(no subject)
Title: Cakes and Claws and Painted Stones
Recipient: kaitoujeanne
Rating: PG-ish? PG-13? (mention of death, blood, and very mild sensuality)
Characters/Pairings: Kyoshi/All The Ladies (Kyoshi/OFC), Avatar Kyoshi, Koko, Roku
Summary: The story of an extraordinary woman, her life, and the legacy she left behind.
Notes: Ok so the prompt for this was a sort of historical look at Avatar Kyoshi and the Kyoshi Warriors. Buuuuuut since know Kyoshi had a daughter who succeeded her as governor, and since we know Kyoshi was extremely long-lived, I delved a bit more into her personal life, and the aspects of what made Kyoshi...well...Kyoshi. Also it was my excuse to write her macking on a lot of ladies.
From the records of The 25th Governor of Kyoshi Island, in her 30th year of office.
My mother was two-hundred years old when she found me, in the autumn of a long and unyielding summer. I was just a squalling babe, filthy and alone, not yet old enough to stand. She held me up to the light, our skins stained orange from the sunset, and she named me Koko for the cranes that cried overhead.
She was in love for the third time, not so many times as they say in the taverns and the campfire songs. She was old by most standards, though she shirked the trappings of age. Frailty did not become her.
Talk spreads around the village quickly, out onto the peninsula, through the region, and all the markets hum with disbelief.
Is it true then? How could it be so?
That the youngest child of the merchant Jiro, the horsefaced girl with gangly arms and big feet is the Avatar.
Her name is Kyoshi, she is thirteen, nearly twice the height of her father, a stout man with one bad eye. Her mother says she will grow into her beauty, but Kyoshi does not much care for appearances. She walks through the village and never once does she stoop. She is a proud child.
She never receives formal training for earthbending, she does not need it. When she moves about the garden, making rows for vegetables, she is herself soil and stone, quake and landslide. When she rises, so does the earth rise with her.
“Your daughter is so intense Jiro,” she hears her uncles say over drinks.
“She’s just quiet, nothing wrong with that,” he responds. He knows she is listening, just beyond their painted screens.
“Quiet like a hunter maybe, just what prey is she stalking?” they laugh, and Jiro smiles into his cup. Kyoshi knows, as he does, that her prey is much bigger than boars or platypus bears or even elephant koi. Jiro knows, as she does, that she is meant for much more.
Soon after the announcement (too early some say, what were the scribes thinking?) offerings begin to appear at her door. They come with no messenger, no explanation, but each day more appear. Fruits, cakes, claws, bones, here and there a painted stone. She holds a pebble to her ear and swears she hears the wishes whispered in the dark of morning. Folk magic for a spirit or a god.
“They mean well, darling,” her mother says as she places yet another string of flowers over the doorway before lighting a candle in front of the family altar. “We are peasant folk, we have never had such prestige to honor our home.”
“Our home doesn’t need prestige,” Kyoshi grumbles in the curt way she has, her voice low like her brothers’. She breathes in and can feel the sea salted air hung like a veil across her village. “Our home is beautiful and safe, our people are strong. We have no need for such displays.”
“Give it time, Kyoshi,” her mother, whose name is Aiko, reaches down and tilts up her daughter’s chin, “Someday soon you will understand your duty in this world, and to your people.”
Kyoshi learns that year of duty, and of justice.
My mother was, to put it simply, a stern woman. She did not look so old, but centuries weighed upon her broad shoulders, and I felt it when we were alone. As a small child, still plagued by nightmares and fevers, I felt often weak and insignificant compared to her, such a powerful creature, for in her paint and armor she did not resemble any human woman.
Sima made things easier though, Sima who nursed me, combed my hair, and sang me lullabies long after I should have outgrown them. Sima who aged beautifully, with sun soaked skin and graying hair. She had blue eyes, not so uncommon on the southern lip of our island, and oh how I longed to have been born with them. I was a plain child, but thanks to Sima, I was a happy one.
It was through Sima’s eyes that I saw my mother’s tenderness. On sunny days I would run ahead of them up the crest of the island, to the cliff where my mother had emancipated us all those years ago. I would clutch at low hanging branches and gather their leaves, and whoop and chase after songbirds who wandered into my path. In moments when I had thought I’d lost them, I’d peek from behind rocks or trees to catch my mother and Sima in a stolen kiss.
They were beautiful together, my mother tall and broad with Sima tucked into her side. Without her paint I saw the soft lines that marked Mother’s face, the places where a scar or a mole interrupted pale skin. In the evenings Sima and I would take turns finding them, and would lay soft kisses on my mother’s somber face until she smiled and caught us up in her strong arms.
I wonder some days, what we would have been without Sima. Strangers, I think, without her firm hands and coaxing songs to bridge the years between us.
They come clawing at her walls in the early morning. The people and the spirits.
Kyoshi’s mother shakes her awake, hair falling into her eyes.
“My darling please, they need you now.” Her voice doesn’t tremble, but her hands fidget with her sleeves. Kyoshi sits up slowly, wills the sleep away and bites the inside of her lip.
“I’m not ready,” she says softly, “I don’t know what to do.”
“THE DEMONS HAVE TAKEN HIM, MY HUSBAND!” a woman cries outside. A man lets out a roar, “THE BOATS ARE ALL ROTTING!” A child wails.
Aiko runs her fingers through her daughter’s hair, brings her lips to that small unlined brow. She breathes out and in, and Kyoshi breathes with her.
“Neither do I,” she whispers.
“MAKE THEM LEAVE US ALONE!”
“WE HAVE DONE NOTHING!”
The entire village pleads for her. And over their cries echoes a great lowing like a gale in mourning, inhuman and horribly big.
“AVATAR YOU ARE OUR KIN!” something shrieks and Kyoshi covers her ears.
“I am only myself, Mother, how can they expect me to be anything else?” Kyoshi says. The wind shakes the trees, “I am not a god.”
Her mother holds her at arm’s length, looking into her daughter’s eyes.
“You are the Avatar, Kyoshi. For them, you must be.”
Kyoshi glances past her mother to the idols on the altar. A woman looks back at her, an old water spirit from long ago, with a wide brimmed hat and dark red eyes. She feels the fear leave her. She listens to the words rumbling under stone and wave.
Kyoshi does not cower.
The legends will say that she walked out of her house, and all noise ended under her gaze. They will say she led the way down to the bay where the elephant koi were hunted for their meat and bones, where the sand of the beaches had been stained black by blood washed in with the tide.
And they will say nothing of how her voice might have wavered, and of the half-moon cuts she left on her clenched hands. They will say she wore all her finery, even though she was only a slip of a girl in her nightclothes.
But they will speak of how she communed with the spirits of the bay. They will tell tale of the pact she made, of the punishments and the compromises she laid down on behalf of the murdered koi, who were sacred creatures.
They will commemorate the koi and revere them, the great fish who joined the emancipation, and they will become symbols of her first great act as Avatar, of the island and its prosperity.
They will recall how Kyoshi descended the steps of her home, her face turned ghostly white, her eyelids marked in dark crimson, her hair pulled back and a golden crest atop her head like a crown.
They will not remember her words though, that first harsh and heavy address:
“If you want a benevolent god, I will not be one. But if you want me to serve justice, and protect this world, so be it.”
I was eight when the raiders came with their stolen ships and blood red sails.
They were from the West; Fire Navy men defected and discharged alike, their armor a piecemeal of outdated breastplates, pilfered boots, worn cloaks, and murderer’s knives.
