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I
 
Her footsteps thud heavily against the dusty dirt road, and her breath is noisy in her ears. The earth is packed down from the passage of hundreds of pairs of feet, jarring through her small frame at each pump of her legs in her steady jog from the marketplace and back up the steep mountain incline toward the dojo that she calls home.

Beneath the sound of her breath her heart thunders,

buzzing

with her excitement.

The girl barely feels the weight of the basket of supplies which pulls down on her reedy arms and at her back and neck.

A bright grin peels back her cheeks, the wind whipping past her in her progress toward the dojo at the North edge of the town which she has called home since birth.

The precious jars that sit at the bottom of the basket, ensconced in the bright green fabric of her freshly made kimono and hakama, still manage to clack against one another with every impact of the soles of her sandals against the ground. They jangle like bells calling her forth to the battlefield. She feels them sing inside of her blood.

“Slow down or you'll hurt yourself!" Kenji’s chesty voice comes out to greet her as she passes his estate. She looks over her shoulder briefly with a nod of deference to the town’s elder. He peers back at her anxiously from the open gate that stands before his house.

“I’ll be careful,” she promises as she returns her attention to the road before her, not once breaking pace. She can almost hear him shaking his head and mumbling about young people and their inability to slow down and take the world a little bit at a time. Always in a hurry.

It doesn’t take long to reach the dojo despite the distance. The roofline climbs up over the crest of the hill as the girl ascends, swooping out like a dragon’s wings. The earth tones of the building’s wooden exterior contrast with the blazing autumn colours around it, stark and familiar. She smiles, her lungs expanding and contracting comfortably despite the exertion of her run.

The girl follows the familiar path down to the entrance of the main building, toeing off her sandals before she pounds barefoot across the wood of the deck and stops to bob a quick bow to the small shrine at the head of the room before she speed walks across the soft tatami to where the familiar figure of her mother sits before it, lighting incense methodically.

Mio is not a tall woman, by any means, nor is her appearance all that remarkable. Her chestnut hair hangs low on her back, collected partway down into a soft, green, piece of material to keep it out of her way. Her kimono is practical and well worn. Dark forest green contrasted with a simple obi in dusty rose.

“Mom I’m back!”

The woman turns to face her, her soft, narrow, middle-aged features almost unrecognizable without the signature warpaint of Kyoshi. She smiles at her daughter.

“Suki, welcome home.” She rolls to her knees, turning around on the mats to face the twelve-year-old and her burden.

“You got everything?”

“Yes mom,” she answers obediently, immediate, beaming proudly.

A small, amused, smirk tucks itself into her mother’s cheek before the woman reaches out her hands for the basket, finally relieving Suki of its burden.

Her mother grunts at the weight.

“You carried this all by yourself?” Mio seems almost surprised, and Suki flushes.

“That’s how it’s supposed to be done,” Suki points out, stomach fluttering, “isn’t it?”

Another smile spreads across the Kyoshi Warrior’s face, warm and slow.

“Yes, that’s right.” There’s more her mother wants to say. Suki can see the desire behind her blue-green eyes, but as per usual the Captain of the Kyoshi Warriors is silent on anything further to do with the matter.

“Are you ready for tonight then,” Mio questions.

Suki’s heart rate rises once again and, breathless, she nods her head in agreement.

“Yes, mom.”

Her mother’s expression remains soft. Suki thinks that there is even something sad behind the look in her eye. Something that Suki herself cannot name. All she feels is excitement.

Nerves.

She’s going to prove herself.

“Good,” Mio finally says, “remember that you’ll need to rest. There’s no use in wearing yourself out,” her tone is pointed at Suki’s flushed cheeks and shining eyes, “not when there will be plenty of that this evening when you take the next steps on your journey.”

Suki tries to put on a serious face, and she presses her lips together, nodding her head decisively.

“Yes mom, I know.” But it’s difficult, she thinks, to even consider standing still.

A warrior must be able to plant themselves like a tree; serene but always ready to bend with the changing wind.

Her whole body is abuzz with energy. Suki thinks she could keep going for days and days with all of the energy that courses through her.

She wonders if it’s the same for all of the girls who are about to become fully fledged Kyoshi Warriors. She wonders if even the women that her mother trained were the same. She wonders if her mother was the same.

“Mom —?”

Her mother pauses in the midst of getting to her feet, basket in hand, looking expectantly at Suki.

“…What was your ceremony like?”

“Mine?”

“Yes…Yours. Do you remember?” Suki thinks it was probably so long ago that maybe her mother does not recall what it was like to go from novice to master.

The woman snorts, standing fully and resting the basket at her hip with ease.

“Of course I remember. I think everyone does.” She gestures at Suki with her free hand. “Come on, we’ll walk and talk.”

Suki follows her mother eagerly from the training hall and into the hallway in the interior building, the two of them slipping their feet into grass slippers before they make their way down the hallway and toward the kitchen.

The smell of wood smoke permeates the space, drifting from rooms where other Kyoshi Warriors are living, boarding with them rather than going home to their families on the other side of the island. For some, it is worth saving themselves the three hour trip by foot between the far larger settlement that the dojo inhabits and the smaller one on the Northern side of the island.

Paper screens obscure any hint of what might go on beyond them, but here and there, where one of the women has opened her second door onto the outside, a shadow can be seen. A silhouette of a figure going about their morning routine.

Like a play put on with shadow puppets.

Suki’s eyes dart back to her mother who has pulled ahead of her somewhat, and she hurries her steps to catch up, matching her mother’s stride after a moment.

“So?”

The woman looks down sideways at her, an amused expression in place on her fine features, full lips parting after a moment.

“I was nervous,” she says, “but excited.”

Suki nods. That’s exactly the way that she would describe her own feelings on the matter.

“I wasn’t as young as you are,” she admits, “but I was young enough. My own mother didn’t really think I was ready, but the others convinced her that I was prepared for my trial. I’m glad that they did. I think that, even if I wasn’t quite ready, it helped me move forward with my training. It was the next step in my journey. I learned a lot merely going through the trial itself. From the mentor who I battled, and

about

myself.”

Suki smiles brightly at the thought. Learning about herself. She likes that sentiment.

“Mio?”

Both Suki and her mother turn toward the voice that comes from one of the rooms at the end of the hall. Her mother’s second in command, Haru, has poked her round face out of her door, and she looks expectantly at the two of them. Mio turns with a smile to face her more fully.

“Yes?”

“When you have a moment I had wanted to speak to you about the preparations for tonight,” Haru says seriously.

Suki sees her mother suppress a sigh before nodding soberly at the other woman.

“Of course, Haru. I will be back to speak with you soon. Will you still be in your quarters?”

“For now, yes.”

“Alright.”

Both Mio and Suki turn from Haru, starting on their journey down the hall once more.

They reach the quieter interior of the large building that their family has kept up for generation; it feels homier here, in Suki’s opinion. There is less of the hustle and bustle of the every day.

Sometimes, as a child, she had wished that she could have siblings to fill up the interior halls too. She had wished that it wasn’t so quiet. Now, she appreciates it. The idea that she does not have any siblings to take their mother’s attention off of her on a day which is so important for Suki.

It would have been nice to have her father though.

In companionable silence, the two of them reach Suki’s room, and her mother pulls the paper screen away from the opening, kneeling and settling the basket on the soft tatami floor before entering and beckoning for Suki to follow.

She kicks off her slippers, lining them up perfectly alongside her mother’s on the hall floor, and comes to kneel in the interior of her room, sliding the door closed again before she returns her attention to her mother.

The commander of the Kyoshi Warriors has moved to the center of Suki’s room and is taking the contents of the basket out to lie on the floor.

The green wool kimono that they’d sent to the tailor for two weeks previous, stitched with expertise. Suki had managed to take a look at the work before she’d got home, and she knows well enough that the stitches are so small in the seams that one can barely tell that they’re even there at all.

She wishes her own sewing were so skilled. Alas, it isn’t her strong suit. The kimono is followed by the deep green ceremonial hakama. Her mother lays them both out cleanly, smoothing away the wrinkles of transport.

They’re followed by terracotta jars, painted with lacquer and gold leaf. Their war paint is contained within. The chalky scent of the white and red face paints will follow her everywhere today, once she has been readied. A smell that she has always associated with her mother and her aunties.

Suki kneels, waiting patiently for her mother to finish with her task, trying not to fidget.

A warrior can remain completely still and serene, calm even in the face of battle

.

“In an hour you will take the sacred bath,” her mother says as she puts the finishing touches on her display in the center of the room, “and wash away your impurities. Then you will go to the temple and meditate until sundown.”

Suki knows all of this, of course, but it is her mother’s duty to remind her, and it is her duty to listen. She takes a deep breath and settles where she is sitting, nodding seriously at her mother’s instructions.

“No food or drink will pass your lips until the feast tonight, to remind you of the hunger that those we are meant to serve suffer.”

This, of course, is symbolic too. Their people do not suffer from hunger like in the old days, and the hand of Kyoshi no longer stretches outside of their island. Suffering, however, is meant to be understood by a good acolyte of Kyoshi, and Suki is willing to suffer the hunger that is required of her for her trial.

“Yes, mother.”

Mio’s expression softens again, and she reaches forward, taking one of Suki’s hands between her own. She sighs heavily.

“Look at you, growing up right in front of me.” Mio turns her head away, retrieving one of her hands to wipe at the corner of an eye.

Suki smiles back at her mother, her chest feeling fit to burst.

“Don’t cry, mom.”

“I’m not,” Mio denies, grinning at her daughter when she turns back to her. A wet trail runs down her cheek.

“Yes you are.” The girl gets onto her knees and shuffles toward her mom, bringing her hands up to wipe her tears away. “No one can stay a kid forever.”

Her mother laughs. Suki wishes she wouldn’t, but at least it isn’t tears.

“That is very true,” she says, taking Suki’s wrists between her fingers and turning her face to kiss her palms.

Mio stands, releasing her as she goes.

“One hour,” she reminds Suki.

“I know mom.” Suki smiles back at her, face turned upward as the other woman makes her way back to the door of her room.

“We’ll all be waiting.”

Suki feels her heart racing in her chest, the clack of the door closed behind her mother sounding more final than she had ever thought possible. She takes a deep breath.
 
*

Suki had never thought that meditating for the better part of a day could leave her so tired and disoriented. She can barely think straight as her tabi’d foot slides onto the tatami of the dojo floor, soft and silent.

She doesn’t feel like the same person.

Her skin itches under her layers of makeup, and her shoulders and middle feel overly weighted with the traditional armour which covers her uniform. In the silence of the room, filled to the rafters with people come to witness her test, the only thing that Suki can hear is the tinkling of her headgear.

She comes to kneel before her mother, and the two other warriors situated at the front of the room, before the shrine to their predecessors. Suki bows low, forehead pressed to the backs of her gloved hands.

The rustle of fabric as everyone else in the dojo bows as well is deafening.

“Suki of Kyoshi Island,” her mother begins, voice booming in the silence which follows, “Avatar Kyoshi calls you forth to begin your trial. Do you accept her call?”

Suki straightens to look at her mother, still half-bent in her deference.

“Osu!” Her assent echoes around the room, resounding in her ears. Confident. Suki bows again, forehead touching the mats.

She straightens.

“Do you accept the responsibility of defending our people and all innocent people who cannot defend themselves from harm, as is our way?”

“Osu!” Another bow. Straighten.

“Do you understand the gravity of the power which will be handed to you should you succeed in your trial, and receive the golden belt which will brand you forever more a Kyoshi Warrior?”

“Osu!”

“Then please stand, and let the trial begin.”

Suki is glad for her empty belly, though it pangs with every movement. She thinks that if it had been full, she might have thrown up. Suki closes her eyes and breathes, bowing again before she moves to the center of the room. She forces herself to grin, falling into a ready stance.

This part of the ceremony, like the rest, is relatively predictable. Weeks before she had been assigned an opponent to take her trial with — an elder who she wished to follow in the footsteps of once she has been granted her status as a warrior of Avatar Kyoshi. Riko, one of the younger warriors, with a broad smile and a cheerful disposition, had volunteered to be her mentor.

So Suki waits for her to rise from her seat at the side of the room, and to join her on the mats to test her skills.

“Challenger,” Mio announces, her voice ringing through the quiet hush that has settled over all of those who have come to spectate, “please proceed forward.”

Suki glances her way only briefly before returning her gaze to the empty space before her, hands free and up in a defensive position, ready. Riko shifts in her seat, ready to stand, and then stops. She looks wide-eyed at the front of the room. Suki looks again, frowning.

Her stomach drops as, from the assembled commanders at the front of the dojo, Haru stands. Her heart starts to thunder in her ears.

This is unheard of.

Her mother looks at Haru, but in the end she says nothing. Suki can see that she is not pleased with Haru’s actions. A scowl pulls at her features, making her look more severe than usual.

The girl trains her gaze forward again, feeling herself begin to sweat in her uniform. She tries to guess what this means, but most of all, she doesn't know how to proceed. Haru is not her partner or her mentor, Riko is. Does this mean that she has been ousted? What will happen if Suki fails against Haru?

What will —?

There is precious little time left to consider the ramifications of what is about to happen. Haru comes to a stop before her, her arms outstretched, mirroring Suki’s position.

No signal is given to start their match. Suki looks owlishly at Haru even as she chooses to attack her from the front.

One on one competitions like this one usually have a structure. A technique that is meant to be practiced over and over until it is ingrained in the muscles. The challenge that Suki faces now, however, is up in the air.

