. Gopan is from a noble house, and from what I heard the day before, he's pretty much guaranteed a spot in the army. I'll get my greater cause if I have to cling to him to do it.

()

Ow. Ow.

I try to ignore the stinging rocks and focus on my meditation, but it's all rather hard with someone throwing rocks at me every few seconds. I yelp as the last rock scrapes my arm, and I leap to my feet.

"What was that for?"

Gopan stares at me, distinctly unimpressed. "I didn't throw that rock any harder than any of the other ones. Sit back down."

I stare at him, then grumble and do as he says. "Remind me why we're doing this again?"

"Because you-" a rock hits the middle of my back "-need to learn to be less aggressive. You'll be able to fight better when you've got more balance."

"Can't we do something else? It's been two turns of the hourglass, and I think I'm covered in bruises."

There's a pause, then Gopan sighs, and I open my eyes to see him setting down the rocks. "Fine. We can take a break."

Finally! I stretch and yawn, then slump down, glad to finally be free of the restricting pose. I pull one of the stones that I've been working on occasionally out of my pocket and reach out to it to find where I left off. I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing with these rocks, or even what I want to do with them, but if nothing else, they do keep me busy. Right now, for lack of anything better to do, I'm mostly shifting the particles around so that they form the rigid structures I'm used to feeling when I work at this level.

I'm half aware of Gopan settling down next to me, but he doesn't say anything, so I ignore him and keep shifting the things within the rock slowly, twitching my fingers carefully to bring the particles into alignment.

"What are you doing?" Gopan asks, and it takes me a moment to realize that he spoke.

I open my eyes, and shake my head to clear it, then I glance over at him. "What do you mean, what am I doing?"

"You're obviously doing something with that rock," Gopan says, "you've been working on it for months, but it doesn't really seem any different from it was when you first had it."

I hesitate. My grandmother and I were very good at what we did, for working class people, good enough that the lesser nobles sometimes called upon one of us to help instead of the higher class artisans. But in the working class, our work wasn't something men did, and Gopan knows what class I came from. If I tell him what I'm doing - why I'm doing it, he might figure out that I'm not exactly . . . that I'm not exactly someone who can be his deputy.

By law, he would be obligated to turn me in.

"It's nothing," I say, moving to put the stone back into my pocket. Gopan catches my wrist, still staring at me.

"It's not nothing. That's the most focused and calm I've seen you. You've been doing this for months, and you are doing something with it. It is not nothing." He searches my eyes with that odd, unfocused gaze of his. "Kiran, what are you doing with that stone?"

I stare helplessly at him. If I don't answer him now, he'll just keep asking. He was willing to wait for four months when he asked me to be his deputy. Then, if I had said no, he probably would have left. But I said yes, and I'm his business now, and unless it's something I straight up refuse to do, something I tell him I cannot do, I don't think he'll take no for an answer.

"I don't even know what I'm doing," I say, looking down at my crossed legs, hoping that the partial answer will satisfy him, but when I look back up he's still frowning.

"Then what do you think you're doing?"

"I don't know. I guess - I'm trying to make it feel like the other stones I've felt." I tug slightly against the wrist still in his grasp as my eyes drop to the ground again. "Can I go now?"

I can feel his eyes against my skin like they're a physical force. He lets go of my wrist.

"You can go."

I quickly stand and make for the door.

"And Kiran," he calls, forcing me to pause and glance back. "Bring the rock with you next time."

()

I bring the rock.

Actually, that's wrong. I bring a different rock I picked up at some point that I hadn't messed with yet.

Today, I'm the first to the courtyard we use to practice. I had one of the patrol routes that stayed closer to the station, so I got back fairly quickly once the patrol time was done.

Without Gopan around giving me something to do, without the distraction of home, I'm bored. The last time this happened, I started feeling fiddling around with rocks, but that's not an option right now considering the fact that I'm waiting for the person doing that got me in trouble with.

Eventually, I crouch down and sink my fingers into the dirt. I consider the dirt as I dig my fingers in and root myself there for the moment. I could . . . make something. Gopan will probably notice if I something with any of the rocks, but messing with the dirt won't leave a trace, or at least not one that any other earthbender wouldn't leave. I settle back into a more comfortable position, then pull up with my rolled fingers to bring a chunk of dirt out of the ground.

It's easy enough now to separate it into the different possible sizes, each type flying out of the pile at a flick of my wrist. There isn't enough clay to work with unfortunately, so I have to set that aside, along with sand, which I hated working with. This leaves me with the loose silt, which I pull together and crush until it's about as hard as a rock, and the size of two fists.

