The wind sighs through the window beside his bed. Lee pulls the blanket up to his chin and listens to the tree outside rustling in the breeze.
"Lee?" The woman from before, Ye Wan, asks from the doorway.
"Yes?" He looks over at her, but stays on his back.
"Are you alright? Do you feel safe?" She moves over to close the window against the chilly breeze.
"Yeah."
She sits on the bed and runs her hand over his head.
"Do you need anything for the night?" Her voice is very soft, like the mattress underneath him. Soft, warm and safe.
"Do you think I made the right choice?" He blurts out.
"I don't know. Everyone else seems to think so. What do you think? That's what matters."
"I don't know." He rolls over to face the wall. He glances up out the window at a cloud, backlit by the moon, passing by.
"All I know for sure is that you are safe here, and we will make certain that you get a good education and a good job. If you want to go to one of the other larger cities in a few years, start a business, or go to a university, we'll make sure it happens. We're so glad to have you, Lee. We will do everything we can to make you happy."
She rubs his shoulder and gets up to leave.
"Will you leave the door open? I get bad dreams sometimes." The wind whines against the window shutters, and the eerie sound sends chills down Lee's spine.
"Of course."
She lights a candle in the hallway so he can see the glow. He rolls over to face the window and listens again to the wind.
He wonders where Cinderman and the girl are now. He gets a sinking feeling in his stomach, made worse by the darkness and wind.
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"Lee?" Mom's voice, soft and quiet in his ear. Lee wakes up and looks for the source.
"Lee." It calls again.
"Mom?" He sits up. "Mama?"
"Lee? Where are you?" Her voice sounds distant now.
He swings out of bed and dashes down the hall.
"Where are you, Mom!" He calls out.
"Lee! Help me!" She calls out. "Where are you? I need your help!" He hears a scream.
He rushes through house and flings open the front door. He gasps as a wall of heat hits him, burns his face, dries his eyes and open mouth.
Towers of fire roar in the wind and spit bits of burning debris.
"Lee!" The shriek is ear piercing, but it comes from everywhere and he can't find it's source.
"Mom! Where are you?" His throat is torn raw by the shout.
A shadow appears in front of him in the shape of a woman's body. His mind leaves a blank slate where details should be. He tries to conjour the image of her face, a memory from before the fire. But all that lies in front of him is a plain, dark, nonmaterial shadow.
"Lee. Where did you go? Why aren't you here?" The voice now a worried whisper.
"I'm sorry, Mom! I'm sorry." He sobs.
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"Lee! What are you doing out here? What's wrong?" Ye Wan kneels beside him and pulls him into a tight hug. He looks around to see a quiet, peaceful night. No flames, no bodies, no Mom.
"I don't know." He replies truthfully. What just happened?
"Let's get you back inside. It's cold out here. I'll get you some milk." She helps him up and leads him inside.
"Do you think my mom can still see me?" He asks her.
"I don't know. Did you dream about her?" She wraps an arm around him.
"Sort of. I guess." He gulps his milk, trying to squash the sadness in his chest down into a little ball in his stomach.
"Nobody knows what happens when we leave this world, Lee. I've heard a lot of different things in my time. But nobody knows for sure. When my mother died, I never got to say goodbye to her. So, I'd sit and imagine her sitting next to me, and I'd tell her about my day or about how much I missed her." Her eyes seem to look somewhere far and long away.
The sadness spreads from his chest to his throat and is quickly heating his face again.
"Do you think maybe you can help me talk to her?" He asks.
"Of course. Where do you want to go?" She places his empty cup in the sink and stands up.
"Dad always used to say that people become stars when they die. Maybe she'll hear me better if we're outside."
"Alright."
The wind is gentle when they leave the house, brushing softly against Lee's face. He imagines Mama's hand.
They sit in the back yard and gaze up at the stars.
"Which one is your mother?" Ye Wan asks.
"I don't know."
"Look harder. I'm sure she's there somewhere."
He finds the warmest looking star. A bright, big one. It has a sort of summer green hue to it, and it reminds him of one of the fields he used to play in back home.
"That one! That's her." He points it out.
"Take a deep breath and close your eyes."
He breathes in and out and lets darkness wrap itself around him.
"Do I have to say anything? Or do you think she'll know?"
"Do whatever you think she'll hear, Lee. She's your mother and you know her best."
In and out, dark blanket around him with a warm star above. In and out, peace fills his mind and the wind sighs with him.
He imagines Mom's star above him, filling him with it's warmth. He remembers her smile and laugh, and the way she used to hug him each night. He remembers star watching with Dad and Sensu. He remembers playing in the fields with the other kids in the village, and the feeling he must explore the mountains around them.
He feels the warmth of Mom's star and the touch of her hand in the wind. He knows she loved him. He believes that wherever she is now, she is happy and safe.
Her face appears in his mind's eye, happy and smiling. He smiles back. And his eyes open.