Of the hundreds of techniques that she knows, she must draw on her knowledge and use it to her advantage to win the fight. Suki can barely think, let alone act, and a frontal attack looks deceptively easy.

She acts.

Suki flows with the strike, pivoting all the way around, the weight of Haru’s knuckles brushing against her palm before she takes a firm hold of Haru’s wrist.

Her toes dig into the soft grass mats. She shoots forward with her hips. She throws the other woman well across the room with the momentum of their shared movements.

Suki’s mouth hangs open.

Haru rolls, spinning on her knee to face Suki once more. She looks — determined.

Haru launches herself back toward Suki. Suki meets her head-on, catching her in the crook of an elbow, sending her back onto her rump once again.

Haru grabs her ankle, foot hooking behind Suki’s knee.

The girl falls as well. The other warrior scrambles to get atop of her, fist ready to strike down at her face. Suki cocks her hips, grabs onto the wrist of the hand twisted in the front of her gi.

They roll backward.

When they recover, it’s Suki straddled on Haru’s chest. Her elder looks surprised, if only for a moment. Haru bucks. Suki tries to dig her toes into the mats. She feels her body tip in the unseating.

She rolls out of the way. Back on her feet. Suki thumbs at her nose. Maybe a little too cocky. The older warrior’s face could have been flushed under her makeup. Suki cannot tell…But there is a familiar set to her jaw. as though she is frustrated; annoyed with Suki’s show of confidence.

The two of them breathe harshly in the quiet of the dojo.

There’s tension from the crowd. Suki reminds herself to ignore them.

Haru strikes from overhead.

Suki feels her heart jump in her surprise. Muscle memory takes over. She catches the strike, leading hand on Haru’s elbow. She twists, pushing the other woman back. She grabs her hand and pivots. Turns back. Haru collapses backward with but the twitch of Suki’s hand against her own and she moves to roll the other warrior to her belly.

Her grip is not what it should be.

Haru catches Suki behind the knees again, the two women crying out (Suki in surprise) as once again the younger finds herself on her back. There is noise from the crowd. They’ve started to get excited. Suki breathes out sharply.

Haru allows her to stand, and the two of them pant, facing one another, hands at the ready. Haru seems calmer than before. It makes Suki uneasy.

Haru falls back into a defensive stance. Suki changes her own stance, gaze hardening in resolve when she realises that she is being invited to attack first.

A Kyoshi Warrior must attack as well as defend. This is a foundational principle.

Ready for anything. Stop the situation before it gets out of hand.

Suki comes forward, chopping down from the side with the blade of her hand. Haru catches her. Solid. Suki just manages to block the fist that comes toward her face to distract her. Haru’s other hand brushes her attacking arm away. The second in command comes in close, her dominant arm heavy against Suki’s chest. She feels her spine strain. Her body is pulled back by Haru’s hand at the nape of her neck.

Her body sways left. Haru throws her right.

Suki rounds her back, breaking the fall with a slap of her arms against the mats, but it is resounding anyway. Her chest feels tight for a moment before she has recovered and flipped herself back onto her feet. She pivots as Haru comes toward her in another attack, catching her arm and letting the momentum of the other woman continue to propel her forward passed Suki’s position and precariously close to the assembled warriors knelt to the side of the dojo mats.

Suki’s hands come back into a ready position, her blue eyes trained on Haru as she recovers.

The older Kyoshi Warrior laughs. It sounds pleased in spite of her apparent determination to…Well, Suki’s not sure what. Haru grabs hold of a wooden staff, hidden from Suki’s sight by the group of other warriors. She dances out of the way of the first swing of the wooden weapon toward her.

To the side. Step. Down as she swipes at her head. Step. Suki bends back out of the way of another swipe, this time at her throat. She feels her momentum backward. Rolls rather than fall on her rump.

She finds herself close enough to the extra weapons that they house on the far wall of the dojo that she can reach out and grab her own short staff.

She catches Haru’s next strike with a backward swipe of her weapon. It turns in her hand. She strikes out, stopping short of Haru’s throat.

Her mother’s second in command stops abruptly, eyeing down the length of Suki’s weapon. She lets out a burst of breath through her teeth, and swipes the staff aside with her own, backing off.

Suki falls into a defensive stance with the staff once again, stepping back with each strike of Haru’s weapon against her own in the thick silence of the dojo. Suki feels the turn of the battle’s tide as it happens. Her spine strains, her balance off as she retreats.

Haru bears down on her until Suki cannot keep hold of her weapon any longer, disarmed by an expert thrust and parry. Sent to her back again with a sharp strike to her stomach which winds her. Suki struggles to draw in breath even as she raises her hands in front of her face, trying to shuffle back. She digs her heels into the mats to propel her away from Haru.

The second in command is not deterred. She makes to strike again.

“Enough!”

Haru’s weapon stops before it can descend, and Suki feels the tension in her own limbs lingering even as the second in command looks over at her mother, lowering her weapon and stepping out of her offensive stance.

“The trial is over. Warriors, back to your marks,” she instructs firmly, levelling a glare at Haru.

Suki sits up in a flurry once Haru has backed down, scrambling wearily to her feet, hearing a ringing in her ears. She sways but stays standing, at the ready. Mirroring one another the two of them fall to at ease and then bow. Haru exits the mats. Suki cannot help but catch the brief, satisfied, tug of her mouth into a smile before she has schooled her expression again and turned back to the gathered audience, sitting back in her assigned place.

Suki turns to face the front of the room and her mother.

“Candidate Suki.” Her mother’s voice has softened again, her expression too. Suki is glad for the makeup that obscures the flush she feels rushing to her cheeks at the marked difference. “You have done well. You are free to wash and take some time to yourself whilst we deliberate on the outcome of your trial. Please, be excused.”

Suki bows again, her heart even louder in her ears than before, if possible. She walks steadily from the dojo, but she feels faint. She will not faint. She will not make a fool of herself. She will not —

Safely out on the terrace, hidden behind the paper shoji that obscures the majority of the dojo, Suki allows overwhelmed tears to slide down her painted cheeks, streaking her makeup further than her sweat has already done. Something inside of her knows that the test was more than just a simple test to see if she is ready. She knows that Haru meant to hurt her, if she could get away with it. That she wanted to prove

something

to her mother and had used Suki as a vehicle to do so.

Perhaps it is simply to show that Suki is neither ready nor skilled enough to earn her gold belt yet. Perhaps that she will never be ready?

Will she ever be ready?

Her thoughts reeling, Suki finds her way to one of the many empty public courtyards in close vicinity to the dojo and sits on the bench provided there, taking in sharp breaths, trying to even her pulse and stop the sobs that threaten to be loud enough to wake the island’s very dead.

A dull scrape sounds behind her. Suki jumps, turning to see who might be lurking, remembering her eyes and wiping at them ineffectually. All it serves to do is smudge red and white all over her gloves. It’s Kenji.

The old man shuffles his way over to her, silent until he occupies the space that sits empty beside the little girl, grunting out almost dramatically as he sits. His knees crack loudly.

Suki looks sidelong at him again, bowing her head, shame heating her face once more.

“That was an impressive display in there,” he begins conversationally, “you’ve worked so hard and come so far, Suki. Imagine a young girl like you holding her own against a seasoned warrior. Your mother must be very proud.”

Suki sniffles, brow furrowing.

“I didn’t — “ she protests. He interrupts her.

“And with Miss Haru not holding back like that — she must have been so frustrated to find that you would not go down so easily. Or maybe she was impressed.”

Suki’s brow furrows yet further, but her blue eyes fix on the elder, hands fidgeting in her lap.

“You think so…?” she asks hesitantly.

Kenji smiles, the gaps in his teeth stark.

“I think so.”

“I don’t really think that Haru likes me,” she admits then, turning her face back toward her lap, and smoothing out the dark green fabric of her hakama.

“Haru’s always been a grump,” Kenji says with a harrumph. “She’ll get over it, and she’ll warm up to you for it too. I can guarantee as much.”

“If you say so,” Suki agrees reluctantly.

Kenji smiles again, reaching over to place his arm around her narrow shoulders. He hugs her tight to him, and breathes in deep, looking up at the dusk sky where the stars have already started to appear in pinpricks of distant light above them.

“Your dad would be so proud too.”

“My dad?"

“Yes. Ryuichi was smitten with your mum because of her skills as a warrior. Amongst other things. I bet he’s beaming with pride in the spirit world for what you’ve accomplished today. His own little girl.”

Suki’s face scrunches a little, and she feels the urge to cry sticking in the back of her throat once again. She swallows, working the tight ache of it away. She smiles. She feels her limbs soften.

“Thanks, Uncle.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

II
 
In the clear light of morning, Suki’s golden sash hangs bright and cheery next to her uniform, winking at her. She doesn’t think that she’s ever been this happy.

In the center of the room a little fire crackles merrily, an answer to the chill in the air from her open shoji, allowing her to view the garden in relative comfort while she relaxes in her room, her full body ache has subsided in the last few days, but she still feels supremely lazy for all of the effort of the trial.

The thought that she might have failed seems a hundred years in the past now, and Haru’s face when her mother had handed over the golden belt is more than enough to make up for the humiliation that she had forced her to suffer during the trial.

Her mother and Haru aren’t talking to one another. It’s been three days.

The other warriors gossip, forgetting, as they often do, that Suki is even there. It doesn’t matter. Her mother thought her ready enough, and so had the others deliberating on the trial.

Their opinions are the ones that matter. Suki knows she will not disappoint them.

“Suki!”

Her mother’s voice echoes down the hall, distant. Suki shuffles on her knees over to her door and slides the screen open, sticking her head out into the quiet hallway.

“Yes, mom?”

“The morning lesson will start shortly, are you even out of bed yet?”

Suki rolls her eyes, looks down at her usual spring green and cream morning practice wear, straightens the soft ties of her belt, and leans back out.

“Of course I’m out of bed! I’ll be there in a minute!”

Her mother says nothing more, and Suki stands, rushing over to her vanity and dragging a comb through her short hair, ruthless with the knots, before tying the top of it back haphazardly. She nods at her reflection and then rushes out the door into the hall.

She nearly trips toeing on her slippers, and then stumbles her way down the long glossy length of wood floor to the stairs that lead to the lower levels of the building.

Her footsteps thunder down them, and she lands inelegantly at the bottom with a hop from the last two steps, hurrying to the door. Her slippers are kicked off. She descends one step. Her sandals are slipped on. She runs out into the courtyard and to the right, grass sandals scraping against the stone steps in a hiss with each broad stride, breath misting in the air before her while she hurries so that she does not miss the ringing of the gong.

It air smells of rain, and the mist covering the mountains and the forest surrounding their little piece of the island is especially heavy, clinging to her in droplets.

Suki scrambles into the drill hall at the last second, kicking off her sandals and falling into position on the mats. They start with basic movements.
 
*
 
Mio sits in the quiet of the temple, staring up at the faded effigy of Avatar Kyoshi. Around her, the air is filled with the pale miasma of scented smoke, tendrils of it creeping like the white trails of fast moving water into the room from the incense sticks on the altar. She breathes in deep, content in her silent contemplation.

She doesn’t turn at the sound of quiet feet approaching from the temple courtyard that stretches from the back of the living quarters and dojo and out toward the face of the island’s central mountain where the temple has been mounted. A feat of Earth Kingdom ingenuity long lost to them. Or perhaps they had learned a little something from the airbending monks of the time when they had built it.

A shuffle. Mio feels the presence of her company at her left shoulder. Her heavy cotton kimono rustles and hisses as she kneels just out of sight. Mio breathes out in a rush through her nose, closing her eyes only briefly.

She knows who it is from the rhythm of her breathing alone.

“Haru,” she greets in a single word. She had thought to put their differences behind her after the fiasco at the initiation ceremony, but instead the divide between herself and her second in command has only grown a little wider. “You don’t usually make reverence to Avatar Kyoshi,” she points out in a murmur.

“And that is not why I am here today either,” Haru answers, voice a little stronger than Mio’s in the silence.

The leader of the Kyoshi Warriors presses her lips together where her second in command cannot see, feeling her shoulders tighten just slightly.

Kyoshi lend me strength

. She turns to the other woman, expression open and neutral.

“What does bring you here then?”

“I want to talk about Suki.”

Mio’s expression hardens just slightly.

“We have already sufficiently discussed my daughter and her role in our ranks. The fact that you continue to be unable to accept that what’s done is done does not speak well for you, Haru. You complain of her being a child, and yet it is

you

who are act — “

“I merely wish to voice a concern that not only I, but several others of our number have expressed amongst one another in the month since Suki was awarded her gold belt.”

Mio’s words stick behind her teeth, and she swallows them down, trying not to show her outrage at the concept that not only Haru but several others in her charge have decided to take up against her daughter.

When she speaks again her voice is tight. “What concern?”

“The fact that at her young age she is allowed to instruct her elders. It is unprecedented and unwelcome. I am not the only one who feels this way. I have here at least twenty signatures which say the same.”

Haru reaches into the crossed section at the front of her pale green kimono and produces a scroll. She tosses it over to Mio.

Mio feels the grain of the scroll’s parchment under her fingertips before she breaks the seal and rolls it open. Inside are in fact a great number more than twenty signatures, of that she is certain. Her brow furrows.

“You all feel this sincerely?” She looks up over the rim of the scroll at Haru’s round features, and the fierce brown eyes that she knows too well. It troubles Mio, to say the least. Is she really giving Suki too much control at her age?

It does not feel that way. She herself had had a number of responsibilities similar to Suki’s when her

own

mother had been leading. Before the work had taken its toll on her and taken her from them before her time.