I shift the shape so it's thick disk rather than some sort of blob, look it over critically as I consider what I can make from this amount of material. I consider several designs that would be worse that useless to me considering that I'm not coming right now, and I can't sell them off before I think of making a water jug for myself. It's still nothing I need, but it would be nice to have something to drink when I'm posted at some guardhouse, waiting for people to approach the gate or come running for help.

With that decided, I start tapping one foot slightly against the grounded to set the disk spinning. I dig into the center and pull it towards the edge slowly with curved fingers. Over and over, I have push and pull at the silt, urging it into shape, mindlessly boring the difference between working with silt and clay as I push it up.

When I'm done, I stop tapping my foot, and slowly set it down onto the pile of sand and clay in front of me. It's not my best work, but I'm used to working with silt, and its misshapen form doesn't stop it from holding water.

I glance up reflexively at the sound of footsteps in the corridor, expecting yet another person walk past, in time to see Gopan stride into the courtyard. He nods at me, but the gesture is absent, his attention fixed more on the jug in front of me than on his actions.

I glance between them, wondering what's so fascinating about a lopsided, unglazed water jug, before I realize that the jug's unfinished nature makes it rather obvious that I am probably the maker. I restrain the urge to bang my head against the wall. If been so worried about Gopan figuring out I was a girl from the rock that I'd gone and done something even more discriminating to distract myself. Great thinking there, really.

I wait stiffly for Gopan to say something, about the jug, about the rock, about who I am, as he sits down in front of me and offers me the small bag that contains his latest attempt to help me find a focus for mediation. It's like there's nothing unusual. He opens his mouth and asks, "Were you teased?"

"Excuse me?"

"Were you teased because you were a stoneworker?" Gopan asks curiously, as if I hadn't been so worried about him finding out just that. "I won't tell anyone, if that's what you're worried about."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

My fingers tighten around the neck of the bag. Suddenly, I'm angry. If it wasn't something that could lead to my identity, I wouldn't be this scared. I wouldn't bother hiding it, I'd fix broken cups in front of the others because I am not ashamed to be a stoneworker. We're not potters or sculptors or masons or glassworkers or jewelers, but we know how to work with their materials. We know how to fix their work so they're as good as new, or better. It takes delicacy and patience that I haven't been able to find anywhere else, and I'm proud.

"It's alright!" Gopan says hurriedly, trying to reassure me.

"That's not something - that's not something you say to people," I tell him. I force my fingers to loosen around the bag because sometimes the things he brings are breakable. "You don't just ask - we're in the army! Do you know what people would say if they found out? Do you know what they'll think?"

"I'm sorry! It's just - I wanted to know, and I thought it was nothing to be ashamed of, and you'd never minded before -"

I'm on my feet with no memory of how I got there, watching Gopan scramble to match me as I yell. I don't know what I'm saying, and suddenly I can't take it - the panic in his eyes, the confusion, the signs he doesn't know why I'm so angry, so scared, so frustrated. He doesn't understand, he doesn't know, no one knows - no one can ever know if I want to be able to stay here - and I can't take it.

I turn and I bolt out of the courtyard, and I run out of the guard station. I run through the streets, part people, past stalls, past everything. I slide around corners and through alleys, I go under fences and over to heedlessly until I myself at one of my old favorite places to events on people at night.

There are tears that I don't remember, and my chest heaves with a sob as I collapse downwards to bury my face in my knees. I can't stop crying.

I think of my mother and my grandmother, of my aunt and my uncle, of how I left them for this. I think of Minato and Hikari in my dreams of how amazing their lives sound. For the first time, I wonder seriously if they're real. I wonder if I really am just as unnatural as the neighbors sometimes whispered I was. I wonder if I should just - just leave. I miss my mother. I miss my grandmother.

"Kiran?" I glance up to see Minato hovering over me uncertainly, hands fluttering at his sides like he wants to touch me, but doesn't know if I want him to.

I don't want to do this. I want to be alone right now, but Minato looks so worried. I wipe the tears away and take a breath. "You thought of anything new today?"

The worried look doesn't fade as he sits down next to me, not touching, but close enough for me to bridge the distance as he starts talking. I let the sound of his voice wash over me as he talks, listening more to the cadence than the words as I force myself to relax.

I offer comments on his thoughts occasionally, limiting some to Kyoshi Island, extending others to at least Baoshan. Hikari comes at some point after Minato started talking, and her eyes linger on my face as she sits down in front of us, no doubt noting my puffy eyes.

