A/N: ooooh, I'm so thankful for everyone who read my story! Thanks!
Disclaimer: I don't own A:TLA or Legend of Korra.
Chapter Three: Hired Help
Bolin, when it came down to it, really was a natural country boy. As a kid he'd helped his mother plow the fields with earthbending, and seemed to share an understanding with animals of all shapes and sizes. Back in the days before the drought, their family had owned a small farm with beaver-pigs and turtle-ducks. Bolin had practically run the little farm by himself, taking care of each animal with attentive care. The animals, in turn, seemed to trust him like no other.
Apart from farm work, cooking was a favorite pastime of his. When their mother had been pregnant with Min, Bolin had taken it upon himself to do most of the cooking. Although Bolin spent more time eating his mother's meals rather than helping her cook anything, he turned out to be just as skilled at whipping up a dish of fried rice as he was at cleaning his plate.
The villagers all knew this about Bolin and, coupled with Bolin's amiable character and carefree spirit, took a liking to him almost at once. There was hardly anyone in Toh Sa Village or the neighboring town he wasn't on speaking terms with.
Bolin rather enjoyed being a social magnet but he sometimes wondered if Mako was bothered by it. No matter how you looked at it, Mako and Bolin were complete opposites.
When they were younger, their parents had encouraged Mako to help out in the soy bean fields like his younger brother. Their parents regretted this action immediately once Mako started displaying such an uncanny knack for ruining more crops than he actually grew that his mother had thought he was doing it on purpose.
"How dare you do this, Mako! How dare you!"
"Xiuling, calm down. I'm sure our son didn't mean it."
In Bolin's opinion, it wasn't for a lack of trying but even he had to admit Mako's appalling abilities. The young firebender never watered the seeds but drowned them, constantly pulled out saplings by their roots thinking they were weeds, and on one memorable occasion managed to kill an entire field of soy beans after giving them twice the amount of fertilizer than necessary. Thankfully, the animals were spared due to Bolin's refusal to let his brother do anything more than pet them.
After being forbidden to do so much as stare at the field for too long, Mako spent most of his time playing indoors with his father and Mireu. Kenji, who'd been a novelist before marrying their mother and moving to the country, taught Mako calligraphy and let him read from his personal collection. It wasn't long before Mako read his father's entire collection and started requesting other reading material which Kenji supplied whenever he could.
His father had often brought back books on new subjects Mako had never even heard of. Once his father had found a dusty maintenance manual at a flea market and Mako, not even knowing what a motorcycle was, had finished it in one sitting. After a couple more instruction manual read-throughs, Bolin had watched his older brother fixing everything from the kitchen pipeline to the neighbor's old plowing machine. By the time they were teenagers, Mako was taking odd jobs at a neighboring town and earning pocket money. When their father left, Mako started taking up even more jobs in order to support their family.
As far as Bolin could tell, Mako usually spent more time tinkering than conversing with anyone in town. Even in their own village Mako usually spent his time alone or with his family members. The most interaction he had with his neighbors were polite greetings and limited small talk. There were very few boys their age now but when growing up, most of the village kids had teased Mako mercilessly for his conspicuous height, and Mako had few friends to miss when they moved away.
It was perhaps for this last reason that Bolin felt compelled to keep his brother company even when he was making his daily road trip to town for one of his gigs.
"Shouldn't you be getting back to the fields?" Mako asked when after a while Bolin didn't turn back to head home.
"What for? You saw the fields; they're doomed." Bolin answered morosely. He looked sideways (at an upward angle) at his brother and added, "Besides, I thought I'd get a job myself. Just to keep busy, you know."
The two brothers walked the rest of the way in silence until they reached Shin Ren Town.
Shin Ren Town was roughly an hour's walk from Toh Sa Village. The town's main attraction was a busy marketplace which comprised a series of large tented areas and a row of shops with ancient plywood walls and rusty tin roofs. Most of the merchants were outside fanning themselves or chatting with their neighbors. A trickle of customers milled around, browsing and attempting to score outrageous bargains.