That would be my first encounter with the Fire Nation. Sima had told me of the orange mountains, those caverns and peaks veined with gold, and of the strange fruits shaped like dragons eggs. She said that the water was warm year round, steaming like hot tea where the sun set into the horizon.
Sima, of course, had never actually been there, though I never held it against her. I was a child with a love of stories, and Sima obliged me. Mother, however, had traveled much in that first century, though in my lifetime I only saw her leave the island once. It was never spoken of to me, but there was no doubt that she had walked those far shores (some say with a lover, others say with the Fire Lady, and still more insist they were one and the same).
But that Spring Sima’s stories and my dreams of gold-eyed princesses in robes of phoenix down shriveled like fruit sucked dry.
They burned our Eastern fields, murdered a farmer there. They tried to capture our children to sell in the Si Wong Desert, or to the Slavers in Chameleon Bay. They came quickly in the night like an infection and by morning they’d left scars on the shores of our island.
But just as quickly as they’d come, Avatar Kyoshi purged them from our lives. My mother dealt with them justly. We watched their ships burn from the hill and I was afraid. I was always afraid back then.
“Why does she never look me in the eyes?” I heard Mother say one night when I’d crept away from my bed. I peered into our dining room, and saw Mother sitting with her back to me, and Sima beyond. By the set of her shoulders I could tell she was angry, and I think they had argued.
“You exaggerate,” Sima replied, eyes on her stitching.
“She’s anxious around me, Sima. She is already eight years old and yet she frets in her sleep and never comes to me with her fears. She hasn’t spoken to me in a week.”
“She is intimidated by you, that’s all,”
“Nonsense.”
“Oh?” Sima put down her stitching suddenly, and placed her hands upon our low table. “Six days ago she and I watched you lay waste to a small army of bandits. You smote them with lightning, you ripped their boats apart with mud and ice and you set the whole company aflame in the bay. Then you came home with your clothing burned and your fans covered in blood and told her justice had been served. She loves you, dearest, but she is eight years old and her mother is the Avatar. Believe me. She. Is. Intimidated.”
After Sima had sat back on her heels and they both had taken deep breaths, my mother spoke, her head bowed.
“She need not be,”
I saw Sima reach across the table and lift up Mother’s chin with her hand.
“You are an intimidating woman, Kyoshi.”
“…Our daughter shouldn’t be intimidated by anything.”
I saw Sima smile.
“So what do you plan to do about it?”
The next day Mother took me to a dojo up on the bluffs. It was small and old, but the tatami mats were new and the cobwebs had been cleaned.
I remember how she placed a hand on my shoulder, guiding me into the shady room. Her hands were huge, and they left a warm spot that spanned the width of my shoulders.
“Koko,” she said to me, not unkindly, “If I ever impart one lesson to you, let it be this:
“You are not a bender, and in this world there are those who would seek to use that against you. They will perceive it as a weakness, and they will think themselves stronger than you because of it.”
I puzzled over this for a moment, and finally said, “B-but Mother…aren’t they?”
She kneeled and ruffled my hair, something she’d never done before.
“No. Not if you are the better warrior. Train well and you will find that, even against the strongest foes, you shall never feel weak.”
And so I began my training.
Firebending comes easily, like a second language she’d always known. Isn’t it fire that courses like blood underneath the cool earth? She is fierce and clever, and she is a master in less than a year.
Airbending, however, poses more of a challenge. Kyoshi does not understand, how is she expected to bend the intangible? She practices her forms, and the wind slips around her, indifferent to her frustration.
“We move with the air, young Avatar,” the Abbess says patiently. “It is not something to be thrown like rocks or sticks. It is a great force that stirs the spirit and we are its living conduit.”
“I prefer the rocks and sticks,” she complains to Haomei that night.
Haomei is, to put it simply, her tutor. She is another student, a higher level than Kyoshi herself. She is also seventeen, suntanned and freckled, with a giddy laugh like a ringing bell. In the evenings at supper, Kyoshi feels Haomei’s braid brush at her arm and a chill runs through her.
She is smitten. She finds excuses to train with Haomei, to let her correct a previously flawless stance, to feel her cool hands press at the small of her back. She goes out one day without pretense and returns with wildflowers to fit into Haomei’s braids. She whispers soft things into Haomei’s ear, and brushes imaginary eyelashes from her freckled cheeks.
Haomei, for her part, laughs and smiles and runs a finger along the broad line of Kyoshi’s jaw as she slips past. They chase each other through the courtyards, and fall into the grass when they both cannot run any more.
“What’s wrong with me?” Kyoshi asks one day, her wide hand blocking the sun from her eyes, “I’ve never had trouble bending in the past. Why should this be any different?”
“You shouldn’t fret so much!” Haomei clucks as she strings clovers together in a chain, “It will come to you, but first you need to let go of what is keeping you grounded.”
“How am I to do that?! I am born of earth and I’ll return to earth, it’s in my bones!” she frowns, “I can’t just leave that behind.”
“Different arts require different approaches, silly.” Haomei teases.
“You airbenders are all jest and scripture, how am I to see through all that to the heart of it?” she covers her eyes with her arms, shutting out the blue sky and Haomei’s stinging smile. “Is this how it feels for others? Those who cannot bend? I become feeble and incompetent compared to you lot and it is infuriating!”
“You shouldn’t scoff at those who cannot bend. They have their own gifts and find other means to use them. Just look at the swordsmen in the East, or the horsemen of the plains. I have seen them and they are not weak, Kyoshi.”
Haomei lays the chain across Kyoshi’s neck, and asks her softly to rise so that she might fasten it. Kyoshi glares at her all the while.
“I need to find my own way to airbend,” she vows, “A way that I can understand. Something with weight to it, not just words.” Haomei stares at her longer than necessary, and nods with a small grin.
“Perhaps I can help.”
When Kyoshi wakes, the fans are waiting for her. They are metal and dark, sturdy wood, the blades painted gold and buffed to shine. Haomei asks shyly what she thinks of them, and Kyoshi thanks her in other ways than words.
“They suit you,” Haomei murmurs afterwards, stretching out beside Kyoshi on the pallet. She has freckles on her shoulders too.
“How so?” Kyoshi tests the balance in one hand.
“They are solid and effective, strong, elegant,” Haomei yawns, “And beautiful.”
Kyoshi blushes behind her fan. Haomei begins to tickle her and they lose half the morning in laughs and soft embraces.
Not many know this, but I was not the first Kyoshi Warrior.
In truth it was Sima who came to Mother in her own youth and requested training.
Mother first taught her the forms, the throws and footwork. Then came the fans, the daggers and swords, and finally after years of study, the warrior’s code. And so it was with me.
Most days I trained under Sima while Mother observed. Every now and then she would comment, or correct my posture, but in the end it was Sima who instructed me and Sima who I sparred with. Despite her age, I discovered all too quickly Sima was still an excellent fighter, and that even as my loving parent she was still willing to leave me bruised.
“The fan is an extension of your arm,” she told me one day, “it acts as shield and sword, but it always moves with you, never against. If you let your control slacken, it becomes just another fan and it is easily disarmed.” She struck the fan out of my hand for emphasis, and I recall in the evening quiet the way it clattered far across the room.
“Remember,” Sima said, “The core of your mother’s teachings is to use the strength of your opponent against him. The fan will guide you, and you must be prepared to follow through and seek the openings it reveals to you.”
“How did Mother learn this?” I asked, rubbing at my still stinging hand, “This is nothing like earthbending.”
“Your mother is not just an earthbender, Koko.” Sima told me as we sank into defensive postures. I remember quite clearly that we practiced kicks, something I still do even though I’ve aged even older than Sima was when she taught me. “The Avatar masters many disciplines. But that particular philosophy, I believe, came from her time with the airbenders.”