In Mio’s opinion, the earlier Suki can take on these responsibilities the better for her in the long run. Especially when she herself takes up Mio’s mantel as commander. These younger Kyoshi Warriors simply don’t understand what it takes, being the daughter of the order’s leader.

“Yes.” Haru searches Mio’s face, “And don’t go punishing these women for speaking their minds either,” she says curtly, “you’ve always professed that we all have a say. So let us all have a say. Or I suppose you could let the other women know exactly how much their opinions count to this order.”

Mio rolls her eyes, gathering the scroll back up and stuffing it in the front of her forest green kimono.

“You may desist with the dramatics, Haru. You’ve done nothing better than act like a wounded child ever since we granted Suki her status as a Kyoshi Warrior. She needs to take the next step in her journey, and getting her gold belt and beginning to learn what leadership

is

is exactly that next step.”

The commander folds her hands in her lap as she stares at her compatriot, wondering where she had gone wrong in this. They've always been friends, and they have rarely disagreed with one another. Haru is like family to Suki too. So why must she be so hard on her?

“Suki does not need doubters now. She will doubt herself enough for all of us. She needs a support system.

You

need to be a part of that system of support. You are one of the people who is closest to her. Your lack of faith in her abilities will only be damaging, Haru.”

“Your overabundance of faith in her abilities could very well get her killed!”

Mio grinds her teeth together, feeling her jaw pop.

“That is enough.” The silence which stretches between them could be sliced with a blade. “I will take these signatures and what you have said into consideration. Perhaps she has been given too many responsibilities. She could benefit from still being in a position to learn more than instruct.”

Mio motions toward the exit of the temple.

“Now please, if you are not here for contemplation then leave me to mine.”

Haru’s stoney expression does not change; one that she has been presenting to Mio since before she had made her final decision on whether she would even test Suki. Her friend stands, bowing to Mio and the statue of Kyoshi before she leaves the room with longer strides than should be comfortable in her kimono.

Mio pivots on her knees, settling back before the Avatar’s effigy. She lets out a heavy sigh.

“What am I going to do with these women?”
 
*
 
Suki reaches across the table, gathering more noodles from the central pot and heaping them in her empty bowl for the third time in a short period, smelling the aromatic steam as it lilts toward her nose, beckoning. She fishes in the broth for some of the large king mushrooms that her mother has brought special from some of the last of the cellar’s stores. She doesn’t know what the occasion is, but she won’t complain.

She loves them.

Satisfied that she has enough of everything from the pot, Suki settles back on her heels again, slurping up the noodles in the broth with relish.

“Someone’s hungry,” her mother comments with a smirk from where she herself is starting on what is only her second helping.

Tonight it is just the two of them, and so Suki does not worry about eating another warrior’s share unfairly. The newer, longer, training regimen has made her even hungrier than she was as an initiate. She doesn’t know how any of the other warriors manage only one helping in the communal hall.

For a brief moment, she feels guilty for having the hot pot almost all to herself. For a brief moment.

“Mmf — “ Suki tries to chew elegantly, but she has stuffed her mouth rather too full to do so, “s’really good…” she mumbles around her food.

“It is quite good, isn’t it?” Her mother’s cheeks are slightly flushed, and she looks proud of herself. Suki grins at her messily.

“Suki…” Her mother places her bowl and chopsticks aside. For a moment, she even manages to look particularly grave.

Suki’s eyebrows shoot up on her forehead, and she sets aside her own food, folding her hands in her lap expectantly. She swallows down her large mouthful of dinner, wiping at the dribble on her chin.

“Yes?”

Mio continues to let the silence stretch between them for a little longer, and she looks away briefly, expression denoting a struggle of some kind. Her mother looks back at her.

“…I want you to know that I think you are doing a wonderful job in your new role,” she begins then, and something inside of Suki sinks, feeling like a rock in the pit of her stomach.

“Uhm…thank you?” Her voice comes out quieter than Suki would like, and she feels her  shoulders hunch inward as her mother continues to look at her with what she distinctly believes to be regret.

“I hope you know that I am sincere. When I praise you, and when I tell you that I believe you are ready for the steps that you have been taking.”

Suki’s chest tightens. “Of course I believe you, mom. Why wouldn’t I?”

Her mother’s shoulders deflate a little, though her posture remains far better than Suki’s.

“Despite all of this, I think perhaps I have given you too much responsibility this early on…I think that perhaps in the interest of allowing you to still have a childhood, since you are only twelve, it might be better if you did not instruct in the adult lessons for now.”

“Not in the adult lessons?” She feels her gut churning, her throat growing tight close to her collar bone, aching a little.

“You are of course still welcome to continue teaching the classes with the younger girls, if that is your wish/ I know that you’re very good with them, and they are less likely to have their egos hurt by your instruction than some of…the older warriors.”

“Have I — done something wrong,” Suki asks, voice small.

“No my darling, nothing wrong.”

“Oh…” Suki feels heavy all over, her cheeks burning.

“Suki? Do you…understand what I am saying?”

No

. “Yes, mother.”

“It’s not because you are not doing a good job.”

“Yes, mother.”

“…I’m sorry if this disappoints you.”

“It’s fine…” She feels the back of her throat closing up, pinching the words in her mouth. Suki clears her throat, suddenly not hungry at all. She pushes her bowl a little further away, staring down into her lap.

“May I please be excused?”

Mio is silent for a time, but Suki doesn’t dare look up, in case her mother sees the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

“Of course. Shall I join you for a bit in a little while? We could play some games together.”

“I’m very tired,” Suki excuses, “I think I’m going to go to bed.”

“…Of course. Sleep well my love.”

“Goodnight, mom…”

Suki stands from the table, head still kept low to hide the emotions roiling in her guts, and heads from the room hastily, nearly sprinting down the hallway and to her personal quarters.
 
*
 
Suki quickly learns what her place is actually to be amongst the older women in the dojo. She is not a respected comrade, as she had thought would be the case upon earning the status that her belt affords her. Rather, she is still seen as beneath many of them, in skill and in wisdom.

But at least things are a little easier once she is taken out of an instructor’s position in the drills. Some of the women who had refused to look at her now smile when she enters, acknowledging her presence. Even Haru seems to have cooled in her resentment toward her, and Suki cannot pretend to feel anything other than relief at this. Garnering the other woman’s contempt is not something that she wishes to do again any time soon.

She keeps her head down, and things feel easier.

At least the younger girls are happy for her.

Suki throws herself into instructing them with gusto, and she feels that pride which comes with accomplishment each time any one of them takes a step forward in her journey. Maybe this is what her mother felt when watching her gain strides toward her gold belt.

Summer is well upon them when the first traders from the Earth Kingdom find their way far enough South to trade with the island. Suki goes with some of the other gully fledged warriors to the market that day to make certain that the foreigners do not cause trouble whilst on their shores — and that their own people behave themselves too.

The ship brings silks and a few barrels of spices from the Fire Nation (a rare thing and a delicacy for the Islanders). They bring teas too, of course, but those are not really what interests Suki. She lets her nostrils flare at the scent of gently spiced meat wafting through the air. It’s so rare that they get to have any meat on Kyoshi Island that she finds her mouth watering almost immediately, driving her to distraction.

No. She has to pay attention. Her mission is a clear one, and none of the other ladies seem to be bent over sniffing at the cooking pot that the merchants’ leader has started up to entice the villagers.

The older man, skin golden from the sun, has bright green eyes the colour of grass during a rainfall. He stirs the contents of the pot but is not so distracted by his task that he does not notice Suki looking. He winks at her.

Suki feels herself flush under her makeup, but is certain that her bashfulness does not show on her face.

She straightens out her back and averts her eyes, looking over the crowd dutifully. One of the other warriors bends toward her, smirking just a little. Suki catches her out of the corner of her eye.

“Smells wonderful, doesn’t it? I hope the elders get enough for the entire village to enjoy. We could use them to preserve game for the winter.”

Suki feels her mouth lift into a slight smile, and she nods eagerly. Her teammate smiles back once more and then straightens, returning her attention to the crowd.

The merchants stay well into the evening.

“If anyone is interested,” the old man who had been stirring the pot of food announces in a cracking voice, like rocks coming free in a rockslide, “we’ll be serving up a feast tonight and all are welcome. Lots of news to go around too. Get you all caught up on what’s happening in the world outside!”

Suki glances at her teammates, gauging their reactions. They seem as interested as she is, and no one moves to stop him from making his invitation. This must be okay then.

Suki’s attention is caught by movement in the crowd, and she notices Kenji for the first time, hands folded at the small of his back, hunched over as he observes the people milling about around them, closing up shop for the day. He looks troubled, but she cannot stay to ask him about it.

There’s too much to be done.

She and her teammates escort the merchants back to their ship, helping them with the barrels of their goods and other such loading responsibilities. More than one man refuses her help, but Suki keeps on steadily, not minding when they take slightly heavier things from her. Even if she could carry them herself.

“What kind of man would I be letting a little girl carry these heavy wares into my ship for me,” is asked of her more than once. She pushes the sentiment away.

Men have fragile egos.

The way home is a relief. Suki feels weary down to her bones in an unfamiliar way. It is not as though she has spent the day training, but the fresh air and the company, and the reloading of the ship have all settled in her bones, making them feel as though she carries around a skeleton of stone.

She relishes the act of drawing the damp washcloth across her face to remove all trace of her warrior’s war paint from her skin one thin layer at a time. Each pass of the cloth through the water in her basin makes it murkier and murkier. White clouds billow beneath the surface.

Suki leans close to her mirror to asses every nook and cranny on her face. Any grease paint left means a breakout that she does not wish to deal with.

When she is satisfied that she has washed away her mask in its entirety, the girl moves from her vanity to the full-length mirror next to the racks which store and air out her official regalia. She removes her hakama and gi methodically, setting them in place, smacking out any wrinkles that she can spot. She runs her rough palms over the surface of her uniform once more with a crisp nod before she takes out her light cotton yukata (new; white cotton with dark green vertical stripes both solid and dashed) and wraps herself in it. The sash takes her hardly any time at all these days.

She remembers when she had been younger, and when she could not tie her obi herself. Suki smiles, just a little, satisfied with her reflection in the low light offered by the lit lanterns in the corners of her room.

When she gets to the entrance of the dojo with the intent of going down to the beach to sit and listen to the tales that the sailors have promised to the public, she finds that she will not be alone.

Many of the warriors have donned their casual attire and are milling about. They talk and laugh with one another as they wait for their companions to get on their sandals and ready themselves for the journey down to the beach.

Suki smiles reservedly at some of the more familiar faces, but no one seems interested in engaging her. She looks around to see if any of the younger girls are going. If they are then they have already left, she discovers. Suki feels her stomach flutter but swallows down the unease which she feels and toes on her wooden sandals.

“Suki!”

Her head pops up from where she had been focused on getting the fabric of the sarong to bunch correctly between her toes, and her blues eyes light on Haru, beckoning her with a flap of her hand.

Her yukata is understated. A simple pale green with no adornments. She looks beautiful, with her dark hair piled on her head, and a small, brass, dragonfly pin winking out from the mass of her bun.

Suki swallows thickly, puts on a smile, and wanders over to the second in command.

“Yes, auntie?”

“Surely you’re not going down to the beach all on your own?”

“I…I hadn’t asked mother if she wants to go, and it seems like all the other girls my age have already left…” she explains.

Haru snorts, decidedly inelegant.

“Well, if that’s all then you can come with me and some of the other officers. I’m sure you’ll be able to find the other girls when we get there and if not..? Well, there’s no reason you can’t sit by me.” Haru’s friendly smile reminds Suki of the times before she’d earned her belt and gone through her trial, and she cannot help but feel a warmth build up inside her chest.

Thank Kyoshi, she’s finally not cross with me

.

Suki nods, and Haru’s warm, broad, palm comes around the girl’s narrow shoulders, guiding her out of the dojo’s entrance and down the hill toward the village and the beach beyond.
 
*
 
Her mother is already there, in the gathering gloom which closes in with twilight, sitting close to the fire and listening with an intent expression. Suki smiles up at Haru and then trots to join her mother where she sits. Kenji sees her and shuffles over to make room when she comes to seek her resting place beside the Kyoshi Commander.

Mio only looks at her briefly, lifting a hand to brush over the back of Suki’s hair before she has returned her attention to what the sailor who currently speaks is saying.

“…Fire! In all directions, like a whirling miasma of heat. The Fire nation poured down upon the village, not with the faces of men, but the faces of

demons

.” Suki feels her skin crawl, hair rising along her arms. The breeze off of the water is a little too cool, perhaps, for the thin cotton of her kimono. Covertly, she sidles closer to her mother for warmth.

“Their masks are worn to frighten their victims, but the Earth Kingdom soldiers protecting the town stood firm, their resolve written on their faces and in their body language.” It sounds like an old tale, a tale that she knows, sitting just on the top of her tongue and waiting to be revealed. Suki frowns.

“My men and I knew as soon as they mounted their defences that the Fire nation was in for a struggle. Never let it be said that the Earth Kingdom and all of her peoples,” he looks out over the crowd with meaning, “are easily surmounted or intimidated. That we do not stand firm and face a threat head-on.”

The crowd murmurs, and Suki sees in the darkness and the low glow of the fire the nodding of heads amongst the villagers gathered to listen. Her mother is still, as are the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors around them, but Suki can see an almost resolute look in her mother’s eye. She feels something roiling in the pit of her stomach, and her arms squeeze about her knees a little tighter. She presses her chest into her thighs, screwing up her mouth.

There’s nothing to worry about

, she thinks,

it’s just a story

.

