Rating: PG, probably; some unpleasant imagery - a fire, this time - but nothing especially explicit.
Characters/Pairing: This chapter's about Jet's mother, about whom we know nothing except that she's dead by the time canon rolls around. So, fair warning, this chapter is about an OC, and, briefly, her pairing with another OC.
Summary: Some of the missing and/or dead mothers of Avatar: who they might have been, and things they might have done or never did. Each chapter will be sort of its own five-things fic.
Disclaimer: Places and people you recognize from canon are not mine.
Acknowledgements: GIANT THANK-YOU to my sister, for the beautiful art (unfortunately, I can't embed it here!) and the constant nagging. And, of course, to the ladiesbigbang challenge on Dreamwidth, for leading me to actually get off my butt and post fic.
Other Notes: I knew nothing whatsoever about the care and feeding of silkworms before I wrote this, and I couldn't have done it without the free preview of Chinese Silk: A Cultural History available on Google Books. Also, I do realize that Chinese women do not typically take their husbands' names, but I am given to understand - through Wikipedia, so take this with a grain of salt - that in some regions, they used to. So the reference in here to name changery is not the result of thoughtlessness, I promise.
(One person Jet's mother might have been, and five things she might have done.)
One:
Jinshiang loves her parents dearly; loves working on the farm, tending the pig cows, raking the hay. But it's exhausting work that never ends, and she sees how her parents stoop, the weariness that curves their shoulders, and knows that she can't spend the rest of her life doing it.
She has four brothers and two sisters, so she knows she will not leave her parents without anyone to care for them, and she resolves to herself that she will send them as much money as she can spare; more, even. This alleviates much of the guilt she feels for deciding to head for the city.
She tells her mother first, because Mother will see the sense in it even if she doesn't want to. Father won't want her to go, and he'll let that overwhelm all other considerations; but Mother will understand. Chaoying and Mei Sun are pleased for her, and when they are all squeezed into their bed together that night, they whisper to her excitedly of all the wonders the city undoubtedly holds.
When the day comes, Father cries; not as an attempt at persuasion, only because he is sorry to let her go. Mei Sun helps Mother and the boys comfort him, and Chaoying winds her arms around Jinshiang and murmurs, smiling, "Don't forget to send me presents."
Jinshiang laughs and shakes her head, but she knows she won't.
Their farm is in the northwest; not as far as you can get from Ba Sing Se, but not close, either, and the trains don't go that far from the city. Jinshiang is prepared to walk the whole way - her legs are strong, she thinks with a smile, after chasing down so many pig chickens - but perhaps halfway to the train, there is a family with a cart, and they let Jinshiang ride on the back corner and make sure none of their belongings fall off the back.
The train is beautiful. The track looks like a bridge from far away, arching over the ground like all that stone weighs nothing at all - like a bridge to the sky, the way it ends where they're waiting. They can hear the train coming long before they can see it, the Earthbending that pushes it making the track shake and rumble, and by the time it finally comes into view, Jinshiang feels like her heart has been pounding for at least an hour.
She helps the family with the cart load their things onto the train, and then takes a seat, as close to the back of the train as she can. She thinks she'll like being able to feel the quiver of Earthbending through the train floor, knowing every tremble is bringing her closer to the city, and she won't mind if it takes her a while to fight her way back to the door when they arrive. This train is hope incarnate, her path to her new life; she won't complain if she ends up spending ten extra minutes on it.
Two:
Jinshiang bows to Shing Minleng as deeply as she can manage, and wonders whether she can figure out how to put lice in the five bolts of silk he has just ordered.
If she has gotten the job, that is; she turns, and sees Mistress Tsu smiling at her from the corner where she has been watching, invisible from where Lord Shing was standing. "Good," she says decisively. "If you can handle Lord Shing on the first day, you can handle the job."
Jinshiang lets out a sigh of relief, and only realizes it was audible when Mistress Tsu laughs. "My apologies-" she starts.
Mistress Tsu waves a hand. "Enough," she says. "You have only just come to the city, haven't you? You have the look of someone who has just stepped off the train."
This is not precisely true; it has been nearly a whole month, a month of sleeping in doorways and on roofs so that she may devote her dwindling store of coins to feeding herself. She was not quite clean enough, fine enough, to pass the gates into the Middle Ring, so she spent a whole handful of money yesterday to get all her clothes laundered, and if she had not won this job, it might well have been a waste.
"They are not all like Lord Shing," Mistress Tsu assures her. "And he pays well, which you will find helps to make his foibles forgivable."
Jinshiang thinks he surpassed foibles a long time ago - he is both rude and demanding, and sighed like she was deliberately thwarting him when she told him it would take time to obtain the exact dye shades he requires. But if he pays well, and Mistress Tsu demands it, Jinshiang will touch her head to the floor in front of him, as long as she can keep this job.
Mistress Tsu insists that Jinshiang cannot work at the shop wearing such clothes as she has, even though they look better than they ever have before; Jinshiang suspects this is half truth, and half an excuse for Mistress Tsu to give her a generous stack of silks. Jinshiang went into the shop at random, but she chose well: Mistress Tsu is kind and thoughtful, with a gentle sense of humor. When she finds out Jinshiang has nowhere to stay, she helps her find a place in the Lower Ring that is reasonably priced and not unpleasant, and pays her early so that she may move there immediately.