She talks about the royal family, and Minato must have run out of thoughts because he starts telling stories about his sister, and about the funny things that the other Kyoshi Warriors in training have done. I lean against Minato as the stories continue, tired of tears, of anger. When it gets to be time for me to leave, I sit up and stretch. The others watch, used to me leaving first.

"He asked me if I was teased for being a stoneworker."

They sit up straight at my words - words they had no doubt been waiting for all night.

"I think I'll tell him who I am," I say as I turn away so that I can't see their reactions. "I . . . I need someone else to know."

I flinch away from the arms that come around me for a moment, then relax into the hug.

"It's alright," Minato says gently as he tucks himself against my side. "It'll be fine. You've told us that he's nice, right? He'll understand."

()

I wake up tucked against the warmth of a chimney. I stay that way for a moment, shivering slightly in the cool morning air before I push myself up. I'm a bit sore in some places from the awkward position I fell asleep in, and my eyes are even more crusted than normal because of the tears.

I bring my hand up to run at them, then pull it away from my face at the feeling of fabric against my skin. I peer blankly at the cloth sucking out of my closed first for a moment before I figure out that I should open my first so I could see the rest of whatever it is.

I uncurl my fingers slowly, and stare at the small bag. It's the one Gopan's always giving me with his latest attempt to help me find a good focus for mediation. I don't remember bringing it with me. Almost morbidly curious, I pull at the neck of the bag to open it, then dump the contents into my hand.

A bunch of gems tumble out, clicking against each other in a way that makes me want to wince and check to see if any have chipped. I don't. I examine the stones, picking them up one at a time to identify them. Most of them have been cut, and as I closer, I can see little scratch marks in the sides of some that indicate they were pulled out of their settings in rings or whatever jewelry they were in. There were also a couple of larger stones, polished, but uncut.

I recognize most of the stones easily; there's some very nice amber, topaz, bloodstone, and jade. Then there are a couple of stones that . . . that can't be what I think they are. There is no way he just handed me a bunch of very expensive gemstones. There's no way he handed me emeralds and green sapphires.

I look them over again, comparing them to the vague memory I have of the real thing from when one of the upper class woman had let me examine her jewelry as my grandmother fixed her vase in the back room. Then I shake my head. Now's not the time or place for this - I need to get back to the station in time to report for my patrol.

I pour the stones back into the bag - more carefully than I had taken them out with the possible identity of some of the stones in mind - close it, and tuck it into one of the inner pockets of my jacket.

I thread my way through the slowly waking city streets back to my guard post. It takes me longer than I would have liked, but I'd been assigned far enough away that no one who could recognise me was likely to see me, so I can't complain. As I thread my way through the market district, I buy a pair of streaming chicken-pork buns from a yawning vendor, and eat them for breakfast. I arrive back at the station too late to be put on any of the normal patrols.

Rasul - the man in charge of assigning missions - glances over me as I walk in, no doubt noting my sleep crumpled clothing. He doesn't comment on it, just orders me to change into my uniform and come out for desk duty.

I nod without looking up, and make my way to my bed, to grab my uniform. I go and change in the bathroom, and splash water into my face to clear the lingering tear nods at me as I emerge, and leaves his spot behind the desk.

"Don't forget, if you need any runners, there's a bunch of men sitting in the rec room," he reminds me from the door of his office. I nod to the closed door, then sit down.

The rest of the morning passes slowly, and I find myself playing with the gems Gopan had handed me. Around noon, I glance up from one of the gems (that better not - that can't be a sapphire), when Rasul clears his throat.

"Guard, lunch time."

"Alright?"

Rasul gives me a look.

"Go eat."

"But I have desk duty," I protest, even as I scramble to get all of the gems back into the bag.

"Go eat lunch officer. I'll put you back on patrol after."

"Yes sir." I stand, leave the chair for Rasul, and, after a moment's aimless confusion, wander in the direction of the cafeteria. The cooks are only just starting to put out the large trays of cooked meat and vegetables in their sweet and savory sauces, and the pots of oat rice with different seasonings.

I wonder what prompted Rasul to release me so early as I grab a tray, and quickly serve myself. Before I can sit down to eat though, footsteps pound into the room, and I glance up just in time to see Gopan as he slides to a stop, relief all over his face.

"Kiran! Thanks to the lady," he says as he advances on me. I step backwards instinctively, and he freezes.

An almost hurt look flickers over his face before he frowns, and suddenly just looks sad.