“Why doesn’t she ever tell me about them?” I was prone to pouting in my youth, and as we faced each other, I let my guard down. Sima swept my feet out from under me.
As she leaned down to offer me her hand, she smiled and said, “Why don’t you ever ask?”
At dusk we walked back towards our home. It was autumn again, I remember my birthday was coming soon. I was turning thirteen. Mother had not been in the dojo that day; she was off on some important business with the merchants’ guild.
It was a good a time as any to ask Sima what had been on my mind for some time.
“Um…Sima,” I began, stammering as I often used to do, “Why…Why do I call Kyoshi mother, and you by your name?”
“What do you mean Koko?”
“That is…you nursed me, and have watched over me, and you train me even now. I love Mother…and I respect her but…why are you not my mother, Sima?”
She smiled at me, maybe a little sadly, and reached out to touch my hand.
“Koko, you are my daughter and I love you. But when the time comes, history will remember Avatar Kyoshi, and they will celebrate her and her child. History will not remember me, and I do not need the posterity. But when you are older you will understand how very important it is that you are Kyoshi’s daughter.”
And while all she said was true, in that moment Sima was also wrong. Because I did not need to wait until I was older, I understood completely. And perhaps more for my love of her than anything else, I wept in the fading light of dusk, because truly Sima deserved to be remembered far more than I. She deserved the honor and admiration of the whole world. All the while she held me close to her, and whispered that I need not be sad, that she had me and Mother and that she was content. I wept anyway and when I was done we walked home arm in arm.
That night, when Mother returned, I sat across from her at our little table. I poured her tea, and I told her for the first time that I would like her to be my sifu.
“And I’d also like to hear about the airbenders, please.”
She smirked a bit, took a drag of her pipe, and honored my requests.
Kyoshi moves unseen through a whirlwind; spinning low and rising, kicking up dust and leaves, making the air thin and sharp like knives. When it’s dissipated, her arms are still raised, and in each hand she holds a fan. Haomei applauds, and the rest of the crowd follows suit.
She closes her fans with a flourish, and walks towards the Abbess and senior nuns. They smile and nod, and it is through that small gesture that Kyoshi is released from her training.
“Congratulations,” Haomei says to her later, seated atop her bison.
“And to you,” Kyoshi nods to the newly healed tattoos that cut across Haomei’s arms and shoulders. She has shaved most of her hair, and the arrow stands out vibrant blue against her scalp, still pink and healing.
“I take it you’re off to the North Pole to train then? There is something in the way she says it, so cavalier, that gives Kyoshi pause.
“I was considering the South, it is closer to my home…but I had thought that you might-”
“Come with you?” Haomei’s smile drops a little. “Kyoshi, you know I love you best out of all things in this world, but I could never…it is not my nature.”
“You are being coy again.” Kyoshi grits her teeth, “You expect me to chase after you like we did as students, but I am not a child anymore Haomei.”
“No,” she responds, “I don’t think you were ever a child, not really. But you are the Avatar, and you have responsibilities that will tie you to the material, to the earth and its conflicts.”
“Because it is my duty!”
“It is not mine, Kyoshi. I am a nomad, and I cannot let myself stray from my own callings.” She takes up the bison’s reins for a moment, but lets them fall and slides down to embrace her lover. Kyoshi grips her tight for as long as she can.
“You say you love me best…how am I to believe that if you are so prepared to leave me?”
“Oh Kyoshi,” Haomei runs long fingers through her hair, “I do love you best, but you mustn’t let me keep you from what is waiting for you. You will love others, and you won’t regret having loved them.” She stands a full head shorter than Kyoshi, but she raises up on a gust of wind and lays a soft kiss there at her brow, and another on her lips.
“How can you be so certain of such things?”
Haomei laughs and it sounds like bells singing.
“Because I have loved you, Kyoshi! And I do not regret it!”
Kyoshi watches until Haomei is less than a bright spot against a darkening sky. She does not weep, but she holds the fans close to her breast, and counts the long seconds between heartbeats.
I was twenty when, for the first time in my life, my mother left Kyoshi Island.
“Some trouble in the Capital,” she said before her departure, “That fool of a king thinks the Dai Li are his own personal brute squad. I created them to help keep balance in that wretched city.”
“Are you sure you are willing to make this journey mother?” I had asked, holding up the sash to fasten her robes. She scoffed and pulled her gauntlets tight.
“I am healthier than a hundred soldiers put together, Koko. The Earth King thinks me some infirm old hag simply because I was there to chide his fool of a grandfather when he misbehaved.”
“You speak as if the King were a child,” I failed to hide a smile.
“They’re all children in my eyes, the whole lot of them.” She tied her crest in place, and turned to our mirror. She touched at the corners of her eyes, where the red paint had covered up the small wrinkles that had begun to show. “So, my daughter, do I look suitably imposing?”
“You, Mother?” I chuckled as we made our goodbyes, “Always.”
By then my training was complete, and had taken to teaching many of the local children in simple self-defense. Sima accompanied me to many of the classes, though a fever that past winter had taken much of the strength from her legs. Instead she lectured those that were interested on the history of our island, and the proud tradition of its warriors.
I was pleased, and Mother also, to see that most of the attendees were young girls.
She arrives at the head of a gale, water and wind buffeting her on all sides and in her heart a fury and a sorrow.
She lands heavily on her hilltop, the one where her footprints have long worn away since the day she sailed her home to freedom. She doesn’t fall, but allows herself to take a knee, lungs gasping for breath. For the first time she feels old.
Koko comes up the hill soon after, Sima leaning against her with her walking stick. Kyoshi watches them come along the path, and something in her keeps her from running forward to meet them, scooping them into a warm embrace.
Koko is a woman now, taller than Sima, with dark eyes and a broad nose. She wears her hair short, cut at the chin, and it suits her. Many of the other women have done the same. She has grown stoic and blossomed with it, strength and patience winning over childhood apprehension. She stammers still, when she is nervous, and Kyoshi sees much of herself there.
Sima is simply Sima, ever lovely, always practical, even though she has stooped a little and her hair has gone to white. Her eyes are still the same sparkling blue, and her caresses still as comforting.
When they reach her, Koko looks her up and down. Kyoshi realizes she has forgotten to bend the water out of her clothing, still soaked from her arrival. The dripping hems of her hakama make puddles about her feet.
“It didn’t go well, I take it.” Sima says, reaching forward and taking Kyoshi’s hand in her own. She offers her whole arm, and Sima takes it.
“The Dai Li are lost.” She begins, hot coals of anger flaring again in her heart, “I created them, trained them, instilled them with a sense of honor and purpose, I gave them a code of justice to follow and so soon they have fallen.”
“A hundred years feels much longer to common men, Mother,” Koko says, holding her gaze, “Who can say how many weeds have taken root in the capital since you were there last.”
“It is no matter to me now; I have no interest in the affairs of the Earth King. I have done what I can, made my reprimands, and exercised my authority as the Avatar. I doubt he’ll make much noise while I still live. Let him keep his damnable bodyguards, that’s all they are now. They have become swayed by gold and jade and promises of luxury. The city beyond the palace thrives for now.”
“And what of the future?” Koko asks as they descend the hill homewards.
“I daresay it will be the burden of someone else by then.”
Koko grows quiet, and Sima squeezes Kyoshi’s arm, fingers gripped tight in the folds of her robes.
That night she calls Koko to her room.
“I am ashamed, Koko,” she says, abruptly, “I have failed to do justice as the Avatar.”
“Wha-” shock paints her daughters features, “What on earth do you mean?”