Mako and Bolin made their way through the market, passing stands selling fruit, beans, dried red peppers, and a tangle of strange herbs a seedy merchant claimed were "mystical healing agents". Some people were selling pots and pans, others selling live trout that thrashed around in basins of water. Mako had to practically drag Bolin forward as every time they came across something edible, Bolin's feet slowed, his pupils dilated, and his mouth positively watered at the sight of food.
"You just ate lunch!" Mako hissed impatiently when Bolin stopped in his tracks the fifth time to gaze longingly at a neatly stacked pile of moon cakes.
At long last, they reached a part of the market where there were less things to eat and far fewer people bustling about. Mako entered a shop to their right which had a faded sign hanging over the door reading "Noh's Print Shop".
"Good afternoon, Mr. Noh," Mako said, bowing to an elderly old man upon entering. The old man had a mop of gray hair, his face a fleshy mask of liver spots and behind a pair of half-moon spectacles twinkled a pair of kind, brown eyes. His hands were folded in front of him and he walked with a slight limp, a souvenir from a childhood accident.
Mr. Noh was the owner of the only printing press in the entire market. Inside his shop, the air was stuffy and hot even with the windows thrown wide open and a fan sputtered on the desk making ominous grinding noises. Every single inch of wallspace had been devoted to printouts of different font, format and ink. At the very back of the shop was an old printing press which shook violently every time it spat out paper.
"Ah, Mako. Right on time I see," Mr. Noh said, clapping a wrinkly hand on Mako's elbow, his shoulder being out of reach. The old man then turned to Bolin who had stumbled in behind his older brother. "and your brother is here with you. Bolin, was it?"
"Yes, sir!" Bolin replied, straightening up immediately.
"Ah, forgive an old man his failing memory but-," he turned to Mako, a little perplexed. "I don't recall giving your brother a job as well."
"No, sir, you didn't," Mako replied as Bolin flushed red and tried to blend in with his surroundings. "But you see, sir, we were wondering if you couldn't make an exception because of the-"
Mr. Noh waved away his explanation, shaking his head.
"Yes, yes, I know Mako. The drought, isn't it?" When the two boys nodded he continued, "It's not just your village that's being affected you know. The farmers of Shin Ren are quite as devastated. However-" he gave Mako a meaningful look. "-I'm afraid this position is the only one I'm offering right now. Bolin will have to find work elsewhere."
Bolin looked crestfallen but took his leave. Mako watched the door close behind him before turning back to Mr. Noh.
"I am sorry, Mako," the old man apologized again. "I wish I could do more to help you. I knew your father, after all."
"It's okay, Mr. Noh. I'm quite grateful for the job opportunity." Mako replied.
"Hmm, keeping busy, I take it? From what I hear around the market, you're already working for half a dozen of my neighbors." Mr. Noh peered at Mako over his spectacles, examining the young firebender.
Mako didn't answer him.
Outside, Bolin had returned to his previous activity of staring at every single item of food on display. Some of the more agitated merchants shooed him away when he got too close to drooling over their products but most greeted him with a half-exasperated, half-amused smiles.
One of Bolin's all-time favorite snacks was traditional Duk which were rice cakes and came in a variety of shapes and sizes. The merchant who sold Duk from a wagon stall was a middle-aged motherly type with a broad forehead and large quantities of bushy black hair she kept tied with a blue ribbon. Her name was Huaming, a good friend of Bolin's mother Xiuling, and knew only too well of Bolin's insatiable appetite for her Duk.
"I wondered when little Bolin was going to come visit me," She said as Bolin practically dived for her little wagon stall display of treats. Huaming deftly stepped in front of him and caught him in a strangling embrace, effectly stopping Bolin from getting too close to the Duk cakes.
"Nice to see you too," Bolin gasped when Huaming finally released him. He stepped back, massaging his neck.
Huaming smiled broadly, taking in Bolin's features.