The yarn continues even as the last bit of sunlight disappears over the water’s edge, leaving the bay dark and the unagi infested waters black and unfriendly. Another breeze brushes by her off of the water. Suki shivers, and makes herself a little smaller.

She feels a solid arm come around her shoulders and looks up to find Kenji pulling her in close, his own pale green eyes still transfixed on the sailor telling his tale.

Grateful, Suki leans into the old man a little, letting her cheek rest against his narrow shoulder.

Kenji smells of cedar and the smoke of a cooking fire. It’s comforting.

“And then,” the sailor is saying, “in a great

explosion

,” his voice booms over the crowd, and for a moment it is almost as though Suki can feel the heat from the flames of it on her face, vivid and blistering, “the Earth Kingdom defences were felled by the Fire Nation, crumbling to ruin as the men fell one by one to Fire Nation soldiers…” His voice grows quiet, mournful.

“But the men’s work had been fruitful,” his voice begins to build again, “their people had escaped the Fire nation attack and fled into the mountains where the Fire Nation could not pursue! The new Fire Lord’s tactics had failed, and his men were left with nothing but the ashes of a city they would have used for its resources, enslaving its people and forcing them to work for nothing, taking all of their food and shelter! Though those twenty brave Earth Kingdom soldiers had lost their lives, they’d done so to protect their people, and they succeeded. The Earth Kingdom prevailed!”

The villagers cheer. Suki smiles just a little when Kenji jostles her, trying to get her to participate. She cannot help but think that something in the atmosphere has shifted with the sailor’s story.

She feels something at her spine, a whisper in her ear, but she cannot quite hear it over the din, and she strains to identify what it might be. And then it’s gone.

Suki looks surreptitiously over her shoulder at the women amassed behind her, and the girls too. They’re as silent as she is, though some of them have an ember in their eyes. She looks back up at her mother, and cannot quite read whatever sits there in her face.

Mio stands, Suki watching, and addresses the man that spins the tale.

“And these attacks are still happening,” she calls out in question. The village quiets at the sound of her voice.

The sailor turns, eyebrows raised, and then nods, seeming to become far more serious than he had been in the telling of the story.

“Aye, mistress. They attack Earth Kingdom villagers every day, some not so well defended as the ones I’ve just told you about.”

“And their goal, presumably, is to destabilize the earth Kingdom by place of interest?”

“One can only assume…”

“And they really enslave the people that they capture in their raids?”

“Of course. It’s the Fire Nation.”

Her mother falls silent, expression contemplative. She sits once more, and the sailor hesitates for a moment before returning to a better tale, something lighter and with less tragic death than the one he had told before. Suki can barely concentrate on it.

She can only stare up at her mother’s troubled expression, and the pinch of her brow, and feel a strange sense of dread in the pit of her stomach.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

III
 
Before earning her place amongst the warriors of Kyoshi, Suki had never been permitted to attend the meetings with the village’s elders. She has often wondered what goes on behind the closed screen, and the answer is — well, nothing all that exciting.

They speak of grains (how their crops are yielding for harvest, what sorts of rations they can expect, and how much longer their shores will be open to merchant trade before they close off for the winter, blocked by ice.

She sits erect, doing her best to force herself to pay attention, but she is tired, and occasionally Suki finds herself drifting off before she has realised what’s happening.

When Hayako stands to address them, she hardly knows what the matter at hand is for just this reason, and she blinks, her interest piquing as the old woman speaks.

Of their elders, Hayako is one of the grandest. She sweeps before them like a queen, swathed in good quality cotton, embroidered with coveted silk thread in patterns of red-throated cranes and long sheaves of glossy, pale green, grass. The base of the kimono is dark, bold, green. Almost too vivid. Like the fabric has had a charm placed on it by some spirit who has crawled through to the human world.

Her steel grey hair is pulled back at the nape of her neck in a wide bun, polished, but one strand still sticks out of the coiffe, bouncing lazily in the breeze caused by each turn of the woman in the opposite direction whilst she paces.

“I don’t know what there is to argue about,” she is saying in her strong, earthen, voice, “it is obvious that the war had gotten far worse, and reaches much further than anyone could have foreseen.”

Hayako comes to rest directly in front of Suki’s mother and the three warriors who have been selected to sit and listen to whatever it is the elders have to say.

“Kyoshi has stayed out of the war thus far,” Haru says briskly to Suki’s right, “and we have been all the better for it.”

“And how long will it be before the Fire Nation comes here too? How can we know if we will be prepared if we are hiding here with only the word of sailors to go by on the whereabouts of the Fire Nation’s troops?

Kenji raises his hand to quell what feels like an oncoming conflict between the two women, his expression grave.

“We all heard what the sailors said. They are coming for key locations one by one, and we all know well enough that the South Pole is of particular interest to the Fire Nation because of their benders…or rather, it was.”

The implications speak for themselves, and Suki feels her gut roil at the idea of all of the Southern Water Tribe’s water benders suffering at the hands of the Fire Nation until there were none left.

None that anyone had heard of, in any case.

“How long before they attempt to take Kyoshi because we are the primary trade partners of the Southern Water Tribe?” Kenji leans forward, gesturing his question outward with a gnarled hand.

Mio’s expression has been turned inward, contemplative, for the duration of the argument. Unreadable.

Suki thinks that Haru is right to resist. After all, Kyoshi is not very big. In the end, what difference can they make in this war? The Fire Nation has ignored them so far. Perhaps it is best if they, too, keep ignoring the Fire Nation.

“Kenji is right,” her mother finally breaks her silence, voice even and tempered, “and more than that, we work under the name of Avatar Kyoshi…And the Avatar’s duty is to bring balance to the world…”

Suki’s attention snaps to her mother at her words.

“If we continue to stay out of the fight, then we are betraying the ideals of the person we profess to keep the memory and ways of. If we stay out of the fight, then we are betraying those who cannot fight for themselves.”

The back of Suki’s neck prickles. She wants to speak out before her mother can go any further, but the words are stuck behind her teeth like a caged bird trying to unsuccessfully slip through the bars.

The two other warriors on their side of her shift their weight, and SUki catches a look cast between the two out of the corner of her eye. Haru does not seem pleased, but she presses her mouth into a thin line and says nothing to contradict her mother’s sentiments.

Mio is looking steadily into Hayako’s eyes, the two of them seeming to communicate without words.

“We have a duty to the Earth Kingdom and to the rest of the world,” Mio says then, firm.

Suki bites the inside of her cheek, feeling cold.

‘More than that, it is clear that the war will not stay away from Kyoshi Island forever. Elder Kenji is right, as is Elder Hayako. How long before they attempt to take Kyoshi because we are the primary trade center between the Earth Kingdom and the South? How long can we stand by and watch innocent people suffer because of the Fire nation’s ravenous appetite for expansion? If we don’t act, then we will be at fault if the Fire Nation wins this war.”

Suki swallows against a thick throat, staring at the pale, woven, grass of the mats where she kneels.

No, no, no…

Leave the island? What use is there for that? Everything that they love and protect is

here

, not in the rest of the Earth Kingdom. Not even in the Southern Water Tribe.

“Then it is decided,” another of the Elders asks, her weathered face carrying worry in its nooks and crannies.

“Haru and I will discuss the particulars,” Mio answers evenly, “and devise a plan of action. Then we shall return to you and present our decision.”

The four old villagers at the front of the room nod, staggered. Hayako seems pleased. Kenji remains grave, as do the other two sitting beside him on the mats.

The faces of Suki’s compatriots are unreadable.

“Thank you, Commander,” Kenji says finally, bowing his head to the mats below him. The other elders follow suit, and Suki’s mother pauses as is polite before she too bends to the mats, followed by Suki, Haru, and Chio.

When the elders have left the room, and Suki thinks they are a good distance away, she turns to her mother, feeling hot incredulity in her face.

“We can’t

leave

,” she says in outrage.

“Who is this ‘we’ you speak of,” Mio inquires calmly. Suki’s face feels even hotter beneath her war paint, if possible.

“

Us

! The warriors! Who will protect the island and

our

people? The Kyoshi Warriors aren’t a giant fighting force meant to wage war with the Fire Nation!”

Haru and Chio exchange a look, but Suki sees the slight upturn of the second in command’s mouth as she speaks with her mother before them. Perhaps Suki should feel shame, but in that moment she cannot feel much other than the shaking in her limbs — panic?

“We are large enough,” her mother answers, “and will be joining forces with the Earth Kingdom’s considerably larger body of soldiers. That will be more than adequate.”

With her makeup on, and the forced calm of one used to weathering Suki’s occasional outbursts, her mother looks like the statue of Avatar Kyoshi in the temple behind the dojo. For a moment, it is as though Suki were railing against the Avatar herself.

“You, though, will not be coming with us, Suki.”

Suki stops, feeling a cold dread and betrayal turn her to stone where she kneels. Her mouth opens and closes but no sounds come out as she processes the words that her mother speaks.

“Wh — ?”

“What is the wisest thing I’ve heard all morning,” Haru intones sardonically.

“H — “

“Suki.”

Suki closes her mouth with a snap, spine straightening as far as it can go, painful, her hands balling to fists at her sides. She focuses her blue gaze on her mother's face once more.

“A Kyoshi Warrior’s job is to take care of anyone that needs help. To answer the call of

anyone

who is weaker than us, and who cannot protect themselves. That means the Islanders here, yes, but it also means the people of the rest of the world too. We are ambassadors of the Avatar, who belongs to all Nations. Not just our little island in the Southern Sea.”

She’s right, of course, and Suki knows it.

Her outrage leaves her all at once, replaced instead by sadness.

“Why can’t I go,” she asks then, voice brittle.

Mio closes her eyes and lets out a sigh.

“You are a Kyoshi Warrior, but you are still a child, my darling. No child should have to have the blood of others on their hands. No child should have to make the choice about who lives or dies in a battle. It isn’t fair to you to have to enter a war so young. And besides…” Mio stands, reaching out a gloved hand to press against Suki’s shoulder, squeezing.

“You are going to protect the villagers, and continue training the other girls, so that they can help out too. I’ll leave some of the older warriors behind as well, but the majority of our fore must come with me to the mainland. Your role here will be one of the most important of the roles I give out in the next few weeks.

Suki feels her cheeks flush under the stark white paint once more, but this time for completely different reasons.

Perhaps her mother really does believe in her.

“Alright..” Suki says quietly, her head hanging down against her chest.

Mio squeezes her shoulder a little tighter for a moment and then releases her.

“That’s my girl.”

When Suki looks into her face, she sees the familiar warmth of her close-lipped smile before she has turned from her and back toward the other two warriors.

“Haru, Chio, let’s gather the other leaders and deliberate,” she instructs, “Suki…” She turns back toward her, meeting her gaze steadily, “Will you please let Hidaka know that she will be taking over instruction of the warriors’ training today, and will you please see to it that the younger girls are looked after by yourself?”

Suki bows.