“The Dai Li has been corrupted, and I am too far gone in years to go to war with them. They are perhaps my greatest failing, Koko. I have created an elite force of earthbenders, trained them as I have trained few others, and they take those gifts and use them selfishly.”
“You could not have known, Mother.” She starts, and Kyoshi holds up a hand to silence her.
“I am telling you this not only because you are my child, and I trust you deeply,” Koko softens a bit, looking down and fiddling with the edge of her sleeve. “I am two-hundred and twenty years of age. I have seen much, but my time is ending, Koko, you and I both know this.
“And that is why I will ensure the protection of our people, our culture and traditions. I will create a force to match the Dai Li, and all who come after them, one that relies not on bending but whose strength lies in the competence and fortitude of the human body. Let the benders of the world think they are the strongest. There will come a day when all the nations gather in one place to see great justice done and mark my words, a common woman of Kyoshi will stand tall as any bender and fight twice as fierce.”
Koko stares up at her mother, who has risen and moved to the window. A night breeze plucks at Kyoshi’s hair and the tassels of her crest. The moon is low and bright; the backs of koi glow silver on the surface of the bay. Somewhere the unagi lets out a hissing shriek and rolls over in its sleep.
“Do you know why I dress this way, Koko?”
“Ah…I…” she stammers, swallows and begins again, “You told me in training. That the green silk was the robes of our old warriors, it represented bravery; green like the heart of the land, and silk which becomes strong when weaved together, like the bonds of brotherhood.”
Kyoshi motions for her to continue.
“The gold crest you wear belonged to your grandmother, a priestess, and the golden ore was symbol of the honor and nobility in our people’s hearts. The paint on your face is meant to frighten your enemies.”
“True, though I first wore it to shut up a noisy crowd.” Kyoshi chuckles while Koko gapes. “I felt that if the world wished to see me as a divine and terrible, I’d best look the part.”
“You…never told me that before.”
“I am sorry it has taken me so long.”
They stay silent for a while, listening to the rustle of the trees and Sima’s soft snores just past the curtain. Kyoshi stays at the window, and looking down from her height Koko seems so much the child again, tiny and precious. And then she speaks, shoulders set and chin raised high, with a woman’s voice.
“Mother what would you have me do, to help you find these warriors?”
Kyoshi moves the way a mountain moves. A slow descent, a bend, a shift, like layers of silt, and soon she is knee to knee with her daughter, hands pressed firmly on Koko’s shoulders.
“My beloved…my only child…I want you to lead them.”
It came to pass that we were named the Kyoshi Warriors. It was Sima’s idea.
I handpicked the best girls from my classes, a group of twelve, who I trained rigorously as my mother had trained me. It was not long before parents begged us to view their daughters and test their merit in combat, so prestigious it was to join our ranks.
Within five years our size had doubled, and we had gained a small amount of fame for foiling bandits and poachers, as well as the disputes that would flare between villages. The girls grew into women, all of them masters of our techniques and each with her own brand of shrewd improvisation. We took on the uniform and the paint, and it became a badge of honor and courage to walk amongst my warriors.
It was in winter, near the solstice, in my tenth year as Captain of the Kyoshi Warriors, that my mother kissed Sima good night, and did not rise the next morning.
I was thirty, with a house of my own, and though I was old by our village’s standards, I had a few prospects for marriage. I was with my future husband when the news came.
It had never occurred to me, despite her warnings, that Avatar Kyoshi could truly die. She was too permanent, too powerful. She moved with the land itself and like the land I had always thought she’d remain. And yet her body was laid out before us all on a pyre lined in flowers and cedar bark. The whole island had come, and with them came offerings, cakes and claws and painted stones.
When the torch was brought forth, they all began to wail. I remained silent, for I was the one that carried it. I could not look upon the masses; old men more than twice my age who had looked upon her as children and fallen in love; pregnant women who she had visited, offering wisdom and kindness; small babies that would never know her as anything more than a statue in the bay.
Somewhere a flute played, a drum beat, and I set my mother aflame.
I stepped back as the flames rose, engulfing her silks, her long dark hair, her golden fans laid across her chest. Sima was with me, holding my hand. Tears were in her eyes.
“Don’t look away.” She said.
“I won’t.” I replied. My heart felt heavy and dead like a chunk of rock, pitted and charred black.
Ash leapt from her pyre, stinging our eyes. Smoke covered everything, and with it came the smell of burning flowers. And yet when I turned to look upon Sima, (my other mother; my wave where Mother had been my rock) she was bathed in soft oranges, her features made smooth and serene. We all were.
It was like the glow of evening on a hot autumn day, when the sun turns everything a burning gold and the cranes call out overhead.
“She looks so peaceful,” Sima said, holding my hand to her cheek, “She looks so young.”
I took a last look upon her face. She was wearing her paint. It seemed right.
“She looks proud.” I whispered, and through my grief I felt a flutter of warmth return to my stone of a heart.
When my mother finally returned to the island she wore the face of a young man from the Fire Nation.
He was tall and young, wise at his moments and foolish in most others, with a pleasant laugh and a humble heart. Yet I did not, could not know these things, for when he stepped onto Kyoshi for the first time, all I could see was my mother’s pyre some twenty years prior.
“My name is Roku, Madame Governor, and I am the Avatar.” he said to me in my offices. I was named Governor of the island after Mother’s death, and though I continued to train the Kyoshi Warriors, I found myself suited to role.
“Yes I was told you were coming,” I responded, not looking up from a new charter on fishing quotas, “What brings you to our home, young Avatar?”
“Well you see, ma’am,” he continued, “I’ve travelled a long way, from my home to the Air Temples to the North Pole and now I find myself here.”
I recall how straight he sat, and yet how he stooped his head, all deference and humility. It was a strange contrast to what I’d come to expect from the Avatar.
“And as it is, ma’am, I have mastered the elements of fire, air, and water. Now I must move on to earth and before I do that…I would like very much, to know of Avatar Kyoshi.”
“And why should you come so far to know anything of Kyoshi?” I replied, “Her time as Avatar is well documented, she traveled every inch of the great continent. She visited your fire islands many times.”
“Yes ma’am, but you were her daughter.”
“I am still her daughter, young man.”
He fell silent for a moment, afraid he had offended me. I sighed and leaned forward, my knees creaking in protest.
“What you are not telling me, young man,” I said, looking him square in the eyes, “Is that you wish to learn of the Avatar before you because you fear you won’t be able fill her shoes. And you have come to me, perhaps the last living person who knew her well, and you’re hoping I’ll prove you wrong.”
His eyes grew wide, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed a few times, and watching him fidget I recognized that under his beard and muscles he was still only a boy learning his place in this world.
I smiled.
“Well I’m afraid you’ll never quite fill her shoes…my mother’s feet were quite large.”
When we had finished laughing, he regarded me with a warm expression, relief perhaps. He was not so tall as her, but he still stood half a head over me, and I felt a strange nostalgia for the days that I looked up into my mother’s face so far above my own.
“Is it strange that I feel like I’ve met you before, Madame Governor?”
“No,” I stood and motioned for him to follow me, “No I don’t think so.”
We walked side by side up the hilly path to the dojo. He asked me where I was taking him and I told him there was much to discuss, and I had much to tell him of my mother’s teachings.
Along the way we stopped at a small shrine half-covered with moss and clover. Truly it was more a collection of stones, weathered smooth by rain and wind. It stood about knee high, and on it had been carved a woman’s face. The white paint had all but faded, but the red around her eyes was still vibrant.
At its base was an offering: some flowers, pebbles from the river, and a paper fan.
