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“That’s not true!”
“Oh, so then I suppose you fell neck-first into a sharp object by accident?” Rangi said. A deep scowl crossed her features. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed your new scars. It’s like you’re ruining my favorite parts on purpose.”
Jinpa wiped his eyes, the release making him emotional. “She is so taxing,” he said into his fist, sniffling a little.
Rangi got up from the bed and patted him on the back. “I know. I know she is. She’s the worst. You’ve done a heroic job taking care of her, and I’m here to help you now.”
“I am the Avatar!” Kyoshi said in a desperate last resort to shield herself from further judgment. “Not some helpless child!”
The way she stamped her foot undercut her message. Rangi and Jinpa gave each other a squint. Are we sure about that? I’m not so sure.
Kyoshi’s head hurt. She had spent long months building fortifications around herself, establishing a reputation and self-image in the Earth Kingdom as someone not to be trifled with. It’d taken Rangi less than an hour in the Fire Nation to tear those walls down and invite Jinpa inside.
Jinpa’s growing grin told her this was revenge, glorious revenge aged like fine wine until the perfect moment. This was payback for all the times she’d ordered him to drop the conversation about her injuries or ignored his reminders to put the books away and get some rest. She finally figured out how she felt about the young man who’d been there quietly in the background, providing her care with grace and compassion.
He was a dirty snitch. “You can’t talk about me like this!” Kyoshi fumed, pointing her finger at Jinpa. In the daofei code, snitches were punished by thunderbolts and knives. “I am your boss!”
“That may be, but she’s clearly the one in charge.” He tipped his bald head at Rangi, positively gleeful with the new method of Avatar management he’d been gifted. “If squealing is what it takes to keep you healthy, then slap me with a feather and call me a pig chicken.”
“Get out,” Kyoshi snapped.
Jinpa shared another knowing smile with Rangi as he backed out the door. Look at her, trying to be tough. How adorable.
And then, suddenly, for the first time in a long time, Kyoshi and Rangi were alone together.
It was like being granted a wish from a spirit before she was ready. Kyoshi felt the need to choose her words carefully or else her boon would vanish.
Rangi helped her with the selection. “How are things back at the mansion?” she asked quietly. She’d lived there alongside Kyoshi. Yokoya had been her home too, until that night they fled together into the storm.
“Less busy.” The mansion was no longer the vibrant, bustling place it was during Kyoshi’s servant days. Much of the staff had quit immediately after the Earth King’s investigators closed the poisoning case. As the new master of the estate, Kyoshi didn’t replace them, not wanting to manage a large household anyway, which left most of the halls empty and the gardens untended. The villagers avoided the hollowed-out manor and called it an unlucky place. “Auntie Mui is still there, doing what she can. I don’t know why she hasn’t left yet.”
“You’re why.” Rangi looked pained and frustrated, as if an old injury that should have long since healed had been prodded too hard. “She’s trying to support you, Kyoshi.”
She was going to say more on the matter but decided to hold it for another day. Their next topic needed every possible inch of space cleared around it before they could approach. For a while, the two of them stared at the same patch of red threads woven into the rug.
>
Again, Rangi got there first. “Yun?”
One of the promises that Kyoshi had made to Rangi before she boarded the ship bound for the frigid reaches of the north was that she would find their friend, no matter what it took. The declaration had been slipped in among tears and embraces so tight Kyoshi’s shoulders ached for days afterward. The witnesses were the dockworkers and sailors weaving around them on the pier, grumbling at their obliviousness to anything but each other.
But in the expanse of the Earth Kingdom the force of her vow had dissipated. She’d quickly learned that without some kind of edge, it was functionally impossible to find a single person in the depths of the largest continent, even one as famous as Yun had been. She hadn’t a shirshu to track his scent, nor spiritual trigrams to read for his location. Asking commoners in the villages she visited in the course of her Avatar duties if they’d seen a particular Earthbender was a laughable exercise. Gray hand? Sure, my cousin’s got a skin problem like that.
Looking back on it now, her grand ambitions had been reduced to pathetic letter writing campaigns to sages who had no inclination to help. And why would they? Lu Beifong wasn’t the only one who preferred to believe he was dead.
“I thought if I could figure out how he survived, it might give me a lead,” Kyoshi said. “But every story I found of people taken bodily by spirits was a folktale, and none of them live. I don’t have an explanation for how he came back.” Or why he changed.
She rubbed her eyes. The sting of reliving her failures made it hard to see straight. “The closest piece of information I could find was an account of a spirit possessing the son of a provincial governor during the Hao dynasty. It said a dragon bird flew through his body, altered his physical appearance, and gave him unusual abilities.”
“Is that the answer?” Rangi said. “Maybe people touched by spirits can pass through the boundaries between the Spirit World and the human realm easier than others.”
“It’s hard to say. The text didn’t mention crossing between worlds. It just said the boy sprouted feathers and a beak when the dragon bird flew into him. Yun didn’t look any different on the outside when I saw him in Qinchao. But he’s not the same as before. I just know it.”
Kyoshi felt like screaming in the red chamber. This was the best she had done for their friend. An old story and a wild guess. She couldn’t pretend in front of Rangi. The full weight of her futile, wasted efforts crushed down on her shoulders.
“Kyoshi . . . have you ever considered that he’s moved on?”
She looked up at Rangi’s question, confused. “From what?”