“Yes, mom.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

IV

It's just like I wanted , she reminds herself as she watches her mother and the other Kyoshi warriors who have been chosen to accompany their commanders to the mainland to assist in the war effort, I'm in charge now. I get to prove myself . It’s what she’s wanted all along; a chance to prove herself.Still, it doesn’t feel like this is the ideal way to go about it. Her stomach roils, fluttering with butterflies. Suki takes a deep breath and tells herself that it is excitement. Excitement to prove that she can be left in charge. That she can do what it is that the other, older, Kyoshi Warriors believe she cannot.It will be as easy as breathing. This much, Suki believes. She is nervous, but that simply comes with something new…And really, this isn’t new. She was leading before the other warriors kicked up a fuss. She can do it again. Even if her mother isn’t here to help her out this time.It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. It is what it is. She can do this. She can do this. She can…“Suki!”She snaps her head around, hair blowing briefly into her face before she swipes it out of the way and lets a grin split her cheeks from ear to ear as her mother jogs over to her, in full official regalia. Suki has opted to remain in her casual clothes for the farewells. She will put on her uniform later, when she is training the girls. When the other elders who have stayed behind address her and ask for their tasks…Or rather…tell her their tasks for the day.Her mother opens her arms to her, and Suki rushes forward, burying her face in her mother’s chest. Her small arms squeeze as tightly about Mio’s middle as they can manage. Her mother grunts, and then chuckles, closing her own solid arms about Suki’s small form. She leans her cheek close to Suki’s hair. Suki can feel her warpaint tangling in the strands. She doesn’t care.Mio smells of the incense that they burn in the Temple of Kyoshi. Cedarwood and pine, the subtle undertones of amber. Suki breathes in deep, wanting to remember it for the times when she misses her.Suki already misses her.“You will be wonderful,” her mother murmurs in her ear before she parts them slightly, holding her in the cradle of her arms. “You’re growing up too fast…You’ll practically be a woman by the time I return.”Suki grins a little harder, flattered, but she cannot quite fight the sadness that brugeons up out of the depths of her chest. A little sob escapes her lips, and she presses her face into her mother’s front again, to hide the emotions that are welling up from the inside of her like water from a newly dug well.“Just come back, okay?” Her voice is muffled by Mio’s uniform. Her mother peels her away from her front gently, brushing a gloved hand through Suki’s hair before she presses it against her cheek.“I promise,” Mio says seriously, and then pulls her in again, planting a wet kiss on both of Suki’s cheeks before she has finally detangled herself from her daughter. She squeezes the girl’s biceps once more before she finally starts toward the ship and her waiting chain of command.The other elder warriors have come to bid their sisters goodbye as well. They raise their hands and wave at the women already hanging over the rail of the ship, calling out to their loved ones against the crash of the incoming tide. The ship buoys itself with each creep of the water closer to the wet edge of the sand.Suki watches as the plank is brought up, Mio standing at the mouth of the ship’s docking station, her gaze fixed on her daughter meaningfully. Around her crowd is shouting back.Suki feels something wet on her cheeks, creeping down and cooling her skin with each pass of the breeze off of the water. In the sun, the top of her head grows hot. She stays standing, rooted into place, a tree watching its birds fly away for the winter.When the ship is a dot in the harbour, she reaches up to wipe away the tears still rolling down her cheeks, sniffling. She clears her throat and turns from the water, starting her long trek back home.She does not run this time. Let classes start a little late. Let the other girls trickle in on their own time. Let the older warriors set up their first classes of the day, and let their community take a moment to rest in the face of the departure of their sisters.Maybe she will sit in the temple a while with Avatar Kyoshi. Sometimes, when she is very still and quiet, Suki can feel her standing at her shoulder, looking up at her statue where it stares down at them, emotionless. Caught in a dream.Suki already knows that tonight she will write her first letter to her mother. She’ll send it out with the next merchant ship that docks at their shore. By the time that it reaches her it will have been a few weeks already, likely. Especially if the traders are taking the long route. It won’t look so childish. Maybe.She grunts with the burn in her thighs at the slow incline of the road up toward the dojo from the village proper. At her back, she can hear the scraping of sandals and the murmur of talk, people laughing. Music plays somewhere in the market. Small children run about the place playing tag, smelling of sweat and the sweetness of late summer fruit.Suki is surprised when someone’s hand suddenly comes around her elbow, slowing her pace, and wide-eyed she turns to see who is assaulting her. She recognizes the face of one of the more senior of the pupils in her girls’ class. Koharu.The other girl’s hair is straight and black, left long except to be gathered near the bottom to keep it out of her face. Her yukata is thin sky blue cotton with a motif of clouds painted on by the fabric painter who designed it. She’s tied it with a bright green obi. She leans into Suki, friendly and chipper.“Suki! I finally caught up to you. I’ve been calling and calling since the beginning of the market, couldn’t you hear me?”“Oh…” Suki blinks at her owlishly. “No, sorry I didn’t — my mind was elsewhere.”Koharu shrugs.“That’s alright. The other girls and I were wondering if there will be a class today?”Suki stares at her for a moment, and wonders if she is being so familiar because and the other girls want something. Perhaps no classes now that the commander is not here. The day is a fine one, after all, and hot. They’d all rather be milling about the marketplace and eating shaved ice.Suki herself would rather be doing as much…But she would rather that her mother was not shipping off to a war zone without her too. These things Suki cannot have.“I think…a half day,” she answers finally, “at least for you girls. You can go into market after the morning drills if you’d like. Maybe you can all have lunch from the food stalls and I’ll let Kinsuke have the afternoon to himself.”“Really?” Her question is bright, tight with excitement. Suki can’t help the small smile that turns up the corners of her mouth.“Yes, really.”“Oooohhhh! Thank you, thank you!” The other girl jumps up and down, still holding tight to Suki’s arm. It jostles her. Suki finds that she doesn’t mind. The girl hugs her tight around the shoulders before Suki can protest and then she has dashed off through the crowd, darting around the market goers and off into the distance up the length of the hill that leads to the dojo.Suki chuckles, just a little.Yes. This could be a very good start to something new.When she herself makes it to the top of the incline, and sees the compound that houses her and her sisters in full view, an imposing fortress but also home, she breathes in deep and relishes in the scent of pine on the breeze, heated by the summer’s midday sun, and the warm feel of the soft carpet of dead needles on the ground beneath her sandals, prickling at her toes.She smiles. * It isn’t the last time that Koharu asks her for such a favour. The girls return to the dojo happy after their half day, and they get a taste for the freedom that can be afforded them by the commander and the rest of the high ranking women of the order away. There aren’t as many aunties to cluck after them and ensure that they are doing as they are told.Suki discovers that this is a problem in the third week of her new position.The girls lounge about the dojo lazily, feet in the air, bodies strewn over the grass mats in the oppressive heat of the late summer. Suki comes into the stale room to find them this way; hardly a position for a warrior to find herself in.She frowns, her hands going to her hips.“Girls!”Their heads snap up, but seeing that it is just Suki, they lay them back down again. Only Koharu bothers to sit to greet her, and she does so languidly, like some mermaid coming up to bask on a sun-warmed rock on a shoreline.“Suuukiiiii….” She falls onto her forearms, pouting up at her, “do we have to do exercises today? It’s so hot, and it’s making us so tired. We hardly even slept,” she complains.Suki feels her anger sear at the core of her, but she presses it down, brow furrowing. It is the only indication that she is displeased.It is true enough that it has been overly warm in the past few days. Suki herself has hardly had a wink of sleep, and she does not share a room with two other girls, unlike the group assembled before her. She can only imagine what it has been like with three bodies pressed together in a single room.Still, they have weathered such summers before, and never has she seen a single one of them complain in quite this manner. Suki purses her lips, arms still akimbo.“Yes, we have to do the exercises,” she answers firmly. “We must do them every day. What if the Fire Nation were to come here while our mothers and sisters and aunties are gone? Who will defend everyone from them if we are sloppy and lazy? Now get up, all of you! Not a single one of you is showing a warrior’s spirit, and it’s a disgrace!”The girls grumble, starting to oblige reluctantly.When they are all in formation, Suki proceeds to the front of the room for bows. She notes that none of them bow as low as they should. None of them show the proper respect. They are all looking sidelong at each other, as though they know what they are doing, and are corroborating in the effort.Suki’s nostrils flare, and she straightens, still clamping down on the indignant rage that’s boiling in the pit of her stomach.“Who will come up to help me with a demonstration,” she asks cooly.At first, no one makes a move to volunteer, but then Koharu’s hand shoots up in the air, a pale rod in the midst of a sea of thirty some odd dark heads. She bows low to the floor and then stands sharply, trotting to the front in perfect formality.Suki finds her shoulders loosen just slightly at this show of respect. Ha. So there.The two of them turn to face one another, and they bow. Suki turns her face toward the class. The girls finally look at least somewhat attentive. Good. Maybe it was just a mood after all. It is hot, and it can make one so cranky sometimes.She fights back the urge to smile.“Today we’re going to focus on hand controls with pins,” she explains calmly, “we’re going to start with control one and work our way up. Koharu and I will now demonstrate.”She moves into position, catching the gaze of her volunteer before she opens her mouth to explain the technique.“Now — “Without warning, Koharu moves into the technique, sharp and precise, and Suki feels herself tugged by it without any sense of control, knowing that Koharu has her balance and her power before she can even blink. She breathes out in a hiss through her teeth when her back hits the floor, breaking the fall with her free hand before Koharu has moved to apply the pin. Suki is stuck, and she can feel her face colour beneath the stark white of her mask.She taps, and catches Koharu’s dark eyes for a long moment before the two of them straighten once again.“Yes. Like that,” she says. The girls in the dojo titter, and then politely put their hands together for Koharu’s sake. * The first of the autumn festivals comes with rain. It’s heavy and soaking, leaving the earth a sodden sponge of water and dirt. It keeps the air in the dojo heavy, though there is a chill at the edge of it already. It seems early, Suki thinks, but then the summer had been intensely hot and abnormally long seeming because of it.It’s a relief to have the brief twinge of cold in the atmosphere.The kitchen is mostly silent but for the sound of herself and Kazumi, one of the women her mother had left behind three months ago, beating at some rice flour dough. In the corner of the kitchen, Kinsuke mutters to himself over a boiling pot, adding some sugar to the water with a rasping of his fingers one against the other, scattering the sweet grains evenly across the width of the cauldron.Suki smiles briefly at him but quickly returns her attention to what she is doing, letting out a weary sigh at how involved the work is. Her elbows and wrists already ache.Beside her, Kazumi seems to have worked her dough to satisfaction, and she reaches into the steaming basket for more to work, her knobby knuckles covered in globs of the stuff.“You and the girls seem to be getting along,” Kazumi says after a time, expression pleasant when Suki looks over to gauge the tone of her probing.On the other side of the kitchen, Kinsuke clears his throat, wiping at his brow with the back of his arm as he bends over the steaming pot to check on the red beans he’s trying to turn into paste of the inside of the mochi that the three of them prepare.“I’m as surprised as you are,” Suki admits after a pause, rolling her aching shoulder with a wince, “I’ve never really had any friends among them…”“No?” It seems to genuinely surprise Kazumi.“No…It’s kind of hard…when you’re the commander’s daughter,” Suki says lamely by way of explanation. Surely Kazumi understands that. She must. She’s far older than Suki.The older woman smiles kindly at her, expression soft.“That must be lonely…But didn’t your mother have friends amongst the girls when she was your age? She and second commander Haru have always been best friends, as far as I remember…”“I guess,” Suki concedes, “but wasn’t that different? I don’t know how my grandmother ran things but…I think probably it was easier for my mother to live alongside the other girls her age. She wasn’t — they did not place her apart from themselves. It seems like…With girls like Koharu, it seems like the closer I allow them to get to me, the more they push against my authority and doing as I’ve asked…”Kazumi hums in thought at this, and Kenji makes a clatter removing the pot suddenly from the fire. There is only the slightest smell of burning, as though he had allowed himself to get distracted. Suki herself has been too distracted to notice.Her blue eyes flash up to him briefly before she returns her attention to Kazumi.“I would be careful of that girl, if I were you,” she says after a moment, brushing some of her light brown hair behind her ear where it has slipped out of her low bun.Suki gives her a confused look.“How so?”“I’ve known girls like that before,” Kazumi explains, “and they will push you as far as possible and then blame you for it when you justifiably retaliate. Don’t let her convince you that you’re in the wrong.”Suki’s mouth draws into a thin line, and she feels the butterflies in her stomach flutter, a far too familiar sensation these days, but nods firmly. If Koharu does completely overstep her boundaries, then Suki believes that she will have the ability to regain control…Even if it means being harsher than she wants to.Koharu is the first of the girls to ever really reach out to her. The notion stings just a little.Maybe it’s not to take advantage. Maybe she doesn’t know what she’s doing (she knows what she is doing, that display in the dojo two months back had been purposeful). Maybe she merely wants to interact with Suki as she does all of her friends.She just has a strong personality.The girl shakes her head, going back to work on the rest of the dough that she had been kneading.“The Elders have asked me to prepare a guard for an incoming merchant vessel in the next few days,” Suki says then, changing the subject from Koharu. She’ll dwell on it later, in private. She can't rely on her sisters for everything. This is something that she must deal with, as interim leader.“A merchant vessel,” Kazumi asks, eyebrows raising in mild surprise, “it’s a bit late in the season, isn’t it?”“That’s what I thought too, but he said that they sent a bird ahead. They’re Southern Water Tribe.”“What? I wouldn’t have expected that. They’ll already be getting their winter ice. How will they return to the South Pole after coming here?”That, too, is a good question. Suki shrugs her shoulders, bottom lip pursing out from her upper one.“Maybe they’re desperate for supplies before winter truly sets in and were willing to risk it,” she suggests to the older Kyoshi Warrior.Kazumi’s brow furrows, concern bright in her eyes.“Must be pretty dire straits indeed,” she mutters. She tosses aside the dough she has finished working on.“Kinsuke,” Kazumi says, and the cook looks up from where he’s been grinding the red beans into a steaming paste, “these are ready for filling. Should I fetch the water to start boiling over the fire?”“Yes,” he answers, waving his hand at Kazumi to indicate that she should go out into the yard to draw it from the well.Kazumi turns to Suki and smiles.“I’ll be back. We’ll call a meeting of all the remainers for later. Maybe just before the bedtime bell.”Suki nods in agreement and tosses aside her own dough to add to the pile of dough that is ready for the filling that Kinsuke prepares.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

V
 
The incident starts small at first. Hardly noticeable. The men who come from the Southern Water Tribe are friendly enough, if a little strange looking for Southerners. An air hangs about them that Suki is unfamiliar with. It puts her on edge. She is not the only one.

Miyuki, one of the eldest of those left behind to defend the island, stares out at the crowds, but she is not watching their people as she might usually do. She watches the men who have come with their furs and cured meats to trade with them. Her red-brown eyes are sharp on them, like a hawk waiting to strike at its prey.

All of the women shift uncomfortably with the thick feeling of the air around them.

The merchants are unusually quiet for people hawking wares, wanting to drive up a deal for their furs. The most noise comes from the murmur of the crowd. From the people who haggle over things at the Kyoshi Island stalls. It feels as though they are all being watched, Suki thinks. As though something is in the shadows, waiting to strike. In retrospect, this is perhaps what ought to have tipped them off to something being terribly wrong.

The first scream is singular, barely audible above the din of the crowd, but just audible enough to make her and the other Kyoshi Warriors turn. Suki’s skin feels like electricity dances over its surface.

“Kazumi,” she says shortly. Kazumi nods, and together the two of them dash off into the thick of the crowd to find the source of distress behind the wall of people who have all pressed together rot see what is the matter.

Then another screech sounds, and another, and the crowd that the two of them wade through begins to push back, people panicking. They run toward the center of the square, away from the edges. Suki feels her shoulders tighten in anticipation of whatever they will find on the other side of the burgeoning tide of people heading toward them.

When they reach the spot where the woman first let out her scream of distress, they find her lying on the ground, pale, clutching a bleeding arm. Kazumi crouches before her immediately, pressing her gloved hands to the wound to stave the bleeding. She and Suki look up, around, trying to see where the threat lies.