We said a prayer, and continued on.
Recipient: kaitoujeanne
Rating: PG-ish? PG-13? (mention of death, blood, and very mild sensuality)
Characters/Pairings: Kyoshi/All The Ladies (Kyoshi/OFC), Avatar Kyoshi, Koko, Roku
Summary: The story of an extraordinary woman, her life, and the legacy she left behind.
Notes: Ok so the prompt for this was a sort of historical look at Avatar Kyoshi and the Kyoshi Warriors. Buuuuuut since know Kyoshi had a daughter who succeeded her as governor, and since we know Kyoshi was extremely long-lived, I delved a bit more into her personal life, and the aspects of what made Kyoshi...well...Kyoshi. Also it was my excuse to write her macking on a lot of ladies.
From the records of The 25th Governor of Kyoshi Island, in her 30th year of office.
My mother was two-hundred years old when she found me, in the autumn of a long and unyielding summer. I was just a squalling babe, filthy and alone, not yet old enough to stand. She held me up to the light, our skins stained orange from the sunset, and she named me Koko for the cranes that cried overhead.
She was in love for the third time, not so many times as they say in the taverns and the campfire songs. She was old by most standards, though she shirked the trappings of age. Frailty did not become her.
Talk spreads around the village quickly, out onto the peninsula, through the region, and all the markets hum with disbelief.
Is it true then? How could it be so?
That the youngest child of the merchant Jiro, the horsefaced girl with gangly arms and big feet is the Avatar.
Her name is Kyoshi, she is thirteen, nearly twice the height of her father, a stout man with one bad eye. Her mother says she will grow into her beauty, but Kyoshi does not much care for appearances. She walks through the village and never once does she stoop. She is a proud child.
She never receives formal training for earthbending, she does not need it. When she moves about the garden, making rows for vegetables, she is herself soil and stone, quake and landslide. When she rises, so does the earth rise with her.
“Your daughter is so intense Jiro,” she hears her uncles say over drinks.
“She’s just quiet, nothing wrong with that,” he responds. He knows she is listening, just beyond their painted screens.
“Quiet like a hunter maybe, just what prey is she stalking?” they laugh, and Jiro smiles into his cup. Kyoshi knows, as he does, that her prey is much bigger than boars or platypus bears or even elephant koi. Jiro knows, as she does, that she is meant for much more.
Soon after the announcement (too early some say, what were the scribes thinking?) offerings begin to appear at her door. They come with no messenger, no explanation, but each day more appear. Fruits, cakes, claws, bones, here and there a painted stone. She holds a pebble to her ear and swears she hears the wishes whispered in the dark of morning. Folk magic for a spirit or a god.
“They mean well, darling,” her mother says as she places yet another string of flowers over the doorway before lighting a candle in front of the family altar. “We are peasant folk, we have never had such prestige to honor our home.”
“Our home doesn’t need prestige,” Kyoshi grumbles in the curt way she has, her voice low like her brothers’. She breathes in and can feel the sea salted air hung like a veil across her village. “Our home is beautiful and safe, our people are strong. We have no need for such displays.”
“Give it time, Kyoshi,” her mother, whose name is Aiko, reaches down and tilts up her daughter’s chin, “Someday soon you will understand your duty in this world, and to your people.”
Kyoshi learns that year of duty, and of justice.
My mother was, to put it simply, a stern woman. She did not look so old, but centuries weighed upon her broad shoulders, and I felt it when we were alone. As a small child, still plagued by nightmares and fevers, I felt often weak and insignificant compared to her, such a powerful creature, for in her paint and armor she did not resemble any human woman.
Sima made things easier though, Sima who nursed me, combed my hair, and sang me lullabies long after I should have outgrown them. Sima who aged beautifully, with sun soaked skin and graying hair. She had blue eyes, not so uncommon on the southern lip of our island, and oh how I longed to have been born with them. I was a plain child, but thanks to Sima, I was a happy one.
It was through Sima’s eyes that I saw my mother’s tenderness. On sunny days I would run ahead of them up the crest of the island, to the cliff where my mother had emancipated us all those years ago. I would clutch at low hanging branches and gather their leaves, and whoop and chase after songbirds who wandered into my path. In moments when I had thought I’d lost them, I’d peek from behind rocks or trees to catch my mother and Sima in a stolen kiss.
They were beautiful together, my mother tall and broad with Sima tucked into her side. Without her paint I saw the soft lines that marked Mother’s face, the places where a scar or a mole interrupted pale skin. In the evenings Sima and I would take turns finding them, and would lay soft kisses on my mother’s somber face until she smiled and caught us up in her strong arms.
I wonder some days, what we would have been without Sima. Strangers, I think, without her firm hands and coaxing songs to bridge the years between us.
They come clawing at her walls in the early morning. The people and the spirits.
Kyoshi’s mother shakes her awake, hair falling into her eyes.
“My darling please, they need you now.” Her voice doesn’t tremble, but her hands fidget with her sleeves. Kyoshi sits up slowly, wills the sleep away and bites the inside of her lip.
“I’m not ready,” she says softly, “I don’t know what to do.”
“THE DEMONS HAVE TAKEN HIM, MY HUSBAND!” a woman cries outside. A man lets out a roar, “THE BOATS ARE ALL ROTTING!” A child wails.
Aiko runs her fingers through her daughter’s hair, brings her lips to that small unlined brow. She breathes out and in, and Kyoshi breathes with her.
“Neither do I,” she whispers.
“MAKE THEM LEAVE US ALONE!”
“WE HAVE DONE NOTHING!”
The entire village pleads for her. And over their cries echoes a great lowing like a gale in mourning, inhuman and horribly big.
“AVATAR YOU ARE OUR KIN!” something shrieks and Kyoshi covers her ears.
“I am only myself, Mother, how can they expect me to be anything else?” Kyoshi says. The wind shakes the trees, “I am not a god.”
Her mother holds her at arm’s length, looking into her daughter’s eyes.
“You are the Avatar, Kyoshi. For them, you must be.”
Kyoshi glances past her mother to the idols on the altar. A woman looks back at her, an old water spirit from long ago, with a wide brimmed hat and dark red eyes. She feels the fear leave her. She listens to the words rumbling under stone and wave.
Kyoshi does not cower.
The legends will say that she walked out of her house, and all noise ended under her gaze. They will say she led the way down to the bay where the elephant koi were hunted for their meat and bones, where the sand of the beaches had been stained black by blood washed in with the tide.
And they will say nothing of how her voice might have wavered, and of the half-moon cuts she left on her clenched hands. They will say she wore all her finery, even though she was only a slip of a girl in her nightclothes.
But they will speak of how she communed with the spirits of the bay. They will tell tale of the pact she made, of the punishments and the compromises she laid down on behalf of the murdered koi, who were sacred creatures.
They will commemorate the koi and revere them, the great fish who joined the emancipation, and they will become symbols of her first great act as Avatar, of the island and its prosperity.
They will recall how Kyoshi descended the steps of her home, her face turned ghostly white, her eyelids marked in dark crimson, her hair pulled back and a golden crest atop her head like a crown.
They will not remember her words though, that first harsh and heavy address:
“If you want a benevolent god, I will not be one. But if you want me to serve justice, and protect this world, so be it.”
I was eight when the raiders came with their stolen ships and blood red sails.
They were from the West; Fire Navy men defected and discharged alike, their armor a piecemeal of outdated breastplates, pilfered boots, worn cloaks, and murderer’s knives.
That would be my first encounter with the Fire Nation. Sima had told me of the orange mountains, those caverns and peaks veined with gold, and of the strange fruits shaped like dragons eggs. She said that the water was warm year round, steaming like hot tea where the sun set into the horizon.
