--Lynne—

Lynne's friend had returned, but Lynne wasn't focused on the conversation. She kept glancing at a young man in red robes by the banquet table. She tapped her friend gently on the arm. "Who is that man that keeps staring at me?" she whispered under the talk of the room.

"I don't know," she decided after observing him for a few minutes. "I've never seen him before. Go talk to him!"

"What?" Lynne pulled her sleeves up again. Why were these cursed things so loose?

"Go on!" Her friend subtly nudged her forward, and Lynne suddenly found herself half way across the room with no idea how she had gotten there. She took a deep meditative breath and changed direction slightly so as to come to the table a little further down.

"Good evening," he said pleasantly.

"Good evening," she returned, picking up the ladle to pour herself a drink. But her hands were shaking so badly she only got a few drops in her glass.

"Allow me," he said. He took the ladle and filled her cup himself.

"Thank you," she mumbled, and took a sip. Her breath hitched, something it hadn't done since she'd mastered airbending, and she began coughing.

He frowned, but with a wave of his hand, he pulled the water out of her airway and into an empty glass. "Sorry," she said, but he shook his head.

"It was nothing."

Neither of them said anything.

"Is it always so hot in these rooms?" he asked, trying to find some sort of conversation before she fled his presence.

"Oh yes, summer parties are the worst. We usually have them outside."

"I always preferred garden parties."

"Me too."

"I'm Lynne."

"I'm Kyzu."

They blushed. "You go ahead," he said, gesturing for her to continue, but her eyes had widened.

"Kyzu? Not Avatar Kyzu, surely!"

"Guilty," he said, ducking his head. "And your name is?"

"By the trade winds," she said, not paying the least attention. "You're not old at all!"

"Thank you?" he said, confused.

Instantly, her fan popped open to cover her face, and her eyes became guarded.

"Oh no!" he said. "Don't do that, we were starting to have such a nice talk. Please, don't change your behavior toward me."

Lynne stopped fluttering her fan so wildly as she thought this over.

Kyzu tried to think of something to say to fix things. But he could only come up with one thing. "Would you like to dance?" he said in a rush, then hoped she didn't think him too forward.

She hesitated. "I'm Lynne," she said with a smile.

--Kyzu—

Several hours later, after a quick word with a key servant, Kyzu had arranged for Lynne to sit by him near the head of the dinner table. She seemed uncomfortable to be sitting so close to the Earth King and the Avatar, but she was handling it well.

Kyzu prided himself that he was able to monopolize her conversation, making sure she never said more than necessary to the other people around her. He thought he could detect a special shine in her eyes when she talked to him, and he had to constantly remind himself that the Earth King's table was not the place to start flying around and bending impressively. He was so intent on Lynne's reaction to his joke that he nearly missed what the Earth King said.

"Kyzu, do you think it possible that the Avatar is not the only one to undergo reincarnation?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. None of the past lives he had contacted had hinted at any such possibility.

The Earth King waved to two men across from Kyzu. "There have been several new theories concerning the reincarnation of other people, from the commonest potter to the wealthiest emperor."

"Indeed," said the man on the left. "We're working on an idea about bending. Take a single spirit, like this girl's," he gestured to Lynne, who hurriedly tugged at her sleeves to hide her tattoos, but you could still see the tip of the arrow on her forehead, "an Airbender. When she dies, the spirit will move on, following the Avatar cycle, so it will be reborn as a Waterbender. But it is an airbending spirit, so while it is in the Water Tribe, it will not be able to bend. Same with Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. When it finally reenters the Air Nomad culture, the spirit can bend again."

"Fascinating," Kyzu allowed, but he was more focused on how the speech had made Lynne draw into herself like a hermit crab.

"And there's another theory that might interest you," the man on the right said. "We've been looking through ancient texts and found several passages which allude to a matching spirit to the Avatar."

"What?" Kyzu asked. "Matching spirit? Like yin and yang, complementing each other?"

"Precisely," said the first man. "We've taken to calling it the Consort. At the most basic level, it is born into the nation of the opposite element that the Avatar is born into. The Avatar and the Consort usually find a way to meet, and may or may not marry, depending on the circumstances."

"Circumstances?" asked the Earth King. He looked mildly amused for some reason.

"Well, for example, Avatar Aang didn't have a chance to find his Consort before he became trapped in the iceberg. A hundred years of war passed. The Consort was probably killed at least once during that time. They could hardly get married, now, could they?"

"So, my Consort would be from the Water Tribe?" Kyzu asked.

"Um, we're not sure," the second man confessed. "Because of Avatar Aang's hundred-year imprisonment, it threw the cycle off, though we're not sure by how much."

"Or if there's any substance to this theory at all?"

"Historical evidence – "

"- Can be misleading," the Earth King finished. "If any of you have bothered to read Firelord Sozin's memoirs…" he looked around at his audience, but everyone except Kyzu shook their head, "you would think that he had summoned the comet, then rode it into battle and used it's very fire to smite his enemies. Now, I wouldn't place a copper's worth of value on that account except to tell me that the comet and the Fire Nation victory were connected in some way. The same can be said of many a historical text."

A ceramic clink caught Kyzu's attention. Lynne was pushing her food around her plate, and her spoon had dropped on the plate. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, I just…need to get some air," she said, avoiding his gaze. "Excuse me, Your Majesty," she said. The Earth King nodded, and a servant jumped forward to pull her chair out for her. Kyzu watched as she swept across the room toward a courtyard. She didn't look back. At least, not until she had reached the doorway. And then she was gone.