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“Buzz off!” Rangi yelled. She took the fire she’d been winding between her hands and redirected it high above Kirima’s head.
Since the night they spent in the marble quarry, Rangi’s personal attitude toward Kirima had gone steeply downhill. Kyoshi had no idea why. They were both talented benders who married intelligence with precision. She’d trust either of their judgments in a pinch.
Kirima didn’t flinch from the fire blast. The waves of heat fluttered her hair and illuminated her sharp face in golden hues, an effect that was rather pretty. “You’re not setting a very good example for the baby Avatar, Topknot. Too much rage will stunt her growth.”
“Stop calling me that!” Rangi fumed.
Maybe that was it, the constant teasing. Kyoshi wondered how Rangi put up with the nickname for so long. In the Fire Nation, hair was h
eavily linked with honor. She’d heard that sometimes the losers of an important Agni Kai would shave parts of their head bald, laying patches of their scalp bare to symbolize an extra level of humility from their defeat, but the topknot was always sacred. It was never touched except in circumstances akin to death.
Kirima bowed in mockery. “As you wish, my good Hotwoman. I’m coming back in five minutes.”
After she disappeared, Kyoshi put her hand on Rangi’s shoulder. “Did something happen between the two of you?”
Rangi responded with her new favorite way of avoiding the subject. “Stance training,” she said.
“We already did stance training!”
“Lek said you went berserk in the cave. We’re moving to two a day. Horse. Now.”
Kyoshi groaned and pressed her feet together. She shuffled them to the sides, alternating between heels and toes, until they were wider than her shoulders. She kept quiet as she lowered her waist, or else Rangi would make her hold a log or some other heavy object they could find lying around.
Rangi circled her, looking for any weakness where she could strike. “Do not move,” she said, right before stepping carefully onto Kyoshi’s bent knee.
“I hate you so much!” Kyoshi yelled as Rangi draped her bodyweight over her shoulders.
“The exercise is to maintain composure in the face of distraction! Now maintain!”
Kyoshi put up with the asymmetrical agony until Rangi dropped back down to the ground. “I don’t want her teaching you waterbending,” Rangi said as she moved threateningly into Kyoshi’s blind spot.
“Why?” Kyoshi felt Rangi leap onto her back, clinging to her like a rucksack. “Agh! Why!”
“There’s a proper order to training the Avatar,” Rangi said. “The cycle of the seasons. Earth, fire, air, water. It’s not good to deviate from that pattern. You have to master the other elements before water.”
“Again, why?” There were only four airbending temples in the world. If she tried to seek out a master there, Jianzhu would find her more easily than anywhere else.
“Because!” Rangi snapped. “They say bad things happen when an Avatar tries to defy the natural order of bending. Ill fortune befalls them.”
Kyoshi had never known Rangi to lean on superstition. Tradition, however, was another matter. She could tell that each time they ignored an established practice regarding the Avatar, the knife twisted in Rangi’s heart a little bit more.
But Kyoshi owed it to her not to make a promise she couldn’t keep. “I’m going to use every weapon I have at my disposal,” she said. That was the truth.
Rangi let go of her. “I know. I can’t stop you from training with Kirima. It’s just that as soon as you start waterbending in earnest, our chance to do things the right way dies. Forever. It can’t be brought back.”
Hearing it phrased that way made Kyoshi glummer than she’d expected. She stared at the ground in front of her. Rangi’s feet came into view.
“Come on,” she said. “Cheer up. I didn’t mean to send you into a spiral.”
“I can’t cheer up. I’m in Horse stance.”
“I like your focus,” Rangi said. “But see if you can withstand this.”
She slid between Kyoshi’s arms and gave her a head-tilting, knee-buckling kiss, as powerful and deep as the ocean after a storm.
Kyoshi’s eyes went wide before they shut forever. She sank into heavenly darkness. Her backbone turned to liquid. “Maintain,” Rangi murmured, her lips like a feather on Kyoshi’s before she attacked again, with added ferocity this time.
Kyoshi never wanted the torment to end. Rangi pressed into her like metal glowing on an anvil, scorching her where their skin met. Fingers ran through Kyoshi’s hair, twisting and pulling to remind her how delightfully at the Firebender’s mercy she was.
