There was always a breeze. His pyjamas floated around him, clouds brushing against his fingertips like spun cotton. The fields of fire lilies drifted past far below, petals collected by invisible hands, whirling around him in gentle tornadoes. He could see the shadows of four people on the ground, moving through the flowers in a dance of perfect symmetry, the parted blossoms tracing faint lines in their wake. He watched them quietly as they moved, mesmerised.
He sensed rather than saw Mushi appear beside him. "What are they doing, Uncle?"
The old man looked down at the ocean of red, smiling, "Ah, the dancers. They are making a mandala." His hand stretched out, following the path of the shadows, showing the intricate pattern in its entirety. "They move through the flowers, making beautiful and complex patterns, so that the wind may smooth all their work away. They have been dancing for ten thousand years, and still they leave no trace."
Jianyu frowned. "But why do it in the first place if it always gets blown away? It seems like such a waste."
Mushi tucked his hands back into the sleeves of his billowing robes, "This you must understand, Jiji. While the people around us may seem like the mountains, we are all temporary, like the fire lilies. We have our time in the sun, and then we all must leave. Even mountains are worn down by the wind and rain, and turned to dust."
He caught a few petals in his fingertips, watching the rest fly away into the clouds, "The wind must be very powerful, then."
"Yes, it is. But so are mountains. Where the wind wears one down, another rises somewhere else. No element is more powerful than the others."
"Mom says metal is more powerful than anything else in the world."
The dancers kept circling below. Mushi was quiet for a long time. "Tell me, Jiji. What happens to your mother's naval ships, if they are left adrift at sea?"
"They sink." He let the petals he was holding go, and watched as they joined the streams of confetti drifting away. "The paint peels off. They rust, and creak, and fall to pieces. The water swallows them."
The old man nodded. "Any element can defeat another, in the right circumstances. It is all part of the balance of the world, like the symmetry of the mandala. No dancer can move without being matched by the others."
He looks back down at the dancers. "So why aren't there any airbenders?"
Mushi sighed, and his face suddenly seemed very old. "That is a long and terrible story, Jianyu. It comes from a time before you, and before me."
"Tell me."
"Very well." The clouds lit up in vivid reds and golds as the sun began to dip below the horizon. "This is the story of a very powerful ruler of the Fire Nation, Fire Lord Sozin..."
"Hey kid come on, wake up! Jiji!"
He felt like throwing up as he opened his eyes, glasses sitting crooked and cracked on his nose. "Qí? What happened?"
She lets out a breath of relief, helping him to sit up, "Guess you're not as quick as I thought, pipsqueak. I knocked you a good one on the head. You were out for a bit there."
He pushed himself up slowly, the world swimming around him, "Man, I had a weird dream."
"You always have weird dreams." She stood up beside him, straightening his tunic and glasses up, "Let's get you inside. No more training until we're sure you don't have a concussion."
Mom was packing again.
Jianyu sat quietly at the table, nursing the egg on the side of his head with a block of ice wrapped in a cloth. As much as he liked Qí, he hated it when Mom went away on her search missions. She was always gone for weeks on end, and rarely sent word home. "Why can't you send someone else to go?"
She frowned in frustration. "Jiji, I've told you over and over again. The Avatar is a very dangerous enemy, even if they're young. I can't expect my troops to face someone I won't face myself."
"But why can't we be allies with the Avatar?"
"That's what I hope will happen, if it can. But it's still dangerous to be out there. You're safest here."
"I don't want to be safe! I'm sick of being left behind!"
"Jianyu! This is the type of attitude I would expect from a snivelling beetle worm, let alone from you. You will behave while I'm gone. Do I make myself clear?"
A timid whimper broke from Jianyu as he sat quietly, and grumbled to himself. His head was aching, and he thought he might have a loose tooth, and Mom was leaving again, and it was all terrible and-
"Hey." She knelt down with a heavy sigh, and smiled at him fondly. "It's okay. I won't be gone long this time, and you're a tough eleven year old now, aren't you?"
"I guess." He hugs her tightly, "Be careful, Mom. I love you."
"I love you too."
Jianyu called Guanyin from his room as Kuvira made her way through the main hallway and out the front door, following after her. He had seen this ceremony occur a countless amount of times, and yet every moment he spent there standing at the end of the parade ground, his stomach churned like a bag of beetle worms. All he wanted was for Mom to come back safely. She was like a different person here, calculating and in control, every inch the Great Uniter. He felt lonely watching her.
Bowing deeply with her head facing the floor, arms straight at her sides, she spoke with a slow, solemn tone. "I, Kuvira of Jin Nuo, Commander in Chief of the Earth Empire, formally acknowledge the authority of the Council Triumvirate to act as the guides of this great city in my absence."
A woman, with greying hair and a thin, angular face stepped forward and bowed deeply in return. "I, Councilwoman Huiling, speak on behalf of the Council Triumvirate, and officially accept and recognise the responsibility that Kuvira of Jin Nuo, Great Uniter of the Earth Empire has entrusted us in lieu of her travels. May Oma and Shu bless her with a successful journey and shield her from any harm. May she live ten thousand years."
After a moment of silence, both rose from their positions and faced the small crowd, bowing briefly to acknowledge them before Kuvira turned away, marching off towards the mountains as one of the guards played the salute on a tsungi horn. Jianyu's hand buried itself into the smooth and prickly fuzz of Guanyin's fur as he watched her go. He stayed there in the gathering dusk, watching until the last glint of her metal uniform disappeared into the mountains.
The guards on the battlements sung out the call. "ALL HAIL THE GREAT UNITER!"
His chest hurt.
A/N
Lou: Iroh is back! And Jiji has very odd dreams indeed.
The idea of a ten thousand year eternity seems to be a very prevalent in The Legend of Korra, especially in book 2, with the occurrence of harmonic convergence every ten thousand years. It is used in Chinese on Kuvira's banners throughout book 4, that read "may Kuvira live 10,000 years". It seems to be the Avatar equivalent of an eternity (maybe coming from the idea of a cyclical eternity in traditional Indian mythology?). I based the idea of the dancers' mandala off the sand mandalas made by Buddhist monks, who make intricately patterned mandalas out of sand and then brush them all away to show the impermanence of life and the material world.
Jin Nuo is the new name for Zaofu. Kuvira isn't so self-absorbed to name it after herself, but the old name just couldn't stay :) The new name roughly means "gracious metal".
Pat: holy heck thank you all for reading this far! we're having a lot of fun writing this and we hope you're having fun reading