And she was right; all the customers are not like Lord Shing. Certainly, there are other lords and ladies whose every action seems designed to tell Jinshiang that she does not meet their standards for service; but they get tailors, too, and women from the Middle Ring who embroider the most beautiful things Jinshiang has ever seen in her life.
At first, the silks catch on Jinshiang's rough hands, but soon the callouses of the farm fade and she handles the cloth as delicately and confidently as Mistress Tsu herself. She sends money home as fast as she can make it, and saves up enough money to buy silk robes for Chaoying and Mei Sun and Mother from one of their best customers.
Her favorite days are when Lord Shing sends his servants, instead of coming himself. She appreciates deeply what she has been spared, and if she is lucky, the servant who comes will be Peng Shao. Peng Shao is polite, with a face made for smiling, and never complains once when she lingers over the bolts and talks with him, even though it makes an hour-long visit out of what might easily have been a ten-minute trip. Mistress Tsu teases her often about Peng Shao, and though Jinshiang protests, it makes her face hot with happiness.
Three:
They cannot afford a house in the Middle Ring, but the nearer you are to the gates between rings, the better the Lower Ring becomes; so they find a perfectly good place in the Lower Ring by the Great South Gate, and they have lived there for nearly a year when the fire starts.
It doesn't begin anywhere near them, but it has been a dry summer and the wind is high, so it's not long before they hear a distant roaring.
At first it sounds like the wind, and Jinshiang pays it no attention; then it sounds like water rushing, and Jinshiang listens to the change in volume for a moment before realizing something about it is unusual. She leaves the rice to heat briefly unattended, and steps toward the door, sharing a look of confusion with Shao.
The first thing she sees when she opens the door is people running. The second thing is the great black smear of smoke hanging in the west, the sun glinting redly through it like a molten coin.
"Shao," she cries, and looks to the west, and yes, there, she can see the flames, pulled by the wind into whirling arcs and towers. The wind is coming from the west, blowing into her face hot as a bellows, and she feels a spike of fear deep in her belly.
They run for the Great South Gate. It's lucky they are so close, Jinshiang is thinking, and then slows, uncertain. There is a great crowd at the gate, people banging on the wood with their fists; but the gates are not opening.
She stares, uncomprehending, but Shao yanks her back with a terrible, knowing look on his face. "Keep running," he shouts, over the noise.
"But the wind," Jinshiang yells, "the sparks - they'll go over the wall-"
Shao shakes his head. "They won't open the gates," he says. "Not if they think it will help save the Middle Ring. Keep running," he repeats, and they do.
They live, because they are fast and lucky; they outlast the wind, which changes direction in the evening, as it often does, and then dies down.
Squads of Earthbenders in the Middle Ring raised the walls, and lifted stone against the backs of the wooden gates to keep the fire out. Only when the wind has changed do they rush into the Lower Ring and raise earthen barriers against the flames, and begin to beat the fire back.
Their house is gone, leaving behind half a blackened frame and a smattering of scorched dishes, cracked by the heat. They have nothing left to pack up, which makes it easier to leave.
Ostensibly, they leave Ba Sing Se because their house has been destroyed, and they need somewhere to go. But when Jinshiang steps back onto the train - hope incarnate, she remembers, and feels suddenly ill and tired - she knows that's not the real reason.
Four:
They held their wedding ceremony at the Peng family home, Jinshiang's parents traveling far west across the Serpent's Pass to help select an auspicious date; so they settle in relatively familiar surroundings, a boon after the harrowing experience of the fire.
Jinshiang does not start out with the intention of running a silkworm house; to be honest, she has barely any plans at all, not knowing what she will do if she cannot sell silk in this new city. But Mistress Tsu clucked often over their fabrics, exclaiming that these silkworms must have been fed duckweed, and those nothing but the finest white mulberry, and when Jinshiang passes the silkworm house on the bank of the lake, she remembers it all at once.
She still has her silk-clever fingers - one thing the fire could not take from her - and she develops a knack for steaming cocoons, and takes to even the most tedious tasks with an ease that surprises even her. Stirring until the sticky gum loosens from the silk fibers is oddly calming, with built-in breaks because the water must be kept hot; and in mere weeks, she is reeling silk like she has been doing it all her life. Soon enough, the other women are calling her Mistress Peng, which makes Jinshiang want to laugh; she feels about as much like someone's mistress as she did when she first climbed onto the train to Ba Sing Se.
When her son is born, they coo over him, and her best customers bring gifts of silk woven from her own worms; and as soon as he is tall enough to reach, she teaches him how to pick only the best leaves from their mulberry bushes.
Five:
She will never forget the fire; she still dreams of it sometimes, and wakes with her breath harsh in her throat, covered with sweat as though she has been running. There are days she cannot help but remember, when the sun sets with a particular scarlet glow, or when the wind brings them the smoky smell of wildfires on the western plains.
She thinks it is one of those days, at first, when the smell of burning comes to her, and closes her eyes for a moment over the tray of silkworms she is feeding. She hates those days.
But then Yang comes running in, eight-year-old face tight with fear, and she knows it's something else.
The silkworm house is on the outskirts of the city, their home even further, so she can afford to stand still for a moment and stare at the smoke. Everyone had known the Fire Nation was close, but General Yu had been between them and the Fire Nation's armies; they had assumed they were safe.
But the flames consuming the market district say otherwise. Even this far away, Jinshiang can see the banners of the Fire Lord, hidden by the smoke one moment and flapping free the next.
"Home," she tells Yang, "home right now," and starts planning where she will hide him before the soldiers come.