“What happened,” Suki finally asks the woman, turning her attention back to her sharply. The woman doesn’t answer. She merely lies quaking on the ground.

“She needs a healer,” Kazumi says tightly, “right now.”

Suki hesitates, swaying on her feet.

“I shouldn’t leave you — “

“I’ll be fine here for a moment,” Haru assures her.

Another brief hesitation, and then Suki nods, her teeth worrying her bottom lip before she turns and dashes back into the crowd.

“Elder Kenji!”

It takes her some minutes of calling Kenji’s name before she finds him.

“Someone is injured at the edge of the square!”

He pushes his way through the crowd, his pace sure and quick despite his need for a cane as he follows Suki back to the bleeding woman.

Kazumi moves aside when she sees him approach, and Kenji takes hold of the woman’s arm in turn, bending in closer to see it. As he examines the wound, another scream goes up amongst the crowd, and Suki hears the distinct sound of the Kyoshi Warriors they had left behind with the merchants falling into formation with a war cry.

Her skin prickles again. She turns to look at Kazumi. The other woman’s eyes are also wide, and she whips her attention to Suki.

“Go,” Kazumi says after a tense pause, “I’ll look to Elder Kenji and this woman.”

Suki rushes back into the crowd, darting passed market goers and the panicked milling of their bodies as the sounds of a clash draw closer and closer the further toward the center of the square Suki comes.

She emerges to find the men from the Southern Water Tribe with bone weapons brandished, attacking the Kyoshi Warriors that she and Kazumi had left behind to defend them. She’d been right to be worried about them. She’d been right to be leery.

The girl charges in to help her sisters, taking one of the men from behind whilst his arm is raised to strike at Miyuki. She hugs him to her, though he is much taller and larger than Suki, and drags him back little by little until she has him laid out on the ground, twisting him by his arm so that he is forced to his belly.

The man grunts and makes a fuss, but Suki disarms him, handing the sharp looking club to a nearby man from the village. She holds her hand out and receives a sash. She ties his hands behind him, making certain to incorporate his feet too. He isn’t going anywhere, and now Miyuki and Shiroko have the other man surrounded, neutralizing him in a breath.

How quickly the tides of a battle can turn.

Once he is detained as well, the three Kyoshi Warriors nod at one another, and the men from the local jail gather the two Water Tribesmen up and take them away. Their wares are gathered as well, and brought with the men to the jail.

“Kazumi,” Miyuki asks her.

“Guarding Elder Kenji while he sees to a wounded woman at the edge of the square.”

“Did she say what happened?”

“No, she was in shock,” Sukia answers steadily. “We should head there now. Perhaps she will be able to talk since Kenji is seeing to her.”

They nod in agreement with her assessment and the three of them head off in the direction that Suki had come from, hyper-alert to their surroundings. The market has mostly cleared of people as they make their way home. They’ve left in their panic. Sales will be down for their local merchants now.

She watches as people look over their shoulders, anxious.

When they come upon Kenji and Kazumi, the woman who had been nearly catatonic when Suki had left them, is sitting up leaning against a building, sweaty but seemingly far more chipper than when they had found her.

“Miss,” Suki addresses her, “you’re sitting!”

“Yes, thanks to Elder Kenji.”

“Not a bother, Miss Marika.”

“What happened,” Miyuki asks her, all business. She stands with her hands at her hips, waiting. The woman’s smile fades, her face paling again.

“I — there was someone in the shadows. I couldn’t really see him, but he attacked me. When I screamed, he fled.”

Miyuki and Suki look at one another, trading meaningful glances. There is another one. And he is still at large. It is like the Water Tribe merchants came as a hunting team and are hunting their people to try and achieve…What?

Suki frowns and turns her attention briefly to Kenji. He looks as troubled as she feels.

A voice echoes over the din toward them, travelling on the air. They all turn to see as Hayako comes limping toward them with her elegant cane, breathless and red-faced, frazzled. Kenji’s name is on her lips.

“Kenji come quickly and see! You four as well!” She looks at the Kyoshi Warriors but is not as benevolent as she is when she is speaking to her fellow Elder. She frowns at them, as though they have done something that she disapproves of.

Suki doesn’t like the sensation it causes in her belly.
 
*
 
The storehouse is a disaster. The doors hang loose on their hinges, hardly effective, the lock that they had placed around the handles a broken twist of metal on the ground at the entrance. Useless.

Suki and her sisters proceed into the storehouse to see that it has been ransacked. Years of preserved food and other things have been taken or destroyed, leaving them with perhaps a quarter of what had been built up there over the year, and those previous. They look at one another in apprehension and then turn to the four elders who have gathered with them.

Hayako’s hands are on her hips, her expression livid.

“You four let this happen!”

Suki and the others frown as a collective, defensive.

“Elder Hayako, we — “

“Why were there only

four

of you out today? We weren’t even expecting merchants! It was odd from the get-go and now

this

!” She is staring directly at Suki, and Suki cannot help but feel that this angry rant is directed wholly upon her. As though she had made the decision to let her another take all but a handful of them with her to the Mainland to fight.

Her cheeks burn hot under her war paint.

“Elder Hayako,” Suki starts again, “there are only four of us left here on the island, and the girls do not know the formations or the routines well enough to accompany — “

“Then you have failed to teach them something important! This is on your head, young lady! I knew your mother was wrong to have left you in charge here. She is too trusting of a

child

!”

“With all due respect, Elder Hayako,” Miyuki says then, stepping forward, “it was our commander’s decision to take the majority of our sisters with her, leaving only us to defend the island, not Suki’s.”

Thundering feet scrape up the road behind them, and all present exit the storehouse to see a thin man approaching from the village, bent double to catch his breath once he has come upon them all.

“Esc-escaped!”

“What?” Suki, Hayako, and Miyuki all step forward in concern.

“The two…men in the jail! They’ve escaped! There’s…no sign of them…anywhere! And their canoe is gone!”

Suki feels a cold sensation at the back of her neck. Oh no. Oh no, oh no. They took their supplies, and they fled. That is why they’d come all along. Not to trade. They’d come to steal the island’s supplies.
 
*
 
Her mother’s letters stop coming after she sends away to ask her advice on the matter of the stolen supplies. Suki feels the strain of it in the base of her neck.

The lessons with the younger girls begin to go poorly once again.

Perhaps they can sense that she is not at her best, despite Suki’s hard attempts at seeming as chipper as ever. Perhaps they can feel that she is weak. That now is the time to pounce, if they so choose.

She tries not to crack down on them too hard and give it away. But they are testing her.

The villagers too.

Her failure to see through the ruse that the false merchants from the Water Tribe had put on has marked her a social pariah amongst the townsfolk. Even the majority of the Elders believe her at fault for something that neither she nor any of the

adults

in the room had seen coming. But she is young, she knows, and easily targeted as the one at fault, when the others are worried about what will become of them for the winter, and about the return of the marauders to take more of their supplies and people.

The villagers have already demanded to know what will be done. Suki and the Elders have made their assurances. Suki has heard the other warriors and the Elders talking when they think she cannot hear, however, about how it will likely not be enough. She isn’t certain what to do about it.

It is on a day in the midst of the autumn season, the chill in the air permeating the Kyoshi Warriors’ dwelling so that Suki can see her breath in the absence of a stoked fire pit, that Koharu decides she will say her piece.

The rap on Suki’s door is unexpected, and when she opens it to reveal the other girl on its opposite side, her eyes widen slightly with her surprise.

“Koharu. What can I do for you?”

The other girl barges passed Suki into the interior of her room without being invited. She looks around the place as though in appraisal before she returns her attention to Suki, who slides her door closed once more to afford them at least a little privacy.

“Suki,” the girls and I will not be doing the drills today,” she announces, confidence in the set of her shoulders. “Instead, we were thinking that we’ll go down to the festival by the beach and have some street food and see the performers. We were thinking that you should come with us. It’ll be great fun!”

Suki is, at first, made speechless by the other girl’s gall, but simultaneously remembers to feel flattered that they would consider including her. This is followed on the heels of a rising annoyance with the fact that Koharu, and by extension the other under Suki’s instruction, believe that they can get away with this act of impudent laziness simply by flattering Suki enough to invite her to their truant activities.

Suki stands facing Koharu and remembers Kazumi’s words to her in the kitchen over the mochi some weeks before.

They

will

push you as far as possible and then blame you for it when you justifiably retaliate

.

She takes a breath and grounds herself.

“No, Koharu,” Suki answers with calm conviction, “you will not be going to the festival until tonight, when your duties and training are all complete; Just as it is every year.”

“What? But we always miss all of the good parts because of our stupid chores,” she complains. This isn’t wrong, but it is also not the point.

“You made the choice to enter the order of Kyoshi,” Suki says firmly, “you must honour your commitment to the order first, above your selfish wishes. Or have you learned nothing in your time amongst us?”

Koharu’s round face pinches into anger, her cheeks growing splotchy with redness.

“Don’t you want to be our friend,” she asks then, tone snide.

Suki frowns.

"Of course I do, but in the end I am responsible for all of you, and so I cannot always give you what you want!”

“Oh, I see. So you’re too good for us.” Haru chances tactics. Suki feels her anger bubbling a little closer to the surface.

“Koharu —!”

“Well that’s fine, I’ll just tell all of the other girls that. I’m sure they’ll be relieved to know their standing in your favour.”

“Suki’s frustration bubbles up within her yet further, and she feels as though she is expanding with it, ready to burst. Finally, she does.

“Koharu that is

enough

,” Suki snaps. The other girl’s arms uncross, falling to her sides as she ducks her head, surprise evident in her expression at the ferocity in Suki’s tone. “I am your commanding officer! You will show me the respect that this position demands, or you may return to your family and forfeit your standing in this order! Do you understand?”

It is the first time that Suki has felt like a true commander. She sees it in the way that Koharu snaps to attention. All of the friendly pretenses and superior posturing are gone. Suki

is

in command of this situation.

Her heart flutters in her breast.

“…Yes, Suki,” Koharu finally answers in a near whisper, her face completely splotched with red in her embarrassment and shame.

Suki nods sharply, satisfied.

“Good. Then you shall return to your group of friends and inform them that they are to meet me in the dojo in a half hour, ready to train. Please tell them that the training will be extra long, and that they will be expected to give it their all as well, courtesy of yourself. Furthermore, in lieu of attending the festival, we will go foraging afterward. The town has lost most of its supplies to pirates, and so we must supplement what has been lost with new supplies. I should hate to see the people that we protect starving because my recruits were too lazy to do the work that they agreed to do when they joined the Kyoshi Warriors.”

“…Yes, Suki…”

“You are dismissed.” Suki steps back, sliding her door open once again, waiting for Koharu to shuffled from her room.

She does so quickly, disappearing down the hall with her tail between her legs.

Suki closes her door again with a snap of the wood against its frame and paces her room for a few moments to calm herself. Despite her reticence to be cruel to the other girl, she finds that she feels…strangely elated by this triumph. Suki turns to her makeup table and strides over to sit before it, reaching for her war paint. Today can only look up.
 
*
 
The living quarters are quiet when Suki finally returns to find her rest for the day. She takes a deep breath of the thick air, stokes the fire in her room, and then sets about wiping the makeup from her skin with the water basin she keeps close to the vanity.

She feels…Content. Accomplished. As though she could do anything if she simply puts her mind to it, and isn’t that the case? The girls had fallen into line with no fuss today, and they would do so from hereafter. Of this, she is certain.

There is a clamour down the hall. The sound of rushing feet. Suki frowns, standing from the vanity and moving quickly toward her door to open it and peer into the hallway. Before she even has the chance to slide it in its frame there is an urgent rapping at the door, hurried and insistent.

Suki opens it with a wide-eyed frown of alarm. Before Her, Miyuki, Kazumi, and Kenji stand, all of them pale as sheets.

“What? What is it?” She looks between the three of them in alarm. Had those pirates returned? Had there been an accident?

“Suki…we…received…” Miyuki begins, but she seems unable to finish. Suki frowns and looks then to Kenji. His expression is grave.

“There has been a letter from your sisters on the frontlines.”

“What..?”

“Suki…” Kazumi steps into her room, taking her by the hand as the other two join them, seating themselves across from her. Kazumi has turned toward Suki, both of her hands now in the older woman’s grasp. “There was a battle…The Kyoshi Warriors fought off and encroaching Fire Nation unit successfully but your mother —“

“Your mother did not make it, my dear.” Kenji’s voice drops like a stone, and in the silence which follows afterward, Suki feels as though she is being stifled. Her ears ring, and she blinks at him slowly, wondering if she could possibly have heard him correctly.

“What..?” she feels like she cannot breathe.

“She was defending a small group of civilians. She became surrounded. She…She did not make it. Your mother has died.”

It’s a punch to the gut. Suki nearly doubles over at the words, eyes wide, breath refusing to come at first.

“No,” she finally manages to wheeze, “no, no, no!” She can’t draw breath. She’s suffocating, she’s —

Kazumi’s arm comes around her back, the other still holding onto her hands, and she draws her close. Suki hears a cry rip from her own throat in anguish.”

“Mom..!”
 
*
 
Suki wakes groggily in the middle of the night. It’s silent in the dojo, but she could swear she hears footsteps in her room, padding across the floor. An overwhelming sensation of being watched washes over the girl. She looks into the shadows at the corners of her room. Nothing.

When she looks again, her mother’s pale face peers down at her from above. She feels calm. She blinks slowly, lazily. Mio reaches out to touch her face, but there is nothing there when her hand makes contact with Suki’s cold skin.

