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She stared at the water until the sun’s reflection became too much, and then reached for her single bag of belongings. Digging around, she found the clay turtle. It was made of earth. It was tiny. She could use it for practice.
Small, she thought as she cradled it with both hands. Precise. Silent. Small.
She curled her lips in concentration. It was like crooking the tip of her pinky while wiggling her opposite ear. She needed a whole-body effort to keep her focus sufficiently narrow.
There was another reason why she didn’t want to seek instruction from a famous bending master with a sterling reputation and wisdom to spare. Such a teacher would never let her kill Jianzhu in cold blood. Her hunger to learn all four elements had nothing to do with becoming a fully realized Avatar. Fire, Air, and Water were simply more weapons she could bring to bear on a single target.
And she had to bring her earthbending up to speed too.
Small. Precise.
The turtle floated upward, trembling in the air.
It wasn’t steady the way bent earth should be, more of a wobbling top on its last few spins. But she was bending it. The smallest piece of earth she’d ever managed to control.
A minor victory. This was only the beginning of her path. She would need much more practice to see Jianzhu broken in pieces before her feet, to steal his world away from him the way he had stolen hers, to make him suffer as much as possible before she ended his miserable worthless life—
There was a sharp crack.
The turtle fractured along innumerable fault lines. The smallest parts, the blunt little tail and squat legs, crumbled first. The head fell off and bounced over the edge of the saddle. She tried to close her grip around the rest of it and caught only dust. The powdered clay slipped between her fingers and was taken by the breeze.
Her only keepsake of Kelsang flew away on the wind.
ADAPTATION
Jianzhu pushed open the doors of his house to find it in static, silent chaos.
The servants lined up in rows to the left and right, bowing as the master entered, forming a human aisle of deference for him to walk through. It was overly formal, a practice he’d dismissed long ago.
He hadn’t bothered to clean himself before entering, so he left a trail of dust and rubble in his wake. There was an ache in his chest as he passed the bashed-in door to his study, a testament to his Airbender friend’s great strength and personal conviction.
He had no time to grieve for what had happened to Kelsang. He went straight to the Avatar’s room in the staff quarters, followed the path of damage outside to the empty bison pen and then back to his cowering servants in a loop.
“Can someone tell me what happened here?” he said in what he thought was an admirably neutral, collected tone given the circumstances.
Instead of answering they shrank further into their shoulders, quaking. Whoever spoke up first was sure to take the blame.
They’re afraid of me, he thought. To the point they can’t do their jobs properly. He cursed the fact that the girl had no official supervisor watching her, and pointed at his head cook, Mui. He’d seen the Avatar doing favors for the woman in the kitchen.
“Where is Kyoshi?” he said
, snapping his fingers.
Mui went crimson. “I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Master. None of us had ever seen her act that way before. She—she had a weapon. By the time we could find a guardsman, she was gone.”
“Did any of the guests see her leave?”
Mui shook her head. “Most of them left early to try and beat the storm, and the others were in their rooms in the far wing.”
He supposed it wasn’t the middle-aged cook’s fault that she was unable to stop a rampaging, axe-wielding teenager who could break a mountain whenever she remembered she had the ability. Jianzhu dismissed the staff without another word. Better to have them uncertain, fearing his next command.
He drifted through the halls of the house until he found himself in an aisle of the gallery, staring at some of his artwork but not seeing it. That was where Hei-Ran found him after she returned from an offshore meeting with the delegation from the Fire Navy.
She frowned at his appearance, ever the disciplinarian. “You look like you were spat out by a badgermole,” she said.
Better to tear off this bandage quickly. He told her the version of events she needed to hear. Kyoshi being the true Avatar. The disappearance of both Yun and Kelsang, caused by a treacherous spirit. The Avatar holding a grudge against him for it.
She slapped him across the face. Which was about as good a result as he could get.