"My, my you've grown, Bolin," she exclaimed, patting him on the arm. "How's your family doing? Is your mother all right? What about the crops? And do you still hear from-"
Bolin interrupted her before she could finish. "Family's doing great; Mako's here working. Mom's doing okay, she's at home. The crops are- well, could be worse. And as for the other thing, we're still waiting."
Huaming nodded in understanding. She'd been one of the few people they'd confided in about their missing father although at this point Bolin suspected most everyone would have guessed the truth; there were only so many ways to answer the question "have you heard from your father?" without saying "no".
"Yes, I've seen your brother around here quite often, actually," Huaming said with a thoughtful expression. "Must be quite busy with all the part-time jobs."
"Yep. He just told me he's got five," Bolin replied, feeling slightly downcast. "I don't know how he handles them but at least he tries. I've been struggling to keep that crop alive for months and nothing's doing. I should've found a job like Mako when the drought kicked in."
Huaming pondered this for a moment, observing the usually upbeat Bolin's gloomy face.
"Well, a job isn't that hard to come by around here, actually. The problem is whether the pay is worth it," Huaming began. "And a whole lot of places just want cheap labor for almost no pay, you know? Everyone wants to work a little less while making the same amount. But… oh wait!"
Bolin looked up at her sudden exclamation but she'd already dived behind her wagon. In a moment, she'd come out again with a sheaf of paper, rifling through the pages before finally extracting something like a colorful flyer.
"Ta-da!" Huaming sang as she waved it in Bolin's face.
Bolin took it. It was a poster featuring a rather well-drawn illustration of a tent in the middle surrounded by a group strange looking people. There was a shorthaired feminine-looking young man wearing a flowing red cape holding a ball of fire in one hand. Directly below the tent drawing was a muscular male standing with his enormous chest puffed out, his tight muscle shirt ready to split. Next to him was a young blonde woman in a flowing blue dress, curtsying prettily. The final person who seemed to leer above the canopy of the tent was a mysterious silver-haired male with a powered white face, a black diamond drawn right over his right eyelid. Down the right-hand side were the words "Shadow's Spectacular Traveling Circus" in artistic calligraphy.
"A traveling circus?" Bolin read, thoroughly bemused.
Huaming nodded enthusiastically. "Apparently they go everywhere, moving from place to place to perform. They also have this miniature carnival thing where people can enjoy the evening before the actual circus show." She pointed to a margin where a cramped time table had been inked in. "They arrived just yesterday just outside the town. There's going to be performance this evening."
"Um… that's great, I guess," Bolin mumbled. "But what does a circus have anything to do with… well, anything?"
Instead of replying, Huaming pulled out a second piece of paper from her pile, and Bolin realized that the sheaf of papers were all advertisements.
"Here," Huaming handed him the second flyer which Bolin took.
It was an ordinary handout recruiting hired help at the same circus on the poster. There was a short list of positions, one of which caught Bolin's eye at once.
"'Caretaker for circus animals'? That's excellent!" Bolin cried. "And they're offering… wow! This much for just a few days? The hours aren't bad either."
"They pay well because they're so busy and I hear the animals are quite unusual," Huaming explained, quite aware of Bolin's ability to deal with any animal however big and ferocious. "Oh, I almost forgot."
From her apron pocket Huaming produced two paper stubs.
"These are tickets to tonight's performance." Huaming said, pressing them into Bolin's hand. "I want you to go enjoy it with Mako."
Bolin looked taken aback and tried to return them. "Oh, no, Aunt Huaming, you've already done so much-"
"Not quite as much as your mother has done for me in the past. And after all you boys have been through, I think you need a break more than me," Huaming said, refusing the tickets. "I got these complimentary tickets when one of the circus people dropped by. Absolutely adored my Duk cakes, he did."
Bolin didn't press the point any further. Instead, he refrained from begging Huaming for any free Duk cakes and bade her good bye, setting off to find his brother and tell him of the surprise treat.
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