Beside her, Kazumi stirs in her sleeps and turns toward her. Suki looks back at the ceiling, and her mother is gone, and there is nothing but the emptiness of the black shadows above her again.

Suki’s eyes are heavy, and she lets them close once more, succumbing to the dark behind her lids.
 
*
 
The first morning is the hardest. Suki manages.

She gets up at the usual time, just as dawn is breaking over the Eastern side of the Island, and washes her face again in the new water that someone has poured out for her at some point the night previous. She dresses in her heavy practice uniform, ties back the front section of her hair, and leaves her room after rolling up her futon for the day to store in the corner.

She is silent through the morning workout, but Haruko takes over the leadership of the class, and it goes well. Suki makes a note to praise her for a job well done at a later time in the day when there are not so many girls watching. She is silent through her practice with the other full-fledged warriors as well.

If they are any different around her, she cannot tell. She goes about her day in a fog. When it is evening again, Suki lies down and does not wake until the next morning.

The second day is easier.

She remembers who she is. She puts on her practice uniform, and she leads the young women’s class. She goes to her own drills. She talks and laughs with some of the women. She goes to the village and buys some meagre supplies for the dojo (they have cut back so that the townsfolk have first pick of the supplies left by the pirates the month before). She stocks the kitchen for Kinsuke. She helps him prepare the thin broth that he has planned for their dinner. They chat about nothing. The weather. What root vegetables keep best through the winter. Whether they have enough to store in their own cellar so that they’ll at least have something a little heartier to give to the women who still occupy the dojo.

Suki promises him that she will take a few of their younger archers and hunt for some game. There isn’t much to be had on the island, but there must be something. It will stop them taking what the village needs to survive.

It will be hard on their stomachs at first, to transition to a more meat-based diet, but in the end, it will be what is best for everyone involved.

Suki conducts the evening class for the girls, and while they eat, she makes her way to the village again to buy some extra bedding. One of the girls had accidentally ruined hers not long ago, and the dojo is responsible for its replacement.

It goes on like this, for a month or more. Winter arrives, and they change to their heavier, more padded, gi and hakama, and the girls complain of the chill, but the inside of the living quarters is warm, and they all help one another to heat water for bathing, and they survive. As they have always done.

And that is when the first of their warriors returns to the island.

Suki, and all of the island are surprised to see one of their skiffs. The bay is beginning to clog with ice from the cold, and passage is not as simple for the wooden ships that they employ.

The warrior who returns is Haru.

Suki had always thought that she would have taken over the command. She returns to the island late in the afternoon near to the winter solstice. The boat appears in the bay, and all of the residents come to see who it might be, anxious at the thought that it may be returning pirates or worse. When they see it is one of their own they cheer in relief.

Haru disembarks followed by strange men carrying a wooden box behind them. It smells of sweet grasses and perfumed oils, and Suki knows without having to ask that it is a body. She looks long at Haru, feeling weary, and her mother’s second in command comes forward, pressing a firm hand to Suki’s shoulder.

“I have brought her home,” she tells Suki solemnly. Suki looks once again at the box, and understanding dawns on her.

Oh. She has brought her home for proper internment. This is why she is here and not some other warrior.

Suki nods wordlessly. Haru stoops and embraces her tightly.

“I am so sorry, Suki. I loved her too, but I cannot imagine the pain that you must be in.”

She hasn’t been in pain, Suki thinks, but she does not admit this out loud. She had been able, for a time, to forget. When she goes about her routine, she can forget that her mother is not coming back. She can forget that her mother is not still simply away fighting and that she will never hear her voice again, or see her smile.

Fat, silent, tears run down Suki’s face. She buries her eyes against Haru’s shoulder, trying to hide the sadness that spills out of her in a river. Finally, she pushes away from her mother’s second in command, half bowed so that it simply appears that she is offering deference to her before she turns and runs from the shoreline and back into the depths of the island.

The village passes her by in a blur, and the villagers who had not dared go to the water’s edge for fear of the pirate watch her go with wide eyes. Suki ignores them, her breath feeling like fire every time that she takes it into her lungs.

She coughs wetly by the time she makes it back to the dojo, and she goes the long way around to avoid seeing anyone, scrabbling over the steps of the courtyard and up into the temple. She falls on her knees before the silent, looming, statue of Avatar Kyoshi, and presses her forehead to her forearms against the floor.

No longer able to suppress her sobs, Suki lets them out into the floorboards. Her own grief echoes back to her from the silent arches of the temple’s rafters.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

VI

“The Fire Nation was not far behind me when I returned. They pursued when they saw my ship break off from the Earth Kingdom fleet at the harbour,” Haru says, grave.

It’s the first that Suki has heard of the conversation at dinner. The Elders have gathered to hear what Haru has to say of the battle which took her mother’s life. Suki doesn’t want to know more than she already knows…But this grabs her attention.

You led them straight to us?!

It’s what she wants to say, but she knows that it is not Haru’s fault. The Fire Nation would have followed anyone who returned to Kyoshi Island.

It had only been a matter of time before they would descend on them.

“I expect we shall see them within the week,” Haru continues.

“We should shore up as much extra in supplies as we can without affecting the rest of the village,” Suki says. The entire room turns to look at her with expressions on their faces as though they have forgotten she is even there. “I know things are tight, and that there has been unrest because of it,” she continues, “but I’ll take the girls out to hunt, so it shouldn’t affect the villagers too much.”

“Suki,” Haru says, not unkindly, “you don’t have to do anything. Just focus on mourning for now.”

“But I —

“I will be taking over from here,” Haru interrupts before Suki can say more. The girl’s mouth closes, and she feels her stomach turn. Suddenly she is not hungry. Not at all. She pushes her bowl away.

Kenji’s withered hand comes forward, his fingers brushing against Suki’s wrist before she pulls her hand away forcefully and stands, her hands in tight fists at her sides. She stares at the tabletop, willing herself not to show any emotion; not to show how hurt she is to be shouldered out when she has been doing her best.

“Suki…”

She doesn’t wait to hear what the Elder has to say. Instead, she bows stiffly in his general direction and turns, fleeing the room and down the narrow hallway back toward the dormitory.

She fumbles into her room, sliding the door closed with a curt crack of the wood doorframe.

Suki wanders over to the vanity, plunking down before it. She notices for the first time that her face is puffy and pink, splotchy from her earlier shows of emotion, and seems only to have worsened now that she tries to press down on her grief. She buries her face in her hands, scrubbing her palms over her itching eyes, and sniffles heavily before she allows herself to simply fall back against the mats, her arms spread wide on either side of her while she stares up at the rafters of her ceiling.

There’s a gentle tapping at the door. Suki closes her eyes.

When she does not answer, hoping that whoever it is will go away, she hears the shift of fabric and heavy sigh as someone settles themselves in the hallway outside her door. She recognizes the sound of Kenji’s voice. She presses her lips into a thin line.

“Suki,” he voice floats through the door, respectfully quiet though he speaks to her from the hallway, and so likely everyone else in this area of the dormitory will hear him anyway, “I know that it is painful, to be forced into stillness when all you want to do is move and forget,” he tells her gently. “I know that you have thrown yourself into your work so much in the last few months because you do not wish to focus on your mother’s death. That you would rather be useful than sit here and mourn…But please understand. What Haru and the rest of us want is for you to not have to face the consequences and realities of going to war. Not at your young age. A child should not have to mount a defence against the Fire Nation. A child should not have to mount a defense at all,” he says through the door.

Suki breathes rapidly, feeling fat gobs of tears falling from her eyes and down her face toward the floor.

“I’m not a child,” she manages thickly, “I’m a Kyoshi Warrior.”

“I know…But you’re also the youngest Kyoshi Warrior to ever take the cloth. You

are

still a child…Even if you did turn thirteen today.”

Suki’s eyes fall open. Oh…Her brow furrows. It is her birthday, she recalls finally. She is —

“May I come in?” Kenji’s voice seems to lower beyond the door, but Suki hears him well enough. She sits up from her position on the grass mats, and shuffles over to her door, opening it a crack to peer out at him.

Kenji looks across at her from where he has seated himself before the door, and he smiles sadly at her.

Suki sighs, and then moves out of the way, opening her door wider so that he may have access to her room. Kenji enters, leaving the door ajar behind him.

He reaches into the front of his gi and produces a long package wrapped in a  handkerchief. The old man places it on the floor between them, carefully folding back the edges of the fabric to reveal what lies beneath. She knows the gold of the fans intimately before she really gets a good look at them.

Suki reaches out, carefully taking one of the fans from the wrapping, running her fingers along the engraved badger-moles on the handles. She flicks the weapon open, turning it this way and that. Spotless.

“These are — “

“Your mother’s fans. Yes.” He smiles at her a little warmer than before. “She would have wanted you to have them, not Haru, so I made certain to get them before anyone else could start divvying up her warriors’ supplies.”

Suki closes the fan, holding the length of it in both of her hands.

“They are surprisingly heavy things. I had never realised just how hefty your fans were.”

‘They’re real metal,” Suki imparts, “because they’re actually weapons. One good whack in just the right place could split a man’s skull.”

Kenji chuckles in that uncomfortable way that men sometimes do when a Kyoshi Warrior says as much so casually. He seems otherwise unbothered by the words, and more interested.

Suki sniffles loudly once again, and wipes her nose on her rough sleeve without thinking.

“Thank you,” she says after a pause, “I really…This is a lovely gift.”

“You’re welcome,” he answers with a nod. “We all love you, Suki. We don’t want you to suffer in this way, and we do not wish to be the cause of your suffering. Please understand.”

“I do,” she lies. She wonders if, eventually, it will be the truth.

Kenji reaches forward, patting her hands, and then shifts with a grunt, rolling to his feet. His joints crack with the motion, and he rubs at his hip absently.

“Get some rest. If you’d like, you can accompany me on village business in the morning, for something to do. But only if you like.”

‘Alright…I’ll think about it,” Suki promises. She tries on a smile. It wavers, but it holds steady.

Kenji nods, disappearing back down the hall.
 
*
 
After the ceremony for her mother, Suki separates herself from the group of assembled warriors and initiates. The whole Island seems to be there. Everyone is staring. It’s a miracle that she is able to slip away.

The dull, scratchy, white fabric of her mourning clothes itches. She scratches at a spot on her arm for the hundredth time as she ascends the steps to the temple of Kyoshi, padding silently in.

Her neck strains upward, taking in the full scope of the statue, which stares silently back at her looking as though it has been expecting her arrival. Suki stops, the weak light from the outdoors streaming in behind her. It lights a second of the statue with cold, hard, light, making the old polished wood glimmer.

Finally, she kneels before it.

The weight of Kyoshi’s gaze hunches the girl’s shoulders, though perhaps it is also the cold which permeates the temple. Her breath mists before her, rising up and disappearing as it makes it way toward the rafters.

“Please…” the word is quiet, raspy, barely audible despite being echoed back to her from the vast cavern of the empty temple. “Avatar Kyoshi…I know that the Avatar Cycle was probably broken when the Fire Nation attacked the Air Nomads a hundred years ago…I know…That you will never come back here again.” Suki’s voice sounds foreign to her own ears in the silence.

“But I need you. I

need

your guidance,” she pleads, “my mother is dead, and I don’t know what to do. The Elders don’t want me to fight.

Haru

doesn’t want me to fight, but…That’s what I should do, isn’t it? I’ve spent my whole life being told that I should face all challenges head-on, that I am a warrior and should conduct myself as such so…”

She looks up at the statue once more, her neck straining as she takes in the nearest parts of the carved figure. “So why do I feel so conflicted? Why is everyone trying to stop me?”

Suki’s face crumples, and she feels the familiar droplets of her tears streaking down her cheeks again.

“I feel so lost…”

The temple fills once again with silence, and the only response is the sound of Suki’s own stuttering breath as she weeps.
 
*
 
She doesn’t find Kenji the next day, or the day after. There are four weeks between her mother’s funeral and Haru’s return to the island. None of the other adult warriors return after her.

Suki can feel the tension rising on the island, twisting its fingers between the huts. When the Islanders approach in a mob to demand answers from the Kyoshi Warriors she shouldn’t be surprised — but she is a little.

Haru faces them down, a severe expression on her face as they demand to be told what the warriors will do to help them. They’re starving, they complain.

“Suki and the girls have already done all that they can to ensure that you all have the majority of the supplies and food which were salvaged and gathered directly after the unfortunate mishap with the pirates,” Haru tells them sternly. “We are facing a new threat in the form of the Fire Nation. We have given all that we are able to give at this time.”

Men and women alike shout at her that it isn’t enough. The Elders arrive.

Despite the re-rationing of the remaining food supplies, and all of the assurances of the Elders and Haru and her small chain of command at the dojo, the people continue to be disgruntled, wanting to know what the Kyoshi Warriors have been hoarding for themselves.

Suki slips away.

The adults have made it so that this is not about her. She will no longer involve herself.

She hunts, though she doesn’t let anyone know that it is her. She leaves her kills for the cook and disappears before she can be reprimanded. She practices her forms on her own, away from the others. Haru and the remaining adults take over her classes and teach the girls.

Lastly, Suki spends time at the temple, as her mother had once done, and she speaks to Avatar Kyoshi, who never deigns to speak back. She falls to sleep in the quiet interior of the temple more than once. No one seems to notice.
 
*
 
The day that the Fire Nation finally comes, the island grows still.