Sima, of course, had never actually been there, though I never held it against her. I was a child with a love of stories, and Sima obliged me. Mother, however, had traveled much in that first century, though in my lifetime I only saw her leave the island once. It was never spoken of to me, but there was no doubt that she had walked those far shores (some say with a lover, others say with the Fire Lady, and still more insist they were one and the same).
But that Spring Sima’s stories and my dreams of gold-eyed princesses in robes of phoenix down shriveled like fruit sucked dry.
They burned our Eastern fields, murdered a farmer there. They tried to capture our children to sell in the Si Wong Desert, or to the Slavers in Chameleon Bay. They came quickly in the night like an infection and by morning they’d left scars on the shores of our island.
But just as quickly as they’d come, Avatar Kyoshi purged them from our lives. My mother dealt with them justly. We watched their ships burn from the hill and I was afraid. I was always afraid back then.
“Why does she never look me in the eyes?” I heard Mother say one night when I’d crept away from my bed. I peered into our dining room, and saw Mother sitting with her back to me, and Sima beyond. By the set of her shoulders I could tell she was angry, and I think they had argued.
“You exaggerate,” Sima replied, eyes on her stitching.
“She’s anxious around me, Sima. She is already eight years old and yet she frets in her sleep and never comes to me with her fears. She hasn’t spoken to me in a week.”
“She is intimidated by you, that’s all,”
“Nonsense.”
“Oh?” Sima put down her stitching suddenly, and placed her hands upon our low table. “Six days ago she and I watched you lay waste to a small army of bandits. You smote them with lightning, you ripped their boats apart with mud and ice and you set the whole company aflame in the bay. Then you came home with your clothing burned and your fans covered in blood and told her justice had been served. She loves you, dearest, but she is eight years old and her mother is the Avatar. Believe me. She. Is. Intimidated.”
After Sima had sat back on her heels and they both had taken deep breaths, my mother spoke, her head bowed.
“She need not be,”
I saw Sima reach across the table and lift up Mother’s chin with her hand.
“You are an intimidating woman, Kyoshi.”
“…Our daughter shouldn’t be intimidated by anything.”
I saw Sima smile.
“So what do you plan to do about it?”
The next day Mother took me to a dojo up on the bluffs. It was small and old, but the tatami mats were new and the cobwebs had been cleaned.
I remember how she placed a hand on my shoulder, guiding me into the shady room. Her hands were huge, and they left a warm spot that spanned the width of my shoulders.
“Koko,” she said to me, not unkindly, “If I ever impart one lesson to you, let it be this:
“You are not a bender, and in this world there are those who would seek to use that against you. They will perceive it as a weakness, and they will think themselves stronger than you because of it.”
I puzzled over this for a moment, and finally said, “B-but Mother…aren’t they?”
She kneeled and ruffled my hair, something she’d never done before.
“No. Not if you are the better warrior. Train well and you will find that, even against the strongest foes, you shall never feel weak.”
And so I began my training.
Firebending comes easily, like a second language she’d always known. Isn’t it fire that courses like blood underneath the cool earth? She is fierce and clever, and she is a master in less than a year.
Airbending, however, poses more of a challenge. Kyoshi does not understand, how is she expected to bend the intangible? She practices her forms, and the wind slips around her, indifferent to her frustration.
“We move with the air, young Avatar,” the Abbess says patiently. “It is not something to be thrown like rocks or sticks. It is a great force that stirs the spirit and we are its living conduit.”
“I prefer the rocks and sticks,” she complains to Haomei that night.
Haomei is, to put it simply, her tutor. She is another student, a higher level than Kyoshi herself. She is also seventeen, suntanned and freckled, with a giddy laugh like a ringing bell. In the evenings at supper, Kyoshi feels Haomei’s braid brush at her arm and a chill runs through her.
She is smitten. She finds excuses to train with Haomei, to let her correct a previously flawless stance, to feel her cool hands press at the small of her back. She goes out one day without pretense and returns with wildflowers to fit into Haomei’s braids. She whispers soft things into Haomei’s ear, and brushes imaginary eyelashes from her freckled cheeks.
Haomei, for her part, laughs and smiles and runs a finger along the broad line of Kyoshi’s jaw as she slips past. They chase each other through the courtyards, and fall into the grass when they both cannot run any more.
“What’s wrong with me?” Kyoshi asks one day, her wide hand blocking the sun from her eyes, “I’ve never had trouble bending in the past. Why should this be any different?”
“You shouldn’t fret so much!” Haomei clucks as she strings clovers together in a chain, “It will come to you, but first you need to let go of what is keeping you grounded.”
“How am I to do that?! I am born of earth and I’ll return to earth, it’s in my bones!” she frowns, “I can’t just leave that behind.”
“Different arts require different approaches, silly.” Haomei teases.
“You airbenders are all jest and scripture, how am I to see through all that to the heart of it?” she covers her eyes with her arms, shutting out the blue sky and Haomei’s stinging smile. “Is this how it feels for others? Those who cannot bend? I become feeble and incompetent compared to you lot and it is infuriating!”
“You shouldn’t scoff at those who cannot bend. They have their own gifts and find other means to use them. Just look at the swordsmen in the East, or the horsemen of the plains. I have seen them and they are not weak, Kyoshi.”
Haomei lays the chain across Kyoshi’s neck, and asks her softly to rise so that she might fasten it. Kyoshi glares at her all the while.
“I need to find my own way to airbend,” she vows, “A way that I can understand. Something with weight to it, not just words.” Haomei stares at her longer than necessary, and nods with a small grin.
“Perhaps I can help.”
When Kyoshi wakes, the fans are waiting for her. They are metal and dark, sturdy wood, the blades painted gold and buffed to shine. Haomei asks shyly what she thinks of them, and Kyoshi thanks her in other ways than words.
“They suit you,” Haomei murmurs afterwards, stretching out beside Kyoshi on the pallet. She has freckles on her shoulders too.
“How so?” Kyoshi tests the balance in one hand.
“They are solid and effective, strong, elegant,” Haomei yawns, “And beautiful.”
Kyoshi blushes behind her fan. Haomei begins to tickle her and they lose half the morning in laughs and soft embraces.
Not many know this, but I was not the first Kyoshi Warrior.
In truth it was Sima who came to Mother in her own youth and requested training.
Mother first taught her the forms, the throws and footwork. Then came the fans, the daggers and swords, and finally after years of study, the warrior’s code. And so it was with me.
Most days I trained under Sima while Mother observed. Every now and then she would comment, or correct my posture, but in the end it was Sima who instructed me and Sima who I sparred with. Despite her age, I discovered all too quickly Sima was still an excellent fighter, and that even as my loving parent she was still willing to leave me bruised.
“The fan is an extension of your arm,” she told me one day, “it acts as shield and sword, but it always moves with you, never against. If you let your control slacken, it becomes just another fan and it is easily disarmed.” She struck the fan out of my hand for emphasis, and I recall in the evening quiet the way it clattered far across the room.
“Remember,” Sima said, “The core of your mother’s teachings is to use the strength of your opponent against him. The fan will guide you, and you must be prepared to follow through and seek the openings it reveals to you.”
“How did Mother learn this?” I asked, rubbing at my still stinging hand, “This is nothing like earthbending.”
“Your mother is not just an earthbender, Koko.” Sima told me as we sank into defensive postures. I remember quite clearly that we practiced kicks, something I still do even though I’ve aged even older than Sima was when she taught me. “The Avatar masters many disciplines. But that particular philosophy, I believe, came from her time with the airbenders.”