"She's not up there, Miss Ye Wan." He says, turning the look at the lady beside him.
"She's right here." He puts his hand over his heart.
"That's good to hear. She'll always be there, Lee." She smiles and they go back inside.
When he sleeps again, it is dreamless.
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"And it was then that Avatar Kyoshi,"
A loud snore interrupted the man's voice. A collective giggle rose from the class of children and teenagers seated before him.
"Ahem, Meng? Perhaps you can tell me what happens next. You've been hearing this story the longest of anyone here." The teacher smacks the girl's desk with his ruler. She sits up, dazed, and looks as though she's frantically digging through her mind for some semblance of an answer.
"Nevermind, don't bother." He sighs and moves to Lee's desk.
"What about you, Avatar Apprentice? What do you know about the Avatar Kyoshi?"
Another giggle goes up at the mention of the nickname. Lee already had a reputation for asking the most Avatar related questions of anyone they'd ever known.
"Just that she was an Earthbender. And what you've told us so far." He piped up, unfazed by neither the question or the nickname.
"I see. And what have I told you so far?" The man crosses his arms and raises a questioning brow.
"You told us how her parents were bandits, and that she was poor and they didn't know she was the Avatar until she was sixteen. You were at the part when she was given a servant job at the Avatar Mansion." Lee sits up as straight and tall as he could, trying to impress the man.
"Alright. You were listening. Good. If only you could pay attention in your other classes." The teacher proceeds toward the front of the room.
"It was Kyoshi's job to clean up after Yun,"
Lee zones out again, as he knows this part of the story. Avatar Kyoshi had always been Sensu's favorite to hear about, and her longer than usual story had always been told at the dinner table when he arrived home after long months away at school.
When they dismiss for the lunch hour, Lee heads up to the Avatar Shrine to help with painting the new walls.
The man he's "apprenticed" to gets him set up with paint in brown, grey, and white for the Yangchen exhibit, then strolls off to the market to buy them lunch.
Lee carefully paints the arrow on the sky bison's head, doing his best to keep it within the lines.
The enormous creature is carved out of the wall in a way that makes it look as though he's taking off to fly.
The wall behind is carved with two dimensional images of an Air Temple, although Lee's not sure which one it is.
The color he's using for the arrow is difficult to distinguish from the color of the stone it's carved from and he looks back from his musing to find that he's painted a good portion of the bison's head.
"Oops."
"What are you doing, boy?" The older man comes back in with lunch and takes the brush from him.
"Sorry. I, uh, got a bit distracted." Lee stares at the floor.
"Ah well, it's fixed easily enough while the paint's still wet. Grab that water bucket and some rags."
Lee hops to.
"There we are. See? Good as new." The man takes the brush and finishes the arrow.
"Let's get out into the sunlight. It's warm out right now. We don't spend nearly enough time outdoors this time of the year." The man ushers him out and situates them on the cliff looking out over the ocean.
Lee hears the waves crashing against the rocks below and his stiff, sore back reminds him of their crushing force. He moves himself a bit further from the edge.
"How are your injuries?" The man asks, handing him some meat.
"Still sore. Getting better." He replies.
"And your dreams? I heard you were having some trouble sleeping."
Ye Wan must have told him!
"I'm fine." He tears off a chunk of meat and swallows it without chewing, trying to replace one lump with another.
"I see." He doesn't sound convinced. "And your brother, do you have a plan for finding him?"
"Are you saying I shouldn't be here?!" Lee bursts.
"Not at all. I'm just wondering if you've given up looking, or if you'd like some help. I haven't heard you say anything since the Firebender left. Considering how certain you seemed that he was alive, it seems a little strange that you wouldn't be badgering us to do something to find him." The man seems completely unfazed by his outburst.
Lee takes a deep breath of the fresh, autumn air and pauses to think.
"I just have so much to learn here that I haven't had time to think about it." He mutters, almost to himself.
"I see. You haven't been learning too quickly, from what I hear."
"You seem to hear a lot about me." He doesn't mean to sound so resentful, but it's getting annoying, everybody always knowing his business.
"It's my job, boy." The man smiles. "I'm your master and you're my apprentice. I'd best be teaching you something. I can't teach you if you're distracted. And it seems you're very distracted. But if it's not your brother you're thinking about, what is it? I can't help if I don't know the problem."
He puts an arm around Lee.
Lee gulps some of his water down abruptly.
"I still have nightmares about the night..." He doesn't want to finish the sentence.
"It's to be expected. You'll remember that night for the rest of your life. It's not easy to lose everything and everyone you know." He squeezes gently.
"I didn't go with Cinderman and his girlfriend." He says quietly.
"It did seem a rather sudden decision on your part. I thought you were going with them. Everybody here was still trying to figure out how to convince you not to. There was a secret village meeting and everything."
"Really?"
"Really. Nobody wanted to see you leave with that Firebender. Or Hua for that matter."
