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Scorched earth. Such a simple image, and yet it still sent those memories flooding in. At least here, the air didn't swell with the stench of burning skin, nor did flies swarm in, too inconsiderate to wait for the bereaved to tend to their dead.
My home had been in a northern valley of the Earth Kingdom, less than fifty miles from the shore, and yet I had never seen the ocean, not until the days following the Fire Nation raid on my village that everyone knew had been long overdue. The last raid there had ravaged the land, killed or whisked away most of the men, and left the women to plead with nearby villages for provisions. It was a long recovery. That first raid had happened less than a year before I was born, and even at age twelve I knew our village was scarred.
My mother, always that look of strain on her face, made the most of our situation. She refused to leave. She had lived there all her life, and though her father and brother were gone, and though my grandmother had one foot in the grave, she never wanted to discuss moving.
Of my father, she said only that we were better off never seeing his face again. I knew my mother well enough not to ask.
Even on her death bed, after her body had shrunk to brittle bone, her own blood turned against her, I couldn't ask. She had taught me to seek comfort in the unknowable. That to dwell in possibility was to be free of constraints. And so I kissed her and told her how I loved her, until her fingers cooled and breath released.
The spring of my thirteenth year, high winds swept black smoke across our fields and through the holes of our patchwork homes.
And then my village, my home, was no more.
I hid away among those starved cornstalks lining our village for two days. Blotted out the fire, hardened myself against the screams. Two days, and I began to believe I might escape alive.
That night, I woke to a man, mid-forties and remarkably feline, face carrying the lines of someone who never smiled.
"Finally," he said, kneeling down. Red armor. Flame adorned. "I've been looking day and night for you."
As I approached the ruined forest, I remembered a conversation with the avatar from years ago. In the months after the end of the war, Aang hung onto his enthusiasm, his bright-eyed tales of adventures across the continent. This excitement was replaced, eventually, with anxiety and reservation. He was still a child, so young, and faced with the sudden reality that the world was too divided to be simply pieced back together. Uprisings across the Fire Nation, greedy generals wishing to divide up the Earth Kingdom into their own feudal states.
Hei Bai. Aang and his partner, Katara, had told me about their run-in with the spirit.
Ba Sing Se, winter settling in, the fragrant steam of Iroh's jasmine tea putting all of us at ease. This was during a "vacation" Zuko had insisted I take, a reprieve from work as his advisor, a position that still didn't feel earned. That I could take a vacation after years of homelessness and vagrancy was laughable to me.
"Sokka, always trying to be the hero," Katara said, pointing to her brother.
"He rushed the spirit head-on," Aang cut in, giddy. "I had to enter the spirit world to save him."
"Don't complain," Sokka called from across the tea room. He was in the middle of painting a portrait of our young Fire Lord, and had rubbed ink across his nose and chin. "Communing with spirits is your job."
This camaraderie, the ability to make jokes, had been a welcome reprieve. It felt good to laugh again.
"The forest Hei Bai protected had been burned down by the Fire Nation," Aang explained, and a guilty tremble set across Zuko's body. I smirked at him. No amount of good deed would weed out his regret at everything his nation did during the war. I had told him once that earth and waterbenders were guilty of horrors, too, and somehow that hadn't reassured him.
"Hei Bai had been attacking and kidnapping villagers, thinking they had burned his domain down, but I was able to show him the truth. That the forest would grow and bring new life back to his home."
"How?" I had asked.
"I showed the spirit acorns from the destroyed forest."
"And then he turned into a giant cuddly panda and returned us all to the living," Sokka said, dripping ink onto his painting.
After, Zuko and I walked along the innermost wall of the city. The wind was bitter cold, but we kept ourselves warm, speaking of the brilliant order of the city, and the inevitable need for the walls to come down. Order at the expense of equity and freedom was merely a flirtation with disaster. We had begun work with the regent, a distant relative of the previous king and a respected scholar, but his place on the throne was only for the time being.
"Do you regret it?" Zuko asked me as we drew farther and farther away from the tea house.
"Regret asking Sokka to paint your official portrait? Of course not."
He laughed.
"Do you regret taking the position as my advisor? You could've been free. Gone home."
"You know I don't have a home anymore." I ran my hands over my arms and sucked in my breath. Snow had begun to fall. "And of course I don't regret it. This is the first time I've been paid for proper work."
We stopped, presumably to turn back. I shivered, the cold settling inside me. Zuko took my hands in his and warmed them.
"I just thought, after—," but he trailed off and removed his hands. "I thought you might want some distance."
"We're both adults," I said, "or we practically are."
We didn't speak for the rest of the walk. When we re-entered the Jasmine Dragon, Sokka was busy mimicking a violent Hei Bai grabbing after Aang. Iroh had pulled out his tsungi horn, and Suki, fans in hand, offered us a song and dance, lyrics memorializing the tragic love of Oma and Shu. Zuko and I joined her in the dance, and soon Katara and Aang followed. For the first time in years, a weight lifted from my chest and I found my heart beating steadily, happily, beneath.
In the forest Hei Bai protected, I searched for further signs of a fight. I found none, only that lonely circle of black dirt. I went over the village once again. Nothing. Until I caught a curious birdsong along the wind. A heavy trill stopped off by a raspy squawk.
I returned to that burned spot, gazed down the path of destruction, and saw a glorious fan of feathers of all colors whip behind a tree, fifty feet off. Orbs of gold light lingered in its wake. I followed after, knowing now that Zuko and the villagers were near, cordoned off in that other realm.