“Why doesn’t she ever tell me about them?” I was prone to pouting in my youth, and as we faced each other, I let my guard down. Sima swept my feet out from under me.
As she leaned down to offer me her hand, she smiled and said, “Why don’t you ever ask?”
At dusk we walked back towards our home. It was autumn again, I remember my birthday was coming soon. I was turning thirteen. Mother had not been in the dojo that day; she was off on some important business with the merchants’ guild.
It was a good a time as any to ask Sima what had been on my mind for some time.
“Um…Sima,” I began, stammering as I often used to do, “Why…Why do I call Kyoshi mother, and you by your name?”
“What do you mean Koko?”
“That is…you nursed me, and have watched over me, and you train me even now. I love Mother…and I respect her but…why are you not my mother, Sima?”
She smiled at me, maybe a little sadly, and reached out to touch my hand.
“Koko, you are my daughter and I love you. But when the time comes, history will remember Avatar Kyoshi, and they will celebrate her and her child. History will not remember me, and I do not need the posterity. But when you are older you will understand how very important it is that you are Kyoshi’s daughter.”
And while all she said was true, in that moment Sima was also wrong. Because I did not need to wait until I was older, I understood completely. And perhaps more for my love of her than anything else, I wept in the fading light of dusk, because truly Sima deserved to be remembered far more than I. She deserved the honor and admiration of the whole world. All the while she held me close to her, and whispered that I need not be sad, that she had me and Mother and that she was content. I wept anyway and when I was done we walked home arm in arm.
That night, when Mother returned, I sat across from her at our little table. I poured her tea, and I told her for the first time that I would like her to be my sifu.
“And I’d also like to hear about the airbenders, please.”
She smirked a bit, took a drag of her pipe, and honored my requests.
Kyoshi moves unseen through a whirlwind; spinning low and rising, kicking up dust and leaves, making the air thin and sharp like knives. When it’s dissipated, her arms are still raised, and in each hand she holds a fan. Haomei applauds, and the rest of the crowd follows suit.
She closes her fans with a flourish, and walks towards the Abbess and senior nuns. They smile and nod, and it is through that small gesture that Kyoshi is released from her training.
“Congratulations,” Haomei says to her later, seated atop her bison.
“And to you,” Kyoshi nods to the newly healed tattoos that cut across Haomei’s arms and shoulders. She has shaved most of her hair, and the arrow stands out vibrant blue against her scalp, still pink and healing.
“I take it you’re off to the North Pole to train then? There is something in the way she says it, so cavalier, that gives Kyoshi pause.
“I was considering the South, it is closer to my home…but I had thought that you might-”
“Come with you?” Haomei’s smile drops a little. “Kyoshi, you know I love you best out of all things in this world, but I could never…it is not my nature.”
“You are being coy again.” Kyoshi grits her teeth, “You expect me to chase after you like we did as students, but I am not a child anymore Haomei.”
“No,” she responds, “I don’t think you were ever a child, not really. But you are the Avatar, and you have responsibilities that will tie you to the material, to the earth and its conflicts.”
“Because it is my duty!”
“It is not mine, Kyoshi. I am a nomad, and I cannot let myself stray from my own callings.” She takes up the bison’s reins for a moment, but lets them fall and slides down to embrace her lover. Kyoshi grips her tight for as long as she can.
“You say you love me best…how am I to believe that if you are so prepared to leave me?”
“Oh Kyoshi,” Haomei runs long fingers through her hair, “I do love you best, but you mustn’t let me keep you from what is waiting for you. You will love others, and you won’t regret having loved them.” She stands a full head shorter than Kyoshi, but she raises up on a gust of wind and lays a soft kiss there at her brow, and another on her lips.
“How can you be so certain of such things?”
Haomei laughs and it sounds like bells singing.
“Because I have loved you, Kyoshi! And I do not regret it!”
Kyoshi watches until Haomei is less than a bright spot against a darkening sky. She does not weep, but she holds the fans close to her breast, and counts the long seconds between heartbeats.
I was twenty when, for the first time in my life, my mother left Kyoshi Island.
“Some trouble in the Capital,” she said before her departure, “That fool of a king thinks the Dai Li are his own personal brute squad. I created them to help keep balance in that wretched city.”
“Are you sure you are willing to make this journey mother?” I had asked, holding up the sash to fasten her robes. She scoffed and pulled her gauntlets tight.
“I am healthier than a hundred soldiers put together, Koko. The Earth King thinks me some infirm old hag simply because I was there to chide his fool of a grandfather when he misbehaved.”
“You speak as if the King were a child,” I failed to hide a smile.
“They’re all children in my eyes, the whole lot of them.” She tied her crest in place, and turned to our mirror. She touched at the corners of her eyes, where the red paint had covered up the small wrinkles that had begun to show. “So, my daughter, do I look suitably imposing?”
“You, Mother?” I chuckled as we made our goodbyes, “Always.”
By then my training was complete, and had taken to teaching many of the local children in simple self-defense. Sima accompanied me to many of the classes, though a fever that past winter had taken much of the strength from her legs. Instead she lectured those that were interested on the history of our island, and the proud tradition of its warriors.
I was pleased, and Mother also, to see that most of the attendees were young girls.
She arrives at the head of a gale, water and wind buffeting her on all sides and in her heart a fury and a sorrow.
She lands heavily on her hilltop, the one where her footprints have long worn away since the day she sailed her home to freedom. She doesn’t fall, but allows herself to take a knee, lungs gasping for breath. For the first time she feels old.
Koko comes up the hill soon after, Sima leaning against her with her walking stick. Kyoshi watches them come along the path, and something in her keeps her from running forward to meet them, scooping them into a warm embrace.
Koko is a woman now, taller than Sima, with dark eyes and a broad nose. She wears her hair short, cut at the chin, and it suits her. Many of the other women have done the same. She has grown stoic and blossomed with it, strength and patience winning over childhood apprehension. She stammers still, when she is nervous, and Kyoshi sees much of herself there.
Sima is simply Sima, ever lovely, always practical, even though she has stooped a little and her hair has gone to white. Her eyes are still the same sparkling blue, and her caresses still as comforting.
When they reach her, Koko looks her up and down. Kyoshi realizes she has forgotten to bend the water out of her clothing, still soaked from her arrival. The dripping hems of her hakama make puddles about her feet.
“It didn’t go well, I take it.” Sima says, reaching forward and taking Kyoshi’s hand in her own. She offers her whole arm, and Sima takes it.
“The Dai Li are lost.” She begins, hot coals of anger flaring again in her heart, “I created them, trained them, instilled them with a sense of honor and purpose, I gave them a code of justice to follow and so soon they have fallen.”
“A hundred years feels much longer to common men, Mother,” Koko says, holding her gaze, “Who can say how many weeds have taken root in the capital since you were there last.”
“It is no matter to me now; I have no interest in the affairs of the Earth King. I have done what I can, made my reprimands, and exercised my authority as the Avatar. I doubt he’ll make much noise while I still live. Let him keep his damnable bodyguards, that’s all they are now. They have become swayed by gold and jade and promises of luxury. The city beyond the palace thrives for now.”
“And what of the future?” Koko asks as they descend the hill homewards.
“I daresay it will be the burden of someone else by then.”
Koko grows quiet, and Sima squeezes Kyoshi’s arm, fingers gripped tight in the folds of her robes.
That night she calls Koko to her room.
“I am ashamed, Koko,” she says, abruptly, “I have failed to do justice as the Avatar.”
“Wha-” shock paints her daughters features, “What on earth do you mean?”