"What did you tell them?"
"I told 'em, "Let 'em make their own decisions! They gotta learn how to sometime, you old busybodies!"" He waves his arms theatrically.
Lee laughs.
"That girl wasn't going to have a future in any of the small villages. She needs to be somewhere where nobody cares about her mixed heritage, somewhere she can blend in without having to go too far out of her way to do it. Ba Sing Se or Gao Ling are really her best bets."
"Wait, you know Hua can Firebend?" The shock locks his jaw open.
"Of course! That girl was not nearly as subtle as she thought she was. Going out only in the evening, never eating anywhere but at home, wearing heavy cloaks on barely chilly nights. I'm surprised nobody else had her pegged as one. And coming from a place like Yu Dao. Looks like Fire Nation. More so than either of her parents anyway. It wasn't right for her to have to stay here and hide her ability." The man shakes his head, like it's all a crying shame.
"So, you don't hate her? For lying about it?" Lee is incredulous.
"Of course not! What else was she supposed to do? You saw how they treated your friend when you first arrived."
This man is a traitor!
"He wasn't my friend!"
"No need to shout, my boy. No need at all. We don't want anyone to discover we're not hard at work, discussing the same things over and over, now do we?" His voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper.
"And if he wasn't your friend, you ought to have told him that. He seemed to think it was his job to look after you. And I quite agree. He's the one who found you, after all."
"What do you think I should have done, since everyone seems to have an opinion!" Lee pouts, but keeps his voice down this time.
"What do you think you should do? It's not my job to decide that for you."
"Weilai said,"
"It's not Weilai's job either. Or fate's. Or destiny's. It's your job. Do it. What do you think you should or should not do?" He leans back against the steps of the shrine.
"You say that like it's still a choice."
"It is."
"But Cinderman's been gone a week. He'd be almost to Gao Ling by now."
"Doesn't matter. There are ways of catching up to him."
"You think I should go."
"It doesn't matter what I think." He closes his eyes and leans his head back, like he's planning on a nap while Lee decides what to do with himself.
"Hua's family and everyone else thinks I ought to stay and learn a trade."
"Doesn't matter what they think." He says through a yawn.
"Well I can't do both!"
"No, you can't." Matter of factly.
"Well, then what should I do?"
"What do you think?" Bored. Very bored.
"I don't know!"
"No need to shout. I didn't ask what you knew, I asked what you thought. There's a difference." His eyes open with a snap.
"Argh!"
"You can think, can't you? It's not something that's taught. Or in any case, when it is taught, it's never taught right." He seems a little irritated now.
Lee doesn't respond. The man closes his eyes again and seems content to nap in the autumn sun.
Lee realizes this debate is playing out similarly to when it happened the first time with Cinderman, in nearly the same spot.
He thinks of Gao Ling and how far away it is, and how big and far off Ba Sing Se must be from there.
The world's a pretty big place. I may never find Cinderman again.
The thought is not as comforting as he thought it ought to be.
A bird swoops down and flies along parallel to the cliffside. Lee has the sudden urge to leap into the air and follow it.
But he remembers how that ended last time, and the sound of the ocean below becomes almost nauseating.
An image of himself dusting and painting the shrine as an old man pops into his mind, and he finds it nauseating in a different way. It's followed by an image of him and Sensu running together through the streets of Ba Sing Se, as young as they both were the day Sensu left.
He tries to imagine sitting and studying in a large university building and finding it so boring he starts to fidget a bit to relieve the feeling.
Several of these and more disjointed thoughts and images swirl in his mind.
At the end of it all, when they go back to work in the shrine, and even later when he returns to school to finish out the day's last classes, he still has no answer for his master on what he ought to do. Amd no answer for himself.
The wind beckons to him as he tries to sleep that night, wild and reckless abandon in it's song.
The stars pull at him from their place in his window, begging him to reach out across time and space to find where they lead, and to follow.
A/N So sorry for long update wait times! I did put this story on hiatus for this reason. Although I still work on it here and there, it's taking a backseat to a far more busy real world life. And I also admit to being distracted in my spare time by Dragon Age and Mass Effect, which I've just discovered recently. I may start writing some stories for those too, at some point. Special thanks to my new followers/favoriters: Adrimore, Angel Wraith, N3phtys, H3LLF1R3IIOS, Kosmokrator.
Thank you to Angel Wraith for your extensive review. I will be taking everything you mentioned under consideration. Particularly about the pov skipping around. The chapters and pov's are organized this way so I don't lose track of my timeline while writing the story, but I'll agree that it makes for some difficult reading. I will probably try to move the chapters around to an easier order once they're posted, but it may take a while to correct. As for Azula losing her Bending... I can't give anything away on that, because spoilers. Your input has been duly noted. :) Thank you again for your time and review. I hope you'll give this story another shot once I get the chapters sorted out. :)