Author's Note: I would like to thank all the people who have put this on their alerts and favorites. I appreciate the support for this odd idea of a story. I greatly thank those that have reviewed for their diligence. I apologize for the lack of updates, as I've just started school and that's always a bit of a rough time. I hope to update more often in the future and I thank everyone for their patience and continual support.
Korra thinks she understands her daughter's problems with spirituality.
She understands that about as much as Pema understands her son Amzin.
They are both growing quieter as time goes on, and although their shared disdain of the spiritual world should bring them problems with their parents, Kyoda thinks she has it worse, because her parents are supportive, and that's a lot harder to deal with because it means they haven't tried to force it on her. They think that she's fine without it.
They don't understand that she fears spirituality.
She fears bending. She doesn't want to be a bender, and if it's a spiritual thing, then spirits and tales of them are to be avoided. She doesn't want to make the earth tremble or make tsunamis out of the gutter or set the air ablaze. She doesn't want to be an earthbender with Water Tribe skin or a waterbender with earthbender eyes and firebender's hair or a firebender with the wrong everything but her hair. She will not be a mismatched puzzle piece in the world. She will be a plain nonbender and move away one day, to some tiny village where no one knows her and she can make a living quietly away from the noise and judgmental stares.
Until then she fears the spirit world and awakes screaming every time her dreams seem to have any spirit, any past Avatar with kind eyes full of sorrow for her. She withdraws from them as if they're monsters and more often than not her mother comes to attend to her. Korra is a fierce warrior of a mother and yells at the spirits her blue eyes track through the room, until they are gone and her daughter is safely held tight in muscular arms. Korra thinks they are spirits coming in guises of human spirits. She does not understand that they're truly coming to try to help Kyoda, and she keeps them at bay as best she can, but spirituality was never her strong point, either.
When Kyoda is better at sneaking by the White Lotus Sentries, she sneaks out to where Amzin is. He is like her brother, and they share a roof on Air Temple Island, so she feels no shame or hesitance in hiding from the spirits and her mother there. Her mother does not understand and it hurts Kyoda; how can she tell her parents she doesn't want to be a bender? When her mother bends all four elements and her father and uncle bend fire and earth, her grandmother Senna a fine waterbender, how can Kyoda even think she doesn't want to bend? Something is horribly wrong with her and she cries many tears over it, drinking teas that Amzin custom blends, as they stay awake long into the night and early hours of the morning, together in how alone they are. He has the opposite problem, seeing his mother's exhaustion at putting up with another bender of a child, but he listens like no one else. He understands living under a legacy.
The kids at school don't. She has friends, of course, but they don't know what it's like to be so wary of the world at the age of eight. She can't properly explain it either, so she shares it only with Amzin, bit by bit, day by day. Older kids make kissy faces at the two, but Kyoda still thinks kissing is gross and Amzin just rolls his eyes. They are unnaturally serious as a natural result of how they've been raised. At least by the time her ninth birthday rolls around her father has quit trying to get her to bend through hands-on training.
Until then he takes her out to the gym above the pro-bending arena and tries things. He thinks she's unhappy because she can't bend. And like finding a job or fighting the Equalists, Mako approaches things practically. He finds solutions. It's what he does. When it's for someone he loves, he can even lightningbend under the duress of being bloodbended; he is the kind of father who will make life better because he feels it's just how he works. So their trips to the gym ensue after he's off work, and he and some old pro-bending buddies show her all kinds of techniques and positions and work with her. She is terrified to find that something within her stirs at these sessions, but she fights it down. Like forcing down unpleasant tea, she shoves it away and nothing moves, nothing burns, nothing so much as sways. Mako keeps trying until she breaks down in tears one day, envisioning a future where this is her life and she has to fight this feeling every day.
He thinks she's crying because he's pushed her too far. He regrets it, and stops. It's the best ninth birthday present she's gotten next to a vest from Amzin that makes her eyes look blue. It's still not enough to make her normal, but two instead of three is better accepted, and she hugs him. That night she dreams she runs from the spirits who visit her as fast as she can, through a forest thick with fog, until her legs give out and she must claw and crawl every inch further, which she does until she wakes.
The spirits visit her no more after that.