“The Dai Li has been corrupted, and I am too far gone in years to go to war with them. They are perhaps my greatest failing, Koko. I have created an elite force of earthbenders, trained them as I have trained few others, and they take those gifts and use them selfishly.”
“You could not have known, Mother.” She starts, and Kyoshi holds up a hand to silence her.
“I am telling you this not only because you are my child, and I trust you deeply,” Koko softens a bit, looking down and fiddling with the edge of her sleeve. “I am two-hundred and twenty years of age. I have seen much, but my time is ending, Koko, you and I both know this.
“And that is why I will ensure the protection of our people, our culture and traditions. I will create a force to match the Dai Li, and all who come after them, one that relies not on bending but whose strength lies in the competence and fortitude of the human body. Let the benders of the world think they are the strongest. There will come a day when all the nations gather in one place to see great justice done and mark my words, a common woman of Kyoshi will stand tall as any bender and fight twice as fierce.”
Koko stares up at her mother, who has risen and moved to the window. A night breeze plucks at Kyoshi’s hair and the tassels of her crest. The moon is low and bright; the backs of koi glow silver on the surface of the bay. Somewhere the unagi lets out a hissing shriek and rolls over in its sleep.
“Do you know why I dress this way, Koko?”
“Ah…I…” she stammers, swallows and begins again, “You told me in training. That the green silk was the robes of our old warriors, it represented bravery; green like the heart of the land, and silk which becomes strong when weaved together, like the bonds of brotherhood.”
Kyoshi motions for her to continue.
“The gold crest you wear belonged to your grandmother, a priestess, and the golden ore was symbol of the honor and nobility in our people’s hearts. The paint on your face is meant to frighten your enemies.”
“True, though I first wore it to shut up a noisy crowd.” Kyoshi chuckles while Koko gapes. “I felt that if the world wished to see me as a divine and terrible, I’d best look the part.”
“You…never told me that before.”
“I am sorry it has taken me so long.”
They stay silent for a while, listening to the rustle of the trees and Sima’s soft snores just past the curtain. Kyoshi stays at the window, and looking down from her height Koko seems so much the child again, tiny and precious. And then she speaks, shoulders set and chin raised high, with a woman’s voice.
“Mother what would you have me do, to help you find these warriors?”
Kyoshi moves the way a mountain moves. A slow descent, a bend, a shift, like layers of silt, and soon she is knee to knee with her daughter, hands pressed firmly on Koko’s shoulders.
“My beloved…my only child…I want you to lead them.”
It came to pass that we were named the Kyoshi Warriors. It was Sima’s idea.
I handpicked the best girls from my classes, a group of twelve, who I trained rigorously as my mother had trained me. It was not long before parents begged us to view their daughters and test their merit in combat, so prestigious it was to join our ranks.
Within five years our size had doubled, and we had gained a small amount of fame for foiling bandits and poachers, as well as the disputes that would flare between villages. The girls grew into women, all of them masters of our techniques and each with her own brand of shrewd improvisation. We took on the uniform and the paint, and it became a badge of honor and courage to walk amongst my warriors.
It was in winter, near the solstice, in my tenth year as Captain of the Kyoshi Warriors, that my mother kissed Sima good night, and did not rise the next morning.
I was thirty, with a house of my own, and though I was old by our village’s standards, I had a few prospects for marriage. I was with my future husband when the news came.
It had never occurred to me, despite her warnings, that Avatar Kyoshi could truly die. She was too permanent, too powerful. She moved with the land itself and like the land I had always thought she’d remain. And yet her body was laid out before us all on a pyre lined in flowers and cedar bark. The whole island had come, and with them came offerings, cakes and claws and painted stones.
When the torch was brought forth, they all began to wail. I remained silent, for I was the one that carried it. I could not look upon the masses; old men more than twice my age who had looked upon her as children and fallen in love; pregnant women who she had visited, offering wisdom and kindness; small babies that would never know her as anything more than a statue in the bay.
Somewhere a flute played, a drum beat, and I set my mother aflame.
I stepped back as the flames rose, engulfing her silks, her long dark hair, her golden fans laid across her chest. Sima was with me, holding my hand. Tears were in her eyes.
“Don’t look away.” She said.
“I won’t.” I replied. My heart felt heavy and dead like a chunk of rock, pitted and charred black.
Ash leapt from her pyre, stinging our eyes. Smoke covered everything, and with it came the smell of burning flowers. And yet when I turned to look upon Sima, (my other mother; my wave where Mother had been my rock) she was bathed in soft oranges, her features made smooth and serene. We all were.
It was like the glow of evening on a hot autumn day, when the sun turns everything a burning gold and the cranes call out overhead.
“She looks so peaceful,” Sima said, holding my hand to her cheek, “She looks so young.”
I took a last look upon her face. She was wearing her paint. It seemed right.
“She looks proud.” I whispered, and through my grief I felt a flutter of warmth return to my stone of a heart.
When my mother finally returned to the island she wore the face of a young man from the Fire Nation.
He was tall and young, wise at his moments and foolish in most others, with a pleasant laugh and a humble heart. Yet I did not, could not know these things, for when he stepped onto Kyoshi for the first time, all I could see was my mother’s pyre some twenty years prior.
“My name is Roku, Madame Governor, and I am the Avatar.” he said to me in my offices. I was named Governor of the island after Mother’s death, and though I continued to train the Kyoshi Warriors, I found myself suited to role.
“Yes I was told you were coming,” I responded, not looking up from a new charter on fishing quotas, “What brings you to our home, young Avatar?”
“Well you see, ma’am,” he continued, “I’ve travelled a long way, from my home to the Air Temples to the North Pole and now I find myself here.”
I recall how straight he sat, and yet how he stooped his head, all deference and humility. It was a strange contrast to what I’d come to expect from the Avatar.
“And as it is, ma’am, I have mastered the elements of fire, air, and water. Now I must move on to earth and before I do that…I would like very much, to know of Avatar Kyoshi.”
“And why should you come so far to know anything of Kyoshi?” I replied, “Her time as Avatar is well documented, she traveled every inch of the great continent. She visited your fire islands many times.”
“Yes ma’am, but you were her daughter.”
“I am still her daughter, young man.”
He fell silent for a moment, afraid he had offended me. I sighed and leaned forward, my knees creaking in protest.
“What you are not telling me, young man,” I said, looking him square in the eyes, “Is that you wish to learn of the Avatar before you because you fear you won’t be able fill her shoes. And you have come to me, perhaps the last living person who knew her well, and you’re hoping I’ll prove you wrong.”
His eyes grew wide, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed a few times, and watching him fidget I recognized that under his beard and muscles he was still only a boy learning his place in this world.
I smiled.
“Well I’m afraid you’ll never quite fill her shoes…my mother’s feet were quite large.”
When we had finished laughing, he regarded me with a warm expression, relief perhaps. He was not so tall as her, but he still stood half a head over me, and I felt a strange nostalgia for the days that I looked up into my mother’s face so far above my own.
“Is it strange that I feel like I’ve met you before, Madame Governor?”
“No,” I stood and motioned for him to follow me, “No I don’t think so.”
We walked side by side up the hilly path to the dojo. He asked me where I was taking him and I told him there was much to discuss, and I had much to tell him of my mother’s teachings.
Along the way we stopped at a small shrine half-covered with moss and clover. Truly it was more a collection of stones, weathered smooth by rain and wind. It stood about knee high, and on it had been carved a woman’s face. The white paint had all but faded, but the red around her eyes was still vibrant.
At its base was an offering: some flowers, pebbles from the river, and a paper fan.
We said a prayer, and continued on.