"Kiran, I-" he cuts himself off, glancing over at the kitchen where some of the cooks are staring at us. They're doing it discreetly, but it's happening, and I can't help but suddenly feel grateful for them. I should be annoyed at their gossiping, the lack of privacy, but while they're here, it seems that Gopan doesn't want to talk. And I don't want to talk at all after yesterday.

I still think I should tell him, still need to tell someone, but abruptly, I don't want to talk. I put my tray on the nearest table and sit, ignoring Gopan. Voices in the hallway signal the approach of more people, but I ignore that. I ignore them and I ignore Gopan, and I ignore everything as I eat my lunch. I thought I could tell him the next time I saw him - I had all night and all morning to get over his questions - but I can't. I'm halfway aware of Gopan sitting across from me with his own tray as more people steadily stream into the mess hall. I don't look up.

I just eat, breathe, and try to calm myself down. In the back of my head, determination beats steadily louder.

I finish eating, and look up. Across from me, Gopan's picking halfheartedly at his rice, most of it gone, but a good amount still covering the bottom of his bowl. Around us, the mess hall has filled up, and people are talking, filling the room with the soft roar of their conversation.

I stand and take my tray over to the kitchen counter to be cleaned, then make for the hallway, trusting Gopan to be right behind me. I wait for him next to the door, and I'm not disappointed when he walks out calmly a couple of seconds after I do.

I stare at him for a moment, taking in his surprised expression as he registers my presence, and I feel tired. I feel exhausted.

"Come on. Let's go somewhere we can talk privately," I mutter, crossing my arms. Gopan eyes me, then nods.

"I asked to borrow one of the conference rooms. We can talk there," he says as he starts off down the hallway.

I follow him down the hallway. The room he takes us to isn't big; there's only just enough room to pace around the table. I sit. If I stand, I'll run, and this time I won't come back.

Gopan paces on the other side of the table, glancing at me every couple of seconds. I take a breath.

"I'm not . . . I'm not sorry."

Gopan stops pacing to look over at me, then sits down at the table with a frustrated sigh. "I am. I shouldn't have asked. I don't . . . I'm trying to get to know you, but I don't need to pile at your store spots. I didn't know that. I've never done this before."

He pauses, looks at me. His eyes don't focus on my face, but they never have. In this light, they look darker than they normally do, still not reaching any eye color I would consider normal, but they're not so faintly green. I fold my hands in front of me.

"I have to tell you something."

We both pause, watching each other warily.

"I'll go first," I offer after a moment, and he nods. "I'm not a . . . I'm female. As in . . . I wasn't teased for being a stoneworker because it was a perfectly respectable job."

"Oh. I was going to say - do you want me to go - I," Gopan stops, looking uncomfortable. "Um. That would explain a lot."

"I would hope not," I reply, watching him. He's not leaning away. I glance behind me for a moment as footsteps pass the closed door, my heart beat pounding louder in my ears for a moment.

"I can see why," Gopan replies as the footsteps fade away, fingers tapping on the table like he wants to return to pacing, but can't now that he's committed himself to sitting. Then, like he can no longer hold it in, he blurts out, "I'm blind."

I hear his teeth click as he closes his mouth, then the room is silent as he goes still. He doesn't look at me. I watch him for a moment, thinking about the way his eyes don't focus.

"Alright." My fingers are clenched when I look down. I straighten them. I wonder how he reads. "I think that I need some time. To think."

"That's fine," he replies.

I flee the room.

Rasul is talking with one of the older guards when I step into the entryway, and he waves me over and assigns me to one of the farther guardhouses. I spend the afternoon there thinking, like I had at the front desk of the station.

I still want to be a soldier, to have some greater cause. Gopan is still my best shot at it, and now that we've traded secrets, I can't transfer away from for fear that he'll tell. He can't leave either. Being blind is almost as bad as being female.

I wonder what he had intended to tell me before I told him I was a girl.

And . . . we could be friends. I could have a friend I don't share dreams with. I've never quite dared to try before; I didn't want to be called crazy.

I go to the courtyard we've been training in and sit opposite where I had sat yesterday, opposite where I had sat every other day before now. It's new, and I feel slightly nervous at that. I don't know how Gopan will approach me, I don't know if he'll even think to come here after yesterday, and now I don't know the ground around me. But it's a new beginning, and that's what I feel like we need.

Gopan comes in only a couple of minutes after me, and it takes him a moment to find me in my new spot. I watch him carefully, track the way how head tiles and what I can see if his eyes, and I wonder if I could have, should have discovered his secret sooner.

His eyes meet mine as he turns. Even though I know he can't see, it feels like they're seeing who I really am. Then he smiles at me.