The lack of birdsong is the first thing that Suki notices when she climbs the incline behind the temple to go foraging for something other than meat to add to the pot. Her feet crunch in fresh snowfall, the only sound all around her for what seems like miles, and she looks over her shoulder warily before she bends to swipe aside some of the fresh snow, revealing several curling green fiddleheads that seem to have survived the frost and the cold. She takes out a knife, severing them from their roots and placing them in her apron as she gathers each tasty treat. The girls will be happy to see them, she reflects briefly. She herself will be glad of the variety, especially since the dojo has given up yet more of their own rations to assist with the plights of the villagers.

Apron gathered in front of her, her other hand tucked close up inside of her haori and sleeve to keep warm, Suki steps gingerly back down the incline, wedging herself against the hill and the side of the temple to make her way back out into the open courtyard.

In the distance, she hears a mournful lowing. She stops, feeling her ears prick at the sudden sound that breaks through the silence. There Is a commotion somewhere quite far from where she stands too. Her heart’s pace picks up. She hesitates.

What is that?

It sounds again, echoing off of the mountains that form the natural barrier between her town and the one on the other side of the island.

There’s a great grinding, thundering, noise which follows the horn. It makes the hair on her body stand on end. She grits her teeth.

Suki takes off, her sandals scraping against the icy flagstones. She lips more than once, but regains her balance, darting across the expanse of the temple grounds and through the back of the living quarters of the dojo.

Suki can hear her own breath in her ears and she bowls through the kitchen, depositing her find on the counter before continuing through with her sandals in hand, gripped between her fingers, and out into the front courtyard, skidding perilously to a halt when she sees Haru and the handful of adult warriors who had remained behind standing together in conference, expressions grim.

“What’s going on,” Suki asks, breaking into their conversation. The five women assembled stare, eyes wide, and Kazumi says Suki’s name in surprise. It takes Suki a moment to understand why.

She’s not been seen by any of these women in over a month.

She moves past this as though it is of little consequence, and for the moment it is. She looks to her mother’s second — she looks to the

commander

of the Kyoshi Warriors, expression brooking no argument.

“What is going on,” she asks again, perhaps over-enunciating too much. She's tired of being shut out of the conversation.

“The Fire Nation are here,” the commander answers.

Suki looks around at the other full-fledged warriors. A handful of them. She feels the words

I’ll help

bubbling in the back of her throat, but she swallows them down and locks them in her ribcage once more. She knows full well that none of these women will allow her to fight at their sides.

Not a single one.

The anger that has dulled in Suki’s self-imposed isolation flares up red hot, a fire bender’s flames in her breast. She takes a steadying breath. She closes her eyes.

“What’s your plan,” she asks instead, tone disinterested at best.

“We meet them head-on,” Haru answers with conviction. Suki searches the commander's face. Brow furrowing just slightly.

“Do you think that’s wise with our — with your numbers?”

“It’s how it is done,” Haru answers. The other women do not respond, but one or two nod their agreement.

Suki is rather sick of hearing how things are done. The way things were

done

is for before her mother’s death. The way things were

done

is for the times before when they were not facing the Fire nation on their own shores and with very little elite fighting force left over.

She says nothing instead. She grits her teeth, and she looks away/

“Stay here with the girls, Suki,” Haru says then, “you’ll all be safe here.”

She doesn’t want to be safe, and Suki doubts that the other girls do either, but she nods anyway, and continues to stare aggressively away from Haru.

“Come on ladies,” Haru says then to the rest of the assembled warriors, “we’ll pick some of the militia up on the way. The men in town are busy arming themselves. I’m certain there will be a few benders as well.”

They all nod, and fall into rank, following Haru out of the courtyard and to the main road. Suki watches them go from the corner of her eye until she’s certain that none of them will turn around before she turns her face full toward them to watch them go.

There is a sickening, sinking, feeling in the pit of her stomach, She swallows, and then turns away, heading back into the dojo.
 
*
 
The first thunderous boom of a canon resounds from the shore at three hours past the midday meal. Suki and the girls that have gathered with her look up from their chores, and make their way to the doors of the dojo, looking out toward the town and the cove that houses their ships.

There’s a tall, black, smoke plume cutting a line into the high flung blue of the cloudless winter sky. They all feel the ground tremble just slightly under their feet. Suki thinks of a volcano erupting, and the devastation it leaves in its wake. She cannot tear her blue eyes from the smoke.

“Something’s happening,” one of the girls says, voice sound tremulous, “we should do something.”

“Commander Haru told us all to stay here,” Suki replies more calmly than she feels, “so we’ll stay here.”

“But — “

“No buts,” Suki interrupts, “those are our orders. Get back to those floors, I want to see our faces in the reflecting when you’re done waxing them,” she says to the girls. They all nod, murmuring their assent, and then go back to their duties.

Suki returns her attention to repairing a ruined grass matt, weaving the new, dried, grass ends through one another methodically. There’s another boom, and another tremor. They all pause, but then continue on, doing their best to ignore the intrusion.

It isn’t possible to ignore for long.

It is some hours later, but two Elders come rushing to the dojo over the ridge whilst Suki is out with three other girls sweeping their front step, and clearing away what they can of the snow that has accumulated on the pathway, sprinkling sand in the wake of their efforts to stop slippage in the ice hardened around the cobbles.

Kenji slips briefly anyway and is caught by one of the trainees. She carefully rights him, and he makes the rest of his way to Suki shakily, looking over his shoulder and back the way that he and the other Elder have come.

“Suki…I…” he bows his head, and closes his eyes and squeezes them for a moment, his mouth set in a thin line. Suki watches, concerned just a little, her broom held loosely in hand.

“Haru…has fallen.”

She feels her stomach twist into a hard knot. Her ears ring.

“I don’t — “ she swallows convulsively. She doesn’t understand why he’s come all the way here to tell her now. Surely he could have told her when the matter was over? In the distance, they can still hear the sounds of thunder from canons. It is far from over.

“Kazumi too,” he continues, seeming to realise that she hasn’t quite caught up with whatever it is he is trying to say. “And the others…”

Suki’s face feels cold. She gasps out.

“All of them?” She can’t believe it. It seems false. Kenji nods, brow scrunched together in remorse.

“But — “

“The Fire Nation’s forces are overwhelming us. They’ve made land at the beach. The men and others have managed to keep the majority of their forces in their boats but — “

“What are you saying, Kenji?”

Suki searches his expression, feeling sick to her stomach for some reason or other. She thinks she knows what he’s saying, but…This is certainly not what she had wanted.

“I am saying…That we need you to take command. You are the only one left with much experience with anything other than a militia…And there are far more of you and the girls than there are of the inexperienced warriors in the village…” He glances behind her shoulder at the girls that are still standing with their brooms, listening, eyes saucers.

“Kenji, I — “

“It is not what any of us would have preferred,’ he interrupts, grave, “obviously, I have already discussed with you our reasons for not wanting you to enter into battle at your age but…This is not an ideal situation overall.”

Suki swallows thickly and closes her eyes. No, this isn’t what she had wanted either. There are different ways this could have gone.

“What is the situation on the beach,” she asks then, “tell me everything.”

Kenji raises his eyebrows, but he delivers. He tells her the position of the enemy boats, and of the overwhelming force of Fire nation soldiers who still pour from the giant destroyers that have landed on Kyoshi’s shores. Suki thinks that she was right to question Haru that morning.

With five Kyoshi Warriors in total, there had been no way they would have won…and it got her and the others killed.

“Girls,” she turns to the ranks of young warriors who have not yet been initiated into their belts and searches their young faces, no older than her own. They are about to become soldiers before their time. She clenches her fists at her sides.

“I have a plan, but — it will require…some subterfuge. Do you think we can manage that?”

They all murmur their agreement, and Suki sends them to action. No one has time for uniforms.
 
*
 
She splits the force of her girls. She places Koharu in charge of the second unit. The girls gladly rally around her. Suki takes the rest to the temple, and finds a scroll that has been at the edge of her mind since the beginning of the day, when Haru had assembled the adult warriors together and prepared them to meet their fates.

It speaks of a sea creature at the bottom of the bay that Avatar Kyoshi had placed under a long slumber. Suki plans to wake it.

“You girls will circle around to the cliffs,” she tells a small group of five as all of them head to the kitchens, and Suki finds the bloody remains of a deer only half skinned and carved for their future meals by Kinsuke. She gathers all of the parts and the blood in buckets, handing them off one at a time. The girls wrinkle their noses. One or two gag. In the end, everyone keeps their composure.

“You’ll put the parts in the water, make sure to get the blood in there too,” Suki says. If you go up to the farthest cliff that’s supposedly where the Unagi’s cave is. Hopefully, this will be enough to wake it.”

The girls nod. Suki takes a deep breath to steady her own nerves.

“Koharu and the others are keeping the Fire Nation soldiers distracted on the beach. The rest of the girls and I will circle around to make a pincer formation and surprise them from the left and right flanks while they’re still distracted by the militia and Koharu’s unit.  Girls…This is a real battle,” Suki reminds them, tone steady, “some of us will be wounded. Some of us won’t come home. If you want to leave now, then I won’t blame you.”

The girls shift on their feet, glancing at each other. No one makes a move to leave.

“Be careful out there,” Suki requests, expression softening, “and may you fight as ferociously as Kyoshi.”

They yell back Kyoshi’s name at the top of their lungs, and Suki feels her tension turn into something else — something more useful. She smiles, the expression sharp at the edges, and then together they turn and hurry from the dojo and down into the village, splitting up to enact their battle plan.

Suki pauses at the stairs to the dormitory. Hesitating a moment, she motions for the others to go on ahead, and thunders up to her room, opening the drawer of her vanity unceremoniously and extracting the handkerchief which is wrapped around her mother’s fans. She glances at them only momentarily before tucking them into her belt, and then she hurries back down the stairs to meet her sisters, their weight a hefty presence in the back of her mind.
 
*
 
The battleground is more chaotic than Suki could have imagined. Men scream as flames burst hot out of nowhere. She ducks and weaves in the press of bodies, flipping a fire bender in his heavy armour over her shoulder. He lands with a crunch. She doesn’t look back to see if he is still alive.

Her heart is pounding. She can hardly breathe, but she keeps going.

Suki gives a call, and she and her team assemble in a unit, advancing with their shields raised, herding a small group of firebenders slowly back toward their ships. On the far side of the conflict, she can hear Koharu doing the same, her voice ringing out over the din. As one, she and the other warriors give a cry in return to Koharu’s group.

Something behind them explodes.

It’s as though a battering ram has slammed itself into her spine. Suki’s ears ring, and the sand shifts under her hands. Above her, a helmeted face comes into focus.

“It’s a shame that the Earth peasants have to send their children to do their battling for them. Where are your parents little girl?” His voice sounds oddly hollow in the space behind his visor. She swallows convulsively, tasting a little blood. Her cheek smarts.

Slowly, the sound of men’s screams returns to her, and the sounds of her girls screaming too. Some of them have been hurt. Some worse than her. She tries to take in a deep breath but finds it difficult and painful. Suki winces, and turns her face toward the rest of the beach, ignoring the fire bender’s question.

If he is going to kill her, then he is going to kill her, and there is currently little that she can do about it. Not immobilized as she is.

Her plan has failed, she knows. The Fire Nation is going to win this battle, and Kyoshi is going to fall into their hands. They are all done for. Every one of them.

I’m sorry mother

…

An air shaking screech is suddenly audible across the bay. She feels her stomach roil, and the vibrations of the sound in her chest. The Fire Nation soldier above her raises his hands to cover his ears, cringing away. Suki curls in on herself slowly, eyes wide at the pure pain of the noise.

Spirits what on earth —

The boats by the shore rock where they’ve taken anchor, the water lapping up wilder, more violently, around the bodies already strewn across the beach. Suki feels water in her hair, tugging back when it recedes again. She forces herself painfully to her elbows. She looks.

Behind the ships, its cold, black, eyes shining in the weak daylight, a great serpent rears its head, its black body writhing in the water.

Suki’s heart beats fast.

They did it…! They did it!

Everything happens fast.

The boats furthest from the right side begin crashing together, and what few men are left on board the ships bail out over the sides into the bay. The Unagi’s great body wraps about them, crushing the steel with its grip. It opens its mouth, raining water down on the other boats. Men scream. Others run back toward the ships, seemingly uncertain of what to do.

The Kyoshi citizens look at one another, then back at the fleeing enemy. They rally. Suki pushes herself to her feet and staggers forward, her mother’s fans flashing in her hands as she cuts through the wall of enemy flesh that still stands on their shores.

The other remaining Kyoshi warriors rally as well. Together, they surround the enemy. Together, they push them back.

Foreign soldiers stumble over themselves, tripping back to the boats that aren’t damaged. Earth benders chase them away with projectile rocks. The Fire nation retreats as quickly as they can, some men left behind on the beach who cannot make their ways back before disembarkment.

They turn, facing the now much larger force of Kyoshi Islanders surrounding them. They fall to their knees, hands up, expressions baffled. Suki steps forward, still dizzy, but keeping her footing. She looks down her nose at all of them. She smiles.

“Get a canoe, boys,” she instructs some of the villagers. They look at her like she’s grown two heads. “We’re going to send them back home to the Fire Nation. It seems their friends forgot them.

Then the men smile. Someone brings forward a large length of rope. Suki counts heads as the remaining girls who aren’t either wounded or dead gather behind her. It’s a bigger loss than she’d wanted, of course, any would have been. Koharu comes forward, looking to her expectantly. Suki lifts a hand, pressing it to her comrade’s shoulder. The other girl smiles at her.

“Either the Unagi will eat well tonight, or they’ll be reunited with their friends. Either way, someone will live to tell the rest of the Fire Nation that our shores are protected.”